Tuesday 25 November 2008

week 11 Digital Enviroment

Digital Environment

Tableaux vivants

The next project is evolved around the tableaux vivants-style 'photography' the whole project will be Incorporated around this topic and will include various types of development such as designs and idea sketches from my own different environments interiors, exteriors and so on, another aspect i will be looking are artists work around this genre throughout this week using them as references to create some interesting work.
ta⋅bleau vi⋅vant
[French : tableau, picture + vivant, living.]


noun
a group of people attractively arranged (as if in a painting)


French saying meaning living picture can relate to many art forms such as theatre painting and photography.

I found an interesting photograph whilst researching tableaux vivants and examined it for myself, you can clearly see that in this image there is something quite distressing and wrong going on an event has occurred perhaps a murder hence why the women in the image is holding an axe, this is the biggest question that arises in the image the fact that it is black and white really enhances the image also i think if it was in colour it would loose its definition and would become more complex to understand the image shows large amounts of meaning and dept with its use of light.



'Chronicles of Crime is Wong Hoy Cheong's photographic recreation of famous Malaysian crime scenes.'
WONG HOY CHEONG
Malaysian, b.1960

Mise-en-scene

Another French term meaning literally ‘put in the scene’ its almost everything that goes into the composition of the shot which includes composition itself the framing and movement of the camera, lights, set design and the general visual environment.

Ambiguity
From these topics i found ambiguity was the hardest to research as it contains many different types of definitions i located this site which shows the deference's and the meaning for them also A word, phrase, or sentence is ambiguous if it has more than one meaning. The word 'light', for example, can mean not very heavy or not very dark. Words like 'light', 'note', 'bear' and 'over' are lexically ambiguous.





Artist research


From the briefing we received at the start of the week i noted down some key artists that i think i can benefit from as they vary in styles, the reason for my choice is that they appeal to me in the way that artist have constructed the senses as is show me significant use of lighting.

Edward Hooper


http://www.edwardhopper.info/night-hawks.html


I remember researching Edward hopper for my Alevels and was inspired by his work, i like the styles he uses in his work such as the bold layout of colour improving its meaning which is very mysterious, the people are sitting in dinner talking to each other which makes you curious wanting to know what is going to happen next and what they are talking about also.i will take the sense of curiosity from his artwork and try to bring it into my own work.


‘carefully constructed composition and lack of narrative, has a timeless quality that transcends any particular location.’

Sandy Skoglund






http://www.enquirer.com/editions/1998/06/28/skoglund28.html

All the images that Sandy Skoglund create have excellent composition especially the use of colour, she brings the images to life by adding animals such as the foxes shown above it really adds to the balance between reality and society in the way, if you was to imagine the image above without the red foxes it would show a plan average old fashion image but when you include the foxes your view is completely transformed, from her work i take lighting and its composition to help.


Fox games
‘The photographs look as though there were stills from a movie due to the suggestion of movement by the sculptures. Splashes of vibrant colour scattered about the photograph add a lot of interest to this weird, impossible “still”.’

Gregory Crewdson



http://coromandal.wordpress.com/2008/05/03/annunciation/

My favorite of the 3 artist i have researched is Gregory Crewdson , he uses a intense light describing a very anti terrestrial scene, for instances this image shown above the women has brought her own garden into her home which you would not see in normal society, i see a huge element of the uncanny in his work and will perhaps try bring it into my own work.The affect Gregory Crewdsons artwork gives the viewer is the type of affect i want to create with my designs as i feel this is the strongest style, which will bring my work to life it will also fit in with the time scale of the unit.


‘Here are three works by the photographer Gregory Crewdson, all untitled, set in the generic suburb, landscapes and portraits, each with strong beams of light.’


The birds
Dir Alfred Hitchcock
1963



Beginning the week with The Birds, the title gives away the subject of the film straight away, its obviously something to do with birds that perhaps attack as show in the image above, at the opening of the film it seemed very strange as the 'Rod Taylor' playing as Mitch Brenner entered the scene he gave a alien like vibe that was very suspicious i felt he was going to play a big part in his films meaning, the cameras movement was very good and useful when 'Tippi Hedren' playing Melanie Daniels arrived at the house where Mitch lived to deliver his sisters present which was significantly birds, when Melanie comes to the small town she mentions the word birds in a local cafe/dinner and the locals stare at her, this is a fact showing something is not right, the particular scene was the main one i remember but there are also many more.



The birds targeted her because the birds are free migrating and she is possibly in a way invading there space and freedom, the longer she stayed at the small town the more frequent the birds attacks got leading to many deaths there is some kind of war against the birds every time these mysterious crows appeared there was something about to happen.




