The Hostage Title Sequence + Sin City

I mentioned this in my last post as well as the titles in Sin City. This is now consider a very obvious way to show the noir crime genre. I've looked at doing it in this style but thought it was to close to these other examples. I don't want to seem like I'm copying someone else's style because I want to create my own style which ties into the story itself. I wanted to get away from the spot colour, Frank Miller style imagery and the heavy use of colours such as red to set the mood. Mood can be set in a verity of ways and it doesn't have to be done this way. One thing I really like about this piece though is how the names are arranged around the composition and being discovered as the camera moves through. It reminds me very much of methods used in my last titles that were influenced by the titles for the french film Delicatessen.

Below are 2 tests I did before I made this decision of finding my own style and trying to get away from the typical imagery used in these types of films and programs.

Test 1

Test 2

Here is another test that I produced in a similar style to this title sequence but focusing on the idea of "Fall" (autumn) which is spoken about in the short Fall North. I wanted to try an array of ideas to see which best suits the story.

Richard Montanari Book Ad

These are 2 videos produced to advertise novels written by Richard Montanari. He writes crime thrillers and has had these produced to get the readers visually excited and set up the mood. It is a great idea. These are by no means the best examples and the best produced but I like the idea of a ad advertising something a little different. Something you don't see everyday.

Broken Angels is a sponsor advertisement for in the breaks on the FX Channel as they show crime dramas. It is appealing to the crime audience when it knows they are going to be watching. It is done in a similar style to the Sin City and The Hostage titles. This is a style that is closely related to the crime / thriller genre and immediately the audience take note when they see the style.

I'm not wanting to replicate this style is I think it is too obvious and not right for the piece I am designing for. I feel I need to find and develop a style which is a little more subtle but still sets up the viewer for what they are about to see.

Andrew Brooks Talk

Earlier in the year I went to a talk at the Whitworth Art gallery by Andrew Brooks. Andrew Brooks is a graduate from our college and has gone on to be a very successful photographer and digital designer.

He started by showing us some pieces of work he had produced like this piece below:

He then went on to break down the image in photoshop to show how he had composited it all together. It was fascinating to see his layers after layers of changes. He explained how he takes hundreds of photos and selects areas to use in the final composition. His aim is to create seamless pieces of work that could be an actual landscape isn't. It was great to see how he worked and the fact he broke it down for us like this was great as you can actually see on screen the way he has produced it.

He went on to speak of how he likes to try new techniques and over the last year or so he has been testing with making 3D films pieces. He made them as Cross-eyed pieces or alternatively you could view each screen with the corresponding eye. It only occurred after he had projected some of his work on a screen behind him how weird we all must have looked sat there cross-eyed admiring his work. It was great to see though and I had no idea a piece like this could be produced this easily. Since then I have seen this method repeated all over. There were screens set up like this in the Film Archives in Berlin and is also the method Stewart from the Neighborhood had used to create his 3D work. Andrew Brooks had put a lot of time and effort into buying and building his own equipment for his 3D filming but the results really paid off.

This has shown how artists and designers are having to move with the times and keep up to date with the techniques they are using. This makes me want to consider doing some 3D work in the future. I think I will if I have the time and resources available as that is the direction everything is heading into at the moment. Andrew also spoke about he he enjoyed being self employed and working whereever he wished. This made a lot of sense when thinking of the freedom you would have when moving around jobs and companies but I still can't help but think I want experience before I even start considering freelance. I want to get in the industry and see how it works before I take any huge steps like that.

Check Out his website if you have the time:

http://www.andrewbrooksphotography.com/

Museum of Film Archives

While in Berlin one of our tutors had managed to get us into the archives for the “Museum Of Film” where everything is kept when not on show in the museum itself. It was a bit of a mission to find the archive building but when we got there we found it was worth the wait. When we got there we were able to look around the 3 large rooms. The first had the opportunity to see some of the original artworks for a large range of films exhibited at the museum. We saw some of the original concept art from the film Metropolis that was filmed a Studio Babelsberg. These charcoal and pen drawings were beautiful and you could see exactly why the film ended up looking the way it did. These photo’s really don’t do them justice.

After these we saw some costume designs before some real surprises were shown to us. We saw and oscar that had been donated, the actual hook used in the film Hook and to finish with they showed us one of the model Gremlins used in the films.

