If you tuned into Superbowl 2011, you may have seen a slew of dazzling commercials that caught your eye. Here at Motionographer, we where particularly impressed by the latest from Fx & Mat, Coke Siege. As luck would have it, we were fortunate enough to rope the directors in for an exclusive interview about the teams latest piece (full interview below).
“Our intention was to make an epic film using the codes of the fantasy world. As illustrators ourselves we love the energy we see in concept art for films, books and games and we thought this project had great potential for bringing that into motion. We wanted illustrated landscapes, integrating the characters as much as possible with their environment. Wherever possible, we wanted to use graphic tricks to create depth – using atmospheric depth and coloured haze, rather than very photographic optical depth of field.”
Remember the Matrix Ping Pong meme of 2003? The kuroko stagehands of kabuki/bunraku Japanese theater helped two seemingly normal dudes defy physics and bend time for epic ping-pong-ery (and internet delight). Matrix Food Fight and many other clips found online originated on the TV show Kasou Taishou. I highly recommend checking out the highlight reel.
When working with such an eye-catching technique, how do you amp things up to the next level? I was impressed by the attention to detail in these UKTV idents directed by Clemens Habicht (who played with black costume in-camera fun on the lively Friendly Fires ‘Skeleton Boy’ music video). The steadicam takes you in much closer to the action than the usually distant stage-framing. The real physics in reverse (e.g., flying table settings, a purse emptying, frisbees returning home) mixes eerily with the supernatural stage-hand assisted action. There’s a ton of elements in play, but the choreography makes everything seem very natural as the scene almost melts into itself.
Clemens has provided production photos and a clip from their rehearsal. The rehearsal clip in particular deserves a watch and re-watch. Check it all out here.
Nexus Production’s director Johnny Kelly just made this short film for YouTube Play, an exhibition that YouTube and the Guggenheim Museum in NYC are calling “a Biennial of Creative Video” and which you can submit or nominate your own non-commercial work to right now; submissions are open until July 31st. Johnny’s piece is top-notch, encapsulating the Youtube experience in life-size sets which reference famous art works and also run the gamut from wood-grain explosions to rocky caves to circuit-boards and geometric cityscapes, all using the familiar Youtube play button as a central motif. Johnny explained his idea in the press release from Nexus:
“I wanted to try and capture that down the rabbit hole feeling you get when watching YouTube – you start by watching something innocent like a music video, then another video catches your eye and before you know it you’ve spent your fourth hour watching videos of pandas playing pianos. From a technical point of view, it was a challenging animation assault course, with much head-scratching and figuring out along the way. I was very fortunate to be surrounded by brainiacs like production designer Graham Staughton who always had an inventive solution to any problem we came up against.”
The NY Times ran an article on the exhibition yesterday as well, which had an interesting alternative viewpoint expressed by Robert Storr, dean of the Yale University School of Art, which is well worth considering:
“It’s time to stop kidding ourselves,” Mr. Storr added. “The museum as revolving door for new talent is the enemy of art and of talent, not their friend — and the enemy of the public as well, since it refuses to actually serve that public but serves up art as if it was quick-to-spoil produce from a Fresh Direct warehouse.”
We’ll see what the Guggenheim and Youtube eventually pick to include in their show, but if they’re already onto Johnny Kelly, I think it’ll be well worth checking out. Here’s an interesting making-of video if you want to see more.
Credits:
Client: Google / YouTube
Title: YouTube_PLAY Call Out Video
Length: 38 seconds
Client: Across The Pond Productions | Creative Lab EMEA – Google
Executive Producer: Rachna Suri
Production Company: Nexus
Director: Johnny Kelly
Executive Producer: Julia Parfitt
Producers: Liz Chan & Beccy McCray
Animation: Nexus Productions
Compositing: Alasdair Brotherston
Director of Photography: Matthew Day
Production Designer: Graham Staughton @ We Are The Art Department
Stop Motion Animator: Matthew Cooper
Rise and Fall is a new interactive project developed and designed by Theo Watson and Emily Gobeille for the cover of ‘boards magazine’s Innovation issue. The actual piece is a gentle and subtly engaging Augmented Reality project that utilizes both the cover and back of the magazine to manipulate the camera and story flow within the piece. It’s also really great to look at, and easy and intuitive to play with. Rise and Fall was made with openFrameworks and is completely open-source. You can access the source code (if you’re interested) right here.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A. during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
