May 18, 2009
The feature length biopic, Pablo, directed by Richard Goldgewicht is a brilliant initiative both in its subject matter as its approach. I’m really looking forward to seeing this film. It is planned for 2010 but here is the all new trailer to whet your appetites.
April 12, 2009
It’s those lazy Sunday afternoon strolls that are at times most fruitful. Especially when one takes the pleasure of perusing amongst the dust and tatter of back-alley second hand book shops. Two rare gems caught my eye on this particular occasion: Graphic Design in Education Television (Beverley Clarke, Lund Humphries London 1974) A short yet precise introduction to understanding the techniques for broadcast design and in particular, educational television. Although a lot of its contents are today redundant, the book is testament to the state of graphic design in early television production. Clarke drives forward her claim for “The importance of graphic design for educational television…..(which) surprisingly has rarely been discussed.” She continues, “This is clearly an omission in a rapidly expanding profession.” Her claim is a bold stance to take for the time, graphic designers receiving little credit for their work in this domain, but foresaw a definite rise in the role of the designer and many educational programs.
Television in the 1960’s and 70’s was considered as an important medium for extending educational curriculum in schools. One of the better known instructional systems in the UK was the Open University which started transmission in 1971 and was an educational partnership with the BBC. The graphic design unit grew out of the parent department of the BBC creating a shift from presentational graphic work to informational graphics.
Interestingly, we have seen a rise in ‘information graphics’ on the Web in the past five years. Melhil Bilgil’s diploma work, ‘History of the Internet’ being one of the latest fine examples of how graphics can inform. Andrew Vande Moere’s superb website, Information Aesthetics documents this trend.
The second book to pop out from the shelves was The Technique of Film Animation (John Halas & Roger Manvell, Focal Press 1959). John Halas wrote incessantly about all aspects of animation and always with the intelligence that the finer realms of this medium demand. What is striking about this collaboration with Manvell, considered as the authoritative source book for its time, is the scope of animation they manage to present. Whole chapters are devoted to commercial work, public relations, propaganda, avant-garde, instructional and educational animation. Indeed, Halas went on to publish a complete book entitled Film & TV Graphics, a comprehensive survey of graphics in the domain from around the world.
January 19, 2009
If there is one company that has had an influence on motion graphics for film and especially within opening titles, then it must be R/GA. With over 30 years experience R/GA had set out to renew title design after a sluggish time during the 70’s.
“Their firm was among the first to approach film-title design as a collaboration of creative talent and technology. The firm broke new ground…. It also generated many technical innovations that changed the industry and was fertile breeding ground for outstanding talent in film and television design” , Curran
January 7, 2009
Image taken from Recreation 1956
“Breer’s early work was influenced by the various European modern art movements of the early 20th century, ranging from the abstract forms of the Russian Constructivists and the structuralist formulas of the Bauhaus, to the nonsensible universe of the Dadaists. Through his association with the Denise René Gallery, which specialized in geometric art, he saw the abstract films of such pioneers as Hans Richter, Viking Eggeling, Walter Ruttman and Fernand Léger. Breer acknowledges his respect for this purist, “cubist” cinema, which uses geometric shapes moving in time and space.” Jackie Leger
“Breer has restlessly investigated the single frame technique….He has explored new perceptual threshholds with his rapid montage technique, pioneered in the collage film, and experimented with the dynamics of pure abstract animation.” Russett & Starr. 1976
In an early interview at the Screening Room, Robert Breer explains his evolution from painter to film maker. From his background in ‘cartooning’ as a kid and later as a commercial artist for the army, Breer moved to Paris in the 1950’s where his interest in film developed “as an extension of (his) painting”. This excerpt from the Screening Room also includes one of his early experimental films, ‘Recreation’, 1956
September 15, 2008
Achooo Mr. Kerrooschev 1960, 1:43 min, b&w, sound
“Stan VanDerBeek is the Tom Swift of the underground, an inventor of processes and approaches. He is also a collagist, a collisionist and like Georges Méliès, whom he claims as godfather, an illusionist. His earliest films such as What Who How, are animated collages, his midway films such as Breathdeath are collages of film technique and his latest works including Environmental Movie-Drome, are collages of media.”
