The Manhattan Project – Time Lapse

Hold on to your hats for a whistle stop tour of Manhattan.  Cameron Michael lugged 120-130 pounds of gear around all of Manhattan in order to bring you this astonishing footage.  Not all of it, strictly speaking, was legally done but I am sure you will turn a blind eye once you have sat through this amazing piece of work!

What I particularly like about this stop motion piece is the camera work, strictly speaking the way that the camera pans while the stop motion is actually happening.  This is a fairly new technique and has not been attempted successfully (let alone brilliantly!) by many people.  Here it is seamless. Just awesome work!

Articles of War

Articles of War is, I have to admit, one of the best animated short films not produced by a major studio I have ever seen (and as you know, here at the Old Kuriosiatas Shop, we are big fans, so that is saying something).

The story follows a young American fighter pilot in the Second World War who has the awful task of leading bomber missions over occupied Europe and in to the heart of Germany. There, with the flick of a switch, he rains death down to to the hapless German population.

He writes a letter home to his father - a veteran of the Great War - in which he voices his disquiet about his actions. It may turn out to be the last letter he ever writes.  Guaranteed, you will be drawn in to this from the start - it is engrossing, profound and heartfelt.  You can't say that of many live action films, let alone animations.

Beautifully made, this is directed and written by sel-confessed film fanatic Daniel Kanemoto who has been working with animation for over a decade (and has been featured before here at Kuriositas).  The music is composed by Ryan Shore whose work has included Prime starring Meryl Streep and the Bill Murray vehicle Scout's Honor. Edited by Jeff  Yorkes (who has a cool website) with storyboards by Robert Vargas.

The voice of the airman is provided by Clay Adams (left) who has a diverse acting portfolio of work but whose face is probably best known as that of Lloyd, the Lakeview bartender in As The World Turns.

You can read more about the making of Articles of War here.Please go and take a look if you want to see more about how this wonderful and engrossing animated short film was made.

The Chandelier Tree

Sometimes an idea can just take hold.  Adam Tenenbaum, an airbrush make-up artist, photographer and designer from Silver Lake, Los Angeles acquired a few chandeliers six years ago that he thought might go quite nicely in the house. However, they turned out to be too large and so he had the idea of hanging them from the tree outside his house.  Over the years many more have been added and the Chandelier Tree has become something of a local celebrity in its own right.  It does look quite amazing, it must be said.

Colin Kennedy, a director who lives and works in the city of angel just happens to live up the road from Tenenbaum.  After a number of years the temptation became too great and he embarked on creating the short docufilm above which tells the story of the chandelier tree through the words of its creator, Adam Tenenbaum (who comes across as a very nice gentleman indeed).

Sydney Transformed in to a Canvas of Lights with Vivid 2013

The light show is back another year! Vivid Sydney 2013 high-points comprise the immensely popular immersive light installations and projections.  There are also shows from local and international musicians at Vivid LIVE at Sydney Opera House (what has become known as the epicenter of the festival) not to mention the Vivid Ideas Exchange which features public talks and discussions from prominent global creative thinkers.  The event carries on till 10 June so there is still time to get there. However, if you can’t, enjoy the gallery above!

Aeon

Aeon is a wonderfully contemplative piece of animation created by The DMCI as part of the 2013 TEDxSydney Conference.  If you consider a conference of this nature to be a meal then Aeon serves as the palette cleanser between courses (or talks in this case!).  The animation explores the concept of growth as part of a cycle which covers seasons and years.

As the conference was in Australia the makers drew their subject matter from the nature of the country.  The stylised treatment and geometric shapes reflect the desire by The DCMI to reduce things to their core elements.  This is one to sit back and watch when in a meditative mood!

Voice Over

This is probably going to be (just about) the best short film you will see this year so if you have any prejudice against watching subtitled movies, suspend it for just under 10 minutes: I promise you this will be a worthwhile experience.

