Private Project

The Big Bloom Drop (Death by Selfie)

A contemporary parody that stages the death of an of aging subject through the infinity mirror of social media tropes.

  • Lisa Birke
    Director
    Dawn of Melancholy: A Birthday Soliloquy; Signs of Our Times; Land of Milk and Honey; Bombshell; The Knits; Endgame; Calendar Girls; Red Carpet
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short
  • Runtime:
    9 minutes 33 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    July 9, 2025
  • Production Budget:
    1,500 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Canada
  • Country of Filming:
    Canada
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Festival Fotogenia
    Mexico City
    Mexico
    November 22, 2025
    World
    Finalist
  • Pebbles Underground Film and Video Art Festival
    Online
    Canada
    December 14, 2025
    Canadian
    Audience Award
  • VASTLAB Experimental 2026 - VLX7
    Los Angeles
    United States
    February 8, 2026
    USA
  • Arizona International Film Festival
    Tucson
    United States
    April 20, 2026
    US
Director Biography - Lisa Birke

Lisa Birke is an interdisciplinary artist whose work is a collision of video, performance art, and expanded media practice. She is interested how repeated representations and narratives inform our conception of the world and the tragi-comic perception of ourselves. Recently, Birke has been exploring immersive multi-media approaches using special effects, AR, and 360 video. Her award-winning video work has seen more than 100 screenings and installations at film festivals, media centers and in galleries/museums internationally, including Vancouver International Film Festival, Slamdance Film Festival, Florida Film Festival, Arizona International Film Festival, International Short Film Week Regensburg, Stuttgarter Filmwinter Festival for Expanded Media, and the Remai Modern along with many others. Birke is Associate Professor of Digital and Extended Media in the School for the Arts at the University of Saskatchewan.

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Director Statement

I am fascinated by how identity is formed through mimicry, memes, and mirroring on social media. This experimental film is an exaggerated reflection of how the obsessive representing of self are enacted in this space, as well as parodying the irrelevancy of an aging female subject in popular media in general. After all, my all-knowing algorithm is telling me to avoid aging at all costs but deep down, we know we have to resign ourselves to the inevitability of it and that in the end, all efforts are futile.
I am actually becoming increasingly concerned about our self-focused society, where the easy entitlement of "I deserve this" is the norm during a time when we should be extending care to others and the planet. Although this isn’t explicitly stated in the film, I hope that my critique is present implicitly and felt throughout.

"The Big Bloom Drop (Death by Selfie)" was shot using an insta360 x series camera in bullet time, action and 360 modes. This was supplemented by 3D scans of flowers that I made in the shooting locations that were composited into the footage in Blender. I also incorporated moments of AI special effects that I generated on green screens, as well as the 5 second shots of vases dropping near the end. The rest of the film was shot on my Lumix G DSLR camera and edited using Adobe Premiere, Audition, After Effects and Blender.
The entire film was shot on location during an artist residency in the Eagles Estate in Deer Lake Park in Burnaby (just outside of Vancouver) in Canada.