Untitled film frame
C-print, 60 x 33.75 inches [152.4 x 85.725 cm]
Limited edition print, 1 of 1
Blazer
Short film
Historiographic Metafiction • Short Story • True Crime
A groundbreaking production that merges cinema with fine art. The first film where every frame is a singular work of art, never to be reproduced.
Unlike traditional filmmaking, which prioritizes storytelling through moving images, Rocky elevates each individual frame to a piece of art. Every frame is uniquely composed, printed, one-of-a-kind, and irreplaceable.
“Blazer” blazes the trail for a new category of filmmaking and immersive museum installation. The project has three adaptations: art installation, short film with an original motion picture score, and book.
Runtime: 15 min
Untitled film frames
C-print, 60 x 33.75 inches [152.4 x 85.725 cm]
Limited edition prints, 1 of 1
Wrap photo (left to right): NJ Mvondo, Fechi Nkwocha, Maximilian Doubt, Rocky McCorkle, Justin King, Payat Mishra (not pictured: Raul Delarosa)
“Blazer is a historiographic metafiction that only reveals its beauty in the final seconds of the film.
The film unfolds through 846 chronological pictures. 845 pictures belong to the genre of fiction, with one inspired by a true crime.”
Synopsis
New Year’s Eve. 2020. San Francisco. California.
Inspired by a true crime.
In a flash of brilliance, the greatest picture of all time was created. In photographic history, “all time” equals two hundred years. Therefore, the story, told through two hundred years of historical and hermetic pictures (1820—2020), chronologically recounts what led to the greatest picture of all time on New Year’s Eve.
The title “Blazer” is polysemous. It is the protagonist’s car, it is a narrative vehicle that transports all of the characters through the story, and it becomes the stage for the greatest picture of all time. Blazer evokes an obtuse connection to the Director’s past, while ambiguously evoking the flare of New Year’s Eve fireworks, combustible human emotions, and a picture that’s the epitome of Postexpectationism, a philosophy about the moments in life that arise only when one has abandoned control of the outcome.
It is a short film composed entirely of still pictures accompanied by an original score. Featuring actor Justin King and a cast of six, hermetically referencing the pivotal year of 2020, the film was made from over 20,000 pictures of San Francisco that combine into a chain of events of what led to the greatest picture of all time.
The approach transforms the film from a passive viewing experience into an interactive art form, where audiences can own and engage with it in a completely new way.
fig. 1 Cinema unfolding
Illustration expressing time as a sculpture
The film is consciousness in motion. The prose is in running style with banter, fused sentences, tangential Jungian synchronicities, and comma splices to mimic the narrator’s unpredictable thought process. The real picture that the film is about achieved wholeness by integrating conscious and unconscious aspects of the psyche. The story elevates the photograph beyond photography, illustrating the interconnectivity of everything.
The early pandemic period drama was adapted from its four thousand word short story predecessor. The adaptation tries to say what the audience can’t see, but nothing's perfect. Ava Bowlin, the film’s narrator, isn’t describing, she’s remembering in real time, and at times, speaking directly to Inspector Delarosa and Evidence Tech Chen. Her tone is meant to both ground and float slightly above the imagery.
Untitled film frames
C-prints, 60 x 33.75 inches ea. [152.4 x 85.725 cm]
Limited edition prints, 1 of 1
The art installation is scalable, yet boundless. Visitors journey through various physical spaces, such as museums or custom-designed venues, engaging with an original story presented through oversized, chronological film frames, integrated lighting design, and an immersive soundscape.
The plan for "Blazer" is an art installation at a dim-lit Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. An original film score softly playing throughout the space. Visitors are greeted with a larger-than-life, high-resolution film still at the bottom of the rotunda’s spiral ramp. This is the first frame in the film. Visitors then proceed to the next frame in the story, and so on, ascending all of the way up to level six of the Rotunda, in what can best be described as a continuous immersive film experience. Like cinema unfolding, the visitor plays a part (fig. 1).
“Blazer”
Winner CENTER Santa Fe — Social Award
“I responded to the work titled Blazer. Just this week, we have read the news about three ‘wrong address’ shootings across the country. We live through a regular drumbeat of mass shootings and mourn the lives of too many people lost to gun violence. Inspired by a true event, the work recreates and reframes a similar event and presents it as film stills. The production level, the lighting, and the casting all lend to this gruesome event a certain polish and gloss, enticing us to linger and to look for a little longer.
These images not only prompt us to think on current events but also draw attention to the struggles our nation faces.”
Untitled film frames
(starring Fechi Nkwocha)
C-prints, 60 x 33.75 inches ea. [152.4 x 85.725 cm]
Limited edition prints, 1 of 1
Release Date: March 23, 2024
Hardcover / 522 pages / 14 x 10 inches
Blazer, Special Collector's Edition
“Blazer is a timely project that resonates with many issues of our times. As a photographic body of work, it is quite different from other photobooks projects because it blends chronophotography with a script, dialogues, and staging much like a moving picture. That's also what makes Rocky McCorkle’s work so unique, combining cinema-like images, an inventive and detailed aesthetic research, with the drama that characterizes theater.
The endeavor is impressive, from the dedicated amount of work preparing and making the project, but also turning its pages, reading and contemplating the physical book, while feeling emotional. Blazer’s pictures are moving in many ways, because they are built to trigger emotions. As Susan Sontag wrote, “The painter constructs, the photographer discloses.” (On Photography, 1977) McCorkle does both, revealing what is shaking American society today: exploring in the most aesthetic way, while disclosing a sense of justice.”
—Pierre-François Galpin, 2025