After we saw these were entered the next room where there was reels upon reels of film. After these though was the real treat from the archives, which was all the cameras used in years gone by. The guides told us that there wasn’t a camera in there from post 1960’s.

To finish with we got the opportunity to see an original Lotte Reiniger piece of art with the silhouettes that made her famous. I couldn't believe how so much of this was in storage and not on show. We were so lucky to get the opportunity to go and see these but it seems a shame that it is all there behind lock and key. There are some priceless pieces of art there that should be really appreciated rather than hidden. We were convinced that some of the stuff we saw should have been in the museum instead of some of the things we saw but this just show how opinion driven our field is. Someone's love for a piece could be outweighed by someone's hate of it. I just hope this isn't the last seen of these pieces and more people get to be as lucky as we were.

Studio Babelsberg

When we arrived at the worlds oldest large scale studio Babelsberg we were greated by our guide and given a bit of information about the studio itself. It has been producing films and working as studio space since 1912. It has been the set for huge films such as Metropolis, Inglorious Bastards, Valkyrie and The Bourne Ultimatum. It offers services such as a replica Boeing plane with removable walls and cockpit as well as the worlds larges indoor water tank.

After we met our guide she took us to see all the separate areas of the studio. The studio is vast and the size of a town itself. Even the streets were names after famous directors and producers. We started by looking around the prop houses. It when you see all these behind the scenes workings you can truly respect the amount of work that goes into these huge productions. These prop houses were unbelievable, I have never seen anything like it. There was row after row of catalogued objects that could create or recreate any scenario you could think of. I couldn’t believe the work went into making the scenes.

After this we were shown the costume department and the rows upon rows of clothes and costumes such as military outfits all the way to cabaret. After spending our time trying some costumes on and looking through the vast collection we entered a room with the famous costumes in that the celebrities had worn. We saw costumes from Inglorious Basterds and Jude Law’s outfit from Enemy At The Gates. From here we went on to see the carpentry department and the plastering departments that created everything from huge ships to the mask used in V For Vendetta.

The last 2 areas we saw were the most impressive. First we went into the second of the 3 large filming studios where there was the some of the set left from the filming of The 3 Musketeers that had taken place there the week previous. This was by far the best part of the whole trip to Berlin! I cannot go into much detail as to what was inside the studio until the film is released as we said we would not reveal details but the set we got to walk around was unbelievable and the fact they had built it all from scratch. After seeing the rest of the studio I think I could finally understand what effort had gone into building it.

The last section we saw was at the other side of the studio and was a complete street that had been created on the side of huge containers that were stacked over 3 stories high. The street resembled a typical street and could be changed to directors wishes. It had been used in films such as Inglorious Basterds and the Pioanist.

All of this made me think of earlier in the year when I really wanted to get involved with film. Looking around all these separate warehouses showed that there are many areas in which you could get into the film industry. This just shows the amount of opportunities this studio has as well as showing the true scale of the place. I could be quite easy to get lost in the huge teams working together to create these scenarios but that is what this studio is all about. Everyone, every department are working with all the others to create one final outcome.

I am so happy I got the opportunity to see this studio. I made me think a lot of where I wanted to end up as it brought back thoughts of wanting to go into the film industry. The whole studio was fascinating but when I sit back and look I realised thatyet again it would be easy to get lost in the movie business and end up just doing the same thing over and over. I want to work on projects that I can see through until the end as well as working on the ideas rather than just being a production boy. This is the reason why I feel I would be best suited going into the advertising industry.

Old Footage Tutorial

After my feedback from my testing I looked back to what I really wanted to do with this piece. I was not happy of the grading of my film. It just made the footage look darker than it needed to be and it was hard to see colours that separated the sequences. I found this tutorial on making your footage old:

http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorial/old_film_look/

This was a great help showing a more convincing way to make my footage look like it had been taken on a 16mm camera. I wanted this style because of the Plus Guest piece I posted earlier. This has enabled the colour filters I put on the footage to be a lot more visible, plus they also work as vignettes on tablets.

New Composition

After the feedback I got on my tests I have come up with this as my final composition. I have used the idea of an abacus with the tiles on the bars. This would be the final shot of the animation after the tiles have rotated. I think the shadows really help show that each square is a tile as opposed to a hole with footage behind. I have also changed the colour of the type to relate to the footage in each row. I think this has worked well and after softening the shadows and reshooting some of the footage I will be ready to render.

New Composition