Further research, Music Inspiration, Ultre

Ultre, real name Finn Mcnichols is a collaborative member of the film making and visual arts group Flat-E. Ultres's Electro-acoustic styled music is filled with complex layers and rhythm. Ultre is not only fantastic at its complex IDM styled rhythm, but also sound design techniques. Its use of imaging and design of space is well placed and add to the quality of these layers. Also it seems as though hes very skilled in capturing the space of where the instrument was played, capturing its acoustic qualities. 

'The songs are filled with an abundance of complex layers and rhythms that make your brain hurt.' (1)

One track in particular 'Lingers', on the 'The Nest and The Skull' Album has a strong resonance of acoustic qualities, atmospheric ghostliness with a strong use of reverb and recording of some sort of underground room tone from the bass qualities. The track uses a blend of lingering sine tone hence the name noticing at the end a change of placement within surround sound.

 'I always lean towards creating recordings within their own world, like when you hear piano and you can hear the history not just the notes or the arrangement. (2)

With the qualities I mentioned above 'Lingers' is an inspiration to both sound design and music for my Short film. I feel that the inspiration of Ultre's music would add oe of the aspects of a 'live' element im looking for. 

References:

(1) http://hangout.altsounds.com/reviews/104883-ultre-the-nest-and-the-skull-album.html

(2)http://www.audiobulb.com/albums/AB018/AB018.htm


Other sources: Ultre Main Page

Sound Design Inspiration, Rob Bridgett

'You need to understand what you want to get out of the tools a lot more than how to go about achieving the sounds technically' (1)


Rob's 'Roomtones' project, 'involves collecting room-tones from various intereszting spaces,.and augmenting those recordings with some subtle rhythmic interface and tonal elements.' (2) Inspired by Chris Watson.

Rob's Inspirations: Ren Klyne, Tom Colvin (Ninja Theory), Kenny Young (Media Molecule). EA's Don Vecca, Randy Thom.

Source: Designer Sounds


Reference: (1) Miguel Isaza, http://designingsound.org/2009/11/rob-bridgett-special-exclusive-interview/
(2) Ibid.

Directing and Production Design Research, Black Swan

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Production Design: Thérèse DePrez

Discovered In: Screen Rant

Shadow Puppet Inspiration, The Deathly Hallows Pt.1

Interview with Animator: FX guide

More Depth into Shadow Puppetry: Suspended Blog

Here is a link to the video, embedding has been disabled.

Sources: Sandra Cuffes Minor Blog, FX guide, Suspended Blog

Shadow Puppet Inspiration, Seattle Film Festival Entry

Seattle International Film Festival - :60 Trailer from DIGITALKITCHEN on Vimeo.

Production design inspiration, Tatsuyuki Tanaka

'Tanaka is feverishly imaginative, like a blend of some of the best characteristics of Katsuhiro Otomo, Masamune Shirow and Jean “Moebius” Giraud.' (1)

'creating darkly cinematic moods and otherworldly atmospheres.' (2)

Discovered in: Lines and colors

Reference: (1) http://www.linesandcolors.com/2009/02/10/tatsuyuki-tanaka/
(2) Iibid

Other Sources: Simon Birch

Sound/Music Design Inspiration, Diego Stocco

Diego Stocco Webpage

Cinematography, Enter the Void

"I have a phobia of movie lights," says Noé. "I dont't like having equipment on the set that would prevent me from turning the camera around. Benoit and I had an agreement on irreversible and on this film that there would be no movie lights on set." He concedes, however that exeptions were made on Void in order to create the strobe lighting for the night club, and to allow some impressionistic wahses of colors." (1)

"The danger when doing a very colorful film," he continues, "is that it can become a little gaudy. I wanted us to stay in a restrained color palette - the range is more or less between purple and orange or yellow> We tried to keep a unity to the colors." (2)

Cinematographer: Benoit Debie

Production Designer: Marc Caro

Image Source: Photo Films


Reference: (1) Benjamin B, Oct 2010, Contemplating a Coloful Afterlife, American Cinematographer, Vol. 91 No.10, p18
(2) Benjamin B, Oct 2010, Contemplating a Coloful Afterlife, American Cinematographer, Vol. 91 No.10, p22

Useful Applications, Drop Box

Original Source: Drop Box Blog, Drop Box, Trigon Technology

Recycling, rusted Soviet Naval mines

Mati Karmin

This sculpurist from Estonia recycles objects from old soviet deep sea mines from an ex fortress on Nassair Island, and transforms these objects into decayed Steam punk furniture, which he titles "Mine Furniture".