Throughout the film there was never a given answer to why the birds attacked however i have my own suspicions that it was very nature based as you can see from what I've wrote above more evidence from the films, it begins in a pet shop which contain birds and so its appears that the birds are trying to get there own back on humans.


The Uncanny Valley
Dead of the night
1945






We was unable to watch the clip however the images that Phil showed from the PowerPoint where very useful and this is where the idea of using (fake humans) such as ventriloquist dolls come into my work, I'm not very keen on dolls and find them quite freaky there are numerous films display my view such as the chucky films, dead silence and so on.


Chucky

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6116291/


Dead Silence

http://bluebomber.wordpress.com/2007/01/24/movie-watch-dead-silence/





Technical Workshop Maya
Light & Rendering 1: Intro to Software Lighting


during this lesson we watched and learnt techniques which we must consider when creating our scenes , began thinking bout what type of scenes I'm going to try create, is the environment going to be exterior scene or interior scene? the research has covered this question and so next week i will make a choice of my design and create some thumbnail sketch's , i have to remember as my knowledge within Maya is very limited i don't want to create anything to complicated otherwise it my be to time consuming.



My scenes aim:
scene which is effective but not to complicated.




Monday 10 November 2008

week 9

Edward Scissorhands
Dir. Tim Burton
1990
as like the alien film i have seen this film before , i quite enjoyed watching it again. the film starts off with a classic 1950s feel to it as it shows a scene of all the houses ranging from in different colours which are very light giving the impression of happiness the colours consists of baby blue, light green, pink yellow and so forth along with the old fashioned cars. from the clean neighborhood to the darkness of where Edward lives here is where some good contrast was shown an excellent scene looking up at the castle this is were the lighting was at its best.

The anti American Gothic 'perfect world' combination proved to be good as the director Tim Burton had giving the film meaning and so during the end of the film it give you a scene of sadness as Edward returned back to the castle and machinery.




The Cook The Thief ,His Wife & Her Love
Dir Peter Greenway
1989

The the last of our films was 'The Cook The Thief ,His Wife & Her Lover', i found the beginning of the film extremely confusing but soon realised what was actually going on, this film contains some very violence scene and so a get a scene of violence throughout the film an example of this would be when the thief(Albert) stabs a fork into a women's cheek.


The film had almost everything within it there was violence, love, hate, murder , cannibalism etc however i feel there was something missing the whole film seemed theatrical stage like (play) with all the vivid lighting and colours, there were some key features of the film i took note of, such as the kitchen scene, when close examining the film you notice the camera move from side to side capturing the details.


Workshop
Concept Art
Digital painting final touch ups ..


A print screen of the first scene the 'hatchery' is shown here they are images of the development stages of the scenes as you can see it is coming along nicely.I've blocked out the main areas of shadow which applies to all the concept designs sticking to my cold colour scheme of the factory you can find the description for the scenes in my key words.





The next scene is the view from the elevator on the roof looking down onto the city, i didn't spend much time on this image as you will see compared to the other two scenes ,i found it mush more harder to get the colours and angle of the scene i wanted it also lacked in detail however this is only on the beginning of the scene.






My most time consuming scene out the three which is the view from the helicopter ,i wanted to capture the city's atmosphere as well as the right idea of the scene itself , meaning i didn't want to add too much to ruin the scene and didn't want 2 have too much either i had to find the right balance.





In the interim cirt i will view all of my final concept designs.

Wednesday 5 November 2008

week 8

I'm now at the stage of thinking about my essay, from the films we have watched the ones that appeal most are the earlier one such as edward sciccorhands and alien I'm going to stick to a more earlier films idea and so i have chosen equilibrium to be my film to analyses as i have a better undertanding if it from watching it previously the film relates to my projects as well as minorty report however i felt equilbrium would be better becaue of its scence and colours, the film and my book are both set in the futuritc tence which is also an advantage.





Alien
Dir.Ridley Scott
1979




This film has a connection to my book through the futuristic structure of the film ,I'm not sure if there are any other connection although watching the film has shown me some key scenes to look at for example the alien landscape when the humans leave the ship onto the planet coming across living eggs to the alien. Again helping me with different camera shots this was the thing i began thinking about after watching the entire film,rearranging my scenes to make them that little bit better.

i think i can take some pieces of inspiration from the film such as the lights, they range in colour which i can take in consideration when developing my first scene of the hatchery the ship has lots of machinery which can be used also.

i noticed with some of my out door city landscape scences i'm going to need a type of surrounding to give the background some depth so these buildings from the 1930s art deco period became qutie usefull, below are some exmaples i collected.