Infection

Computer graphics are out to make a killing.

– Promotional line used when the film screened at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival

There hasn't been a better film for connoisseurs of punctured-eyeball anxiety since Un Chien Andalou.

– A reviewer for Animation World Magazine compares Infection to Luis Buñuel's legendary surrealist film Un Chien Andalou, 2001

I wanted to create an image of the transactions and information exchanges that go on invisibly all around us. But I didn't want it to look all derivative and obvious, like Tron. I wanted it to be more natural and gooey, all analogue and tactile...

– Writer/director James Cunningham in Pavement 41, June 2000, page 48

[James] Cunningham has his own mega-computer (a dual 350mhz processor Dell workstation, with 512mb RAM, 28 gigs of hard drive space, fitted out with Alias/Wavefront Maya software, Adobe Photoshop, After Effects and an intergraph graphics card), all funded by the New Zealand Film Commission budget for Infection. This means he can work virtually anywhere there's a handy plug socket. For the past year, home has been a converted army barracks in New Jersey while his wife studies for a doctorate at Princeton University.

– Writer Bianca Zander talks equipment details, Pavement 41, June 2000, page 48

Infection may take up less than 10 minutes of screen time but it swallowed up 10 months of his life. That translates to about 2,500 lonely hours in front of a computer screen rendering all 11,000 frames of digital imagery.

– Writer Bianca Zander on the work director/animator James Cunningham put into the film, Pavement 41, June 2000, page 48