Experimental Video Initial Ideas #1
Miniature Town Set
Creating a scene using projection onto a collection of buildings
Our idea is to create a miniature paper town onto which we will be projecting animations to create a scene. We drew inspiration from artists Su Blackwell and Stuart Wroe who both exhibited their work at the RA in London. The beauty and detail showcased in both of them was hard to just look past and we immediately saw the potential to project onto something like this. We like the idea of bringing together 2D and 3D- creating something physically beautiful and merging it with something digitally beautiful. The experimental video will either carry a narrative, which may be based around a character or an aspect of the town. Or we will be creating a purely abstract piece.We are beginning by prioritizing the construction of the set, as that will be the most time consuming, and then we feel like a story/concept will emerge from that.
INITIAL INSPIRATION- Su Blackwell
Su Blackwell works predominantly with paper to create the most intricate artworks ranging from set design, to illustrations for children's books, to beautifully detailed miniature sculptures for editorial commissions and exhibitions. Paper has been used for communication since its invention; either between humans or in an attempt to communicate with the spirit world. Su employs this accessible medium and uses irreversible, destructive processes to reflect on the fragility of the world and our life, dreams and ambitions. She says of her work "I often work within the realm of fairy tales and folk-lore. I began making a series of book sculpture- cutting out images from old books to create three-dimensional diorama's, and displaying them inside wooden boxes". Kaitlan and I are taking inspiration from this and developing the installation aspect into a moving image instead.
There is a quiet melancholy in her work, depicted in the material used and the choice of subtle colour.
She doesn't over power the final outcome with bursts of colour which, if used in the wrong context, can be really invasive to an image. She relies on the paper itself which is far more effective and beautifully poignant. I also really like the illumination coming from behind the windows and the little reflection cast onto the book. Through experimentation of projection in this project, Kaitlan and I hope to produce a similar effect.
Stuart Wroe
I love how he manages to create a whole world through the depiction of a few tower blocks. The way that the frame sections each element of the image makes it seem like each block is a different world within a world. They almost look like separate houses even though it's just the same tower block divided up. There's a strong sense of perspective in his piece as well. It's warped perspective however, as you can't really tell how far away the block of flats is. This just adds to the quirk and ambiguity of the art work. Perspective is definitely something we want to experiment with. His presentation is so individual and holds so many textures and layers, meaning it never disinterests the viewer. There's always something different to look at and i'm sure, if you took some time and looked at it again, you'd spot something you hadn't spotted before. If Kaitlan and I took this idea further than this project, we'd love to exhibit the work as an installation like Rowe and Blackwell.
SET DESIGN
'As you like it'- Stephen Brimson-Lewis (set designer)
'An Inspector Calls' - Ian MacNeil (set designer)
'A Christmas Carol'- Rob Howell (set designer)
This set reminded me of the lights that hang across the 'City of Ember', a 2008 post-apocalyptic science fiction film directed by Gil Kenan (pictured below):
Strung randomly over the houses, these lights seem to blanket the city and make it seem even more out of this world, as its a way of illuminating a city that seems so alien to us.
Es Devlin (artist and stage designer)
'Ugly lies the bone'- Es Devlin
Es Devlin is a British stage designer who works in a range of media, often mapping light and projected film onto kinetic sculptural forms. She began in narrative theatre and then started working designing for the National Theatre in 1998. She has since worked on sculptural designs for the theatre. A critic wrote "Each of her designs is an attack on the notion that a set is merely scenery, Devlin is in demand because she can enter the psychic ether of each production and make it glow with significance".
In the theatre production of 'Ugly lies the bone' (shown above), Devlin has used a basin-shaped map as the canvas for video projections. The play follows an injured soldier undergoing virtual-reality therapy. She has created a map of the town Titusville, Florida which is projected and curves around the stage. In the image below, models of 2,000 buildings (sculpted by hand by the National Theatre scenic workshop) protrude from the surface of the map. I don't think Kaitlan and I will achieve that amount but we'll try our very best haha. The screen creates a rounded backdrop for moving images that simulate the world as seen through a VR headset, including snowy mountains. These images contrast the wire frames and night time shots that are projected to indicate the reality of daily life. It's an innovative and striking set design and an original use of projection. The variety of projections showcased in this performance and the relation between the moving image and the town structure is just what we want to achieve for this project. 'Ugly lies the bone' gives me a lot of inspiration to really experiment with projections and think outside the box, contrasting textures and moods, and hopefully coming out with a really striking piece of work. Es Devlin's set design is vital in bringing this story together, so we can use the construction of our town to help our little narrative unfold.
'Don Giovanni'- Royal Opera House, London
The Weeknd- Es Devlin Coachella set.
Kanye West
Thinking about initial inspiration for designing our town, i looked back at some models i made a few years ago:
My own models
For one, these models have colour and we want our town to be constructed from white card so the projections can be most effective. These models have a lot of lovely long windows which i definitely think some of our buildings should have- this will allow for projections and light to bounce through and create beautiful silhouettes and shapes, giving the town more character. I think it's important to build a few houses and shops in this style, however, we want our town to be predominantly industrialized so we need a lot of factories and urban buildings rather than suburban. It'll be good to have a mix, keep the town varied but we need to prioritize the urban atmosphere.
Ideas for the type of aesthetic we want our town to hold
Industrial, futuristic, dystopian, working town.
Factories in the background, housing in the foreground.
This image (below) is how i imagine the heavy industrial part of the town. We can build the town up in layers, having the suburbs in the foreground and the heavy industrial part in the background. The factory chimneys tower above civilization, dwarfing the rest of the town. The murky, washed out and almost tea stained sky is really effective and evokes the damage being done to this town and the fragility of its environment.
