Chris Harrison lecture

Brilliant- loads of ideas and inspiration.
Starting of at agencies such as point blanc and zip producing cd covers for example one for nebula with exploding headphones with the help of a french illustrator. Later moving to logos for example, logos for milkshake he had really done a variety of stuff. Yet I particularly liked the adverts he had produced for five, the grey's anatomy advert, ashes adverts ( six in the city!)  they were all just clever, original and communicated quickly and this is something I feel I need to bring into my work more.

Richard Branson, 'Screw it, lets just do it', this was given with a brief for Harrison to produce a 3 minute film, showing 160 virgin companies, with the aim of trying to turn around the way people percieved virgin, to create a more humourous, sexy, edgy image. This film was the best of his work, compilling loads and loads of research, film and stills of all aspects of virgin, it was quick, slick, fun and sexy, it gave virgin a much more youthful appeal. Yet too it had such a large audience using lots of people of all ages, nationalities and backgrounds, this made the advert more interesting, yet also global.
Another thing I found interesting about the lecture was his work on project magazine, a new app magazine just launched, getting people involved, for example by having usb hot spots around cities throughout the world. This aspect of social interaction and reaching out to the global audience is something I found fascinating and this is where the genius' of graphic design work.
He was trying to 'break ground' with his work and involvement with companies and this passion to make yourself look different was for me really inspiring, the lecture was fantastic!!

Short films by Jan Svankmajer

Svankmajer here uses familiar, unremarkable objects in a way that is deeply disturbing. His creativity and invention was something that I found brilliant, the films are so clever and for me these were the best yet. Despite having had breakfast half an hour previously and at certain stages throughoput the film feeling like it was all going to come back up I couldn't stop to throw up, I was transfixed by the genius of these films. In the first one two characters keep eating each other and as time goes by the broken up pieces they have eaten is regurgitated and forms the character all over again. Watching the mashing of a mix of foods from roast dinner to fruit to bread was a little too much at 10 in the morning, never the less it was brilliant to watch. The following film was similarly clever with 2 model characters sticking their tongues out, colliding two unrelated objects together, this sense of random fusion of the objects did not only remind you of the work of surrealists but it was qwerky and genius in the success with which individual details came together. For me these films were a cocktail of madness, creativity, and inspiration which created a fantastic spectre, showing commonplace things coming unexpectedly to life.

I decided to do improve an idea I had when we were doing the extraordinary books project... 'Its a book that is not there'.

 Fed up with not only being asked for ID but also forgetting my ID and recently losing it I decided wouldn't life be easier if hwen you were 18 you had a small tatoo done and we just showed this when required!! Yes I have thought that if you were not 18 then you could do one yourself, it could have special ink that you can scan with a scanner.. at least you wouldn't forget or lose your ID!

Peacocks....

Picture from visit to bird world.. lets just say wouldn't go back!

In need of inspiration- went into the environment looking at form that reminded me of peacocks!

I decided to make a potatoe stamp, turned out to be harder to do than expected! Never the less the concept was Mr. P. Cock- who is he, I also thought having done this I could use the idea, going around to billboards and stamping advertisements which are about showy, unecessary things etc. Another thought I had was using Mr P. Cock and doing an invitation for his party, a group of peacocks is called a party and a family called a bevvy. I thought of doing an invitation: Come to my party and bring your bevvy's. Yet thinking about this idea I did not feel the end product would display the fact clearly enough, and having experimented abit I also found it hard to make it obvious linking the fact to the bird.

Having done my research I was of the opinion that peacocks are all show, when your sitting at a zoo eating your lunch watching pretty peacocks walk around sure that is nice in context they look amazing what interesting creatures. But in fact when you look into them there really is not alot that is special about them, they are all show. So I decided to do the piece above looking at people that are perhaps just all show and then I thought why do they  give off this vibe. I decided it was to do with brands and so having likes the idea of a stamp above I did this Louis Vuitton (stamp??) thinking about how brands damage these people, how they can be negative and how they are all just show.

