Tea with Alan
Posted: May 30, 2012 Filed under: comedy, film, music | Tags: Alan Rickman, David Michalek, Portraits in Dramatic Time, slow motion, tea Leave a commentExactly how I imagined it.
Sarcastic fringehead
Posted: May 15, 2012 Filed under: nature, television | Tags: animal, BBC Life, David Attenborough, Sarcastic fringehead Leave a commentFierce.
Inside the New York Times ‘Lively Morgue’
Posted: May 9, 2012 Filed under: art, vintage | Tags: archive, Lively Morgue, New York Times, newspaper, photography, tumblr Leave a commentPrint archives that were once the heart of many newspapers have gone the way of the floppy disk. But at the New York Times, home to the Lively Morgue tumblr, the technology that has threatened to kill the morgue may also save it.
Art of film and television title design
Posted: May 1, 2012 Filed under: art, design, film, television | Tags: Ben Conrad, Blue Valentine, film, Jim Helton, Karing Fong, Mad Men, Off Book, PBS, Peter Frankfurt, Saul Bass, Se7en, television, title sequence, Zombieland Leave a commentPBS’ web series Off Book talks to artists working hard, whether they’re doing so in the street, in tattoo parlors, on Etsy, or on film and television title sequences. In the latest installment above, Karin Fong and Peter Frankfurt discuss their now-iconic Mad Men title sequence, as well as their earlier and more troubling opening credits for David Fincher’s Se7en. Ben Conrad explains how his title work integrated into the physical world of Ruben Fleischer’s Zombieland, allowing zombies to rampage right through floating letters announcing things like “Columbia Pictures” and “Produced by Gavin Polone,” and spelling out the numbered rules of post-apocalyptic survival even as the protagonists observed, bent, and broke them. Jim Helton tells the story of his back-and-forth with director Derek Cianfrance in designing the titles for Blue Valentine, which take exploding-firework imagery and aesthetically unify it with the scattered memories that make up the movie. All of them face the challenge of simultaneously inviting audiences into a story, reflecting its sensibility, and on top of that, making an original contribution to the production as a whole.
Though the meeting of design, film, and television has never been more enthusiastically examined than in this era of internet video, this line of work has a rich history. After this episode of Off Book‘s end credits, the interviewees all give props to title designer Saul Bass — “Saint Saul,” Frankfurt calls him — who, if you believe them, elevated title sequences, corporate logos, and other previously plain and straightforward means of visual communication into art forms unto themselves. Watch Bass’ creations in North By Northwest, The Man With the Golden Arm, and West Side Story, some of the earliest title sequences to showcase the form’s capacity for implication and abstraction, and you’ll understand his importance to these modern-day designers.
Check out Saul Bass’ work here.
Good night, sleep tight
Posted: May 1, 2012 Filed under: art, music | Tags: Closed On Account of Rabies, Edgar Allan Poe, Iggy Pop, The Tell-Tale Heart Leave a commentJohn Peel’s record archive
Posted: May 1, 2012 Filed under: art, music | Tags: Eye Film and TV, John Peel, John Peel's Record Archive, Klik, music, Sheila Ravenscroft, The John Peel Centre for the Creative Arts Leave a commentIt’s really happening!
The contents of one of the most important and eclectic modern music collections in the world – John Peel’s personal record collection, is starting to be made public for the first time through an online archive.
John Peel’s family, The John Peel Centre for the Creative Arts, Eye Film and TV, and website company Klik, are working together to create an online archive of John Peel’s record collection, including specially created videos of key artists, John Peel’s home movies, John’s hand-typed note cards, and other content.
The project will release the names and song titles of 100 records a week from the collection, for 26 weeks between May- Oct, featuring the first records from one letter of the alphabet each week. People will be able to listen online to many of these records via links compiled by the project.
Each week, one artist will be chosen for a video interview, which will feature alongside the collection- these artists are being chosen by Sheila Ravenscroft (John Peel’s wife) and their children.
Check out the archive here.