Tracey Snelling
Working with sculpture, video, photography and installation, her work gives her impression of a place, its people and their experience. Below, her multi-media sculptural installation 'One Thousand Shacks (2016) conveyed the "precarious individual existence" of people living in extreme poverty. Composed of a 16 ft by 10 ft wall of small scale shacks, photographs, wire, wood, and other materials were used in each shack to capture people "living the best they can in excruciating circumstances". This piece is visually stunning and immensely powerful as its nature is so realistic. The bursts of light coming from each little window just adds original character to each shack and evokes a sense of life. The attention to detail in her work is something to strive for and her message is powerful. Our project could entail an underlying message due to current circumstances. Something to consider.
Michael C. McMillen
Aristotle's Cage'
If we used light? Could have different back lights to evoke a different mood/atmosphere.
James Casebere
Could play around with perspective and have a suspended house like the one shown in this image. We want the town to develop into seeming out of the ordinary so this could be one way of showing that.
Tame Impala's most recent album cover shares the same futuristic/dystopian feel as James Casebere's photographs:
'INCEPTION'- Christopher Nolan
This is out of the ordinary as the houses are warping and bending to completely change the layout of this town. We imagine our underworld to be upside down as we want it to completely contrast with the above world and having a world filled with distorted, upside buildings just brings out the sense of an alien world even more. We want to explore that bridge between the real and the surreal which 'Inception' definitely explores. Hopefully our ghost will too.
'Last I heard he was circling the drain'- Thom Yorke
"At its core, our intention was to communicate the experience of feeling completely on your own, surrounded by people you see yourself in but don't understand, who have lost their minds to the city and can't see that you need their help".
This music video gave us ideas for where we wanted to take the story of our scene. We want to try and end it by warping and morphing the 'seeming normal' town into something rather eerie and unrecognizable. The lighting in this video is also really beautiful, so it would be good to experiment with trying to achieve this kind of atmosphere. This video also plays around a lot with perspective and angles which Kaitlan and I really want to try. We want to create a town in which all aspects of it are interesting, it just depends what angle you look at it from. We will experiment in both black and white, and colour. We want to also incorporate mirrors to create reflections and open up more space within the shots, making the town seem more expansive than it actually is.
Idea for a possible narrative- based on Thom Yorke music video
The film is set in a ghost town that used to be a bustling and thriving industrial town. Our protagonist is a ghost who is saddened that his old town is now industrial and murky. Is he actually walking through the skeleton of his old town or is he in some kind of purgatory/hell? Then, we have an excuse to make it strange and unnatural because it's his living hell. He can't expect what's going to happen because even though this space was familiar to him, it isn't anymore. Unnerving. Mysterious.
'Eraserhead'- David Lynch
David Lynch's photographs of abandoned factories are very creepy and ghostly. I love how the decrepit, abandoned industrial buildings are in the foreground and the eerie apartment blocks tower over them like a wall. It's a very varied setting and evokes mystery as well as fragility. It's almost like a visualization of how our above world would contrast with the underworld. Hypothetically, the highly industrialized tower blocks would represent our underworld and the empty, deserted buildings in the foreground would represent our above world.
'City of Ember'- Gil Kenan
'For generations, a massive generator has sustained the needs of the underground 'City of Ember'. But the generator was built only to last 200 years, and as its lights start to flicker and fade, it remains to two youths to follow a cryptic series of clues that will restore light to the place'.
Ember resonates strongly with the ideas we have for our town as it is a post-apocalyptic, underground city, threatened by ageing infrastructure and corruption. We want our above world town to be populated with houses and also industrial buildings and landmarks, to create a sense of a community that once was and have a variety of buildings. Having looked at art work and photographic images depicting old industrial towns, they usually have family housing etc as you enter the town and then there's a specific industrial hub towering over the houses behind them; chimney's rise over bridges that connect the suburbs to the industrial. We want our underworld to consist of more corrupt architecture and worn buildings/factories; rather like the city of Ember but more eerie and dark. I really like how the city of ember has a blanket of little lights covering the city. I think something like that would belong in the underworld, but they'd be a bit tattered and broken; possibly flickering like the classic light flicker in a horror movie. The city of Ember relies on its flickering lights to keep it thriving and our ghost is concerned that his underworld will burn out soon, just like his old town in the above world. As our ghost walks through the town, he will glow and lights of buildings will flicker on and off as he walks past them. This exchange of energy will give a sense of life to a now ghostly town.
I found this image that i really liked because its construction is so simple yet all the textures and attention to detail give it so much character. We want each street in our town to hold this kind of originality. The way all the houses are stacked on top of one another reminds me of the construction of slums and is similar to the sort of buildings i'd imagine finding in the Star Wars universe. They could be futuristic but they could also be something from the past. That's what is so interesting about creating a dystopian world; the construction of it can be really varied. A dystopia is an imagined state or society where there is great suffering or injustice. We can create our own sense of a time in our dystopia. It can hold elements of a futuristic society within the underworld and elements that oppose that in the above world. Star wars validates this, as a city like Coruscant (below) takes the stereotypical imagining of a city like London for example and adds elements that boost it into the future. Skyscrapers that nearly touch the clouds, stacks and stacks of tower blocks and dome like buildings dotted around; no sign of environment or green life. The wall built around it evokes a very totalitarian society; no way out of a system under which you must obey all of their rules. But if you look closer, it's also populated by smaller suburbs and little houses with similar features to the image above.
Coruscant
Suburbs
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