Voice Over has just that – a voice over and perhaps this is another prejudice you may have to overcome too. Yet it is the voice over which drives the action, changes the movie’s direction and brings it to its very, very satisfying conclusion.

I won’t give too much away except the movie poster, enigmatic as it is, does not really indicate the true content or denouement of the movie. You really, really need to watch this – I cannot too highly recommend this.

Unsurprisingly, this short, directed by Martin Rosete, has received over 40 awards and has been selected to appear at over 80 film festivals all over the world. It is a Kamel Films production.

Wrecking Crew Orchestra

The Wrecking Crew Orchestra come from Japan and collectively they have done something quite spectacular with their dance routines.  Instead of the usual eight men on stage we have a cross between Tron and a zoetrope.  While they dance they wear electroluminescent light suits.

Take the perfect synchronization of their dance routines and the latest electronic wizadry and what you get is a simply awesome combination.  This is a straightforward film, shot from the front – what you see is happening is unedited and performed before a live studio audience.

Rosa

Rosa is an epic sci-fi short film that takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where all natural life has disappeared. From the destruction awakes Rosa, a cyborg deployed from the Kernel project, mankind’s last attempt to restore the earth’s ecosystem. Rosa will soon learn that she is not the only entity that has awakened and must fight for her survival.

The short-film was created entirely by young comic-artist Jesús Orellana with no budget during a single year. Since its world premiere at the Seattle International Film Festival, ROSA has been an official selection at film festivals around the world such as Screamfest, Toronto After Dark, Anima Mundi or Los Angeles Shorts Film Festival.

In October ROSA was screened at the opening night of the Sitges International Film Festival, considered the world's best festival specialized in genre films. Following the succesful festival run, the short film has attracted the attention of the major talent-agencies and Hollywood producers. Currently ROSA is in development to be a live-action motion picture.

Detroit Science Center Mass Lip Dub

OK, stand up who maintains that science (and scientists) are boring! Here is definitive proof that science is far from that – or at least the people involved with it.

For no apparent reason (except perhaps to have fun) the staff and members of the Detroit Science Center join, en masse, in a lip dub of Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now.

As you watch it you will begin to get an idea of just how much organization must have gone in to this. First there were a couple of weeks pre-production in order to plan the event. Next the production department and singers rehearsed.  The final thing to do was to call all the members in and have an amazing night!

The whole lip dub extravaganza took a walk through and then five takes - it seems that all the kids were in bed on time (the low point for them I bet, and I can just imagine the parents trying to get them to settle after this excitement!). Of course, you can see that the people involved are not professional actors or singers and this makes this mass lip dub all the more fun for me.  Plus we get to see the whole of the Science Center and its facilties and exhibitions which is as good an advert as it could ever have.

With the best will in the world, there never seems to be a huge amount of good news coming out of Detroit.  Yet this not works as a great promo for the Detroit Science Center, it shows the city and its people in a wonderful light too.

Not the Rise of The Planet of the Apes

Why not take a visit to Simian City where humans and apes live peacefully together?  This is a really cool piece of animation which was created by Neil McDonald for his degree project at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design at the University of Dundee in Scotland.

As a general What If, it proposes an urban landscape where we and some of our closest relatives live side by side.  The result is something quite different from Rise of the Planet of the Apes (yes, we knew that movie popped in to your head the minute you started reading this!).

What really marks out this animation for me is the fluid use of color that runs beautifully and consistently through its two and a half minute duration and the pencil sketched look and feel of the animation, washed through like a watercolor.  There is an element of visual humor within the animation too which, once you lock on to it, makes you look at the rest of the film more closely.

There is a groovy sound track too, provided by Andrew 'Smally' McDonald with the help of Bobby McDonald.  Do we detect a little sibling assistance here or was it just sheer coincidence that the three first named credits at the end of the animation have the same family name?

