The Unknown Known
animation and research, 2012–2013
Animated sequences and archival research for Errol Morris's film about Donald Rumsfeld and his thirty years of memos.
Covered in The New York Times Variety The Hollywood Reporter
The film is built around Rumsfeld reading back the tens of thousands of memos he called “snowflakes.” A snow globe motif, the Pentagon under glass with suspended snow, carries that collection on screen.
The animated sequences include falling snowflakes that carry legible text, letters that assemble and disassemble, a safe sinking into the ocean, a helicopter, and headlines, along with the treated backgrounds for the interview itself, which Morris shot through the Interrotron.
The archival pass used a “moment folders” method. Every event in Rumsfeld’s public life, including Pearl Harbor as he would have known it, Abu Ghraib, the 1980 convention, and his resignation, was organized into a dedicated folder of period images and documents, allowing the visual edit to match the specific memos he discussed.
The film premiered at Venice in 2013.