I met up with Stuart Fortune recently – a designer director that I had only heard of through others. A lot of his stuff has a kind of Japanese/Indonesian feel, which I think he uses in a very modern way.
He has done an interesting mix of TV work and visuals for concerts - including some very trippy stuff for the Led Zeppelin show at the 02 Arena in London and Katie Melua.
There is also a very intriguing animated movie he is working on called "Ergo The Adventures of Don't Be So Ridiculous Valley'" - it is narrated by Rik Mayall and is absolutly beautiful to look at.
Anyway – he has just updated his website - www.stuartfortune.co.uk - so I think it would be definitely worth a look.
I just heard that Channel 4 are having a week long 3D extravaganza and thought that you lot should know about it. They are giving away free 3D glasses in Sainsbury's, and putting on some 3D gems, so there's no excuse not to make some home made popcorn and snuggle up on the sofa. It's been a bit depressing since Guy Fawkes night has been and gone, so why not?
I think I am right in saying this is the first concentrated amount of 3D viewing on the TV – it's been having a bit of a revival in the cinemas recently – most notably many of the recent children's movies. The bonus being that you can't pirate a 3D movie (yet!). I'm not sure what the promos and trails are for this yet - but maybe it will feature the first made in 3D for TV...?
Here's a selection of what you can expect: The Queen in 3D - Unseen footage, shot in 3D, of The Queen during her Coronation year. Tells the story of two innovative young camera men, Bob Angell and Arthur Wooster – now in their 80s – who filmed a 3D colour newsreel they named Royal Review.
Derren Brown Presents the 3D Magic Spectacular
With Derren as host, some of Britain’s leading performers dazzle the audience with incredible trickery, and amazing archive footage features performances of some of the world’s greatest magic tricks.
The Greatest Ever 3D Moments - top ten 3D moments of all time from movies, television and pop videos.
3D films: - Flesh for Frankenstein - 1973 kitsch horror flick - a man intent on building
the perfect man and woman through the collation of body parts from corpses. Friday the 13th Part III and Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour – I will leave you to decide which is the scarier choice Hannah Montana grimacing millimeters from your face live in concert, or the slasher scenes from Friday 13th – but hey it all looks like fun.
I almost forgot to do a follow up on the recent See No Evil event in Brick lane. I had a great time chatting to various people, none of whom I had met before – but hey these director/creative types are a nice lot.
Best of all were some of the films that they had on a loop downstairs – my best ones I have hunted down and put on this post. The new video for the band Air for their song called "singsangsung" by mrzyk & moriceau – I personally love this style of psychadelic 'Yellow submarine' animation and was completely mesmorized by it. Some of my colleagues thought that the song itself was a bit "lite", but I can only view this as a package – and it made me feel goooood
My next favourite was the awesome Neurosonics Audiomedical Labs Inc by Chris Cairns – this resonates very well with the audio nerd within me – both for the type of sounds that the heads make as well as the sheer skill of the DJ's who operate the turntables – the whole thing is perfect and I would love someone to explain to me how they did it and how painstaking it was. Chris currently works at Partizan and was crowned Best New Director at the CADS Music Vision Awards 2005 continuing this success with Shots Best New Director for Virals at Cannes 2006 and Best New Director at Kinsale 2006. Neurosonics Audiomedical Labs Inc. from Chris Cairns on Vimeo.
My third fave was "Snow Bo" by Vera Brosgol – it starts off as a nice sweet tale and turns into something much darker – the sort of thing that would happen in League of Gentleman's Royston Vasey if it was located in Russia. Apparently Vera is Russian born and now lives in Portland USA and works as a storyboard artist for Laika inc.
Here is a list of the other vids they showed that night – all very good as well, but space and time means I have to go with my own favourites – I'm sure you can find the rest of these on Youtube or Vimeo…
Bryum & Kapok 03: A Lilt
Overture is the creative unit of Jason and Aya Brown.
"Dreamland" by Asif Mian
"Two Weeks" promo for a group called Grizzly Bear by Gabe
Don't forget – come to the next one and all comments welcome!
So Devilfish have pulled another mega-sized job out of the bag – one which /I know was a really difficult one to reel in, as there were two rounds of pitching, and some fierce competition. Finally on 11th September the new look Canal+ was launched.
I can see why they were finickity about it – it was the first complete re-brand since the network launched 25 years ago. There were five channels to re-design Canal+, Sport, Cinema, Decal and Family.
Personally I really like the feel of all of these – most of them are incredibly "arty" – the kind of thing that you would see as a video installation at the Tate Modern, rather than cable TV. The idea of breaking the screen into four is that it echoes the cross in Canal +, the + being a positive symbol. This simple graphic device creates a family relationship but allows for each channel to have its own identity.
For the core channel the content was taken from the "real" world (as opposed to the "imagined" world – but treated through the Canal+ perspective.
