Repulsion...

Repulsion is a 1965 film directed by Roman Polanski. Repulsion was Polanski's first English language film and was filmed in Britain. It is widely considered a masterpiece of the psychological thriller genre and is the first installment of Polanski's 'apartment trilogy', the other two being Rosemary's Baby and The Tenant. The plot follows a young Belgian woman who lives in Kensington, London, with her sister. She suffers from androphobia, which is the fear of men. When her sister leaves on holiday with her married boyfriend, the young Belgian woman is left to withdraw deeper into her paranoia. She refuses to leave her apartment and experiences spiralling hallucinations. Food rots around her and her sister's flat falls to shambles. She blugeons a would-be suitor to death with a candlestick, and later, fends off the sexual advances of her landlord before slashing him to death with a cut-throat razor. When her sister returns, she discovers the dead mens' bodies and finds the young Belgian woman hidden under her bed, who appears catatonic and only a shell of her former self. At the end the audience sees a photograph of the young woman as a chld, who seems uninterested in the taking of a family photograph and as the camera zooms in, she is offset from the rest of the family with the look of a 'trapped animal'. This leads us to believe that the underlying reason for her phobia and psychological distress lies in possible childhood trauma.

I really enjoyed watching Repulsion which, surprisingly, i'd never even heard of before. I liked the way that as the narrative progressed, the protagonist's paranoia grew deeper. But we are never fully sure of the reasons behind her fear of men, as we experience the protagonist's fear throughthe cracks in the flat and the rotting food, as well as the dream sequences. This is almost a metaphorical representation of her paranoia, representing how the woman feels. I found it tobe quite full-on, putting us in the protagonist's shoes; the cracks in the walls and the hands coming fro the wall weren't real, but we are able to see them just as she does. I don't think there's one time where we don't see what she is seeing, but we are still able to tell she is paranoid. Even when we see her kill two people, her innocense allows us to forgive her. So I feel this films works extremely well as a psychological thriller because of the way the director makes the film confront us.

HELP!!!

hey everyone, does anyone know how to get the files on MyUCA to download. i've updated my internet explorer and downloaded firefox, but neither of them seem to work. All it comes up with is a blank screen and it says it's loading but nothing's happening. I need to download the content so i can look into the files Phil has given us for the Uncanny essay... thanks in advance.

Idea Development...

So i've started doing some sketches and thumbnails for my ideas, but being the idiot i am, i'm using an A3 sketchbook which makes it kind of hard to scan the images in. Therefore, i'll have to wait for my new camera for christmas to get good quality photos of them to post on my blog. In the meantime, i'm just gonna continue to draw and develop my ideas. I'll possibly bring my sketchbook in on Friday, if Phil's in, just to see what he thinks and if he feels that i'm going in the right direction.

I found this image earlier today and it has made me wonder if i actually need any animals in the forest, or whether the presence of something like fog would give a better effect. I really like this image because i keep expecting something to come from within the fog, possibly some Ringwraiths on horses :P I can't decide whether i like the black at the top and bottom of the image because it seems to be a lot of negative space, but it does centre the attention on the fog which seems to be grouping in the middle of the image. I also feel the three trees in the front make up the foreground, the tertiary trees behind make up the middleground and the fog seems to be in the background. But i can't decide what the focal point of this image is, i can't help but feel it should be the fog, but my eyes are definitely drawn to the trees first, starting from right (the closest tree) to left. I also feel that although it's only fog, there's something very like Close Enconters of the Third Kind in this image, perhaps this was what Phil was talking about when he said to pare my ideas. Really it's only fog and it's a normal image in the woods at night, but there is an unusual sense of eerieness to it, from something that is ordinary.

Original Ideas... Recapping...

So i discarded quite a few of my ideas early on and these same ideas seem thave been snapped up by ther people in the class and in other examples i've seen. So I thought i might just recap on some of the ideas i discarded and reconsider my ideas. Some of them definitely need to be discarded, but i felt it was important to show what ideas i've come up with so far to show some sort of progression. These are the ideas i came up with that i haven't already spoken about.

One of the first ideas i had was of animals being attracted to a light source which would be late at night and in a woods. I thought the colour choice in this idea would be interesting because i could make it quite fantasy like with a lot of 'magical' colours, giving a great visual aesthetic. I had the idea of either using a frog on a rock surrounded by water, staring at the light source, or buterflies attracted to the light source, both would be surronded by a typical forest/wood environment with trees, plants and rocks. When i thought about this idea, i felt the idea of creating animals would be difficult, but butterflies wouldn't be too hard. But, looking back at the idea now, after Phil's 'conceptual hand grenade', I feel this idea is too sci fi and fantasy related, althoug it has an eerie feeing, it doesn't seem ordinary enough.


Another idea i had was of a hand or body part in a broken floor board, the rest of the room would be empty and there would be a window with a car either pulling up or away outside, depending on how you interpret it. It would also be late at light with the moonlight shining through the window and onto the hand. I thought the walls could be red with a crack coming up one of them, and the floor boards would be quite sctratched and marked. I really liked this idea to start of with because i felt the idea of the car was quite ambiguous, not knowing whether it was just parking or about to pull away. I felt the way it was frozen made the audience feel the character's despair, seeing the car in the window and waiting for something to happen, but it doesn't. Again though, after Phil's comments, i feel this is too obvious, it isn't ordinary and follows a 'horror film' cliche.

