Dark Matters: Shadow Technology Art

I didn’t know what to expect from the Dark matters exhibition, as I hadn’t heard of it before hand. It was a compulsory visit arranged by the Rick and I am really glad we went as I find it hard to motivate myself to go to galleries even though when I get there I always enjoy it!

I want to talk about two pieces in particular that I really enjoyed and made me come away thinking about them and how my work could be improved and influenced by them.

Here is the first:

Kiss by R. Luke DuBoise

The thing I found interesting about this video was the sound used, it was quite high pitched and intense straightaway changing the mood of the piece that I wasn’t expecting. It seemed like the use of ‘antique’ clips contrasted with the new futuristic high energy aesthetic and sound that really created a new and refreshing vibe. Something that I also noticed while watching the video is that we were all interacting with the piece trying to guess which film the clips were from since the technique of the aesthetic almost distorted them slightly. This is something I was trying to achieve though my boat animation, as I wanted the audience to feel for my boat and really connect with my piece.

The second piece 'Black Flood' by Barnaby Hoskins (2006) places the audience in a box shaped area with projected visuals of the room filling with water surrounding you. As soon as I entered the space almost straight away I thought of my boat animation and how this effect could be a possibility of show casing my work for the final show to really get the audience to feel my struggles and successes.

Struggling!

I have been having problems portraying the 'struggle' scene within my animation so i thought it would be best to step away from production. So i went back to you tube to really look at existing scenarios caught on camera of all types of boats getting caught it storms.

I have noticed that by just rotating the boat on the wave doesn't give the right affect - i need to use action/reaction so maybe use a wave that will crash into the boat or at least push the boat backwards. OR possibly spin and tip the boat upside down to show loss of control, as the boat is the character itself i need to make the audience feel for it. I could also maybe vary camera angles to show vulnerability and desperation.

Piecing Together The Scenes

I have been struggling with piecing together the scenes for my animation so i went back onto my blog and looked at Nelson Boles 'Little boat' to see how the narrative is continued through the scenes and one thing i noticed is that the boat stays in the same place but its surroundings move past it for example the sky. So i thought i would give it ago. I have notice that the piece is now flowing together a lot more nicely and it has made it easier for me to animate, it is rather late within the project as I was trying so desperately to perfect the movement of the waves but I am glad I have finally found a solution.
Another reason that I think my animation lacks structure is I have some how got lost within the technical side of things that I have almost forgotten the narrative and the order in which I portray this. But I have been thinking to show a journey and take the audience on my journey with me I have to show time is some way and I was thinking of starting in daylight progressing through the night and back into the morning. The day will portray a fresh start, excitement to start the day which will connote the beginning of my university journey. As the day progresses the sky will become darker, colder and stormy to show struggle and fear. The animation will end with almost a sunrise as the boat catches up to the rest to show relief and new beginnings possibly act as some sort of cliff hanger as to where I will go next.

Stop! Think!

After the group presentations last Thursday I came away feeling a bit disorientated about what I need to do as I felt I had all my ideas together but no specific plan of how they will appear on screen. So I need to stop trying to animate and rethink and plan exactly what I am going to do using an animatic, I do have a few different animatics but they don't include everything I want so I need to go back to the drawing board. Some advice given was to make an animatic out of the footage I had already animated so that I can keep adding to it until I get the final piece. I also need to work on sound asap because I felt that the piece was slow paced which isn't the message I wanted to portray and Chris mentioned that if I added in my sound it would feel less empty. Also the piece lacked energy in just appeared that the boat was moving at the same speed throughout the animation and I needed to show struggle/excitement/frustration/anger ECT... Another aspect it didn't think was working was the use of transition shots I need to think of more interesting elements to move from scene to scene as it isn't working well together, they work as individual scenes but do not flow nicely together.

Rashid Rana

As the Asia Triennial was going on in Manchester I thought it would be good to go have a look at some of the exhibitions. So I went along to the Corner House knowing nothing about the artist featured or what to expect and to be honest I wasn’t very excited. Rashid Rana was the name of the artist and he uses photography as the main medium of his work, the exhibition name was 'Everything Happens at Once' and the majority of the exhibition was huge collages of small images creating a larger image or pattern. The images mostly relate to his culture in Pakistan and I enjoyed looking at places and images I have never seen before. This could be a technique that I could use within future work to excite and please my audience.

