Hasta La Motion!

Editor’s note: Like all our reviews, this is one is uncompensated and written purely out of curiosity about a new service that might be useful to some of our readers.

As a freelancer, there are two major hurdles to getting booked: 1) being sought after by employers, and 2) actually getting booked. Most freelancers focus the majority of their energy on the first task—as they should—leaving the second task to producers.

But the system of holds and the back-and-forth communication required to get a successful booking sometimes means things fall through the cracks. If you don’t believe me, take a peek at the typical producer’s calendar. Total. Nightmare.

To alleviate some of that confusion for both freelancers and producers, the folks at Haus created Frank. It was made specifically for booking freelancers in the motion design context, but it’s being used by more and more folks for other things (like babysitters and substitute teachers).

Let’s be clear: Frank is not a social network or a portfolio sharing site or some kind of LinkedIn-Facebook-Behance love child. No. That’s not Frank at all.

Frank’s aim is much simpler: To help people book freelancers (and to help freelancers get booked). It’s this laser-like focus that makes Frank so damned easy to use—and that keeps it from devolving into something lesser.

How it Works: Hold, Please

As a producer, I just need to add some contacts by name and email and pick a range of dates for a hold. Frank then sends a hold request to the appropriate contact.

On the freelancer side, you get an email containing a link back to a communication system on Frank.

By keeping the communication in the world of Frank, everything can be tracked and managed (by both sides). It’s much cleaner than a bevy or emails, phone calls and/or IMs, and it ensures that calendars are updated accordingly.

Back on the producer side, when I’m ready to book, I can change the hold to a booking. Frank sends another message, just as before. Easy as pie.

What We Like

1. It’s private. As a producer, you don’t typically want to share your talent pool with the world. Frank keeps your contacts just that—your contacts.
2. It’s well-designed. The calendar interface is beautiful and responsive, and the entire process from initial hold request through booking makes intuitive sense.
3. It’s free for freelancers. There’s no cost to create a profile and to keep your availability updated.

Ideas for Improvement

When a hold is changed to a booking, the automatic email that’s sent to the freelancer wasn’t entirely clear to me the first time I read it.

As a freelancer, I didn’t realize that I was receiving a booking request. The subject line (Are you available?) was the same for the hold and for the booking, and I found that a little confusing. Maybe some sort of indicator that the correspondence is about a booking vs. a holding would have helped.

Once you click through to the Frank communication page, you see a title that says “Booking Request,” but again, I think the change could have been a little more obvious.

The Future of Frank

Frank’s still pretty young, but it seems ready for prime time. I chatted with Jared Plummer, one of the founders of Haus, and he’s optimistic about its future. The main challenge now is getting freelancers into the system, he said.

Producers already “get” it, for obvious reasons, but some freelancers only want to work with certain producers, so they can be touchy about putting their info into a new tool. (Again, that’s why Frank is a private, closed system.)

What Do You Think?

Have you guys already been using Frank? What do you think about it?

Posted on Motionographer

After a lengthy festival run, Joseph Pierce‘s A Family Portrait makes its online debut, presented by the hardworking fellows over at Short of the Week. It’s an awkward, uncomfortable moment with a family collapsing at the seams under the photographer’s (and our) eyes. The surreal play on rotoscoping was earlier explored in Pierce’s National Film & Television School graduation film, Stand Up.

Posted on Motionographer

Editor’s note: The following interview and review are by guest contributor Cheryl Yau, a 2012 MFA candidate in SVA’s Design Criticism program. Catch the next screening tomorrow, June 1st at the SVA Theater.

New York in Motion is an ambitious attempt to facilitate a rich conversation within the industry of motion design. Bringing together the most prominent players in the field, the film explores the power and inspirations behind the medium. The hour-long documentary is a bricolage combining interviews, shorts and stills in a curated series of hand-held footage and time-lapse photography.

I had the chance to speak to the director, Graham Elliott, about his film-making process.

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What motivated you to make this film?