I also had an idea of some baths in a room where the light shines in through a window, again, it's at night. I had the idea that these could be filled with either soil and plants, whilst the ground is flooded or covered in soil. An alternative idea was that the bath was blood stained, but the room was flooded. The camera angle would only allow you to see one bath full on and the corner of another one. To me, this idea was quite eerie because you are wondering what has gone on or if anyone one is under the soil. A lot of questions could be asked in this image, but i feel that it is too horror-like and doesn't seem ordinary. This was the problem i was having, i was making the image to obvious and giving too much away.

Another idea i had, which other people seem to have gone for, was a child's rooom or living room where there was a teddy bear in the corner and toys which had been played with but were all over the floor. The idea of the bear alone seems quite uncanny, i always wonder whether they are able to see things, it's possibly those black eyes they usually have, something i'd associate with evil. In this scene, there would be a car either coming or going that we could see through the window, similar to the idea with the hand in the floor boards. To me, this scene could be perceived in two ways, a typical room where a child has not bothered to clean up its mess or someone has kidnapped the child and is about to drive off. I feel this idea is much more ordinary than my other ideas and not so full on with genre cliches. It also has some ambiguity in there and the sense of the bear seeing everything, for me, is uncanny. It's the idea that the bear might be able to tell you something, but it can't.

One of the other ideas i had came when i was round a friend's house, there was some sort of hair machine (maybe a big hair dryer) in the corner of the room, i couldn't help but keep staring at it, not only did it seem out of place in an ordinary living room, but it looked like it had a face with the way the buttons were positioned. I liked this idea of something being out of place because it can often seem quite strange or uncomfortable. For this scene, i pretty much copied the whole room because it was such an ordinary living room and this 'out of place' object seemed so eerie. In my idea though, i felt that it should be isolated in the corner to draw your attraction, so we don't see the whole living room, our focus is on the corner of the room. For me, this idea could still work, but i did find it a little bit boring. It didn't have that eerieness and uncanny feeling that some of the other ideas had, although i do feel this idea is a lot more ordinary than the others, which was what Phil was saying.

When i was looking out of my kitchen window to my lovely view of the industrial site across the river. I always expect to see people working there; there's usually cranes, forklifts, and a big boat that they load onto. However, when i look across the river and nothing is going on during the daytime, especially Sundays, it seems so empty and desolate, like something should be happening but it isn't. For me, that is eerieness of abandonment, which is why Alan and Phil have talked to me about these abandoned places. This gave me the idea of an abandoned industrial site, with cranes and machines in a desolate area. I pretty much discarded this idea straight away because i had already decided on my two favourite ideas, but after listening t Phil's comments, i feel that this idea was heading in the right direction, at the time i seemed to think the more obvious ones would be better.

My next idea, again, was discarded early because of my preferred choices but looking at the links and websites Phil gave me, it was going down the right path, following the abandoned idea. The scene was a theme park, in particular a carousel, which was desolate or abandoned. Thise follows the conversation that I had with Alan, talking about how we expect these places to be full of people, so when they're not, it seems a little unnerving. My idea was focused around the carousel, and i felt this would be hard to do, but for some reason, i didn't follow up on this idea and look at a theme park as a whole. I feel it's possible that i might end up going back to the theme park idea after looking at the sites Phil sent me, it definitely ticks all the right boxes.

Another idea i had was a chair in a mental institute, which looking at some of the photography from different websites, is a popular idea. I liked the way it was just a chair in a room, but when i think of mental institutes it reminds me of how they are portrayed in films, and my mind starts to wonder what has happened in this chair and room. Essentially, it's not what we see in this image, althought it is eerie, it's what we imagine happened. I still really like this idea, and since i've been looking at the abandoned buildings photography, i feel it's worth pursuing. It also seems that this image would possibly look better in black and white or monochromatic colours and the chair would be the focal point with a broken window in the background. I will definitely keep looking into different images for this one because i feel it could work well.

I also came up with the idea of either a petrol station at night, or an abandoned petrol station. It seems that Dan has gone with this idea, and Alan was saying, it's the movies that have made our minds think badly of these sorts of places. I suppose this is another cliche in a way, we often find abandoned and desolate petrol stations in films, but i still like this idea. I suppose i probably like because it's such a filmic shot. Although, i feel the abandoned idea would work better for somewhere like a theme park, swimming pool, or mental institue etc.

The last idea i had from my original thumbnails was a clock smashed on the floor because the sense of time and the way the scene was frozen, to me, feels quite eerie. Time doesn't stop it keeps in motion so something like this could be quite unnerving, It also makes you wonder what happended at that time and why is the clock smashed. in this scene i feel the focal point would be the clock, possible an old pocket watch, and the rest of the scene would be blurred or out of focus. I like this idea because i find the idea of frozen time quite unnerving, but it is a bit basic and simple.

When Phil chucked a 'conceptual hand grenade' my way, i thought i was struggling for ideas, when in actual fact, it seems i alreadyhad some decent ideas, i just chose the wrong ones to look into. Some of the ones i discarded seem to be better than my preferred choices. A lot of them seem to follow that idea of abandonment which i am now coming back round to after Phil and Alan's advice. it seems if i would have stuck with those ideas, i would have been on the right path to start off with.