Original Source: Bored To Death, Marine Mine

Watched, Jan Svankmajer's 'To The Cellar'

Exhibtion, Hell's Half Acre

'The Heretic's Gate' by Doug Foster

"The Divine Comedy still exerts a morbid grip on the imagination, and the Lazarides Gallery co-opted 16 artists to produce suitably sense-assaulting meditations on evil. Here is The Heretic’s Gate, a video installation by Doug Foster, featuring a raging inferno reflected in oil." (1)

Discovered in: (1) The Architectural review, Nov 2010, 1365, p89

Architectural Review
Cool hunting
Trend hunter

Amon Tobin Inspired Short, 'Esther's'

Esther's from Amon Tobin HQ on Vimeo.

Original Source: Creative Review Blog, Vimeo

Sound Design, Amon Tobin

Behind the Scenes - Designer Sounds from Amon Tobin HQ on Vimeo.

Original Source: Amon Tobin HQ Vimeo

Short Film, MORGAN M MORGANSEN

View on ExposureRoom

Original Source: Twitch Film, Exposure Room

Music Inspiration, The Sight Below

Original Source: YouTube,

Dark Short Animation, 'Alma'

Original Source: Screenrant, YouTube

Cinematography: Tetsuo Nagata

Scheduling through Celtx

Aphex Twin

The art direction and lighting are key points for me within this music video by french director, Laurent Brent. Its mechanicalised design and fairy tale like style is a style I wish to pursue. Aphex twins music compliments the style with its rhythmic mechanical sounds.

Director: Laurent Briet

Steam Punk Dreams

One of the main pieces of Art Direction and stories that really gave me the inspiration to make 'Graces Fall' was, 'The City Of Lost Children'. The film directed by Jean-Pierre and Marc Caro who I seem to be taking a lot of inspiration from, they really are fantastic visionary directors with other films such as 'Delicatessen' and 'MICMACS'. Both films having a specific visual style and stylistic Art direction. What this film did for me most was the 'dark', fairytale like atmosphere it presents, with its Steam punk direction and colorful Neo-Noir like lighting.

'rented a room to cram quantities of items purchased from right to left. They are disassembled, hack it, I always had a taste for transforming the object.','For the City of Lost Children was composed of machines that do not exist.' (Aline Bonetto, 1)

Im going to do further research into this style and explore similar conventions. Also in relation to the quote above I want to get into this mindset how to transform an object, to make it something original on screen.

Reference:

(1) Alexander Tsekenis, Aline Bonetto Interview, Objectif Cinema, http://www.objectif-cinema.com/spip.php?article3611(google translated)

Director:  Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Marc Caro
Cinematographer: Darius Khondji
Art Direction: Jean Rabasse
Production Design: Marc Caro & Jean Rabasse

Steam Punk Adventure in Production by Director Tomas Alfredson

Product Description

Arthur (Art) Mumby and his irritating sister Myrtle live with their father in the huge and rambling house, Larklight, travelling through space on a remote orbit far beyond the Moon. One ordinary sort of morning they receive a correspondence informing them that a gentleman is on his way to visit, a Mr Webster. Visitors to Larklight are rare if not unique, and a frenzy of preparation ensues. But it is entirely the wrong sort of preparation, as they discover when their guest arrives, and a Dreadful and Terrifying (and Marvellous) adventure begins. It takes them to the furthest reaches of Known Space, where they must battle the evil First Ones in a desperate attempt to save each other - and the Universe. Recounted through the eyes of Art himself, Larklight is sumptuously designed and illustrated throughout.

About the Author

Philip Reeve's first novel Mortal Engines was published to an incredible critical acclaim which his subsequent books have emulated. He is the author of the Larklight trilogy for Bloomsbury. Philip lives in Devon. David Wyatt, has illustrated many beautiful covers for authors including Terry Pratchett and Philip Pullman. He lives in Devon, and is a keen lutist, cyclist, and wanderer of the moors. (Amazon uk synopsis)

From looking around at some literature relating to Steam Punk, I came across  piece that will soon be translated into a Hollywood film. The synopsis sounds quite out there and I'm interested in how this may develop. I think I will take out the book and understand how Steam Punk translates through literature, to understand how the world is articulated through writing.

Although I find this quite interesting, I feel that my story is not very close to any sort of 'Steam Punk' literature. In fact I feel that the feel initially was meant to be within a Steam Punk style, but now i feel that its going in a direction of its own, mixed with a conjunction of styles and ideas from my previous work.


