Distortion (film)

Distortion (Tagalog: Pagbaluktot) is a 2023 Philippine independent experimental silent animated film directed by Frederick C.G. Borromeo in his directorial debut.
Combining the elements of non-narrative, minimalism and machinima, the film was produced in RPG Maker MV engine and its premise set in the fantasy world that slowly descending one-by-one. With a runtime of 47 minutes in the film, making it the first RPG Maker feature-length and non-narrative animated film produced in the Philippines.
Summary
The film lacks dialogue and plot entirely, beginning with a very slow-paced camera movement as the village gradually descends into a white, concept paper-like form. It then returns to the same movement and shifts to the next area. This cycle repeats, with all villages and towns descending into the same form until the scene transitions to the castle interior.
Development
Distortion took a week to complete. A 19-year-old video game developer and eventual filmmaker Frederick C.G. Borromeo expressed his desire of making feature-length animated films made in RPG Maker engine after his own short film Teenagers in Chester Street (2021) as an early blueprint to his filmography. He conducts research about the filmography of RPG Maker that existed, one of these included the web series Slimey (2011) and Atis's Gaze (2016) as well as short films.
In January, Borromeo self-described the film as an "experimental, slow movie made in a video game engine". It took inspirations of his own idea about the place's dissolution from reality to unfinished work in a style of storyboard drawings. Like his previous prototypes, the film was using the RPG Maker MV engine and has no spec script, characters, music, and sound effects during the production, served as a minimalistic piece that allows the camera movement to map scenes and record it less than a minute per scene several times using Bandicam software and dissolve it by editing each similar scenes using VideoPad software. The film later drew inspirations on Andy Warhol's Empire (1965) and Lav Diaz.
Originally titled Minimal as a proof of concept short film released on YouTube on January 15, the film was expanded into more lengthy runtime.

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