DESERT THRONE

This is  short sci-fi film that was made as a lyric video for the popular metal band SepticFlesh.
The story follows an anonymous pilgrim, traversing an unforgiving barren world. Along their path, we get glimpses of this mysterious and desolate place, haunted by spirits of old kingdoms and lost civilizations.
The inspiration for this story was this timeless idea of pilgrimage, which is the process of walking down a perilous path towards spiritual completion. The path eventually leads to a very sacred place, a place of knowledge, power and of eternal renewal. There, the pilgrim is compelled to shed their former identity and “unmask”, before commiting to a final act of self-sacrifice, one that bears the seed of something else, perhaps a new world altogether.
Some other sources of inspiration were the monolithic aesthetics of architectural brutalism, the beloved Dune series by Frank Herbert and the black and white epics of Akira Kurosawa. 
On a technical level, we tried to build upon my former knowledge on Unreal and its fascinating (yet problematic at times) tools for cinematic production. Being on a tight budget, we decided to focus our efforts on cinematography and building a certain atmosphere using limited resources, which helped overcome certan limitations and visualize the story we wanted to tell.

---

Technical Details

Category: Animated music video
Year of production: 2022
Main technique: 3D animation, game engine (Unreal)