EXTENDED: Critical Evaluation

The lifting tower project seemed like a bit of a throwaway brief to me initially and I don't think me or Ewan really poured much heart and soul into the ideas, but we came up with some pretty decent short clips. Sadly I was in bed with a hot water bottle and a cup of lemsip the night they were actually projected, so I never got to see them in action.

It was really great to create the projection visuals for Garde Dog, and to see them projected behind and over the top of the band during their set at Wharf Chambers. The animation itself was based around very basic loops superimposed over dog videos, all in lurid bright colours, which worked perfectly when projected. I was very happy with the outcome, and it was nice that Cinnamon, the group putting the event on, got in contact with the Beefy Squarms collective out of the blue about working with them.
This year's batch of YCN and D&AD briefs were far less inspiring than the previous set in which I had found it quite hard to decide which projects to work on. Action On Hearing Loss did not immediately jump out at me, but actually I think I managed to find a smart and simple outcome to the brief, albeit executed in a quite clinical and dull way due to my quick turnaround of the project, wanting to get started on my work with Brenda.

None out of my YCN, Lifting Tower, or Garde Dog animations really stretched me technically - all of which were made entirely on Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects. But for Loop-de-Loop "Myth" I decided to use paper cutout stop motion for the first time in years, (not counting my ident in first year which used much more basic puppets and was far simpler to execute.) The puppet I made was an assembly of 16 individual pieces of car (including two different 'states' for each hand). Often, because of the way all the tiny limbs were laid over the top of each other it was easier to take the whole puppet apart and re-pose him from the feet upwards rather than try and move one or two pieces without disturbing the rest. It really tested my patience as an animator used to having an undo button. Altogether I actually really enjoyed the challenge, and for a week's work, it is maybe one of my favourite creations.

Working with Brenda again on our final project was a joy. We have a really good working relationship, with space to play and experiment, and a confidence in each others ability to get work done to a high standard. We also share lots of ideas in politics and philosophy, and about art in general so there was a level of trust when tackling some of the more sensitive or subjective elements in our project that we were coming at things from the same angle. Aesthetically I allowed Brenda to set the tone of the animation - the collage style that much of the film is based on is something that she has more experience of working in than I do, but from a technical point of view (if not necessarily an artistic one) I was able to keep pace with her, and I think the film does work as a contiguous whole even though we worked on individual scenes independently. There was always input, advice and suggestion when we needed it, or when a scene was nearly done and ready for tweaking. Despite our annoyance when Walter, the music student we were meant to work with, ending up being a total tool, I actually really enjoyed the process of building up the soundtrack with relevant samples and sound effects. It is clearly the work of someone who doesn't really know what they are doing - and if I'd had more time I would have made the effort to clean up the muddier clips and prepare our samples properly in Audition before adding them to the Logic project. The only real negative I have about not collaborating with someone for the audio is that we had intended to have a back and forth sort of relationship, in which the sound would affect what we animated, and vice versa - which probably would have tied in the audio and visuals more tightly. What ended up happening is that by the time we ended up cutting all ties with Walter the vast majority of the animation was done, and it seemed to make more sense to get it all finished and then focus on making the soundtrack.

EXTENDED: Completed!

Yesterday Brenda and I decided we were satisfied with the soundtrack that we had made, which means that the film is complete!

We now need to decide how best to display it at the exhibition. Ben suggested having it printed onto 16mm film and projecting it, but when me and Brenda looked into it it doesn't seem practical;
Firstly, we couldnt find anywhere in Britain that still offers that service, which would mean having to get the reel shipped to us from a studio overseas and in order to have it ready for the show we will probably have to pay through the teeth for express shipping.
Secondly, due to how little in demand this service is it would cost us over £100 each, plus shipping costs, which seems like an unaffordable extravagance really.

EXTENDED: Music progress

Our soundtrack is really coming together. I have been in the soundbooth for a few days now hacking away at the newsreel clips and public service announcements that we had collected for Walter. Brenda has been doing a really good job of finding relevant samples for me to use at the same time as her other jobs so there is a lot for me to work with, and the film is still coming together.

EXTENDED: Musical Difficulties

After a month and a half since we briefed Walter, the LCOM student who wanted to work on our project, we still haven't received any work. He is also becoming increasingly difficult to contact as he takes days or weeks to respond to emails and messages.

As Plan B I decided to begin working on the soundtrack last week, but as a non-musician it was slow going and in a days work only managed to produce about 6 seconds of not very good audio.