I love the look of the +Sports channel (shot using a new technique of
‘moving time-slice’ with 80 cameras on single rig) – it's the closest thing I have seen to animating a Francis Bacon painting, and to think that this is available to view on a mainstream cable channel is amazing. Richard Holman, creative director on this project, told me that all the executions took a bit of experimentation, and that the whole project took 12 months from start to finish. I think you can see why – none of this imagery is off the shelf by any means. canal plus family & cinema idents from Tim Rabjohns on Vimeo.
For Cinema they used old 16mm film which was then treated and put through a gate (inspired by the work of Stan Brakhage) and then run thought filters in After FX.
To me the +FAMILY idents look like colourful Futurist animations where every shape has its own sound – something you rarely see in idents. +DECALE is a ‘remix’ of the audio and vision from the core channel. Canal plus Decal idents from Tim Rabjohns on Vimeo.
Finally he said that he got to spend a lot of time in France which allowed him to get to get to know the client really well and to develop a new identity for one of the most iconic networks in Europe (as well as get through a lot of Bordeaux – well, who wouldn't?)
Credits:
Client: Olivier Schaack, Director of creative services CANAL+
Olivier Degrave, Manager of On Air Design CANAL+ France
Creative Director: Richard Holman,
Art Director: Dan Eatock, - artist/graphic designer with a very unique vision.
Design Director: Grant Gilbert,
Producer: Lucy Hunt
CORE:Director: Lee Edwards
SPORT:Director: Grant Gilbert – senior dir
CINEMA:Editor: Lifelong Friendship Society, Design: Grant Gilbert
FAMILY:Designers: Lifelong Friendship Society
DECALE:Editor:Exceeda
I'm happy to say that some people are asking me when the next post is coming out, or why havn't I posted in a while – so I'm glad people are paying attention – if anyone wants to add to what I say – let's hear it!
Anyway back to Blac Ionica – the design/film company with the strangest name. I met up with Jon, Tim & Chris in Shoreditch the other day – they insist that the name was mainly chosen for it's phonetic properties and the fact it occurs high up in the alphabet! The funniest part, I think, is that they have a wall of misspellings – where people have sent letters or packages with strange versions of their name ( I'm, sure there's a separate website in there somewhere)
Blac Ionica are very busy boys – they are represented for advertising work by Another Film company (headed by Jeff Stark) as well finding stop motion/animation and live action work for themselves. They have done a lot of work with Devilfish (see my previous post on Devilfish and their augmented reality pop promo) and various other branding agencies. IMHO they have a great style and a lot of skill in what they do. No wonder they were picked to work on an ad for the PSP Go with Love Creative(Manchester) recently
All the ad work on their site and Vimeo page is very slick, but I also like their title sequences for Russel Howard and Russel Brand's shows - there is a real energy in their ideas despite the inevitable lower budgets - They obviously have a lot of fun with this 2D/3D style of animation. I'm sure we'll be hearing more from these guys soon
just a quickie to say that Greg Millar has gone freelance. After spending 5 years working at Redbee as a senior designer and 10 years before that working for the various BBC graphic design departments, he has decided to go solo.
As you would expect he has worked on a ton of different projects including many BBC productions, UKTV, ITV, Channel 4 and both EPT and ANT1 in Greece. I spoke to him the other day and he said that although he planned to continue with live action and graphic based design work, he was looking for new challenges, creatively.
Knifedge are a very interesting company for many reasons, but most notably because they have mutated their customer base outside of TV broadcast and secondly because they are the only graphic design company I know of to be winning awards for theatre productions.
I caught up with Creative director Tim Bird the other day. He set up the company with Jonathan Brigden and Matthew Freeman in 2005. Since then they have worked in many different areas – TV, Web, live events and Theatre – he told me that diversifying and not focussing on just broadcast TV has really helped the company grow, as budgets have shrunk in all areas over the last few years. It makes a lot of sense to have many skills, not just graphic design and animation, in house.
He then told me how he had just come back from the US where a production of the Steven Sondheim musical "Sunday In The Park With George" has been getting rave reviews and winning all kinds design awards (scroll down the page on the Sunday In The Park page for more info on these). You can see a short film of what Tim and the theatre designer David Farley have done below. In a nut shell there are various projections on to the scenery that help bring to life one of Georges Seurat's famous pointillist paintings – but it is done in a very clever way, so that the animations interact with the actors and actually become and integral part of the action.
Tim had this to say about it: Setting out to connect worlds which don't usually join up doesn't necessarily make for an easy life, so putting projection, animation and musical theatre together is bound to bring issues with it.
The most obvious factor is the money I guess, in that people from film and tv do their maths differently to people in theatre - basically because theatre can only sell so many seats, whereas their are fewer limits on tv and film sales and thus their economy is larger. Theatre shows which 'go international' get round this to an extent by in essence franchising the same assets to lots of different cities. It's rare that this happens with Sondheim musicals though. For many he's an acquired taste and even though his work has a huge following in the States, it's still not so economically significant that budgets can be boundless. So, the money is a juggle.