I’ve been working in Motion Graphics for many years and am also teaching it at the School of Visual Arts. It struck me that even though it’s all around us, my students did not really know what Motion Graphics actually was. And thinking about it, I realized that I was somewhat hard pressed for a definite answer myself. There have been so many changes and developments in the last 15 years and you can point to things and say, yes, this is part of it and this and this, but where does it all come together? Motion Graphics is definitely the next big thing in the creative arts, and it’s already happening big time, but what really is it?

I was interested to find out what the people who are actually creating the amazing stuff around us have to say and had the idea of making a kind of short film/documentary. I ran the idea by Richard Wilde, dean of the SVA Graphic Design & Advertising department that also heads an ever-growing Motion-Graphics division. Richard and SVA president David Rhodes immediately shared my excitement and through their support we got the film on the way.

How did you start making New York in Motion?

We really wanted to get a broad cross-section of interviewees, so not just people doing computer-generated stuff but people using all kinds of different mediums and processes to show the incredible diversity of what’s out there rather than reinforce a common assumption about computer graphics. I asked my students to look around and give me lists of work and studios they’ve seen and heard of that inspired them. I also asked people in the field for their recommendations.

All in all we ended up with a hit list of 50 people, companies and designers. Matt Lambert from Motionographer was really instrumental in helping us connect with many of the studios. We expected that maybe a third, if we’re lucky a few more, would take the time to get back to us and hoped for enough material to do a 10-20 minute film. Then 47 got back and said “Yes, we’ll do it.” And it was amazing. We interviewed for several months and ended up with more than 100 hours of footage – really fascinating and inspirational, much more than we had hoped for.

What was the story you were trying to tell with this film?

The ongoing digital revolution has brought with it an era of digital democracy. Accessibility and affordability have put the creatives much more in control, as opposed to ten years ago, when you really had to be part of a large company to have access to tools and distribution. What has changed through this shift?

The other interesting thing in the equation was New York. Why is New York a vortex of this industry? It seems almost contrary to the sign of the times that any one geographical location should be home of such an incredible concentration of the top players and creatives in the field. I wanted to find out what it is about New York that so strongly attracts such a virtually based industry.

What are some things you discovered in the process?

I think we found many epiphanies for the questions we set out to answer, often different from what we expected.

We were just talking about the digital revolution and the empowerment of smaller groups and individuals – I think in a democracy the definition of a term is very much alive. Instead of being determined from the top down, it’s like a moving consensus about the relationship of a lot of different facets that come together.

There are 2 parts to this :

For one, it was very interesting to discover these facets. At any one point you can take a snapshot and formulate a definition. It’s quite exciting to compare and see the development of a definition over time – it kind of puts the status quo into a bigger picture.

Well, Motion Graphics is an interesting term to follow since it connects with communication and with art and expression. And it’s also very much influenced by technology, which has changed all our lives tremendously over the last decades. So looking at how the term has changed reveals a lot of how we have changed. And with “we” I mean not just the industry, but “we” as a community and a culture on a big scale, and also “we” as individuals on a very intimate scale.

On the other hand, the very fascinating part for us was to witness how the people we interviewed are not just pressed into an uniform mold that defines the industry, but are active and passionate about writing and re-writing this definition today. What they do have in common is their drive and creativity and excitement that is very much contagious and shines throughout the film.

What were some of the challenges you faced?

One of the hardest things with this film was restraint. With so much interesting input, I wanted to have the different voices come through as authentic as possible. Of course in order to bring them all together you have to order and edit them in a way they relate to each other in a storyline. And then there is the energy of New York that we wanted to capture. So for instance for the title sequence and between chapters, we shot time-lapse. It’s the city in camera. I’m not designing it, it’s there, but it’s in a bigger picture kind of way. What fascinated me and my team in the process of making the film was the diversity and personality of the people we met and we did not want to super-impose a look or design or treatment to the film that would take away from that diversity.

