Found Studio creates an exquisite fictional “museum of mishearing” in its latest film

Found Studio, part of the Output Group which also houses Studio Output, has created this film as part of a series of self-initiated projects that aim to keep pushing the studio both technically and creatively. “We wanted to do a piece that riffed around our studio name,” explains creative director of Found, Mike Sharpe. “We’ve always struggled with people mishearing our company name so thought we’d have some fun with that.” The film is called Mondegreen a term generally used for mishearing song lyrics and the short takes us through a surreal “museum of mishearing, like an abstract game of charades.” 

Created over a six month period the Found Studio team worked with longtime collaborator Esteban Diácono on the project. The viewer is taken on a meandering trip through beautifully lit corridors and grand chambers. Giant kinetic sculptures are presented like exhibitions and embody words that sound like “found” such as bound, wound, ground, sound and drowned. The environment is exquisite with sweeping shots of the imagined models revealing the magnitude of this abstract world. 

Laced with striking realism the team were keen to push the capabilities of the real-time rendering software Octane. “The project started out very playful with simple bright coloured backdrops and quirky music but as the project developed it evolved into something slightly more sinister and austere,” says Mike. “From there we started thinking about a physical setting for all these strange sculptures and we looked at all sorts of art installations for reference from people such as Rube Goldberg, Byoungho Kim, Peter Brooke-Ball and Matteo Pugliese.”

The studio’s “museum” is inspired by a cacophony of different architecture styles from all over the world including Tate Modern, the Niemeyer Centre in Spain, the Mostyn Gallery in Wales, the Sancaklar Mosque in Istanbul and the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art in Japan. This ambiguity in design creates a familiar yet unfamiliar atmosphere emphasised by the eerie music. In this new landscape a surreal yellow hand, an elegantly shaggy green dog and a submerged red man become hypnotic and dazzling rather than something to question.