RED LION

Red Lion has the inner Fire but only in potential. He eats matter when given his freedom and does the work of Nature. He inspires intelligence, imagination and life but he can not escape the prison of the Earth plane and can not free himself though his own power. A special key is necessary to dissolve the chains of the Earth.

Director/composer Olivia Hadjiioannou (aka Oh.) presents a consciousness-expanding visual and acoustic odyssey within a multidimensional psychedelic landscape.

Inspired by scenes from Federico Fellini’s, “8 1/2”, Lewis Carroll’s, “Alice in Wonderland”, Maurice Sendak’s, “Where the Wild Things Are”, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s, “The Little Prince” and ancient Greek myth.

“Red Lion” is the first in a six-part series of animated music videos by the multi-instrumentalist, Oh. for the progressive metal album “Metallia“.

The music video “Red Lion” is presently a winner, finalist and official selection in 14 film festivals worldwide for Best Music Video, Best Experimental Mixed Media and Best VFX.

Red Lion received the Best Music Video award in the inaugural French Riviera Film Festival (FRFF) in Cannes, France. Winner Best Music Video at the Cosmocinema Film Festival in London. Winner of the Best Music Video Short in The Psychedelic and Transpersonal Film and Music Festival at The Producer’s Club in New York City. Winner Best Experimental Mixed Media Short Film at the Paleochora Lost World Short Film Festival in Southwestern Crete in Greece.

Read more about the making of “Red Lion” and Oh. in her Bio and EPK.

We all want to have answers to the ultimate meaning of why we are here.

There’s a time when you need to set aside everything you already know. We collect experiences and impressions with our minds and this increases the presence of our soul.There is a duality not only without but within because the mind receives information from both the body and the spirit. If the connection is weak between the spirit and the mind – there is no possibility to see the whole or our state and place in existence. Our minds – our everyday consciousness is cluttered with judgements, repetition, echoes of apprehension and fear, debates and doubts. If left on its own without the guidance of spirit; we exist in a negative world, alienated, in conflict with reality.

This missing connection is at the core of all our physical, emotional and mental health issues.

There is a way to recover our initial state so we can truly begin our journey here as we were meant to.

We must isolate the thoughts, feelings and emotions produced by the physical body first. Then it will be possible to isolate the thoughts, feelings, and emotions that are given by our spirits. Once both are recognized, a vision of an ever-present state of awareness awakens on its own.

Metallia acoustically and visually narrates this very intimate personal spiritual and psychic journey. – Olivia Hadjiioannou aka Oh.

It would have taken us many months to create the 5 minutes of animation for Red Lion if it weren’t for the incredible Mettle 3D plugins for Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro,  Adobe Fuse for the 3D models and the free animations on Adobe Mixamo. These plugins and resources made it possible to complete the 5 minutes animation in less than 200 hours.

We are very proud to say the video was #MadeWithMettle. The plugins opened up so many creative possibilities and we were blown away by what beautiful scenes we could create and make what we imagined a reality.

Mettle Plug-ins

Mettle’s Mantra VR is a comprehensive set of 16 stylization effects that work in both 360/VR and 2D, for After Effects and Premiere Pro. In “Red Lion” we used Circular Waves, Esher Droste, Hyperbolix, Mobius Raw, Repeater and Turbulence effects. We also used the Mettle Flux plugin which creates 3D volumetric fractal flames and the FreeForm Pro 3D Mesh Warp plugin that creates terrain, morphing organic shapes, an array of primitives, water simulation and character animation. For a few effects we used Mettle’s Shapeshifter AE  plugin that creates 3D morphing shapes.

Learn more about Mettle 3D plugins for Adobe software