ShapeShifter - What Creative Designers Do in Their Spare Time

Sit back, ignore everything else and take in this stunning piece of animation from creative design studio Charlex. Although the vast bulk of their work is in advertising this represents something completed in-house for the sheer joy of it.

Director of Charlex, Alex Weil asked a few of the company's designers to come up with a project of their own - to enable their creativity to have an outlet unburdened by the demands of their usual projects.This allowed the team to experiment and explore, starting with an empty canvas.  The one mandate was that from this emptiness something great had to come.  I think you will probably agree that it did.

The original concept came from Co-Director and Designer Diana Park.  Her inspiration came from the idea of a machine that creates nature - not the other way around.  As a concept this would provide the challenge in terms of both the demands of the animation but also its associated aesthetics.

Yet the disparate ideas that came through had to be connected - continuity being important to the fluidity of the story.  The concept grew from simple shape-shifting to a look inside the spirit and soul of a car.  To bind it all together, Fitzgerald Scot, the successful poet, writer and author was asked to provide the words.  His poem Dreams that accompanies the animation, together with the music composed by Peter Lauridsen brings everything together beautifully.


The biggest challenge was creating a sense of story and continuity to what was initially a string of loosely connected ideas. As the project evolved from a tale of shape-shifting to an epic exploration of the car's spirit and soul, Charlex tapped Fitzgerald Scott, writer, author, poet - who had successfully collaborated with Weil in the past, to pen the powerful prose poem "Dreams" that accompanies the visuals. Together with a stirring musical track composed by Stimmung's Peter Lauridsen, the effect is that of being in a beautiful but disquieting dream.

The narration by Gabriel Byrne gave the whole project its final shape, culminating in the finished product which is testimony to the awesome creativity of the team at Charlex.  It makes me truly jealous that these people get to do this kind of thing in their spare time!  However, not too jealous to just revel in their amazing work.

One Year in 120 Seconds

As we near the end of another year it is more than easy to scratch the head and wonder where on earth did it all go? It only seems five minutes since we were preparing for the beginning of 2010.  With that in mind, this excellent time lapse shows a whole year in just one hundred and twenty seconds.

Now it takes some patience, time lapse - when it is done in a studio at least you can control the environment.  This is the view from a house over the course of a year and it really must have taken superhuman patience (certainly of the kind which I do not possess) to painstakingly put this together.

Hats off then to its creator, Eric Solheim.  If you want to find out more about how this amazing footage was put together then head over to his website where the full story is waiting to be told.

Spartacus - 1960 Trailer

It is inevitable that the movie Spartacus, starring Kirk Douglas, finds itself in the Christmas TV listings.  It may not be on one of the major channels but you can rest assured that it will be in there somewhere.  What better way is there to spend a few seasonal hours in front of the TV - in fact one of my earliest memories is watching the premiere of the movie on British TV with my family.  I was absolutely agog at the spectacle and overwhelmed by the I am Spartacus humanity of it all.  OK, so I was only around eight years old but the story and the movie in particular still resonates strongly with me, particularly at this time of year.

So, when I discovered this trailer from 1960 on Vimeo, up it had to go on Kuriositas.  Although this is not the original trailer - the fact that it had recently won four Academy Awards is included here - it is still a marvellous piece of movie advertising nostalgia in itself.  As it still is today, a number of Oscars means a box office revival and that was so of Spartacus.  Marketing and advertising budgets in 1960 were not what they are today and as such the movie still had an untapped and vast audience.  The fours Oscars meant that it could read this new audience.

Believe it or not the movie had originally opened to less than rave reviews (despite the hyperbole we see in the trailer).  Bosley Crowther of the New York Times called it a spotty, uneven drama, yet its reputation grew as time went on and in the eyes of movie goers and critics alike it matured like a fine wine.