Looking at these ideas, you can see how Gregory Crewdson had influenced them, but as Phil said, 'the strength of Crewdson's work is that he plays knowingly with genre - but without confirming or denying the various possibilities suggested.' Therefore, my ideas need to be more pared back to their essence and i need to try to make the ordinary work a little harder for me. This is why i have begun to look at abandoned buildings and sites thanks to the help of Phil and Alan. You expect or want something to be happening in these places, but they're so desolate, that they transform from an ordinary place to something quite eerie and unnerving.

New Idea... Staircase...

So after Phil's comments and the websites he used to give me some examples to set me on the right path, i got talking to Allison about my ideas. We were talking about my other ideas and how they alseemed to make things in the image too obvious and stand out, they weren't normal. I was flicking through the Chernobyl fairground which definitely had an unheimlich feel, it was familiar, but i didn't feel comfortable, however i do feel the affect of the images would have been slightly different if it didn't say it was destroyed by the Chernobyl disaster, but i can't say this for sure. The second set of abandoned fairground images didn't have much of an affect on me, i didn't find them particularly unheimlich. I then started to look at the abandoned britain website, wich had some interesting images, i became interested by the Hornsey Road Public Bath images, particularly the ones looking up and down the staircase.

I loved the idea of the perspective you got of looking up or down a staircase, it reminded he of flats of big buildings where you could see all the way up the gap in the middle of the stairs. so i decided to look at different staircases where the camera is looking up or down, and i found a particularly interesting image which i believ looks like an eye staring back down at you. The idea of giving something inanimate or inhuman, human characteristics for me is extremely uncanny and follows a similar idea i had before with a hairdressin machine which had face like features and sat in the corner of a normal living room, based on a friends living room. I find after one particular image looks like an eye, it becomes more obvious in the rest. These are just a few examples of staircases which bare that resemblence.

I feel this idea definitely feels normal, it a staircase probably to someones home, but we feel safe and comfortable, we're indoors and away from harm. but the idea that something is watching you, in this case the fact that the staircase forms an eye shape, for me, creates an uncanny and unheimlich feeling, it's a familiar place but i feel slightly uncomfortable. This could also be to do with perspective and camera angle which is omething i will experiment with when i start my thumbnail sketches and concept designs for this idea.

I also found just the idea of looking up a staircase which has a view of the sky or outside at the end has a similar feeling of unhomeliness. We want to be outside where we feel safe, but it seems so far away. It feels quite clostrophobic and sucluded which, to me, doesn't feel comfortable or happy. Again it is familiar, but there's something about it which makes me feel uncomfortable.

Finally, i've looked at some ideas for looking down the stairs as a lot of the other images were looking up. I feel these have a similar effect to the ones looking up and i particularly like this image, which without the people could give a really unheimlich feel. That idea of a place that should have lots of people, but doesn't.

Phil...

I was wondering if you could point me in the right direction to get my ideas off to the right start. I can't help but feel all my ideas have a genre and aren't pared back enough.

Ideas...

So i've come up with a dozen or so ideas at the moment, i'm happy with pursuing a couple of them even further. My first idea is set at night and we see a car facing us in a confrontational position. The lights are on full beam and the camera sits behind a gate and fence which is padlocked with a rusty chain and has a lot of growth coming up. This gives the impression that this place hasn't been touched for a while and makes you wonder why the car is here, i also think it has something uncanny about, almost giving the possibility that car could be controlling itself. I will make the road up to the gate a long one so the possibility of a car just coming to a dead end and wanting to turn around is ruled out. I'm not too sure what the time period this would be yet, i was thinking a more futuristic concept for the car, giving the idea that it controls itself, similar to I, Robot, which incidentally, was where i got the idea from.

My second main idea was a living room which is rather tidy and normal, but the mirror is wonky or has slightly fallen down. I thought something could be knocked off the fire place from this, either stopped in motion or smashed on the floor. The canera will be offset to angle and the mirror will reflect throught to the bathroom where blood is spilled on the floor and up the shower curtain. I'm not too sure how the bathrrom will look, but i will create a murder scene, where we aren't too sure if the killer is still in the house or not. The offset camera angle and wonky mirror will hopefully create a distorted feeling, similar to the different angles Phil has been talking when we were watching films like The Haunting.

I will be posting some thumbnail sketches with notes soon, and hoepfully develop them into something i can take into Photoshop and Maya for my final piece. I will also be considering other ideas and new possibilities to make sure i get the best possible end product.

Sandy Skoglund...

Sandy Skoglund is an American photographer, sculptor, and installation artist born in Massachusettes, United States in 1946. Her work consists of surreal photography by using sets that have an overwhelming amount of one object and either bright, contrasting colours or a monochromatic colour scheme.

One of her most-known photographs, called Radioactive Cats, features green-painted clay cats running amok in a grey kitchen. An older man sits in a chair with his back facing the camera while his elderly wife looks into a refrigerator that is the same colour as the walls. I like the way the colours are contrasted in this image, it makes the cats stand out more. I also like the random idea, meaning you don't have to think hard about the image or keeping searching around it, because there is no specific point to it. Although, i don't enjoy it as much as Crewdson's work because it has no effect on me.

