Drop-in Tutorial... Week 2...

After a long discussion about my environment design for the Pied Piper with Phil today, i had a lot to take in, but very exciting times are ahead indeed. We've already established that this set should be heavily influenced by expressionism's strong style and bold shapes, and Phil has suggested getting hands-on and stuck in by being extremely experimental and slightly 'bonkers!'. This next two weeks will be about documenting these experiments which will include using a spotlight and sharp objects to create expressionistic silhouettes, using sound in alchemy see what fascinating shapes can be produced, and experimenting with all kinds of organic and natural textures to play with. I'm looking to document the work i produce in the form of a series of video diary entries which will give a first hand view of what i'm doing and the results that i'm producing. Alongside this creative development of ideas, we also discussed the possible of giving the environment design more meaning; more purpose and Phil has suggested setting the piece after the children have been kidnapped.The audience can therefore accept that the town is desolate for a reason, instead of wondering where all the people are. Some eerie and creepy music can be used to emphasise this idea of a desolate town, the soundtrack can possibly be produced in Soundtrack Pro similar to what i produced for the transcription project.

Apart from my minor project, we also discussed some areas of research for my dissertation. Some keywords and films cropped up as well as some suggested reading sources and articles. I'm particularly interested in the controversy surrounding the Human Centipede 2 and its predecessor, as well as Flowers of Flesh and Blood, part of the Guinea Pig film series, in which it has been believed that the film was depicting a real murder, it was so photorealistic. A new category of films have been introduced to me as well, in the form of mondo films and snuff films.

Raskolnikow (1923)...

I came across some screenshots from this film whilst look at some examples of expressionism. The director of the film is the famous German silent cinema director, Robert Wiene, who also directed The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which is evident in the expressionistic style of the screenshots. I love how theatrical and cinematic some of these shots are (despite their low quality) and the elements of expressionism serve as a strong and bold artistic style. Raskolnikow is a 1923 drama film based on the novel Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

Here are some other expressionistic images i've found from other films and sources which also present a similarly bold artistic style, including some Dr. Caligari screenshots of course...

Minor Project Individual Tutorial... Week 1...

So today was my first meeting with Alan discussing my ideas for my minor project and what i'm hoping to do after the course. I presented my two ideas for my adaptation of the Pied Piper, one for a character design, and one for environment design. The latter of the two ideas getting the thumbs up and greenlight from Alan. For next week, Alan has recommended getting to grips with the original dark fairytales and understanding the dark tones and meanings behind them, looking at books that breakdown the 'anatomy' of original fairytale stories. I'll also need to look into art direction, with a particular focus on expressionism and expressionist architecure.

Self Initiated Project - Proposal Pitch...

Here's the proposal pitch i've put together for my tutorial with Alan, in a bid to get a greenlight on one of my ideas...

Pied Piper Character Influence Maps...

The main inspiration for the character design of the Pied Piper for my adaptation will come from folk art and child-friendly drawings of the character. However, my adaptation focuses on the dark tone of the orinigal story, which means i will combine these elements with the surrounding topic of Death and puppet/marionette elements which will fit in with the theatrical style sets. A lot of the existing drawings of the Pied Piper use a red and yellow colour palette for the clothing, whereas, the darker designs seem to use grey, black and green, whilst still keeping to the associated clothing of the character.

Art Direction Influence Maps...

The inspiration for the environment design of my adaptation comes from stop-motion sets, theatre sets, and cinematic sets. I will use my research and developed knowledge of Hamelin and Germany in the Middle Ages, to develop a set-based environment, that integrates my chosen art direction. I feel that bold expressionistic shapes work well in these kind of set designs, with a number of different techniques that can be used to create backgrounds; including silhouettes and matte paintings. The colour palette has a strong influence on the mood and tone of these sets; with greys, blues and greens creating the darkest mood and tone.

Pied Piper of Hamelin... Danse Macabre by Saint-Saens...

Dance of Death, also variously called Danse Macabre, is an artistic genre of late-medieval allegory on the universality of death: no matter one's station in life, the Dance of Death unites all. The Danse Macabre consists of the dead or personified Death summoning representatives from all walks of life to dance along to the grave, typically with a pope, emperor, king, child, and labourer. They were produced to remind people of the fragility of their lives and how vain were the glories of earthly life.

According to legend, "Death" appears at midnight every year on Halloween. Death calls forth the dead from their graves to dance their dance of death for him while he plays his fiddle represented by a solo violin with its E-string tuned to an E-flat in an example of scordatura tuning. His skeletons dance for him until the rooster crows at dawn, when they must return to their graves until the next year.

Danse macabre, Op. 40, is a tone poem for orchestra, written in 1874 by French composer Camille Saint-Saëns. It started out in 1872 as an art song for voice and piano with a French text by the poet Henri Cazalis, which is based in an old French superstition. In 1874, the composer expanded and reworked the piece into a tone poem, replacing the vocal line with a solo violin.

The piece opens with a harp playing a single note, D, twelve times (the twelve strokes of midnight) which is accompanied by soft chords from the string section. This then leads to the E flat and A chords also known as a tritone or the "Devil's chord", and the solo violin's E string is tuned a half step lower to create this effect played by a solo violinist, which represents death. After which the main theme is heard on a solo flute and is followed by a descending scale on the solo violin which is accompanied by soft chords from the string section, particularly the lower instruments of the string section, followed by the full orchestra who then joins in on the descending scale. The main theme and the scale is then heard throughout the various sections of the orchestra until it breaks to the solo violin and the harp playing the scale. The piece becomes more energetic and climaxes with the full orchestra playing very strong dynamics. Towards the end of the piece, there is another violin solo, now in modulation, which is then joined by the rest of the orchestra. The final section represents the dawn breaking (a cockerel's crow, represented by the oboe) and the skeletons returning to their graves.

The piece makes particular use of the xylophone to imitate the sounds of rattling bones. Saint-Saëns uses a similar motif in the Fossils movement of The Carnival of the Animals.