Sheldon Renan.
A La Mode 1959, 6:18 min, b&w, sound
UBUWeb have just put up 15 films by Stan VanDerBeek on their website. This is a wonderful collection of some of his most important works. VanDerBeek is often cited as one of the pioneers of computer animation and multimedia art and his musings can be watched here on the topic. I recently sat down for a viewing of some of his earlier works, Science Friction and A La Mode which are pertinent films in regards to the history of motion graphic technique. The use of collage and cut out, mixed with bold graphic elements, drawn animation and video are akin to the Beat Generation and Monty Python, indeed Terry Gilliam has been quoted to mention VanDerBeek as a huge inspiration. That inspiration remains strong to this day. There a hundreds of motion graphic pieces that draw from this technique, a good majority of which I’m sure have little conscious thought for this man’s achievements fifty years earlier. At the time of creating Science Friction, VanDerBeek was trying to evolve what he calles a “litera-graphic image, an international sign language of fantasy and satire. There is a social literature through filmic pantomime, that is, non-verbal comedy satire; a ‘comic-ominous’ image that pertains to our time and interests which Hollywood and the commercial cinema are ignoring.”
The graphic image has become an international sign. A system of signs that are being used for means of visual communication whether it be political, commercial, educational or cultural. Some more comedy satire though is in dire need for today’s serious matters. More satire please, more satire !
>>> 15 FIlms by Stan VanDerBeek
>>> Machine Art
>>> Exhibition & article
September 14, 2008
© National Film Board of Canada
© National Film Board of Canada
© National Film Board of Canada
There’s an amazing amount of historical and technical information over at the National Film Board of Canada website. One of the most interesting links leads to an archive of writings, photos, objects and artwork by Norman McLaren. For those interested in his artistic as well as technical approach to animated film, you’ll be spoiled for choice. McLaren documented practically all his works and they make for revealing reading. He also embarked upon a little history hunting himself, writing a short piece on animated sound, entitled, A Brief Summary of the Early History of Animated Sound on Film. / by Norman McLaren. – 1952.
Other important texts include a booklet on cameraless animation. A statement written by McLaren commentating on key themes in his work. And a letter written by François Truffaut to McLaren.
July 4, 2008
Population Exposion 1967
Pierre Hébert is one of those unclassified moving image artists, right out there on the boundaries. The work of the Canadian artist is wide ranging in form and technique. His 20 plus film career, the majority within the walls of the National Film Board of Canada, reveal an atypical creator who developed a hybrid of styles and techniques.
His first film, ‘Histoire Verte’, came into creation in 1963, scratched directly onto bleached film, the results mirroring earlier work of his predecessors, Norman McLaren and Len Lye. Etching directly upon the medium became an important technique for him and is recurrent throughout his career. Earlier experiments use simple graphic forms or blocks of colour that play with the viewers perception. Later works develop a more figurative approach to animation incorporating various techniques such as paper cut out, lettering, live action as well as more illustrative work.
Histroire Verte 1963
An interesting aspect of Hébert’s films is the connection with sound. Hébert played with the abstract qualities of sound; his first film mixes raw recordings of scrubbing and scratching noises most probably taken from the etching process itself. ‘Opus 3′, 1967 and ‘Around Perception’, 1968 were part of a series of more formalistic experiments with sound and image. These films all played with the concept of retinal persistance, the intermittent flashing of basic graphic forms, overlaying to create new forms and new combinations. The visuals are crude however the quality of abstraction is effectively expressed. With all these early experiments, it is the music that acts as a narrative structure.
Around Perception 1968
In later films, he begins to work with more musical compositions albeit within the free framework of improvisation. Many of the projections for Hébert’s work found their place within live performances, musicans improvising along with the film. For ‘Technology of Tears’, 2004, the music was performed by Fred Frith and John Zorn. It was created for a live dance performance the moving images becoming an integral part of the mise-en-scène. He even had Ornette Coleman score one of his more figurative and political works, ‘Population Explosion’, 1967, and this relationship with improvised music shaped many of his notions about how to animate and cut his films to such an extent that he went on to scratch directly onto film in live perfomance with the musicians.