Another image, Fox Games has a similar feel to Radioactive Cats and is also widely rocognised. It features red-painted clay foxes running amok in a grey restaurant. A couple sit at a table in the restaurant whilst a waitor seems to be taking their dishes. I like the way the bright red contrats the grey in this image, again it makes the foxes stand out. I also like the way the people seem to be disconcerned and oblivious to what is going on around them. This image seems to be quite playful, the foxes seem to be having fun and playing 'games'. This is possibly why it's called Fox games.

A third often recognised piece by her features numerous fish hovering above people in bed late at night and is called Revenge of the Goldfish. I love this image because the blue could be representing water and the goldfish are orange, a common colour we would associate with them. I like the way, in all these images, the people seem disconcerned with the happenings surrounding them. I also find this image has a slight sense of eerieness, perhaps it's the title of the image or even the boy, who seems to be in a trance. The fish seem to be reacting to the environment as well, which gives them an eerie sense of reality.

Another one of her images is Squirrels at the Drive-In, which features a vast amount of squirrels rampaging a drive-in where only a couple of cars are parked. This one is slightly different to the others because we don't see the people peoperly and the whole image is monochromatic, so nothing stands out straight away. The squirrels are the main cause of concern in this image as they are seen being mischievious. The way the image has ben done makes them seem realistic too, in oppose to her other ones which are obviously fake. Although, this one isn't as intriguing as the others because it looks a bit plain.

Invaders From Mars...

Invaders from Mars is a 1953 science fiction film based on a story treatment by John Tucker Battle and directed by William Cameron Menzies. The story follows a small boy who sees a flying saucer land near his home. His scientist father goes to investigate, but when he returns, there is an unusual mark on the back of his neck and he behaves in a different, cold and hostile manner. Gradually, the boy realises there is a conspiracy in which the people of the town are one by one becoming cold and inhuman. With the help of a local astronomer and physician, he learns that the flying saucer has buried itself in a sandpit just behind his home and is the vanguard of an invasion from Mars. As the story unfolds, the army gets involved in an attempt to penetrae he underground hideout established by the martians. The film begins to get quite silly from here, with people dressed in green suits for the martians and the leader is a head with tentacles in a 'fish bowl'. Ths was probably the result of the production team running out of budget towards the end. After the hideout is blown up, the scene shifts and boy s back in his bed. Everthing seems as though it were a nightmare as the boy goes to his parents' room and they reassure him to go back to sleep. But thunder wakes the boy up again to the sight of the same UFO landing at the sandpit near his house. Although, in the British release there was an alternate ending eliminating the dream concept and the boy's parents seem to be replaced by the 'Lady in white' and astronomer.

After watching his film for the first time, i came back thinking this was possibly one of the worst films i've ever seen. But after thinking about it, I found that i enjoyed the first half of this film, except some of the dodgy acting, because the storyline was quite similar to Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It also had that intensity as you wonder whether anyone will believe what the boy is saying. particularly found the little girl to be quite freaky and a lot of the scenes created that tense and eerie feeling of loneliness. But, the rest of the film seemed to let down what was, for me, a great start to a film. I would like to see if the remakes done it better because i think it had a lot of potential. The story after a while, becomes laughable and totally unserious, which is what ruins the film. I found the scenes where the characters got sucked underground were ridiculous and the costume designer should have been shot after those 'martians' ie people in green suits waddling. i felt the storyline was there, but the execution of it was lacklustre which may have been a result of budgeting issues. If i'm honest, i wouldn't want to see this version again, but i would definitely consider watching the other versions.

Lecture #2... The Uncanny Valley...

So we had our second lecture on Tuesday, and it was very insightful into whatg 'The Uncanny' was and gave some good examples i could research into when i come to write my essay. I had already done sme research nt the Freudian concept prior to this lecture, but it gave a bettr knowledge and understanding of the term. I think it's helpful that there are some links on MyUCA, but i'm hoping the first chapter frrom 'The Uncanny' isn't as confusing as Phil made it sound. Nonetheless, i'm sure i'll get my head round it after a few times reading it over. I love the way Phil broke down the meaning of unheimlich (unhomely) showing the contradiction that its definition brings. In the end he gave the question, how can heimlich be not strange and unscrutible? I think this is something that not only needs to be considered when writing my essay, but during my tableaux vivant piece too, as it is this idea of heimlich, the homely, that will give it that sense of eerieness that i wish t accomplish based on Gregory Crewdson's work. We then looked at The Uncanny Valley, which at first seemed quite a daunting graph, but when explained, it was easy to understad and portrayed a reasonable theory behind The Uncanny.

The Uncanny Valley, in basic terms, describes the human reaction to certain human likenesses and theie familiarity. Using the examples on the graph, you can see something like an industrial robot, which may bare features like arms, a human feature, is perfectly acceptable and doesn't cause much of an issue. Whereas something like a prosthetic hand, which we see as a completely resembles the human feature, causes many issues whether it's still or moving. The Uncanny Valley, in film theory, plays a big role in representing audience reactions in films like I, Robot, Final Fantasy and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Examples of uncanny objects include waxworks, automata and dolls because they areso life-like, we feel they must surely be alive. In these cases The Uncanny becomes an issue "when the lifeless bares an excessive resemblence with the living."

