I think this Wax Experiments is very intriguing when compared to Fischinger's later abstract movies, it shows you the developmental process whereby he decided to arrive at visual music. From what I can tell at the start of the movie he has made some quite complex wax rosettes, these are very reminiscent of the spirals that always fascinated him and never really left his work. He's filming them in black and white, and it's silent, I think he's probably heating them from beneath we see them move around a bit somehow, before they pulsate, shrug, and finally melt.
It's all very slow, and I was thinking Dante and the circles of hell. He changes tact abruptly later in the movie and shows us strange atmospheres of flowing wax/lava. It's Night on the Bare Mountain type of stuff, and he even at two points moves silhouettes across the bottom of the screen, one sinusoidal likes hills or mountains, and another like pyramids, so that the viewer understands how to see what he's showing. It's really a very sci-fi type of idea, like we're on some distant Pluto watching unknowable cataclysms.
It's all very slow, and I was thinking Dante and the circles of hell. He changes tact abruptly later in the movie and shows us strange atmospheres of flowing wax/lava. It's Night on the Bare Mountain type of stuff, and he even at two points moves silhouettes across the bottom of the screen, one sinusoidal likes hills or mountains, and another like pyramids, so that the viewer understands how to see what he's showing. It's really a very sci-fi type of idea, like we're on some distant Pluto watching unknowable cataclysms.
