skynoise

All films with two or more people are collaborative, but there’s a wide range of films trying new ways to exploit current technologies for film production and distribution.

Pssst Pass It On
The mission of PSST? “Produce original short films through the collaboration of different teams of designers, directors, and animators. Each film is comprised of three sections produced by three different teams. This process is the whole idea behind PSST! – a technique derived from the Dadaist game of Exquisite Corpse and the children’s game Telephone and applied to the arts of motion graphics, animation and film-making. There are nine films made through the collaboration of different teams of designers, directors, and animators.” Gorgeous range of styles too.

The 1 Second Film
A non-profit collaborative film being produced by thousands of people around the world. Anyone can help produce this film by donating as little as $1. Worth a look, this is quite an involved project with five phases… which starts with a 1 second film and ends up with an 11,111 Second Film – a narrative movie lasting 11,111 seconds (approximately 180 minutes). The film will be divided into two parts, a 90-minute animated feature film followed by a 90-minute credit-sequence with ‘making of’ documentary. The 90-minutes of animation will be narrative, with an original story to be written by an established screen writer. The 90-minutes of animation will be made during thousands of simultaneous events around the world, with each event making one-second or more of the animation.

Swarm Of Angels
Good range of creatives gathered on this, with good momentum. The plan is to create a £1 million film and give it away to over 1 million people using the Internet and a global community of members. Key features:

* Participative – Vote on major decisions, including which of two scripts goes into production. Post on the forum.
* Open source – Contribute to development and production through script input, materials creation, or be part of our distributed film crew.
* Creative Commons-licensed – Freely share the film. Sample project visuals for your own work.
* Crowdsourced – Feedback into the production, use your expertise, and become part of the team.

The Basement Tapes
“Everything we know about copyright has been turned upside down. From mash-ups to filesharing, creation to distribution, everything is in flux.Thats what I want to explore in this documentary…. it needs your help to be made – thats why Open Source Cinema exists – to faciliate online collaboration – to create a participatory way to discuss these issues.” Script viewable here – http://www.opensourcecinema.org/wikifilm

Your Broadcaster
“A test whether a film can be done with most of the major production decisions made through an online social network.”
Members of the YourBroadcaster social network can become involved in 5 different movie projects ( bollywood, horror, thriller, drama and comedy ). Members will be able to upload scripts, auditions, characters, etc that will be voted on by all members to determine what will be used in the movie project. Subscription fee of $10 (one project) to $35 (multiple projects) is required for full participation. Advertisers can also get in on the movie making action with opportunities of product placement within each movie.”
David Lynch had a nice line on product placement in a recent interview : ” Bullshit. Complete fucking bullshit.”

XIFilm
XIFilm is one of many films claiming to be ‘the world’s first feature film created entirely over the Internet’, but interestingly offers the option of joining a Production-Assistance Team (non-artist types who can offer “idle” computer time for the production team by downloading and installing the XIFilm screensaver).

Awesome, I Fuckin Shot That!
Bustin’ wide their camera crew list to include 50 members of the audience, this Beastie Boys concert doco was made with footage from a few higher quality cams on stage and 50 video cameras handed out to audience members with instructions to ‘keep on shooting’.

Echo Chamber Project
“An open source, investigative documentary about how the television news media became an uncritical echo chamber to the Executive Branch leading up to the war in Iraq. By developing collaborative techniques for producing this film, then this project can potentially provide some solutions for incorporating a broader range of voices and perspectives into the mainstream media. To that extent the project is well documented, there’s an interesting and complex diagram explaining a collaborative filmmaking workflow and a rant on the implications of being able to export Final Cut Pro projects into an XML format. Which means – ‘because Final Cut Pro supports XML, you are no longer limited to creating clips, bins, and sequences within Final Cut Pro. This means you can create your own Final Cut Pro projects outside of Final Cut Pro, using any software or platform you want, as long as you generate a valid Final Cut Pro XML file.’ Or in other words, potentially an open source content management system like Drupal could be used to collaboratively edit a film.

There are three end products for The Echo Chamber Project:

1.) A collaboratively edited 90-minute documentary film about how the mainstream media became an uncritical echo chamber during the lead-up to the war in Iraq.
2.) A set of open source tools and methodologies for participatory journalism and collaborative film editing that is sustained through a viable business model.
3.) An online, interactive collection of transcribed video segments that are annotated and filtered with user-contributed context and meaning at www.echochamberproject.com.”