Having spoken to tutors and peers this then lead to the idea of veins. Peacocks according to the dictionary are 'vein strutting people' and I thought this would create good unobvious imagery and would also steer me away from the cliché images associated with the peacocks looks! Above is a start in my research into this idea!

Peacock research...

Research...
Vauxall city farm, library and bird world. Although bird world is good for information etc... abit of a rip off!
Currently thinking of looking into the personaltity of peacocks more, relating them to human personalities, and looking at how they are all just show no substance!!

Une femme est une femme

'A woman' is Anne Karina, a free spirited Parisian stripper who wants a baby and wants one now. The film is a tribute to 1950's MGM American musicals and therefore like the long goodbye challenges the traditional formula of a detective film, here Godara is doing the same to a musical, thus creating a neo- realist musical. In 'A woman' Godard is playful in his use of cinema technique, for example with sudden interventions of score music as if leading up to a big musical number, to a rhythmically edited argument. Furtherstill, with sudden pauses in the music during various points within the scene this draws your attention to the moment, argument and what is being said. In some cases it leads to silence allowing the characters expression to talk. For me this seemed to add humour to the film, yet it also oddly seemed to bring the scenes together more, as one was able to relate the pause in one scene to the previous. This act of reptition can also be seen when Emile and Angela  are in bed and then take the lamp to find books to call each other names using the book titles. Not only does repition make tis funny but also the act of repitition.
In the 'Long Goodbye' one or two pieces of violence are completly at odds with the rest of the film and this is used for effect, it challenges the genre, in the car he is explaining how much he loves her and then suddenly smashes the bottle in her face. This along with the unexpected shooting at the end which doesn't suit how the detective had treated everyone else through the film and is therefore uncharacteristic is similar to the uncharacteristic music within 'une femme est une femme'. Godard is being playful and this is similar to Odman in 'The long goodbye', very different to 'slacker'. In the 'Long goodbye' violence disrupts the balance of the film yet perhaps this is typical of LA in the 70s, the shooting at the end which seemed to unbalance is like the attitude of LA at the time, its like giving up.
The way the film is shot in 'the long goodbye' is quite raw an organic, this is very different to 'une femme est une femme'. Yet I feel it is more realistic private detectives get destracted and may not just be focused on the case for example the film shows dogs mating on the side of the street. In 'une femme est une femme' and 'slacker' the cuts are more abrupt and the space less well adapted. But perhaps 'the long goodbye' is better as here the film works in real time and real motion, its more complex. On the other hand what is the point in filming things that are not related to the plot?
Never the less although the films are all very different and there are alot of comparisons, I feel that upon further examination there are also strong links. We will have to wait and see how the next films compare...

Final Machine

Final machine bells and target added, a touch of decoration and a test out-worries went! And after 4 days in the studio of panic it all came together to give a quite mode machine and somehow it got the prize for the most inventive which given our girly mechanic skills, we were pretty pleased with!

The stamps our machine made were not amazing and this I think could have been improved, yet I learnt alot from this project:
Something I always say was proved again... 'if you put the time in you will get results.'
I learnt, take risks, just do it and try, and I especially leanrt just to keep going. In the first two days of this project looking around the class I was pretty horrified with what we had done, a wheel attached to a frame. Yes we had talked about other ideas and between the two of us had enough sketches and notes to write a book , but we had not figured out HOW!!! This was when the 'just keep going came in,' and ... it worked out!!

