NTU Multimedia student Alex Card wins prestigious Yellow Pencil in D&AD Awards for Alvy character animation
"I got a second place and a yellow pencil! I'm so pleased it's unreal.
The award ceremony was great fun, so much free wine and Pimms! And obviously the chance to meet loads of professionals.
I had an amazing opportunity to speak to the Disney guys that set the brief I did. And it turns out that I'll actually be working with them on a few projects. I really hope to show them the best of what I can do and someday soon be working with them on my own show, or anything really, I'm still in shock."
(Alex Card, 29 June 2011)
[Nottingham Trent University Multimedia BA (Honours) student Alex Card commenting on winning 2nd place in the Animation / Crafts section of the 2011 D&AD Awards.]
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MultimediaSHARE
Bullet Time: digitally-enhanced simulation of variable-speed photography
"GUN REPORT THUNDERS through the underground, both men BLASTING, moving at impossible speed.
For a blinking moment we enter BULLET-TIME.
Gun flash tongues curl from Neo's gun, bullets float forward like a plane moving across the sky, cartridges cartwheel into space. ..."
(Larry and Andy Wachowski, 3 June 1997, Science Fiction and Fantasy Movie Scripts)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
SMS Sugar Man: the first feature film shot entirely on a cell phone
"Aryan Kaganof's SMS Sugar Man has either the dubious or celebratory distinction - depending on your point of view of these kinds of things - of being the first feature film shot entirely on a cell phone, specifically the Sony Ericsson W900i. Given the film's strong sexual content, Sony probably won't be championing the film any time soon. But, in their absence, I will.
To Kaganof's grand credit, the technique in which the film was shot never comes across as being gimmicky. The majority of the movie is shot as any traditional movie is shot despite the unique camera being used. Every once in awhile we do get a direct POV shot from one of the characters holding his or her own camera, but this is used very sparingly and is thus unobtrusive.
Scenes are mostly lit and executed as if filmed with a traditional camera. What's most surprising about the movie is that one might presuppose - or, at least I did - that it would be comprised of mostly quick cuts. I don't own a cell phone with a camera, but I had assumed one of them could only hold small files for short scenes. Against expectation, Kaganof comprises SMS Sugar Man with fairly longish shots and gives the film a very lyrical tempo."
(Mike Everleth, 17 November 2008)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Urban Symphony: a film from underneath
"The concept of Urban Symphony is the visual and audio composition of the city, which is generated by the contact between physical objects, humans or animals with the surface of the ground. In other words, from the underground perspective, the objects that drop, roll or touch the ground create sounds and visuals."
(Varathit Uthaisri)
Directed by: TU+// Varathit Uthaisri; Sound: Plum// Napat Snidvongs; DP: Jun Oshima; Production: Tong// Thitawan Chaiwong
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Suttana KeyuraphanSHARE
Felice Varini at Osaka Securities Exchange Building
"If we approach the painting of Felice Varini with the aim of describing it, in its fundamental components, the most productive concepts - in particular those of 'vantage point', 'focus' and 'framing' - all closely related to the vocabulary of photography. If we begin with the device Varini employs in each of his artworks, the differences between painting and photography are, effectively, reduced to a minimum. The artist's work, concentrating on the problem of falsehood of images in relation to the truth of perception, makes use of photography, going so far as to equate it with painting in the strategies of constitution and unmasking of iconic status. The roots of photography - the 'machine à dessiner' and the camera obscura - closely connect it to the tools of the painter. Photography demonstrates the functioning of perspective as a construct based on the fixed gaze and monocular vision, thus radicalizing the theme of painting as illusion: 'in the window and in the photograph the framed world seems to inscribe and represent itself in an immediate manner' (1)."
(Roberta Mazzola)
1). Johannes Meinhardt, La realtà dell'illusione estetica. Le 'trappole visive' di Felice Varini, Lugano, Edizioni Studio Dabbeni, 1999, p. 29. The definition machine à dessiner dates back to France in the 17th century. On the forerunners of the camera, see: Heinrich Schwarz, Arte e fotografia, Torino, Bollati Boringhieri, 1991.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