Original Source: Twitch Film ,The Hollywood Reporter

Watched! Miyazaki's 'Ponyo'

I Watched Ponyo last night. After a long 2 year wait Ponyo finally arrives to a western audience. English dubbed Japanese films are usually a bit shoddy but with Disney's backing the Ghibli films always seem to come out with a great English cast. At first i wasnt too sure about the simplicity in the animation within a still, but once I saw the animation in motion, it really has a life of its own with so much fluidity. Similar to 'My Neighbor Totoro', 'Similar in theme and tone, both films ground themselves in domestic life and simply seek to depict how emotional realities are transmitted through a child’s imagination.' (1)

Im really interested in the way the main character gets sucked into this magical atmosphere. I know that this is quite a light hearted piece, but what really grabs me about Miyazaki's films is how he creates imaginative worlds in such effective ways, through  excellent sound design, music composition and visual elements really make up this child like world.

The idea of how Caroline Mckenzie speaks about the depiction of how 'emotional realities are transmitted through a child's imagination.', is an important one for 'Graces Fall'.



Ponyo Trailer from kinodiseea on Vimeo.







Reference:
(1) Caroline McKenzie, High-water Mark, Reverse Shot, http://www.reverseshot.com/article/ponyo

Dark Imaginations

Shadowplay from Flat-e on Vimeo.


Music by Ultre

 

A collaborative parnership of two film makers and visual artists Robin McNicholas, Matt Bateman and Rob Slater. Flat-E created a very Dark short film financed by Screen Yorkshire, Yorkshire Forward & UK Film Council.

Within this short a fairground lures children into a magical surrounding that soon turns itself into a monstrous environment, much like a lot of the dark fairy tales we hear of the past. The Cinematography is very Noir like, with its chiaroscuro lighting, capturing the faces spotlighted within the darkness.

The music by Ultre compliments the twisted, circus like quality perfectly. The video is quite a disturbing one overall, when we move into into the more violent section. I think it my be going on to ideas of displaced violence, where parents try to protect there children with the violent world around them with fantasy, although we see this displaced violence trying to invade that protection.

I think that the video piece has a lot of great stylistic features and art direction, it really builds into a magical atmosphere that gets shattered half way though. I wasn't sure that the music during the change into the violent atmosphere was as effective as the beginning.

Im quite keen on the way its shown this idea of displaced violence. most of all though since its quite a conceptual piece, I was interested in its stylistic elements such as the Noir like Lighting, the circus/ alchemical themed art direction which is something Ive been interested a lot in from Terry Gilliam's films and also the fantastical deranged music by Ultre is a great inspiration. i will carry on exploring these elements to develop into the film.


Other Links: BBC Film Network, Behance Network

Experienced: Darren Almond - The Principle of Moments

Venue: White Cube, London, Until Oct 2nd (Free)

'Anthropocene: The Prelude'

On the 21st of September I witnessed work by Darren Almond within the contemporary, White Cube gallery.  Darren Almond had created two pieces for the gallery; one, a time based weather incurred photographic collection of the same shot, shaped into tiny squares across the top floor. The second was a fantastic 3 screen installation of archival styled footage of the Artic breaking apart. The two front screens were in motion with one moving up and the other inverted. The screen at the back was mainly a static image showing extreme weather conditions.

The Installation was accompanied by a haunting sound scape by composer Max Ritcher. The soundscape is what struck me first before I even laid my eyes on the visuals, its quality was very atmospheric, foreboding and quite Lynchian. With the visuals and sound together, I felt as though I was being sucked into and enveloped within the Artic's dark, solitary atmosphere.

In relation to the Film, the installation's and stylization and atmosphere of the Artic is something I could take on for the beginning animation. Although I find that this is something that takes time to engulf yourself with the atmosphere, it would be hard with the short film to achieve a similar atmosphere in the short amount of time I have, although Max Ritcher's sound design could also be inspiring throughout the film.




Original Source: White Cube, Time Out London
Image Source Studio-International

Final Major Project Short Film: 'Graces Fall'

At the beginning of my third year in University im acquired to do sufficient research for my final major project. For this FMP I want to place down a lot of my electronic secondary research  within this blog. I decided to put this in blog form as I can take advantage of:

- Labeling; to keep every stage organised within paticular subjects.
- Comments; so that people can view the posts and comment to understand other peoples views. Anyone working on the film can understand he thought process behind it.
-  Video; Its difficult to put up electronic research such as a video within a sketch book, this is the best place to put up high quality video's.
- Editing; the ability to go back and edit any posts.