The standout performances in the movie for me are (after Douglas himself of course) Jean Simmons as Verinia and Charles Laughton as Gracchus (even though his character was an anachronism).  Tony Curtis and Laurence Olivier also gave fine performances - and even at ten I recognised the frisson bewteen their characters.  I was also in awe of John Gavin as Julius Caeasar (he also had a role as Janet Leigh's boyfriend in Pyscho, relaeased the same year) who was suitably heroically chinned and patrician.  Yet my favorite character was Woody Strode as Draba, the Ethiopian gladiator who was trained with Spartacus.  I was gutted (and always am) when he was killed.

Anyway, enjoy the trailer.

Poster Image Credit Wikimedia

Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes

While many bemoan the dumbing down of TV as something terminal, those of us who live in the UK can afford a slightly smug moment every now and again. BBC4 is one of those rare channels that shows genuinely challenging television content and the above is a great example.

Hans Rosling is famous for his lectures - they combine the huge amount of data which is generally available to each and every one of us and shows them in a way which is easily comprehensible, despite the vastness of the data. Here, he shows the story of 200 countries over 200 years - all shown through the remarkable technology of augmented reality animation.

This is taken from a programme called The Joy of Stats.  If you are laboring under the impression that statistics are essentially boring then take a look at this excerpt from the show and then deny the fact that you were completely drawn in by it - if you can!

This is an amazing piece of footage - 120,000 numbers flash in front of our eyes in just four minutes and the data that is extrapolated indicates that perhaps the world in which we live is somewhat different from the world which most of us have in our imagination.

Image Credit Wikimedia

Timescapes: Rapture

Tom Lowe is one talented guy.  The Astronomy Photographer of the Year has been shooting his debut film ocer the summer which is to be calles Timescapes. The video above contains some moments from the film and it looks absolutely astounding. 

Envisaged as a modern portrait of the American Southwest it was shot using Canon and Red MX cameras.  If the above is anything to go by we are in for an amazing treat when the film is released.

The skill and patience it must have taken to create these shots (particularly the time lapse) is immense.  Lowe has a unique vision and very much the artist's eye.  He takes the every day - and potentially mundane -and injects magic in to it.  He has the ability to re-awaken and re-ignite our love affair for this world and a mans imagination to actually capture it.

Epic. Breathtaking. Awe inspiring. Astonishing. Incredible. Beautiful. 

Stasis

It isn’t often that an online film will make my day.  However, after a few desultory movie going experiences recently I have become a little short of optimism in terms of great science fiction film making.  Then along came this beauty. The fact that I have found it online has put a smile on my face that will take longer than twenty four hours to remove.

Stasis is quite an exceptional piece of film making.  For a start there is a story – a real one and not just a situation in which an A-lister gurns through the motions until the unavoidable optimistic ending.

The movie has a definite vibe too, which is one of almost unrelieved sobriety throughout and when one likes one’s science fiction of a darker hue then this is the perfect antidote to the plethora of SciFi Lite with which we have to make do at the moment.

The plot is straightforward – at least on preliminary inspection. At some point in the near future a soldier is undergoing a series of virtual exercises in order to cure his Post Traumatatic Stress Disorder.  Through the simulations he catches glimpses of a girl – one he feels he must have had some sort of serious relationship with.

Then a stranger appears in the facility in which he is being treated with a promise.  Do what he says or the soldier will never see the girl again.

The film boasts an excellent and enigmatic cast.  Reshad Strik is a revelation in the main role and Beau Bridges and Ernie Hudson bring different but balanced measures of menace to the screen.  Although Rachel Specter’s role is somewhat limited she brings a lovely presence to an otherwise bleak cinematography.

The movie for me brought to mind Children of Men in parts because the future is painted in a realistic manner.  It is different enough to feel somewhat foreign but familiar enough to resonate and be recognisable.

If you are naturally a page flicker when online, as I am, then you may have to persevere with the first few minutes – but be assured that your patience will be richly rewarded.  Hats off to director Christian Swegal and everyone else involved in this awesome piece of dystopic film making.