I saw Neil Young at Hammersmith Apollo last night. He had a guy on stage with him painting canvas behind the band throughout the concert. It was fantastic, better than any jumbo-tron screen most bands have behind them! His paintings were relevant to the songs, even through the imagery wasn’t totally obvious to the song and then the painter would walk to the front of the stage and place his just finished canvas onto an easel.
I always listen to music while I work, but now I think I’m just going to put some 60’s music on and just see what comes out. Hopefully I should produce work that gives of a 60’s vibe as I’ll be working pretty much from a vibe itself!
I want to create a sequence that represents London and carnaby street, swinging sixties and mod culture.
I’ve started to draw my scene by hand. I want to have a black and white, hand drawn scene, that kind of represents that post-war kind of London and then fill it with bright sixties imagery.
Here are a couple of stages of Big Ben.
I’ll basically lay down my idea for what I want to produce.
I want to create a set of motion graphics that give off a 60’s vibe and give the viewer a 60’s kind of feel, similar to how a title sequence would put the viewer into the world of a film.
I want to present this in an installation in a way inwhich it will further into the 60’s setting.
I’d like the interaction to be seamless and not so obvious, not like pressing a button, but something that may surprise the user and leave the experience alot less obvious and more incapsulated.
After racking my brain for ages trying to come up with a way of presenting my motion graphics, I think I’ve got it. Instead of just projecting onto a screen or wall, I’d like to run my graphics through an old TV or a faux TV (old monitor). I ties in with my theme and will really add to the believability of the 60’s setting and allow for a more seamless experience.
While brainstorming about 60’s TV I thought about the public information films, such as Joe and Petunia and the fridge one (my personal favourite).
I’ve come up with some ideas and sketches for my own idea for one to animate but I’m not sure if I’ll take it further than making a test animation for as I think this may start to get into spoof territory which is what I really don’t want to do.
I bought the Rolling Stones show at Altamont on DVD today. I’d really to try and convey some of the darkness from this. This gig was seen as the end of the innocence of the 1960’s. It’d be really interesting to juxtapose this kind of vibe with the more flower power imagery associated with the 60’s.
I happened to notice while watching Performance some really nice artwork on the walls of Turner’s basement. I somehow managed to track down the guy who did them. Martin Sharp. I’ve actually already come across him as he was interviewed during the Classic Albums programme for Cream’s Disraeli Gears, which he provided the art work for and co-wrote a song on.
Watching Performance has really planted some seeds for ideas in my head. If I decide to shoot any live footage I really want to use the jump cut techniques shown throughout this.
I’ve now seen Yellow Submarine far too many times, I really want to try and get some of the styles used in this into my project. I love the colours and the varying styles used throughout. I especially love the Eleanor Rigby sequence.
The hand tinted photograph style works so well and gives the working class england kind of imagery a really surreal feel. Definitely something I’ll come back to…