I don't know how much fault lies with me and Brenda, as we were slow to begin sending him work, or how much is him being totally incommunicative, but this is the first time I have ever experienced such a lack of contact when collaborating with someone - especially someone who expressed so much interest in the project right from the start, and has repeatedly tried to convince us to keep them onboard, despite not outwardly seeming like he can be bothered.

Sisyphus finally accepted

Sisyphus made it onto Loopdeloop!

EXTENDED: Zine

We finally got round to printing our zines in the flesh (despite setbacks).
There is something really nice about the quality of screen-printing, which makes each copy unique. I also think our choices of inks and card stock worked really nicely too. It was good to get in the print studio and away from computers for a bit.

EXTENDED: Archive footage

We are trawling through archive.org finding footage from old news-reels, public information films and advertising. The footage we find can be rotoscoped over, cut up and manipulated to form part of the montage/collage effect.

I am also looking through some of the better videos to find audio samples which might help Walter with the soundtrack.

EXTENDED: Music

On Monday we met with Walter from LCOM, to discuss the project and see if he is up for doing some music/sound design for us. He seemed quite keen and interested in the project, but has a lot on, so may not be able to see it all the way through.

We have shared with him some artists whose music we like the sound of, as well as a series of animations which show either a similar style of audio or visuals to what we are aiming for.

Hopefully the film will end up like some bastard child of Ballard and these videos:

https://vimeo.com/album/4797567

EXTENDED - The Atrocity Exhibition, my Zine pages

My 5 pages for the zine are complete. They each loosely correspond to a section or a couple of sections from the book. Brenda is also making a 4 images, one of which is a double page spread.

YCN - Action on Hearing Loss

I submitted my YCN videos today. Overall I am pleased, although I think the concept is stronger than my outcome, and definitely could have been expanded upon. Partly this is because I had other projects on the go at the same time and didn't allow myself much time to work on it.

Ideally I would have extended the concept into a series of posters as well, as I think that the slogan 'real life doesn't have subtitles' has a lot of scope.

YCN - Action On Hearing Loss from Tom Hallgarten on Vimeo.

YCN - Action On Hearing Loss

The three subjects I have chosen to animate are a telephone, a train and a canon. I think they show a good range of something most people only see on television (a canon), something commonly seen (a train), and something completely mundane and everyday which you take for granted (the telephone).

The range shows how the series could be expanded upon into a longer series of videos or poster campaigns.

The videos have a bold aesthetic, using the Action On Hearing Loss brand colours.

Sisyphus completed

A Sisyphean Struggle from Tom Hallgarten on Vimeo.

My film is complete and submitted to Loop De Loop!

Sisyphus

My Sisyphus animation is done. It was by far the fiddliest animation I think I have ever made, as the character puppet was made up of 14 separate bits of paper!!

Annoyingly I forgot to put a black background down before I began animating. In the real Greek pottery the characters are either black with orange lines or orange with black lines, but they are always in contrast to the background colour. Because I forgot to put some black paper down before I animated it, Sisyphus is now the same colour as the background. I tried to rotobrush the background out in After Effects but it was too frustrating.

On Monday my friend is going to record some grunting sounds for me.

YCN - Action On Hearing Loss

My concept for the hearing loss brief is a very simple one, but it can be expanded across many iterations, and is ideal for a social media campaign.

A series of short videos show loud things happening; e.g a train or an ambulance rushing past, a rock concert, or fans at a football match. The video will be silent, and have a subtitle explaining the sound in the style of the audio description subtitles on TV, which are very direct and simple "loud train noises" or "crowd cheering". Then the tagline at the end of the video will be 'Real life doesn't have subtitles'

EXTENDED - The Atrocity Exhibition, MUSIC

I have been speaking with one of the students from LCOM about doing some music/sound design for the project. He initially seemed keen but cancelled our first meeting because of illness and hasn't been in contact since.

The logistical issues we face with getting somebody else to score the film are these;

1. We haven't even decided our animation workflow yet! We probably won't end up with a standard animatic to give him, as the film is going to be structured by 'themes' rather than scenes and won't necessarily have a traditional arc.
2. We will probably end up doing quite an intense back-and-forth workflow with the composer as we might end up animating to the sound just as much as they compose to the video....
3. We want to feel that the person doing our sound is familiar with the ideas and concepts in the book, but we obviously can't force anyone to read the original text.

If it comes down to it I am happy to make a stab at the sound myself, and Brenda is also up for doing some field recording, gathering audio-assets etc. Realistically this would solve all three major issues in one go, so apart from the fact that neither of us have very much sound experience, it does seem like the ideal solution.

