I'm selling my lovely scooter. Living where I do means it's actually marginally quicker to cycle to work than to take the hog. Seems silly to keep it and not use it. I took it out for a spin today though and seriously considered keeping it. On a sunny day in London there is no finer feeling that cruising over Tower Bridge with the wind up your sleeves and in your face!
De-restricted 50cc, low mileage, runs like dream, MOT'd, trusty steed. If you are interested get in touch at theoib@gmail.com
It's still miles from completion...in fact I've not properly started it yet, it only exists as storyboards and scraps of paper on my floor but I have a new idea for an animation. I should say it's a collaborative effort with me doing the visuals/animation and my friend Richard of Pen Paper (Pause) fame creating the accompanying words and music.
Richard is far more organized than I (or perhaps less busy at work?) as he has already completed the poem to which I'm meant to be creating visuals. This makes me feel a bit of a guilty shirker as it was my idea to do this in the first place. However my initial concept is pretty ambitious so I'm confident that the end result will either be an unmitigated disaster or an accidental triumph. Perhaps this may prove to be the perfect opportunity for me to live the Wieden + Kennedy mantra of 'Embrace Failure'.
The inspiration for this project came from a faded newspaper article I found myself reading a while ago that mentioned an experiment first conducted by a German clinical psychologist called Wolfgang Kohler in the 1920s. He and later other sociologists became fascinated by the construction of language or rather the unconscious and culturally mediated cognitive processes through which human beings comprehend meaning in one another's speech. The experiment was called the 'Kiki Bouba' effect. It found that irrespective of the subject's native tongue when asked to assign the made up names Kiki and Bouba to two abstract shapes- one curvy, the other spikey overwhelmingly subjects associated the curvy shape to Bouba.
Re-reading lots of old Shakespeare plays reignited my pleasure in language and the fun that playrights or poets can have simply by adjusting the relative balance of vowels, consonants and where the various syllabic stresses lie on words. This got me thinking about whether tricks could be played by abusing these various linguistic phonemes. Mightn't it be fun to say one thing with language but communicate something else entirely through the aural effect the combination of these words and sounds have upon the listener's ear? What is more can visuals be used to distort this meaning still further - could they exacerbate as well as reduce confusion caused, could a narrative be overlayed on top of this? These questions led me to explore other variations of synesthesia such as graphemes, euphonics and cacaphonics.
As I say the animation itself is still a work in progress but I can tell you it features a black plasticine dog and attempts to animate light and shadows simultaneously. Yes, I realise I have bitten off far more than I can comfortably chew.
Here is Vanessa's recently completed music video (yes another one....she's been busy). The track is by a new young singer-songwriter from Australia called Lisa Mitchell. Apparently she is a bit like the Will Young of Australia in as much as she got knocked out in the final of Aussie Pop Idol but is still pretty popular.
Apparently she took rather a lot of coaxing and spent a lot of the time crying quietly to herself in a corner...oh dear. The film itself is one single shot (I'd love to know how many takes they did?) and seems quintessentially Vanessa in style, I think it fits the gentle naivety of the song pretty perfectly too. I also love the grading and the warm aged-fairy tale quality that those colours deliver. If only poor Lisa could lip-sync better.
Just got back from a work trip to Delhi and Rajasthan with StC (one of my clients). It was a pretty exhausting week filled with emotional highs and lows. At the very least I learned a great deal more about how the organization works tirelessly to reduce child mortality around the world.
Neil very kindly posted up more info from the trip over at the main w+k London blog. You can see a couple more photographs and find out what I saw and did by clicking here.
I made some new friends and also spent time with my fellow w+k'ers in the Delhi office. I even found time to pick up a few saris to use as backdrops in photographic projects I'm currently working on.
If you'd like to find out more about StC or if you wish to help those currently displaced by the floods in Bihar you can give directly at the StC appeal website here.
Having just visited Vanessa's website for the first time in a while I stumbled across this piece from a year or so ago. We made it on Super 8mm to enter into the national Straight 8 film competition, where it was successful enough to make it through to the final at the Curzon Mayfair.
It was made exactly as you see it. One cartridge, no editing, one take for each shot. It is funny to watch it again after so long and to remember the fun we had making it one damp Saturday in a warehouse in Wapping. The story follows the struggles of a procrastinating writer and stars lots of friends. I think you'll agree though that the barman steals the show?
My dear friend Vanessa who is busily smashing her way into the film industry has recently finished another couple of music videos. The most recent is this one for a band called the Ryes. I didn't spot it myself but apparently John Lennon makes an appearance at some point?