Chucky is an example of something which might seem as uncanny, but isn't, because he is alive/animate and physically moves. But The Uncanny depends on the viewer and therefore the reaction will vary depending on different people's acceptance and knowledge of the 'familiar'.

Gregory Crewdson... Five Influencial Films...

Film In Focus asked Gregory Crewdson to pick five films that influenced him as a photographer. And here they are:

1. VERTIGO
2. NIGHT OF THE HUNTER
3. CLOSE ENCOUNTER OF THE THIRD KIND
4. BLUE VELVET
5. SAFE



Vertigo is one Alfred Hitchcock's greatest films and is a meiaon on the nature of images, identity, and desire. The protagonist falls in love with the image of a woman who, incidentally, doesn't actually exist. Unable to possess her, he finds another woman and tries to transform her into the woman he desires. His romantic obsession culminates in an extraordina scene that takes place in a hotel room, when he is trying to transform the woman. After completing the make-over, she emerges from the bathroom and walks towards him, ghostlike, in a haunting green haze. It is among the most surreal and dreamlike moments in film history.



Night of the Hunter was Charles Laughton's only film as adiector and is among the most haunting and visually stunning movies ever made. Shot in luminous black and white, the film depicts an ordinary small town as a place of dark shadows and secrets. The gothic tale is setin motion when an evil preacher comes to town in search of money, kept hidden by two children at the behest of their deceased father. In his maniacal efforts to uncover the money, he marries their other and then ceremoniously murders her in their wedding bed. The image of her corpse floating among weeds at the bottom of a riverbed is a beautiful as it is terrifying. The orpans' journey down the river in flight from the preacher is a magical play between good and evil, light and darkness, and inocence and corruption.



Close Encounters of the Third Kind is a Steven Spielberg film which finds a perfect tension between domestic normality and transendence. When Ray Neary witnesses a series of extraterrstrial evens in the night skies over his suburban subdivision, he begins makin a seres of totemic mounds from household mateials. This obsessive activity climaxes with him constructing an extraordinary structure in his living room, built from appliances and backyard debris. This sequence brings the normal and the paranormal together into a perfect and unescapable union.



Blue Velvet is a David Lynch film which reinvents American iconography, to explore the darkes most private fascinations and sinister fixations existing behind the closed doors of an ordinary non-descript town. Jeffrey Beaumnt happens upon a grotesque discovery that hurtles him intthe midst of a decidedly unwholesome series of events, and a journey into the dark characters populating the intoxicating underworld of his town. He becomes dangerously obsessed and illicitly involved with dorothy Vallens, Frank's terrified sexual slave. In an emblematic scene, Jeffrey watches Frank and Dorothy frm inside a closet in her apartment; blurring the line between witness and participant, desire and guilt and love and violence.



Safe is a Todd Hayne haunting, dream like film set in the 1980's in an affluent LA suburb. The protagonist is an empty vessel who wanders through the film as a wanton somnambulist. The heightened colour and carefuly stylized light operate in contrast to her hollow interior. In a central scene, taking place in the aftermath of a failed sexual encounter, the motionless camera witnessesthe despair and anxiety between the protagonist and her husband. As they sit seperately on their bed, the frame perfectly describes their isolated situation.

I've only seen Night of the Hunter, but looking at pictures from the films, I can definitely see how these films have influenced Crewdson's work. In particular Vertigo, Close Encounter of the Third Kind and Safe all resemble a close likeness to Crewdson's photographs. They all have that eerieness that is depicted so well in his photographs, more so in his Twilight and Beneath the Roses series.

Gregory Crewdson... Beneath the Roses...

Beneath the Roses was an exhibition of twenty new large-scale photographys by Gregory Crewdson. The project took shape over the course of three years in collaboration with a full production team. In Beneath the Roses, anonymouse townscapes, forest clearings and broad, desolate streets are revealed as sites of mystery and wonder. Crewdson's scenes are tangibly atmospheric, visually alluring and often deeply disquieting. Never anchored precisely in time or place, the narratives of the series are rather located in the dystopic landscape of the anxious American imagination.

Beneath the Roses is similar to Twilight and, for me, is equally as successful. The sense of eerieness never fails to amaze me and i love the filmic look. I particularly like the way he uses shops and woods in this one, it creates an eerie feeling around the whole town. Although, i still prefer the intimate photographs of people in Twilight because i find them more uncanny. My favourite image is the one above because i feel it represents that intimate feeling well and i keep waiting for the woman to wake from her trance.

Gregory Crewdson... Twilight...

Begun in 1998 and completed in 2002, Twilight consists of forty photographs created as elaborately staged, large-scale tableaux that explore the relationship between the domestic and the fantastical, between the North American landscape and the topology of the imagination. These filmic images strongly reference TV programmes such as The Twilight Zone or films like Close Encounters of the Third Kind that deal with fanatsy and the paranormal. In crewdson's photographs a collision between the normal and the paranormal exists which serves to transform the fmailiar suburban landscape into a place of wonder and anxiety. In these photographs, the paternal goodwill of the small-town becomes something far darker and sinister. In this series Crewdson employs a cinematic, directorial mode of photography, the culmination of weeks of planning and complicated, behind-the-scenes production.