Hovering in late night carnival shadows offers many flavours of revelation. In Melbourne recently : the actual construction into being of a Ferris Wheel, later propelling peeps into the sky. In Sydney currently : an underbelly of provocative performers brought to the surface with Autonomous Improvisation v.1 : a video exhibition by Wade Marynowsky @ Artspace (19 April – 19 May 2007).

From left to right : Jim Denley, Robbie Avenaim, Trash Vaudeville, Singing Sadie, Toy Death.

“Le Spanky”

Anyone who has seen Wade (aka Spanky, aka AC/3P, aka The Geek from Swampy Creek ( etc etc ) and most recently a founder of the Demux live audiovisual DVD label) perform with his wearable-sample-triggering-kangaroo-suit will understand his long connections with all shades of colourful and crazy. This history is woven together nicely with Autonomous Improvisation v., where Wade has video-recorded a range of performances in a studio environment, then arranged 3 channels of audio-visual projection to orchestrate video sequences – which are triggered by a prepared pianola linked to the network of computers playing the clips in an ever-changing composition. Messy sentence, well exceuted concept. And word on the wire is that the show = rad, which is to be expected with people like Matthew Stegh, Toydeath, Lucas Abela, Singing Sadie, Robbie Avenaim, TheGeekFromSwampyCreek, Adrian Bertram, REV. KRISS HADES, Kristina Harrison, Jim Denley, Dallas Dellaforce, Shannon O’ Neil, Peter Blamey & many, many more involved. More info : www.demux.org

Video Software Updates

Another batch of video production software overhauled recently, with both Apple & Adobe announcing new releases. Final Cut Pro Studio 2 brings a host of changes to the Final Cut Pro editing software : a new ‘open format’ timeline which allows footage of different formats and frame rates to be edited together in real-time, a new uncompressed HD format for editing with, 5.1 surround sound output and better integration with other tools. Motion, their motion graphics package is upgraded to 3.0 and features more particles, vector based paint strokes and very easy to use 3D motion graphics. New to the stable? An application for colour grading, called ‘colour’ except spelt the yankee way. A dedicated tool for colour grading at all levels of resolution, suited for developing ‘signature cinematic styles’.

Adobe’s After Effects 8 / CS3 delivers new shape layers, better photoshop and flash integration and a puppet tool which includes many ways of intuitively bringing to life animated characters. ‘Brainstorm’ adds a new interface to offer animated variations based on selected design and animation parameters. Alongside AE, Adobe has re-introduced the editing software Premiere for the mac, the competition hopefully proving fruitful over time. Photoshop CS3 includes a major upgrade to everybody’s benchmark image manipulation tool, but also a new capacity to import video onto an ‘animation timeline’ for painting on top of ( or rotoscoping ).

Downloadables

www.vidtaker.com provides yet another way to more conveniently download online videos from video hosters such as youtube, break, google video, myspace, etc etc. Download the Firefox extension, this enables right clicking on any page with a video and then gives a pop-up selection via for downloading the file as an editable avi divx.

Next up on the coffee table >> VJ : audio-visual art + VJ culture, edited by Michael Faulkner / D-Fuse, published via www.laurenceking.co.uk, with bonus 130 minute DVD.

“For many, vjing is a dirty word. artists view it as eyecandy for the clubbing generation; musicians view it as a secondary accompaniment to their music. at best, vjing is regarded as audio-visual wallpaper, not worthy as a serious consideration. yet to my eyes, the best vjs are creating a new fluid interface between sound and image – one that is genuinely mould-breaking and aesthetically invigorating, and one that deserves to be recognized as a 21st century art form.” – Michael Faulkner

Michael Faulkner aka D-Fuse is primely perched to edit/curate a book on VJing – well travelled as visual performer and graphic designer, an extensive array of profile gigs under his belt, and well hooked into the sprawling VJ networks. Coming from an artist inside the ‘scene’ then, the book is packed with useful insights, laid out with visual flair that respects the work ( and in full colour throughout too! ).

Alongside various new media / video art / motion graphics books that squeeze VJing into a few pages, ‘VJ : audio-visual art + VJ culture’ also slips onto the bookshelves next to a few books dedicated to documenting the global VJ practice. The VJ Book ( from Feral House ) included many interviews by a journalist with an outsiders view, but suffered from a lack of visual displays of the culture and processes it discussed. Live Cinema Unravelled ( available as a free PDF ) managed much sexier design, was written by someone immersed in VJing and came bundled with a lot more theory – aiming to dissect the role of the VJ against such topics such as ‘technological mobility, audience, environment, and codes of the medium’. Thumbs up, full review later.