One image in particular that stood out the most to me was a collaged image of 5 ladies in Burkas. The really interesting thing about this image is, as you got closer you realised that it was made up of tiny pornographic images creating a huge contrast of cultures and belief, which gives an extra dimension to the piece. I really wasn’t expecting this and I think that is why I enjoyed it the most. As I am currently obsessed with narrative and the meaning behind an artist, director and animators decisions this image really excited me and as I seem to have been only paying attention to moving image pieces I completely missed that still imagery can also have the same affect.

This affect of portraying a simple visual that means something much deeper and possibly very personal really relates to my boat animation and how my audience and I perceive it, as it is open to interpretation. As Rashid Rana's image could have so many meanings and reactions it is very personal to the artist and viewer as they will have their own take on the work.

http://www.asiatriennialmanchester.com/

Intertitles

While having a small discussion with Chris and Sarah we thought of maybe adding intertitles to show chapters in my journey like in a story or silent movie. So i had a quick look at what some of the very first intertitles looked like and some more modern intertitles to get a feel for their aesthetics and purpose. What i have noticed is they are used for dialogue within silent movies/to express emotions is silent movies/portray action scenes and to show chapters within narrative. The stereotypical look as you would imagine an intertitle to look like would show text in the centre of the screen with some sort of patterned border framing the type.

Even with the more modern intertitle for example 'Hey Arthur' still uses the patterned border to frame the dominant image and title however on this one it seems to have more pattern to make it appear more visually exciting to their target audience as it is less sophisticated.

So i would have to think of the correct aesthetic way of using an intertitle that relates to my animation. I need to think about the overall mise-en-scene, colour scheme and target audience for my animation to get it just right.

Boats with a narrative

Kirsty showed me a music video she came across over the weekend the song is the Arctic Monkeys - Crying Lightning (2009). The CGI effects within this video are fairly poor as you can tell the boat isn't in the environment as it doesn't move realistically with the water but is that the intended aesthetic? Aside from this the reason it has been useful to me is the use of colour/wave movement/weather is used to connote moods and tempo of the music which is similar to what i am trying to produce.

This is another example of where the audience is taken on a personal journey with the use of a boat but this time there is the use of a character. Aesthetically the piece is beautiful and the journey we are taken on shows the character struggling to keep control of the boat on rough tides and in stormy surroundings similar to what I want to show within my animation. Throughout this section of the animation you see the narrative as if you are looking at the character and then through the characters point of view, something I am currently experimenting with to try and make the audience engage with my struggle. As it draws near to the conclusion of the piece the colours brighten, the sea is calm and there is almost a low angle shot to portray the success of the character as she has finally made it to her destination. I feel that this piece will be very useful for me to use as inspiration and also to keep referring to, to make sure I am showing the right message with the right movement and aesthetics.

Twinings Tea Advertisement - 'gets you back to you'

Narrative

"The explosion of new technologies and the proliferation of new channels have served to remind us of one ancient imperative of the human race, the need to tell stories. As the oral tradition becomes a digital tradition, stories have never been more important."

(Euro RSCG Worldwide)

I was looking at a design company called Euro RSCG worldwide when I came across this quote, Euro RSCG are responsible for the Evian advert with the dancing baby t-shirts which is what I was investigating at the time. This particular quote has hugely impacted on my way of working as I have began to look at stories and the importance of narrative within existing moving image work and my own. After reading this quote I have been consciously and subconsciously analysing film, animation and adverts to see if they have an interesting narrative to engage me and of course other members of its audience. I have never really thought much about narrative before and how as human beings we love to tell and listen to stories as a way to explain, inform and entertain so if a film, advertisement or animation has a great story line then the aesthetics will act as a tool to assist the narrative.

This quote has also majorly influenced my final outcome for the self initiated project as I have never produced a piece of work with a narrative before making the majority of my work lack any sort of meaning and as a result of this I have struggled. So this is the exact practice I want to put into play during future projects, for example in my self initiated project I have chosen a narrative that I want to portray and I shall use the aesthetics to help the narrative along and then let the audience decipher the animation in their own way.

This quote also spurred on a personal exploration into the importance of narrative within film and animation that is now my major theme for my dissertation and continuing into the future this will be one of the most memorable quotes I will come back to again and again to influence my work.