47 Comments »   posted in Shorts, Rob Stevenhagen, Steffen Schaeffler

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Is it a film or a game? Interactivity and non-linear storytelling have been more the realm of gaming than short filmmaking, but the two fields are slowly merging. In the coming years, interactivity promises to become a valuable tool in the short filmmaker’s arsenal. Bla Bla created for the NFB by Montreal director Vincent Morisset is one of the more ambitious and successful interactive film experiments I’ve seen. The press release below contains lots of details about what it’s all about. But first, be sure to spend some time exploring the film itself by going HERE.

Vincent Morisset’s BLA BLA is an interactive tale that explores the fundamental principles of human communication. The viewer makes the story possible: without him or her, the characters remain inert, waiting for the next interaction. The spectator clicks, plays and searches through the simple, uncluttered scenes, truly driving the experience.

Each of the six chapters in the story depicts a different aspect of communication: learning a language, making small talk, expressing emotions, etc. Rich in opportunities for discovery, BLA BLA illustrates these concepts through endearing yet perplexing characters. The figures were designed by Caroline Robert using a variety of techniques, both traditional and hi-tech.

“BLA BLA uses xerography, drawing on paper, ActionScript-generated animations, puppet stop-motion combined with real-time 3D mapping, etc.,” Morisset explains. “I am inspired by projects that feel free aesthetically. I wanted BLA BLA to feel hand-made, imperfect, fragile, so we forget about the technology.”

The music as well as the characters’ speech were fragmented into tiny clips and then scored through programming. Composer Philippe Lambert designed a progressive soundscape that uses “controlled randomness.” Morisset relied on the skills of software developer Édouard Lanctôt-Benoît for the programming of BLA BLA.

The work stands apart in its emphasis on achieving an emotional response in the viewer/actor. “I wanted to create moods and generate emotions through an interactive piece,” Morriset says. “It’s quite hard to do dramatic crescendos on a website… I thought it would be an interesting challenge.”

As part of the creative process for BLA BLA, Morisset extensively researched interactive narrative. Seeking a filmmaking language specific to the online realm, he defined a new grammar of non-linear editing. Through the very format of the work, he therefore questions the challenges of communication and of telling a story in which the spectator is a participant: “The project in itself explores the grammar of a new medium,” he says.

BLA BLA thus offers a new vision of communication in the wider sense, of how our natural behaviours and interactions with others play out in the world. “The relation between the user and the film is part of the message,” Morriset explains. “We wrote and created it based on universal stuff: the social nature of humans, our fear of the unknown, the desire for appropriation and freedom, and paradoxically the love of being taken by the hand.”

Morisset has been exploring the narrative potential of interactive art for twelve years now. His pioneering work in the field has included several collaborations with the group Arcade Fire, including “be oNline B”, widely considered the first interactive music video, and MIROIR NOIR, a documentary portrait of the band. With the support of the NFB, he now offers us BLA BLA, a one-of-a-kind experience that further refines his hallmark: re-imagining “once upon a time” for the digital age.

CREDITS
Direction, Animation and Compositing
Vincent Morisset

Sound, Music and Voice
Philippe Lambert

Programming and Technology
Édouard Lanctôt-Benoit

Visual Design and Animation
Caroline Robert

Puppet Armature Design
Jean-François Lévesque

Rotoscopy
Vincent Lambert

Photography
Minelly Kamemura

Additional Prototype Programming
Mathieu Campagna

Prototype 3D Modelling and Animation
Joshua Sherrett
Jonathan Fleming-Bock

(Thanks, J. J. Sedelmaier)

9 Comments »   posted in Experimental, Interactive, Shorts, NFB, Vincent Morisset

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HAPPY HALLOWEEN: “Duck Pimples”

October 31, 2011 2:23 am

Let’s celebrate Halloween with the creepiest Disney short ever made: Jack Kinney’s Duck Pimples. It’s quite unlike any of Kinney’s Goofy shorts from the same period, not to mention unlike any short ever produced at Disney. The weirdness may be attributed to the writing team of Dick Shaw and weirdo-genius Virgil Partch, who were parodying radio crime/noir dramas, but veered off into some wildly surreal territory. It’s not exactly a great cartoon, but it’s entertaining, which I can’t say for most other Disney shorts. The animation is top-drawer work, and the human character designs are big fun. The effect of Donald’s hallucinatory dream is enhanced by the backgrounds that abruptly change each time a new character appears in the film.

The biggest mystery in this whodunnit is who’s responsible for the animation of Pauline, which is one of the finest pieces of cartoony female animation this side of Preston Blair. Milt Kahl is the most likely candidate if we look at the credits, but Marc Davis and Fred Moore have both been credited as working on the cartoon too (see Graham Webb’s Animated Film Encyclopedia). Disney didn’t use a strict unit system in the 1940s like other studios; usually whichever animators had downtime would work on a short, so it’s conceivable that Kahl, Moore and Davis all contributed to Pauline’s animation. Now that’s a scary amount of talent!

42 Comments »   posted in Disney, Shorts, Dick Shaw, Fred Moore, Jack Kinney, Marc Davis, Milt Kahl, Virgil Partch

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“Don’t Swim After Lunch” by Jens Blank

October 27, 2011 12:05 am

Jens Blank’s imaginative new film Don’t Swim After Lunch was created for a traveling art exhibition that started in London and went on to Shanghai and Beijing. Says Blank:

“It’s my take on daydreaming and changing everyday environments into something exciting. It was done over the stretch of 6 weeks grinding away in my room. Live action, Maya, AE, and pfTrack. You can find info on crew, concept art, behind the scenes on my webpage.“

CREDITS
Direction & Design – Jens Blank
Cinematography – David Liddell
Sound Design – Jussi Honka
Music – David Pringle
Additional animation – Bence Varga & Balogh Zsolt

2 Comments »   posted in Shorts, Jens Blank

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“Mound” by Allison Schulnik

October 26, 2011 12:25 pm

Clay animation can be a magical medium when the material is allowed to be itself and not dressed up to look like something else. This is something that animators like Bruce Bickford and David Daniels understood, as does CalArts Experimental grad Allison Schulnik. The pulsating figures in her new short Mound are reminiscent of an earlier Grizzly Bear music video of hers that I posted in 2009, but there’s also some fun new visual concepts, particularly the sequence that begins at the two-minute mark.

CREDITS
Film by Allison Schulnik
Cinematography by Helder K. Sun.
“It’s Raining Today” written by Noel Scott Engel

(Thanks, Jorge Gutierrez)

7 Comments »   posted in Shorts, Stop Motion, Allison Schulnik

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