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Moonage Ice Cream (aka David Bowie the Shape Shifter)

David Bowie’s album covers are brought to life in a surrealist audio-visual mashup that reimagines the rock legend’s musical personas as a series of bizarre metamorphoses. Bowie’s revered ability to change sees him transform into the likes of an alligator, a mouse, a milkshake, and many more strange incarnations, all narrated in his own words.

  • Dan Noall
    Director
  • Dan Noall
    Producer
  • Dan Noall
    Art Direction
  • Dan Noall
    Animation
  • Dan Noall
    Music
  • Project Type:
    Animation, Experimental, Short
  • Genres:
    Experimental, video art
  • Runtime:
    1 minute 20 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    June 10, 2018
  • Production Budget:
    0 GBP
  • Country of Origin:
    United Kingdom
  • Language:
    English
  • Aspect Ratio:
    1:1
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • London Short Film Festival
    London
    United Kingdom
    January 12, 2019
    World Premiere
    Channel 4 Random Acts Award Nominee
  • Go Short - International Short Film Festival
    Nijmegen
    Netherlands
    April 3, 2019
Director Biography - Dan Noall

Dan Noall is a mashup artist and filmmaker based in London, England. He is inspired by the absurdist and surreal works of sample-based artists such as Cassetteboy, Negativland and Christian Marclay. He enjoys taking familiar pieces of pop culture and modifying them to become something new.

He strives to make each piece of work unique in both concept and approach, while still retaining his light-hearted and offbeat sense of humour throughout.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

Influenced by the art movements of Plunderphonics, Dadaism, and remix culture of the Internet age, Moonage Ice Cream is a deliberately absurd but affectionate riff on the numerous and varying personas David Bowie adopted throughout his career.

This project initially began as a humorous remix of Bowie’s 1972 song Moonage Daydream, using a literal interpretation of the opening line "I'm an alligator" as a jumping board to depict a series of further bizarre transformations, constructed by splicing together vocals from other songs in Bowie's discography. Through ambition and further inspiration, the project slowly progressed into an extended endeavour to edit and animate 10 iconic Bowie-related album covers to accompany the audio – albeit with an equally silly approach.

At just 80 seconds, Moonage Ice Cream is all killer and no filler, with lots of detail packed into its micro running time. The art direction for each album cover has been lovingly recreated to evoke the original. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then this short film walks a line somewhere between parody and fan-art.