Tal Rosner Lecture

Tal Rosner is an award winning designer and filmmaker who recently came to Stockport College to give a lecture. He started off telling us about where he started from which was doing a BA degree in graphic design where he learned about composition and magazine layout design. Although he enjoyed this he decided he had a nack for rhythm and moving image and so went and did a MA course at Central Saint Martins (London) where he graduated in 2005 producing the film 'Doppelganger' as his major project























Doppelganger is a 4 minute long video that he describes as a 'daydream travel between real and imaginary, steel and concrete, clouds and smoke.' It uses footage from took from Londons Docklands area shot from on a train, (Rosner explained the potential of filming from moving trains later on in the lecture saying that it acts as a free dolly!) the video has lots of fantastic shots beautifully edited to an electronic beat, he uses a sort of kaleidoscope effect alot and said that he wanted every single frame to look like a piece of art if you paused it. I really like this piece and I can see definate influence in his work from Michel Gondrys Star Guitar. Rosner actually said that Doppelganger was the first piece of work that he produced that he thought was to a professional standard.
After his MA he got a job in London that he thought would be his dream job, but when he got there he found that he didnt like it as much as he'd hoped to have more creative freedom instead of just being told to do something a certain way.
After this he teamed up with 2 French classical pianists who asked him to work on a cd/dvd combo for there album, they wanted to give it a more modern feel to it so it would apeal to younger listeners and, after seeing Rosner's previous work, thought he was perfect for the job. Again he used footage from a moving train but went alot more abstract with it, and really shows the pace of the music.
The next piece of work he showed us was 'Debussy en blanc et noir' which he used lots of different footage and replaced, edited and speeded up parts of the footage to make it more interesting. I really liked this piece especially the replacing the sky with different footage as I think this can change the entire mood of a shot and I also have a fascination with sky and clouds!

Rosner then moved on to talk about the BAFTA award winning Skins title sequences that he did and explained that the producers of the program had seen his Stravinsky work and thought that it could work well in a more commercial place. He explained that he wanted to show the characters not the actors in the title sequences and also because skins focuses on a different particular character each episode he decided to do each one slightly different showing more of that character than the others. For series 2 he changed them slightly using the shapes of the letters as the transitions which works really well.

















Finally he showed us his favourite and most recent piece he had produced called 'Without you' which was inspired by a poem by Joseph Albers; "Calm down, what happens, happens mostly without you" The video is very abstract using footage of unusual architectural designs and shapes and edited with shapes and colours that are similar to them.
Tal Rosner, I think, is a very talented designer/filmmaker and overall was very impressed with his lecture, he had a few slip ups during the presentation like forgetting where he was up to and talking about because he didnt have a set presentation planned out, but I think that didnt matter as his work speaks for itself. He explained that music influences his work and his edits a great deal and I think this shows through in his work and has moulded his own distinctive style. Overall I have learned quite a bit from his lecture, the two main points I found where that I should investigate sound alot more in my work and also that moving image/ motion design can be applied to all sorts of things not just modern commercials or animations, I think this would be something to look into further.

Guilherme Marcondes - British Gas Advert

This is the new british gas commercial from acclaimed director Guilherme Marcondes from the agency Hornet. It is trying to promote the fact that they have invested into renewable energy sources and in particular the worlds largest off shore wind farm. When I first watched this I thought that it was brilliant and that it must have been produced in 3d, but after watching and reading the making of articles on Marcondes' page I found that the planets were actually hand crafted models shot on a green screen, then composited the animation over the top. I really like the way this has been produced and I think the little universe that they have created looks great, I especially like the fact that you can see they have used photos for the character faces and manipulated into a charicature style. The concept of youre home is your world really works well for the subject matter of the advert and also the 'windfarm planet' was created frame by frame in stop motion to produce the waves. Overall a lovely advert and I think this may influence the techniques i use for my FMP.
Watch The Video Here

Reality Hack: Hidden Manchester

The second exhibition I wanted to go and view was the Hidden Manchester Exhibition by photographer Andrew Brooks, which documents his findings of spaces usually cut off from everyday sight or inaccessible to the public. His works are all very dark dingy places like in the sewers or abandoned underground amenities or the top of a church looking out over the city. The use of lighting is fantastic in his work as he manages to capture lots of eery colours and reflections which are very hard to work out where they have come from. I really like the exhibition he has produced and think that 'Urban Exploring' (which Brooks refers to it as) is really interesting and a great subject not just for photography but maybe for moving image aswell.
To see more of his work go to www. andrewbrooksphotography.com