The other factor is time. As you're aware, animation is a painstaking business and can't be made easily at speed. This runs counter to the culture of live work which can change in an instant, be different each night if it wants to be and so forth. The specific issue we had with Sunday in the Park was needing to change animation right up to the last minute. We got round this by planning the hell out of everything, being very precise to begin with. There was too much content for it to be possible to make massive changes, but we put strategies in place to make the process easier when tweaks were required. That said, there were elements which had to change completely when it came to technical and dress rehearsals simply because until you see the thing all together, you don't know whether it works or not, and if it doesn't work, it has to change, or the story is not properly crafted. The only solution in this case was working some seriously unsociable hours and having enough people to turn the stuff around in time.
The final factor is collaboration. Theatre at its best is a seamless interweaving of all the story-telling elements. We were very lucky to enjoy a great relationship with all the rest of the creative team and to be able collectively to do some of our best work as a result. That said, there are all sorts of areas where the language of theatre, TV, animation, film etc is problematic. A 'producer' does very different things in each context and budgets and technicalities often seem similar in the way they are handled whilst actually being totally different (or vice versa). Misunderstandings arise all too easily, so there was always the need for careful diplomacy and effective communication to ensure nothing went badly wrong.
All in all a great experience, although there were plenty of times where the team and I could definitely have used more sleep. Welcome to the world of Knifedge!
It has just been announced that Kemistry will be rebranding CBS's first evervUK channels–they are gigantic in the US, but this will be their first foray into the UK TV market.In 2005 Chello Zone asked them to rebrand their six "Zone" satellite channels, and now CBS have done a deal with Chello, and they will take over four of their six EPG slots to become: CBS Reality & +1, CBS Drama, and CBS Action, Zone Horror and it's +1 will stay as they are for now.The new channels will launch on 16th Nov 2009
I havn't mentioned them before in my blog, so here's a bit of background info:Kemistry have become one of the longest running design companies in the UK and have clocked up an impressive amount of idents, graphic design, product packaging, awards and art gallery events over the years. The company was founded by Graham McCallum, Ricky Churchill in 1996 - some 13 years ago and currently has 11 staff. Like many of the top companies they do a lot of international work as well as domestic channels. Last year they rebranded Nile TV, which is the sort of BBC1 equivalent in Egypt.
Apart from anything Kemistry are the only design house that also has an ice-cream factory as part of their business. Yes, you read that right – ice cream. Through a collaboration with a cook who lives in the next door building they started the premium ice cream business, as well as doing all the packaging. It is called Rica and is currently selling in Harrods and Waitrose. I'm especially pleased as they use goat's milk to make it - I can't eat dairy, so It'll be on of the few ice creams I can munch on - now where's my free sample....
Superfad are a design based motion graphics company working across all media (TV broadcast, commercials and web). The parent company (also called Superfad) was established in the US since year 2000 and has offices in Seattle, New York and Los Angeles and they handle some pretty impressive campaigns for blue chip companies.(see website for more)
The London office has been open since 2007 and is steadily growing in size and stature. I went to see Stuart Robinson in their Soho office recently. Recent works include sponsorship IDs for Orange's "cinema Sunday" in France (similar to the UK's Wednesday promotions where people can get free cinema tickets) –. Also to say that French equivalent to our 118118 has a new online service – customers can open an account and register more details about themselves which can be passed on to people when they ring up. The aim of the sequence was to give it a new film-like feel.
Wow Wow is a Japanese cable channel. For a number of years creative director Adam Parry had been responsible for their rebrand when he was at Framestore. When he left to join Superfad they decided to ask him pitch again, but this time with another 29 companies! The story goes that they laid out all 30 ideas on a table, unlabelled and still chose his design…..I can see why as it a very classy piece of work.
I went to see Shucks the other day. The three partners have all cut their teeth with various other companies like Superfad, E&P and Radiant and then decided to start their own company since March of this year. Their NW1 studio, which is one of the coolest looking I've been to is set up in an old church – the entrance to which is through a circular ex-stained glass window. It felt like going into Frodo Baggins' house!
Shucks have just completed a nice little piece of work for CBBC – a titles package for a show called "Keep Your Enemies Close" - a sort of game show that tests the strength of the bonds of best friends. Now I know what you're thinking – "yeah yeah, another cheap titles, with flying logos" – but these guys have actually done the near impossible and pulled off a great idea on a small budget in under a month.
The show called for a kind of "cold War" feel, but not rooted in a specific time period and having a non-threatening feel. They referenced Soviet style propaganda posters and the iconic designer Saul Bass (who worked on many of the Hitchcock movies) with his use of silhouettes
All three of the partners worked on this sequence: Ryan St James, Scott Wallace and Matthias Peters.
A blog about the world of motion graphics in all its formats - and of course channel identities. I talk to graphic designers, both freelance and companies and find out what's going on in their world...
www.shriek-music.com
I've been working in the sound-to-picture industry for over 15 years and right from the start have been involved in music for TV programs, advertising and of course, television branding. I wanted to create a blog that could bring together all the people that my company Shriek work with - mainly graphic designers and their producers. There are hardly any print publications who deal with the subject of idents, and it struck me that it would be a good idea to try and put all all this specialised knowledge in one place.
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