Secondly this is the finished video of the Escape Artist by a band called Revere. I blogged about it a few months back because I helped out as the the stills photographer on set. The video isn't yet up on YouTube so this is the link to it on Annex Films' own website. Vanessa is represented by Annex in case you would like to get in touch with her.
I enjoyed the banality of this guy's lyrics. It is easy to forget the innate humor of the everyday.
Sometimes I wonder whether we planners devote too much time gazing into the middle distance for the new, unexpected, momentous human insight when in point of fact the really surprising insight or understanding often lies beneath our own noses.
I think this thought worked pretty well for Pot Noodle. Okay, so it's a more overt parody of hip-hop culture and doesn't quite have the same level of charm or pathos for that matter as the guy singing above but it's still a nice execution that I suspect ticked the boxes for the target audience.
Here is w+k's new ad for Coke in China in time for the Olympics. I like it, I think. It all ends nicely of course but I like the fact it acknowledges the extremely high and frequently politically tense levels of competitiveness which exist between these two great nations.
China is undoubtedly a tricky market within which to advertise, even more so as a western brand/agency. It's uniquely fierce levels of patriotism exist hand in hand with a strongly traditional (by which I mean largely celebrity driven endorsement) model of advertising. It has caught out many an ad agency in the past and frequently results in bland communications which either pander to well worn stereotypes or worse result in ersatz pastiches.
Well done w+k Shanghai for striking the right balance between emotionally honest, creatively provocative, and of course pleasantly entertaining. Nice one guys.
I'm fortunate to have friends who do and make stuff as a matter of course. Some like me share a belief that there is intrinsic worth in the act of doing and making and that more importantly this drive can exist separately from a desire to foist one's wares onto an unsuspecting public. For some the pleasure is in creating not necessarily in promoting. Alternatively there are those friends who happen to have jobs which mean they get paid for doing and making stuff. Either way lots of people I know seem regularly to be engaged in what from the outside at least sound like interesting side projects of some description, myself included.
The thought occurred to me that it might be a nice idea to get together one afternoon and share our various wares the idea being that future collaborations may casually result or at the very least we'd inspire each other in unexpected ways over a few cold beers. I called the event Creative Creole. I liked the idea of a 'creole' because it's a distinct phenomena in its own right but it bears the characteristics of two or more composite languages. It seemed to get at the heart of how I'd envisaged the afternoon working....coincidentally it was also alliterative which made me happy!
Despite some initial skepticism the event proved a great success. On the day the line up variously included stand up comedy, live music (including saxophone and flute), singing, performance poetry, art sketches, photography, music videos, viral films, short films, animation, a documentary and a brightly coloured piñata which we soundly battered to death at the end of the night.
It was a joy to see different people's work and the impromptu freestyle musical art piece at the end was....well..it was terrible but a lot of fun nevertheless. I hope to organise another Creative Creole in a few months time.
Helen kicked things off with two new songs
Rich the unlikely rapper/poet wowed everyone with new material
Ed relaid yet another embarrassing true life story in his stand up routine
Helen prepares to face the piñata
The piñata proved more resilient than you'd expect
Power ballads at midnight it turned out were just what the audience wanted to hear
Freestyle in the early hours of Sunday morning
From my perspective sharing my freshly pressed animation with people (let alone friends) for the first time was a nerve-wracking experience. I found it strange to share something the inception and creation of which had been an entirely solus enterprise. Whilst I'm pleased with it there was really no way at all of knowing whether anybody else would enjoy it. I felt very naked as I glimpsed what creatives go through on an almost daily basis, offering up the fruits of one's mind for critical analysis. Thankfully the reaction seemed pretty positive which I guess isn't bad for a first attempt at animation. I particularly enjoyed hearing how people's interpretations of it differed...is he a goodie or a baddie? Should I sympathise with him or did he get his just desserts? etc. I'll let you form your own opinion.
So...
without further ado here is my animation based upon Aesop's fable 'The Middle-aged Man and his Mistresses'. I hope you like it, feel free to leave me a comment if you so wish.
Note that unfortunately You Tube's compression codec reduces the quality of uploaded films. Whilst I've embedded the film below I would encourage you to click through to You Tube itself where there is an option just below the number of views to 'watch in high quality'. If you click this it will launch a slightly better version of the film optimised for the standard in-page You Tube viewing size. It's not perfect but it's as good as You Tube presently allows. Thanks.
Somewhere along the way I managed to get out of London one weekend and head down to a friend's family cottage in the Isle of Wight. Surrounded by close friends with the sun unexpectedly beating down we couldn't have wished for a more perfect retreat. It provided the time and space to play and for the mind to wander. It was the stuff halcyon days past. Naturally my camera was never far from my hand.