Pencil - 45 Years Of Creativity From D&AD

This week I have visited the Urbis Gallery in Manchester as there was a few exhibitions I wanted to look at, the first, was the D&AD Pencil exhibition. This was showcasing the best pieces of design work to feature in the 45 years of the competition. All the work shown had either won a black or yellow pencil and was positioned next to the cover of that years annual. Although all the entries on show were fantastic and very inspirational what I found most interesting was the cover designs of all the D&AD annuals from every year dating back to 1963, they are all very interesting and innovative and some are quite 'out of the box' for example the Cover of the 2003 Annual was designed by Nick Crosbie and has big white suckers all over it so that you can stick it to things! and Malcolm Gaskin’s marvellous 1984 ‘blow-up’ cover included a valve that allowed the blind embossed, heat sealed, translucent dust jacket to be inflated, which is very imaginative and fun!

Each year the cover is designed by a different aspiring creative chosen by D&AD and has become an award in its own right to be chosen as thousands of designers will see it and have their own criticisms and judgements. Of recent years the design has tended to stick to the main company colours of yellow and black but back at the beginning of the organization it was alot more open. These were the first 3 annuals ever brought out (below), The first was by designer Alan Fletcher who simply took a photo of his old portfolio that he used to carry his own work about in, and stuck a D&AD logo on the handle, very simple yet effective whereas 1964's shows a red apple in the middle of lots of green ones, possibly an analogy or a metaphor for standing out from the crowd.

Her Morning Elegance Video - Oren Lavie

This is the Music Video for Oren Lavie's song 'Her Morning Elegance' produced using fantastic stop motion animation by Yuval and Merav Nathan. The couple had a brilliant concept for the video and it has lots of quirky little finishes like the school of fish (or socks) and the clouds (pillows) moving by. I really like this video and i think it is excellently produced.

Portfolio Review: Alex Bower – Bright Digital

Today I Had a Portfolio review with Alex Bower and his colleague Rachel from Bright Digital in Manchester. It took place in college as they were there anyway shooting on the green screen, and after a shaky start due to my hard drive not working on the laptop, I showed them some of my work from the second year like my Alcohol website, Nando’s flash game and my Dave ident.

They seemed to like my work and asked lots of questions about why I did certain things, we talked about what techniques and methods I enjoy doing and what areas I might be interested in going into after graduation, Alex explained that there company does a wide variety of work and offered a few tips like speeding up the animation in my ident, and not to get to precious over parts of my work that took along time to create; if it is only needed on screen for a few seconds don’t be afraid to trim it down.

I then talked about my self directed project and showed them an unfinished version of my Tomorrows World advert, this seemed to go down very well and I think they quite liked it. I played it a few times explaining each section, as they said some sections weren’t obvious what was happening, which can be a good thing in adverts because it makes people want to watch it again. They said they liked the aesthetic and humour aspect to it and asked me to send them a finished copy when I was done.

I then explained where I was up to on my current project which is for the YCN competition; they had a few tips for me and pointed me in the direction of researching into a few different people like Picasso and Peter Blake.

We talked about getting myself exposed as a designer and that a good idea for me would be to try and meet as many industry professionals as possible and to collect business cards, because then I would have a contact email or number to try and send work to. They also mentioned attending some social events like Northern digital would be beneficial but apparently that is supposed to be just for freelance designers and not students.

Overall I think my review was a success and I think I have gained a lot from the experience, it was useful to see what people who have no knowledge of the briefs I have done to see my work as they noticed things that I didn’t, and they could also offer there professional advice. I think it has given me more confidence in my work and trying to present it to other people, and to have a copy of my work on disk (or any other format) in case of my hard drive not working!!

Johnny Kelly

Johnny Kelly is a designer from Dublin, working in London for Nexus Productions. He created “Procrastination” on his MA animation course at the Royal College of Art and it won the Jerwood Moving Image Award. It is based on the meaning of the word “Procrastination” and uses hand drawn stop motion and live stop frame too. It is a fantastic concept and is produced brilliantly, it doesnt really stick to one style or theme but uses lots of techniques which i think makes it more interesting. Also the voice-over works well, I might look into using one in my work.

His next video is called "The Seed", the one that I saw first that made me want to see more of his work. It is an animation for Adobe featuring the life journey of an apple seed, using 2d animation and stop frame animation it flows effortlessly throughout the stages of its growth. I really like the humour aspect of it like the bird hitting the tree and the worm underground at the beginning, also the transitions between the two styles work really well.