Interviews with VJs the globe over makes up the bulk of VJ : audio-visual art + VJ culture, artist interviews from a significant spread of nations complemented with a range of live performance photos, and video stills, laid out stylishly and vividly demonstrating the diversity of aesethetics and approaches with live video. The DVD immerses even further, with a range of live performances, videos and documentaries of The Light Surgeons, Cold Cut, Hexstatic, D-Fuse and more. It’s a compelling package, the artist interviews supplemented by a range of specialist articles written by various VJs.

Bram Crevits whirlwinds us through an historical overview of ‘the roots of VJing’, taking in the expanded cinema of the 1960s, fluxus video art of the 60s and 70s, the ‘magic lantern’ (an oil lamp, with lens and pictures painted on a glass plate, creating live animations back as early as 1671 ), live animation devices of the 1800s, the development of cinema, the evolution of music videos, concrete music, electronic media, the graphical user interface in 1984 and gives good context to today’s pixel manglers.

Adrian Shaughnessy, further contexualises contemporary VJing (Last night a VJ zapped my retinas) :

“The digital artist is really an editor. We can generate imagery ad infinitum; the skill is to know what is good, what should be kept and what should be discarded. This is the art of editing and it is also the art of VJing. .. VJs often have to do their editing live, in front of an audience. It is one of the factors that makes VJing such an exhilarating ride for both the audience and the VJ.”

“Science and technology multiply around is. To an increasing extent they dictate the language in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute.” – J.G Ballard ( as quoted in Live Cinema Unravelled )

Chris Allen of the Light Surgeons scribes a piece on sampling, arguing it is a technique that “allows us to see the components of our language in isolation – the bricks that then may be used to construct new meanings.”

The overview of technology and creative process by Vello Virkhaus is comprehensive and insightful, documenting processes from storyboarding with clients / collaborators through to venue design and live performance.

Elliot Earls, who looks like he has an intriguing live show, talks of need for VJs to work more closely with musicians, or better yet, to compose music themselves, if they are to move beyond merely being in service to musicians in a manner resembling ‘info-burger flippers’. Robin Rimbaud’s (aka scanner) article “listening to pictures” might provide some help in that regard, offering tips on a/v from a sound perspective.

The book rounds out with a decent coverage of hardware issues – different screens ( shapes, sizes, materials ) , advice on projectors, mixers, midi, computers, and graphics cards etc, a less potent software overview (only 8 of the dozens available profiled ) and an excellent selection of personalised diagrams profiling a dozen or so onstage-set-ups for major Vjs around the world. These are especially fascinating, usually a blend of hi and lo tech, expensive and cheap gear, to help create their custom look and processes.

Everyone’s favourite French audiovisual super-duo, ‘Gangpol Und Mit’ are back with a fresh new picture vinyl LP : “The Hopelessly Sad Story of the Hideous End of the World”, and a DVD on the way!

Sylvain & Guillaume, who sculpt the delicate cartoon cacophony of sounds and video, are currently busy gigging live around Europe to promote their LP ( a narrative musical project about the end of the world ). Along the way they’ve started a collaborative ‘electro-crooner original music & visuals project that features Polish and French artists using entirely material captured from the city of Budapest. Imagining some kind of melancholic Serge Gainsbourg with a pair of loop pedals programming his own cartoon tv channel gets close to the G.&M vibe (check their stunning videos and free music) . In between shooting super 8 and recording at haunted karaoke bars, they* found time to email the below >>

*Sez Sylvain :

“I made the answers so if you may mention Sylvain is talking, maybe it’s better, so that Guillaume is not involved in my stupidity “

What happens at a typical G.U.M gig?

We mostly wear glasses and special suits, jump everywhere, make headbanging and duck-like vocal scratches, play wiht puppets, smal keyboards or circuit-bent toys, trigger samples and use our laptops in order to produce for YOU a sonic and visual entertainment.

Episode 3 of a Gangpol Und Mit TV Show would feature what?

Death of Gangpol & Mit in lot of sadistic ways, full of sexually explicit content.

How do you share or split up your musical roles for performing and composing?

Gangpol always makes every music and Guillaumit every visual. We daily share of course lots of ideas, wishes or views when composing. Pragmatically, one of us starts from an idea, either a 30seconds melody or a short storyboard, then we share a lot until we are satisfied.

