As we’ve done for the last several years, this year Foxtrot X-Ray continued its support of the Phoenix Film Festival by again creating an animated opening bumper to kick off every screening at the festival. This year’s theme was a play on the “Barbenheimer” phenomenon, putting the festival’s “Camerahead” mascot into a world inspired by the 2023 hit movies Barbie and Oppenheimer. The sequence cuts back and forth between Barbie-inspired shots complete with a poppy pink color scheme and spartan black and white scenes inspired by Oppenheimer’s muted color palette, with each shot having been directly modeled after iconic shots from both films. Eventually Camerahead Barbie and Camerahead Oppie (we think perhaps the J. in J. Robert Oppenheimer might stand for “Just Ken”) meet for a ride across the desert in a pink convertible Corvette, finally arriving at the test site where a cotton-candy mushroom cloud reveals the Phoenix Film Festival logo and tagline “Find Your New Favorite Movie.”

Gabe Vigil animated these scenes in Unreal Engine and “filmed” them with very shallow depth of field to evoke miniature photography; Seth Wise oversaw the CG animation and modeling; Paul DeNigris served as compositor as well as creative director.

Check out the final animation , as well as a gallery of our scenes and the shots which inspired them!