Twilight is one of my favourite from Crewdson's series of work. Straight away you can see his fim influences and how well he's 'directed' these photographs to follow a paticular style, in this case, a sense of eerieness. I like the way the 'perfection' of suburban America is contrasted with the idea that somethings out of place or missing, which gives it an overall eerie feeling. It's also the idea that these photographs are shot at twilight which exposes the people when they least expect it, when they're most vulnerable. My favourite image in this series is probably the one with the little girl and the school bus because it is eerieness at its best. We've seen similar scenes in films, but this image is frozen in oppose to film, so we want something to happen, but it doesn't. I will definitely be looking at this series of work closely throughout this project because a lot of my ideas aim to follow a similar sense of eerieness and present something which seems out of place, although i won't be using people, but objects to portray this.

Gregory Crewdson... Hover...

Gregory Crewdson is known for his disarming photographs of suburban life. In this series of photgraphs, Crewdson takes that approach to new heights, literally, in these aerial images of everyday American subdivisions. Shot from a crane, these works seem innocent enough on the surface, but reveal, upon closer investigation, a world strangely out of balance. These images are captured in realistic black and white. Hover revisits collisions between the tame and untame in the town of Lee, Massachusetts.

Hover is another one of Crewdson's successful series and, for me, it is the one that makes you look the hardest. I find my eyes constantly scanning the photographs from left to right, trying to piece the 'puzzle' together. The thing i love about these images is that you straight away notice something is wrong and this leads our minds to find whats wrong. Hover creates a similar sense of eerieness to Twilight and Beneath the Roses, but in a different way, because the camera is 'hovering' we don't feel intimate with the characters like in the other two, it's more of a general overlook of the scene.

Celebration Town, Florida...

Celebration is a census-designated place (a concentration on population) and an unincorporated master-planned community, developed by The Walt Disney Company. It's located in northwest Osceola County in Florida. Celebratio has sucessfuly combined education, health, community, technlogy and architecture in a community with a strong sense of self. In the early 1990's, the Disney Development Company esablshed the Celebration Company to spearhead its development. World-renowned achitects designed celebraton to be a new and exciting place to live, work and play. Total investment frthe project s estimated at $2.5 billion. The community was developed to concentrate on population, allowing the government to look at statistical daa such as ethnicity, gender, age, household income etc... It is seperated into areas refered to as villages. During the utumn, leaf shaped confetti shoots out of the lamp posts on Market Street to similate falling Autumn leaves. In the holiday season, suds pour out of the lamp posts to replicate snow while Christmas music sreams from the sidewaks. There is a water fountain tha comes out from the ground; it is located next to the lake surrounded by palm trees and benches. It currently has approximately 9,000 residents with 4,060 homes and condominiums. Residents first moved in during the summer of 1996. A yealater the school and health centre opened, before a university center in 2001 and a High school in 2003. It has gone on to win major awards including '1996 Development of the Year', '1998 American Society of Landscape Architects Award of Excellence' and '2001 Urban Land Institues Award for Excellence as Best New Community.'

What i love about Celebration Town is the resemblence it bares to film suburban communities we see in films like Stepford Wives, Edward Scissorhands and Halloween. That idea of a community that is so perfect and wonderful that nothing bad could happen, which perhaps creates the eerie feeling of falseness that we associate with them.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers...

Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a 1956 science fiction film based on the novel The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney It was directed by Don Siegel. The story follows a doctor who finds that the local townspeople are being replaced by 'replicas,' produced from plant-like pods. These replicas bare an indistiguishable resemblence to their victims, except they have no emotions. They 'dispose' of their human victims and aim to replace the entire human race. The film has been hailed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant," and was selected for prservation in the United States National Film Registry. It has been praised as one of science fiction's greatest films and represents social and cultural issues surrounding the time of its making. Film critics believe that the film connotes issues with the fear of communism uprising, as the Americans believed there was a heightened influence from communism on American institutions by soviet agents. This idea is often referred to as McCarthyism. Some, however, believe that he film connotes a fear of the American government, and shows possible alienation and paranoia within American society around its time. The BBC wrote, "The sense of post-war, anti-communist paranoia is acute, as is the temptation to view the film as a metaphor for the tyranny of the McCarthy era." However, the creators behind the film and story stand their ground, stating there is no intended political allegory in the work. Wale Mirisch wrote, "People began to read meanings into the pictures that were never intended. The Invasion of the Body Snatchers is an example of that... From personal knowledge, neither Walter Wanger nor Don Siegel, who directed it, nor Dan Mainwaring, who wrote the script nor the original author Jack Finney, nor myself saw it as anything other than a thriller, pure and simple." I've always wanted to watch this film, but have never got round to doing so. I must say, it was well worth the way and rightly deserves its place in Sci Fi's hall of fame. It was an absolute classic sci fi and an enjoyable watch throughout. I loved the way that the film didn't rely on visual aesthetics as we see nowadays, the fear and horror was more of a psychological thing, from an audiences' point of view. Not only is the idea original, the film was well made for its time and i wouldn't have much to say in terms of criticism.

Gregory Crewdson... Natural Wonder...

So i've decided to look at each of his series of work individually as i feel there is a lot learn from them and he will probably be the most influencial artist out of everyone, for me anyway. I feel that researching and analysing each of his seres will help me think of more ideas and hopefully better ones too.