—

New York in Motion gathers the most respected story-tellers in the city, many of which pitch against each other on a regular basis, and creates a dialogue between them about the evolution of motion, their approaches and insights.

The film might seem chaotic and overwhelming at first, but the production corresponds to the content communicated, embodying the melting pot character of this visually rich industry.

Filmed and produced in New York, the documentary constantly uses the cityscape as a backdrop. Interviewees are filmed on the subway, on pedicabs, while driving, walking or even paddling in Central Park. The film is energized with sporadic rhythm and pace. And so is New York. The documentary mimics the grungy, grimy yet exhilarating nature of the gridded urban landscape that lends inspiration to the creatives that inhabit it.

In addition to speaking with experts on the subject by including an assortment of interviews with tourists, street vendors and passers-by, Elliott captures not only the dynamism of motion design in New York, but the city’s spirit itself. The raw quality of the film reveals how difficult it is to represent two vastly diverse and growing structures: the city of New York and the motion design industry, and the abrupt camera work and edits soon become justified.

The film does an excellent job of covering a wide range of topics from various voices, functioning as inspiration to aspiring motion design students and more importantly, elevating awareness to those unfamiliar with the growing industry. What becomes most resonant is realizing how each interviewee draws expertise from their various backgrounds, finding themselves organically with an influential role in the field of motion design.

The film highlights the opportunities in dissemination with the emergence of new technology, and showcases examples of the the best work today. Elliott’s New York in Motion initiates the much needed and overdue discussion of motion design in a movie format. You will leave agreeing that working in motion design in New York right now is an exciting place to be.

If you missed the successful premiere of Graham Elliott’s motion design documentary film in April, you now have a second chance. New York in Motion will be presented on Wednesday, June 1 at 7:30pm, at the SVA Theatre, located at 333 West 23rd Street. This event is free and open to public.

Credits

Director Graham Elliott
Producer: Graham Elliott, Roswitha Rodrigues
Executive Producer: Richard Wilde
Running Time: 1:00:33

Posted on Motionographer

Despite his hectic commercial career, Edouard Salier always seems to find the time for passion projects (see Massive Attack’s ‘Atlas Air‘ and ‘Splitting the Atom‘ as some recent examples) that are delivered with the same scope and precision as his more healthily funded films.

This piece is, what is evolving to be, classic Salier. Abstract, iconic and visually reduced narratives balanced with lush, textural details that tackle tales of mythic proportion. Take a few minutes out from your Friday to take a journey through the history of civilization as realized via Edouard and a pack of wild Buffalo.

(credits coming soon)

Posted on Motionographer

This week’s RE:PLAY films come from Alexander Gellner and David Wilson. Fellas, take it away…

ALEXANDER GELLNER – “HOW TO GET IDEAS”

“I was thinking a lot about concepts of creativity and the exploitation of ideas. On the one hand, you can’t really steal ideas, only share them. To make a solution public and enable collaboration, raises the potential of one small idea and things can build on each other. The whole CreativeCommons movement is based on this concept. But in a competitive, entrepreneur driven environment, sharing may not be perceived as the ideal and the value increases by being the sole vendor of one idea/solution.
The famous “I drink your milkshake” scene in “There will be blood” finally gave me a visual shorthand for this paradox. I used collage technique instead of my usual lineart, because collage art is unapologetic about appropriating and building on work that other people have made for you. ”

DAVID WILSON – “LIFE AS AN INDEPENDENT ASTRONAUT”

“I didn’t want to start with a blank piece of paper on this one. In fact, I decided to step away from my desk completely and start with some fabric, card, scissors and glue, and I made this space suit. The process of doing and making is very therapeutic for me. Over the few days that it took me to create the suit, I developed the character of who lived inside it. Developing the script and costume side-by-side made a lot of sense to me, and was refreshing to start from a different angle. Ultimately, the life of John Barlow, our Independent Astronaut revolves around the importance of inner peace and finding acceptance.”

Posted on Motionographer