Georges Méliès: A Trip to the Moon

In January, Aardvark were invited to play at a new silent movie soundtrack night at Mello Mello in Liverpool.

We were given the quite incredible choice of Georges Méliès' 1902 sci-fi film, A Trip to the Moon. Even more amazingly, we discovered there is an original colourisation of the film. The colour is totally surreal. It was carried out at Elisabeth Thuillier's lab in Paris by a team working on one colour each in a kind of assembly line. The resulting effect is half-way between film and animation, with colours flaring up and changing shades between frames.

We tried to capture something of the anarchic and otherworldly feeling to the film during our performance, holding several rehearsals to try and strike the balance between setting the mood for various scenes and following the action on-screen. The result maintains the "classic" Aardvark sound, while delivering an apt, if slightly tongue-in-cheek, accompaniment to Méliès' masterpiece. Enjoy!