January 15, 2008
Video Still. Synchromy. Norman McLaren 1971. © National Film Board of Canada
An Essay on Music and Motion in Three Parts.
PART 3.
>>> PART 1 Read Here
>>> PART 2 Read Here
…………………………………………………..
Norman McLaren’s 1971 ‘Synchromy‘ epitomizes a particular era in which visual artists were in search of the ultimate marriage between sound and image. There seems to be no other better example of how the two domains meet in perfect sync and graphic rhythm. Synchromy, however, also marks the end of an era and the beginning of another in terms of technique and technology. If the camera brought the canvass into motion and in line with sound and music for the first half of the 20th Century, it was the computer that was to steal the limelight as the new tool for bringing the visual and sonic together.
From as early as the sixties, research and development into computer assisted imagery was taking shape, yet the enormous cost for such a technology and the fact that the privileged domain of science was its main proprietor and knowledge base, meant that the computer was not considered for artistic expression. Indeed, it took until the 80’s; the birth of the digital home computer, desk top publishing and the first graphical user friendly Apple, before the computer really became an accessible and important artistic tool.
One man however, made astonishing developments within the field of computer assisted imagery, well before the computer became a fully boxed clock of zero’s and one’s: John Whitney. The life and work of John Whitney, along with his brother who often had the more artistic role, is rarely given the attention it needs to fully bring to life and present his work in a comprehensive manner. Many short essays and interviews can be found along with his personal writings on his art form, yet we still await a lot more to surface. He is often cited in connection with the term motion graphics, due to his company of the same name in which he developed his first mechanical analog computer and created titles and graphic fx for the film and TV industry. One of the rare pieces available today of this early motion graphics work is entitled Catalogue completed in 1961. As the name suggest, the piece is rather a compilation of the various visual effects he had perfected using his early analog computer. Without doubt, the first ever motion graphics demo reel !
His work ‘Permutations’ was his first cohesive film to have been created using a digital computer, the IBM model 360 along with a 2250 Graphic Display Console. Using a computer program, developed by Dr. Jack Citron, called GRAF (graphic Additions to Fortran), John Whitney completed the film in 1968 along with a 15 minute presentation of the work entitled, ‘Experiments in Motion Graphics’, in which is explained his approach to programming for motion design and the relationships between man and machine . Beyond this technological virtuosity there was an extremely important motivating force that drove Whitney’s artistic expression – the metaphor of music.
Still from Arabesque. John Whitney 1975
“The challenge of creating compositions with this computer instrument is very much like the task faced by all composers who must shape the voices of traditional music to perform harmoniously together. In a piano and string duo for example the interrelationship is usually complex and varied: the parts play together in parallel or opposed motions; one questions, the other replies; one is smooth and melodic – the other is percussive. The range of figurations and the musical partner in this new computer medium for a new World of artistic relationships and expression.”
Experimental Animation. origins of a New Art. Robert Russett & Cecile Starr. Second edition 1988, page 26.
John Whitney was a visionary who wanted to create a new visual language based on moving graphics and who had a strong interest in music. His vision of a new “visual music” takes root in the early European pioneers – Fischinger, Pfenniger and Richter. John Whitney had spent a year in Paris where he had been introduced to the musical compositions of Schoenberg and had later, on return to America, taken great interest in the early film avant-garde movement in Europe. Whitney clearly took a musicians perspective to his visual work, himself writing in an early essay, ‘Moving Pictures and Electronic Music’ that he took the point of view of a composer.
Still from Two Space. © Larry Cuba 1979
“Cuba believes that the numerical capability of the computer is adding a new creative dimension to the field of experimental animation just as mathematical perspective, for example provided additional visual possibilities for the Renaissance artist.”
Experimental Animation. origins of a New Art. Robert Russett & Cecile Starr. Second edition 1988, page 28.