An 'i' printing Machine

So Lara and I were making our machine print the letter 'I' and yes we were both pretty relieved at the start of the project to be given this letter. Yet having been initially briefed all that came into my head was ' f*ck', I really am not mechanically minded and I was pretty sure Lara was in the same boat. Despite this we are both pretty similar minded, we both were prepared to work to find a solution, however long it took!
So we brainstormed, ideas and ideas and ideas flew into our heads onto paper, drawings, fiddling about with junk. We certainly were not short of ambition and imagination, it was the later mechanical aspect of the project which caused the major hurdles. After day one I left the studio thinking I was stupid, I had wasted time, why couldn't I come up with something.... etc and looking around the room that day hadnt helped this later thought. Nevertheless the two of us kept coming up with ideas, talking and talking about it, clearly we had something. The next day wasn't much better although we came up with the basis of the idea, we found a frame we wanted to work with and a wheel. At this point the problem I felt was we both kept flipping with ideas, trying to think of the perfect idea or how we could put all our ideas together which slowed us down, on the plus we were thorough!! That evening I also came across a light, I set myself up in the garage, playing around with how it could print. God knows why I decided this could work but bringing this 10 ton light 'thing' into Chelsea the next day seemed to help us put our previous ideas together- thank the lord!!! Despite the initial panic we had both had, we both seemed to be pretty determined and I think fingers crossed we have a decent machine... lets hope it doesn't let us down on friday! I think maybe with a few sound effects and targets added it may not even look that bad- quite hansom!!!!!!

Some images of it in progress!!

No doubt I will post the final outcome later on... well worth waiting for!!!!!!

book sale:

All books made sold...... target met!

Cinema trip: The long goodbye

The women stands up in front of the crowd of somewhat tired looking CCW students explaining how cinema was not necessarily meant to be relaxing and although last weeks film was far from enjoyable in this sense, this week the film was better. The film was intelligent, the camera didn't really stop moving throughout the entire film which I found for this age film wierd. Yet it made me feel more involved in the film which I liked, giving a better overview and more involved with the characters emotions. Yet perhaps in some places during the film this was inappropriate for example after violence, I think if the camera stopped moving here the violencee would become even more dramatic.  In the 'long goodbye' Altman uses the same ideas ingredients of a traditional detective fiction but manages to stir them up in a different way. Immediately at the start of the film we are introduced to Marlowe's somewhat bizare relationship with his cat and next, to a group of naked women living next door. Yet over the course of the film these are constantly bought in and become an important part of this dectective film, I feel it allows Marlowe and the story to be more believeable. I found the film is suprisingly unviolent and yet this somehow appeals as when violence does occur, it makes you sit up and look as it is even more shocking both in the severity and in some cases randomness of why it is used.
Finally the music... ermmm yes and no, I liked how the same piece played at varying points int he film bought events together and made you flick and link different scenes, yet I found the same song again and agian rather boring, yet perhaps at the time it was just a clever way form the audiences point of view, to piece the film together.
Overall- better than last week, fewer characters to keep track of meant it was easier to follow, moreover I found the rare use of violence compared to Slacker made the film much more engaging. Humour with the cat and  hippy group next door also helped to lift this film above the previous one.

Film: Slacker- 1991

Leister Sqare odeon- such a good venue, nice screen, nice seats and bonus of pleanty of places around for coffee after!
I found this film rather confusing, it does away with almost any form of sustained narritive,  it seemed as soon as the film grew tired of one character , it disposed of them and moved onto the next, this may have made it intense, yet with none of the characters really being in more than one scene I struggled to keep up. Linklater says, ' I wanted to capture the way you walk around for a day and have these brief encounters with people you kind of know. I wanted it to be like you're home alone after a full day of activity and you' re like piecing it all together.. trying to make sense of it.' Here I get his idea and reasoning but for me it was too intense, when I go to the cinema, I go to relax etc and this was far from it!!!!Yet perahps with a second watch I would ask more questions and begin to piece the movie together and perhaps this is what is required for this film.
At a $23 000 budget- for me this was the result, although clever - it left me confused and dizzy trying to keep up. On the other hand I thought the way the camera moved across the characters and used heierachy within the frame successfully-  it helped me understand what was going on better....so maybe Slacker was technically good but lacked content.