Loop De Loop - Myth

February's theme for LoopDeLoop is 'Myth'

My initial thoughts jumed straight to the Greek myths that I used to read as a kid, and I thought about picking one or more of Heracles' 12 labours. The drawing style used on ancient Greek pottery is very distinctive, and actually quite cartoony, so I settled on that for a style.

As I was doodling Heracles and some of the monsters he fought I looked up and saw Albert Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus on my bookshelf, and remembered the story of King Sisyphus who pissed off Zeus and was sent to the cruel punishment section of hell, cursed to roll a boulder up a hill forever. The story seemed a perfect fit, as just when Sisyphus gets to the top of the hill his boulder inevitably rolls down, thereby looping infinitely!

I would like to revisit using cutout animation.

EXTENDED - The Atrocity Exhibition

We have chosen to make a zine for our artbook, which we are planning on riso-printing or screen printing.  We have each gone through the book and decided on a handful of sections which we think have interesting visual or thematic contents which we would like to add to the film.

Each one of these sections will also be a page in our zine.

EXTENDED: 1960S and 70s inspiration

The Atrocity Exhibition was published in 1970, because of this we are trying to achieve a retro look with stock photos and footage from the 60s and earlier. Some of the main themes of the book include automobiles and automobile accidents, cold war paranoia, media saturation, and the main character's increasing mental illness. Many pop-culture and political figures crop up repeatedly throughout the story including Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Ronald Reagan, John Kennedy & Jackie O.

We have decided to go with a video-collage sort of style, inspired in part by the collages of Robert Rauschenberg and Ray Johnson. This way we can mix up stock imagery and footage with hand drawn or painted animation.

EXTENDED: Statement of Intent

The Atrocity Exhibition, written by J.G Ballard, and first published in 1970, is an experimental novel which deals with a wide array of 20th Century subject matter. Many of the book's themes, including media-saturation, political propaganda, and consumerism, are subjects that we have discussed in COP sessions throughout the last three years, and much of the language used in the book is rich in visual metaphor. Because of this we were drawn to the novel as a starting point for our film and our intention is to mimic the post-modern narrative structure of the story by focusing on the themes and concepts within the story, rather than depicting specific scenes or attempting to tell a single coherent storyline. We intend to take an abstract and experimental approach to the visuals, blending archive imagery and footage with our own animation to build up a layered montage of scenes related to key themes from the book. The themes we have identified, which will be broken up into loose "movements" within the film are:

1. Landscapes/Geometries/AnatomiesAs the main character in the book, Travis, slips slowly into psychosis he begins to mix mathematical or scientific language into his descriptions of his daily activities and the people he interacts with. This is a rich vein of visual metaphor which we would like to tap into.

2. Media Saturation
Travis has an obsession with the pop culture icons of the mid 20th Century, and the increase in consumerism and celebrity culture. Much of Ballard's work touches on the power of advertising and mass media which came about during the mid-20th Century.

3. Automobile Fetish
Parts of The Atrocity Exhibition foreshadow Ballard's most famous book, Crash, in which people feel sexual gratification whilst viewing images of car crashes and car crash victims.


4. Apocalypse/World War III
Travis' psychosis eventually becomes a fixation upon war and disaster, reflecting the paranoia of the Cold War during which the book was written. He begins conducting mass re-enactments of public disasters such as the kennedy assassination, remodelling them through his own personal experience of the events.

The finished article may not necessarily be recognisable as an interpretation of Ballard's text, but considering the abstract, montage writing style of the book it seems appropriate that the messages and content of the film will only be revealed to the viewer as part of a whole contiguous piece.

I am looking forward to working with Brenda again, after last year's success working with Rosie on Noelline's Flood for Applied. Brenda and I have very similar views on politics, philosophy and art - many of which are reflected in The Atrocity Exhibition. On top of this Brenda has a drive to experiment and try new methods and techniques, which is not only in line with the experimental mode of the novel, but will also push me to produce more interesting work.

EXTENDED - The Atrocity Exhibition

Me and Brenda have decided to work on a (probably very loose) adaptation of The Atrocity Exhibition by J. G. Ballard. I have read and enjoyed lots of Ballard's work before but never read this one.

The book is based around a central character who is slipping further and further into psychosis, and the text is broken up into separate segments which can be read in any order. The main character, whose name changes throughout the book, continuously uses mathematical or geographical language to describe human physiology, and vice versa, and the book has a really lovely visual quality to the writing.

We are planning on doing a quite experimental film, with collage, digital cutout and a kind of abstract/ambient soundscape.