Larry Cuba was part of the second generation, after having collaborated with Whitney on his ‘Arabesque’ in 1975. Although, he has only made four films to date, his work remains a reference in terms of how computer graphics was to develop and expand the concept of motion graphics with new visual images. Today, one only need to look at audio visual performances and VJ-ing to see the influence, permanance and development of this new ‘visual music’. However, to cite only Cuba alone would be quite wrong. What this essay in three parts has hopefully pointed out, is that the relationship between the sonic and visual has a long and rich history that has shaped the way we perceive and work with the two mediums today. This particular history is revealing not only major artists and their various techniques but also suggesting how certain disciplines of contemporary motion graphics such as VJ-ing has developed within a similar framework. A framework that many contemporary motion designers have followed in step to bring sound and image ever closer as an integral part of communication and entertainment. A framework that has equally developed in to a professional discipline and manifests as well as demands a unique syntax, extending our understanding of what the ‘audiovisual’ scope implies today.
>>> PART ONE Here.
>>> PART TWO Here.
Resources.
>>> James Whitney Retrospective. Moritz, William 1984
>>> The Animator as Musician. Eric Barbeau. NFB 2005
>>> Visual Music. Larry Cuba’s Experimental Film. Moritz, William 1996
>>>Experimental Animation. Origins of a New Art. Russett, Robert. Starr, Cecile. Da Capo Press, New York 1988
>>> Expanded Cinema. Youngblood, Gene 1970
May 4, 2007
Although the advent of broadcast television in 1936 promised a new medium for visual creativity in design terms, it wasn’t until the fifties that broadcasting companies began to think seriously about the possibilities. Indeed when the BBC set up their service in 1936, design for the screen was still very much in an embryonic period, its gestation held amid the art World. The Second World War had also put broadcast on hold and it wasn’t until 1946 that the box was turned on again with a swift demand from households for interesting and entertaining content.
In 1954, the BBC recruited its first graphic designer, John Sewell and a department was set up under his management. This was of course a considerable move for a television company at the time. Little can be found on John Sewell’s work for the BBC, at least for the moment nothing leads to more than a paragraph in most instances. He is clearly noted though for the 1950’s BBC screen graphics and was also a budding amateur film maker.
After this first initiative by the BBC, two people were to have a profound and long standing impact on TV broadcast design : Bernard Lodge and Martin Lambie-Nairn. Bernard Lodge was the title sequence creator behind the classic BBC science fiction series ‘Doctor Who’. The famous time travelling Doctor defied time and space in his adventures into other Worlds and it appears that it was these very dimensions that Bernard Lodge wanted to explore and express in the opening titles. In 1963, the series went on air and Lodge’s unmistakable feed back ‘growl’ effect, along with Ron Grainer’s chilling electronic composition, made for a brilliantly effective opener which has engraved every child’s memory ever since. Bernard Lodge went on to create further titles for the series and in 1973 eventually changed the ‘howl’ effect with the slit-scan technique which had first been used in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Most TV graphics prior to Doctor Who were static channel identities or simple animated pres (presentation screens) for certain programs. It wasn’t until the 1970’s that TV channels began to incorporate moving graphics as part of their brand identity albeit with rather simplified results. This all changed though with the arrival of a new channel in 1982 which brought with it to the forefront the designer Martin Lambie-Nairn. Martin Lambie-Nairn had already his years of experience with the BBC and LWT (London Weekend Television), however it was with his creation of Channel Four’s 3D animated logo that TV identities were to really take off and spark a real cause for experiment with movement and form as a means for branding on the box. Today, the graphic presentation of a channel as well as it’s content has become an increasingly fertile field for motion graphics with a wide range of innovative ideas.
January 21, 2007
As Etienne Mineur, author for this informative link, points out. Practically all the techniques developed over the past 40 years in motion graphics are visible in the main titles for James Bond. It is in itself not only a body of work that is rich in technique, the visual narratives are legend for their iconic images loaded with sex and guns.
Etienne Mineur has presented the complete titles here in glorious chronological order.