Natural wonder was one of Gregory Crewdson's early series of art works. It involves diaramas, 3D miniature models, created by the artist with insects, animals and body parts in "small-town settings both mundane and menacing." I find this series of work to be largely different from his more recent work. I prefer his recent stuff, for reasons i will talk about when i come t post about them. I don't find this style to be filmic or eerie (trance-like) in comparison to his more recnt work. However, i do like the bright colours used and i feel they make the images seem more painterly. It's very similar to his other work, in the way that he has so much going on in the frame, your eyes aren't too sure where to look. You can also see thathe mainly used birds and butterflies in this series. I can't help but feel the animals are watchng you though, as if we we there with them.

My favourite image is the butterfly one because it makes you wonder. We can see the flowers at the middle have been knocked over, and the butterflies have gathered in the middle, making you wonder whats going on.

Philips Cinema 21:9's film Carousel...

Talking about tableaux vivants, today, reminded me of a short sequence i had seen in a 50 Cent video. i remember reading that it was part of a Phillips commercial, but i've never got round to watching the whole thing. Today i decided to have a look and relised that it's very much like one big tableau vivant style setup. As we see the camera pan around the surrounding environment, we see everything moving slightly, either that or our eyes deceive us, and it seems like film's response to a tableau vivant style. I absolutely love it, it's like one big theatrical stage, all shot at once. It was directed by Adam Berg and was awarded the Cannes - Lion 2009 GRAND PRIX.

So check it out, it's well worth watching... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m-uD0u7QD0

And if you were wondering how they made it, here's the scene again with some short intervening commentay... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0MjC4mh0aw

Enjoy!

Lecture #1... Tableaux Vivants...

So we had our first lecture for unit 3 today and Phil explained the brief. I was glad i did my research before this brief because it helped me to understand everything he was talking about. It was a good insight into the different artists we could research into and i felt there was a lot of diferent varities of work to look at. Phil wants us to focus on ambiguity for this unit to get the best out of our work. He also suggested using Gregory Crewdson's work as a big influence as he is one of modern tableau vivant's major successes. I particularly like his work in Twilight and Beneath the Roses as i feel this is his more eerie peices, but i love the way his characters seem to be in a trance. But, i'll write more about Crewdson when i look into more of his work. Phil also told us that the contradiction in this unit would be that we wouldn't be able to create humans, therefore we would need to focus our attention on a piece of work like Jeff Wall's, Destroyed Room. I'm hoping to look into as many of these artists as possible before wednesday, so expect a fair few posts between now and then. But a very insightive lecture today, and something i've never heard much about before, so everything was new to me.

Fine Art Photography... Gregory Crewdson Biography...

Gregory Crewdson was born on the 26th September, 1962 in Brooklyn, New York. In 1985 he received a BA in State University of New York. 3 Years later he received an MFA from Yale School of Art, Yale University. He has since taught at the State University of New York, Sarah Lawrence College, Cooper Union, Vassar College and is now a professor at Yale University. He's been teaching since 1988 right up to the present day. Crewdson is represented in New York at the Luhring Augustine Gallery and in London at White Cube. His books include Hover, Twilight, Gregory Crewdson 1985-2005, Fireflies, and Beneath the Roses. He has also won awards like The Aaron Siskind Fellowship Award, Visual Artists Fellowship Award, and Skowhegan Medal for Photography.

History of Tableaux Vivants...

So i decided to look into the history of tableaux vivants to get a better understanding of what this unit is about. I particularly tried to look into the different pathways it brought me down to get a broadened knowledge of what tableaux vivants is and its background.

The phrase and practice possibly began in medieval liturgical dramas such as the Golden Mass, where on special occasions a mass was punctuated by short dramatic scenes and tableaus.

Liturgical drama is also known as religious drama. In its Christian contexts, it originates from the mass itself, and usually presents a fairly complex ritual that includes theatrical elements. Christian tradition saw religious drama stem out of liturgy at the end of the Middle Ages (mostly the 15th century) in the form of mystery plays.

Mystery plays are among the earliest formally developed plays in medieval Europe. Medieval mystery plays focused on the representation of bible stories in churches as tableaux with accompanying antiphonal song. They developed from the 10th to the 16th century, reaching the height of their popularity in the 15th century, before being rendered absolute by the rise of professional theatre.

Tableaux has also been used as part of passion plays, in religion, to depict the passion of christ: the trial, suffering and death of Jesus Christ. Participants play the roles of the characters within this story to represent the events.

Tableaux was also a major feature of festivities for royal weddings, coronations and royal entries into cities. Often the actors imitated statues, much in the way of modern street entertainers, but inlarger groups, and mounted on stands along the main procession.

Before film, radio and television, tableaux vivants were popular forms of entertainment. It was sometimes used to recreate paintings "on stage", based on an etching or sketch of a painting. This was before the age of colour reproduction of images.

English censorship often forbade actresses to move when nude or semi-nude on stage, so tableaux vivants also had a place in presenting risque entertainment at special shows. In the nineteenth century they took such titles as "Nymths Bathing" and "Dana the Huntress." Such entertainment was also seen at fairground shows. But the shows largely died out by the 1970's.

Tableaux vivants were also performed as the basis for school nativity plays in England during the Victorian period. Now the custom is only practiced in a single English school, Loughborough High School (the oldest all girl school in England, founded in 1850.)

