Woob / Film / Photography / Music / Art / Design / Interviews / Time-Lapse / Random / 8-bit / Synthwave / Retro / Cryptoart
Wow that was quick, a year 367 days of Season 9 already.
Here’s my top 5 favourite posts so far (not including interviews)
No.4 Light Stage 5
No.3 Woob Repurpose / Available Now
No.2 Voice Coder
No.1 The last v8
Special mention goes out to the post Russian tea which is second only to Woob posts to bring people to the site by way of google search.
Interviews are a recent addition heres the list so far.
There’s a part 2 of the interview with Mat Jarvis coming up later this week.
I haven’t seen this film but the opening credits are great.
Trailer for new Woob Album – Repurpose (see last post). The trailer includes music from the title track of the album and the visuals are repurposed from an old Public Domain film.
Visit Channel Woob for a larger version.
This is a short film for the Max & Harvey track Thieves. The concept behind the music was one of diamond theft in a cat burglary fashion hence the title. its seems however Iloobia did not receive this memo and independently conceived and directed a film with Thieves as its soundtrack. The result is a beautifully crafted, visually arresting piece with a somewhat macabre slant. Iloobia, a long time friend and collaborator has featured on Season 9 before with his experimenting Clawboy. I spoke to him recently and asked him to explain the thinking and process behind the film, we also talk film-making and the future of Clawboy is revealed!
S9: You describe the Thieves film as ‘a re-imagining of the Frankenstein story’ could you elaborate on this.
Iloobia: ‘Thieves’ is constructed from fragments of material slowly collected over a year from England, Holland and Hungary. There were no parameters imposed on what that material should be, primarily as I was working in quite a demanding commercial TV realm at the time where the parameters and briefs were extremely strict. So Thieves was to be the antithesis of that way of working.Weirdly, the edit of Thieves began after a fairly major burnout in that part of my commercial career leaving me pretty much abandoning the medium of film and video altogether. But as a process of self imposed therapy I began to assemble this random material to see if there was any form or sense to be forged out of it instead of throwing the edit suite out of the window. This began to evoke some kind of Dr. Frankenstein process, especially as I began to see themes of death and rebirth suggested within the material, which was strangely coincidental as I was trying to restore my interest in the medium again after it being killed off.
So these themes infused into the film, which I came to see as a kind of Dr. Frankenstein story without the Frankenstein character ever on screen.
S9: Explain the technical creation process behind the film.
Disney’s answer to Star Wars, I’m surprised this film doesn’t get more attention. Its got one of the coolest spaceships ever created, a Disney R2D2 that hovers, a seriously homicidal robot called Maximilian and Ernest Borgnine – what more could you want? I saw this in the eighties on TV as a kid, infact it was only today I discovered it’s from 1979. Sure its a little bit rubbish in places, pacing is off and story is limiting but it must have had some sort of lasting effect on me… (see tomorrow’s post) Oh and it just so happens to have one of the best movie soundtracks of all time… LISTEN (Thankyou Mr. Barry)
I really love the comedic timing on this 8-bit masterpiece by Martin Jung for the artist The..AM. (Be sure you watch the film before you carry on reading… ) Martin tells me he was inspired by early 90’s LucasArts and while the influence of Zak McKracken etc. is clear, it took me back even further to 1985 and Activision’s – Little Computer People, a game that would have been infinitely more fun had it been invaded by 3 monkeys and a small bear!
I caught up with Martin and asked him a bit about the process behind the piece.
Martin: First of all I drew the characters and the whole setup using open source program Pixen. Then I arranged the different layers with Photoshop and finally exported approx. 700 images. Following the stop motion idea these images were imported to Final Cut Pro and were arranged in a sequence. It took about 48 working hours.
Ricky Kershaw directs this relaxing, fluid experience for Kidkanevil. The track is taken from the recently released: Basho Basho
USC ICT’s Fantastic looking Light Stage 5, description via: BOING BOING
“Light Stage is a special effects system for films that records how people and objects look when lit from every possible direction. That way, virtual versions of actors can be accurately “lit” to perfectly match the background set.”
Most recently used in Avatar and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, whilst amazing technology it’s not without its flaws. The number one being it can’t do whole bodys. Light stage 6 has this covered however and looks even more sci-fi – image after the break.
Season 9 