In the early years f the 20th century the German dancer Olga Desmond caused scandals with her "Evenings of Beauty" in which she posed nude in "living pictures," imitating classical works of art.

A tableux vivant-style production called the Pageant of the Masters has been held in Laguna Beach, California every summer since 1933 (except four years during world war 2). It involves hundreds of volunteers from the surrounding area and attracts over a hundred thousand visitors anually. The festival recreates famous works of art on stage. nother tableaux vivant-style production called Pageant of our Lord has been held in Rolling Hills Estates, California every spring since 1985. This production differs only in that its focus is exclusively on the life of Jesus Christ as told through religious arts of work.

In photography tableau vivant was an approach to picture-makig taken up by pioneers of fine art photography in the 1840's. It has also influenced current trends in photocompositing. It has also been used in art films, as a more expressionistic and experimental art form.

Unit 3: Environment Brief... Starting My Research

So we received our brief for unit 3 in the crit on Friday and no matter how many times i read it, i still couldn't quite grasp what it was about. I understood that it was similar to the unit before and that we would combine it with our Maya work, but some of the words were new to me. So after i finished my Maya work today, i decided to get straight on with this new unit and do a bit of background research. I firstly identified and underlined any words in the brief which i didn't understand. I also underlined any key names and details that i could use as kewords when researching.

The first word i looked into the meaning of was tableaux vivants or tableau vivant for non-plural. Most people would guess that it's a French word and it actually means "living picture." it describe's a group of suitably costumed 'actors,' carefully positioned and often theatrically lit. The people do not move or speak, marrying the art forms of stage with those of painting/photography.

After that i looked into what 'The Uncanny' was. I established that it was a Freudian concept used to identify an instance where something can be familiar, yet foreign at the same time, resulting in an uncomfortably strange feeling. it often creates cognotive dissonance within a subject due to the nature of being attracted to, yet repulsed by an object at the same time. This often leads to a rejection of the object, as we would rather reject than rationalize.

As cognotive dissonance was brought into the last meaning, i needed to find out what it meant. I soon learned that it's a theory, used in social psychology, which gives an uncomfortable feeling when holding two contradictory ideas at the same time. It normally occurs when a person perceives a logical inconsistency among their cognitions. This happens when one idea implies the opposite of another. An example would be the belief of animal rights interpreted with eating meat or wearing fur. This contradiction could lead to experiencing negative emotional states, also known as dissonance.

I now feel i have a better understanding of the brief, although i have also looked into the history of tableaux vivants to make sure i have the best possible understanding before Phil's lecture on Tomorrow.

Unit 2: Space Crit Presentation and End of Unit...

So we had our crit on Friday and I must say that Phil came up with some reasonable feedback, although if there weren't s many people in our class, i'd like to think i would have received some more. I was fairly happy with the first piece and like Phil said, the second needs a focal point (the plants) and the last one was the best idea of all (i didn't execute it well). I was quite impressed with time management on the last unit, as i went home the weekend before crit for my birthday, so i had to make sure i was ahead of schedule to make up for the lost time. I felt i really pushed myself on this uniot, especially the blog, but again i feel that my final products let me down. I'm going to keep pushing myself this unit, making sure i keep up the standards of my blog, but also doing more research, prepatory ideas and designs, and this should hopefully improve my final products. I've also taking all the feedback on board to allow me to develop and improve even further on the next unit. I've really enjoyed this unit because i've learned a lot and i can't wait to combine it with the maya work on the next project.

Maya Tutorials... The Street - Week 4...

So i've finally finished the street and i must say it was well worth the time and effort that i put in. It was a big jump from the likes of a fan, magnifying glass and toaster. Although, i spent most of my time complaining about problems with extruding and the UV texture mapping, i actually enjoyed this tutorial because i feel i've learnt so much. Not only have i learned to correct some of my problems and mistakes, i have learned more tools which is helpg e get used to the softwae. I actually feel like i could start to model and create my own objects with the software now, using the basic tool s and techniques Alan has already taught us in the space of only 8 weeks. This was a tricky and time consuming tutorial, but well worth it. Keep 'em coming Alan...

Maya Tutiorials... The Street - Week 3...

Well I finished this over a week, so i'm not quite sure why i haven't posted it yet, but here it is. Not many issues to talk about, other than a few problems with extruding and UV texture mapping, but nothing unusual there. Its seems a distant memory to the final image which makes this image on its own loo vaguely average. Athough, it did take the longest to make out of everything.

Concept Artists Research... Stanley Lau...

The other concept artist whose work i really fell in love with was Stanley Lau, it seemed much more anime like. Loking at his work i can see a similarity to final fantasy, which is possibly why it interested me so much, but i feel his work is restricted to the gaming and animation world, not so much of a filmic style. I love his vibrant shades and colours, as well as the futuristic details in his work. This is a completely different style to Andrew Jones but is visually pleasing.

Concept Artists Research... Andrew "Android" Jones...

When I first got the brief i was going home for the weekend, so while i was waiting i went into WH Smiths to see if i could find any concept art magazines. I conveniently found a magazine which listed a lot of concept artist' names. Insted of buying the magazine, i decided i would copy the names onto my phone and check some of the artists out on my way home. I particularly love Andrew "Android" Jones' work, his style seemed so unique and i loved the way his images were so spooky. I also loved the patterns he used and he detail that he included in his work.