Tell us about your upcoming DVD…

We just released a new picture vinyl LP on wwilko label, which offered us this beautiful opportunity thanks to their amazing job. It is a narrative musical about the end of the world. Then we will come the DVD, maybe with close topic, including some video clips and cartoon material, but it will probably be postponed until autumn days. Meanwhile we had an inquiry from japanese label Out one disc for a cd released, and are currently working on it.

How does video relate to your musical processes?

We realize everday how music and visuals are run in our project by exactly the same concepts: composition, rhythm, samples,… We sometimes have tight a relationships between sonic and visual, sometimes it is more allusive, distant,… Both ways have their strength and limits.

Who does live audio & video well?

In most cases, VJ’s don’t have an exclusive relationship with a musician, because they’re supposed to be able to play for any kind of event. Maybe that’s why we enjoy so many graphical or VJ’s works, old weird TV programs, cartoons or anime, and many brilliant musicians, but didn’t really find a specific audio and video live we may quote here.

Some musicians are very good for graphic design, like Dat Politics, but we never saw them live with the video. Le Dernier Cri makes very wild shows, but it is more live music on a screening of their amazing animation work. Doravideo seems to be a funny drum & video project, we hope to see him live… And hope to find more in 2007.

Electronic equipment. Audiovisual busking. How is it possible ?

We just make rehearsals like a regular band. Guillaumit is doing live montage with video sampler, and I play multitracks versions of the audio,playing keyboards, vocals with effects, triggering samples…

What do u like in electronic music gear? soft/hard/wetware?

Gangpol & Mit wasn’t really intended to be an “electronic” project, but it is on these days because nobody unfortunately built an acoustic laptop yet… I tried to work once with a full mouses orchestra. I asked them to play my scores, but they never really were able to play the beats as strong as I wished them to do it…

Medicated rollerskating dentists. How appropriate is your music for them?

I really don’t know. Maybe it’s better for medicated rollerskating ducks.

What cliches of recent times would you like to put a bullet through?

Cliché n°1: There’s no difference between underground and mainstream music.

Cliché n°2: Gangpol & Mit play 8bit music.

3 websites more people should be finding music from:
http://thebrain.lautre.net – our favorite french radio show, hours of top-quality streaming
http://www.tiliqua-records.com – no fucking free mp3s, no fucking download, here is a place to BUY music in the old way.

Their reissue series is amazing work if you do care this kind of things: perfect mastering, top quality packaging… Their rare records section is a kind heaven for people who don’t smoke, drink, take drugs, or have to put some fuel in the car, and so may start an addiction with records once in a while.

http://stephanomariano.free.fr/maison.php – top quality french artist

In what ways is your music a response to the disappearance of European wildlife?

We only try to daily escape from the real world as strong as possible. We’re maybe not wild people, but the world we try to reach is surely stranger than the low-cost hotel rooms we happen to sleep in.

When are you coming to Australia?

As soon as our space ship is gonna get repaired. Get ready.

Current / Future plans?

Make a cake, release records, make a 10 minutes long piece for our lives, feed the cats, go on tour in Poland, make a DVD, have a rest, and die.

Getting much more press than recent XBox or Playstation game consoles, the ascent of Nintendo’s Wii is notable for two aspects – that they deliberately chose to prioritise playability over high-end graphics, and their unique wireless controller which uses a variety of motion sensors to control onscreen action. Unsurprisingly, performers working with digital media have taken quite
a liking to the Wii controller, and in particular VJs – who often prefer instrument like responsiveness rather than highest-end resolution. If your computer has capacity to receive blue-tooth signals from the Wii controller ( or its nunchukka companion controller ), then you’re good to go with a variety of free software:

Converting your Wii controller movements into midi notes or values, can be done easily on PC, or mac. Most VJ or DJ software has some sort of midi functionality built-in now, which allows easy mapping of your movements onto specific parameters of your software.

Control the VJ software Resolume with a Wii device..

Prefer a stand-alone application that allows a bunch of your loops to be triggered and processed / played with a wii controller? Wii Loop machine.

A simple quartz composer ( mac ) composition being manipulated by the Wii remote. (via ).

There are MAX/MSP objects that support the Wii Remote ( and one for the Apple Remote) for building your own wii-ready applications?

Wii Remote as Lightsaber in flash-based game?

Solar powered outdoor wii-rig ( Indoor versions of outdoor sports, outdoors? )

Pop your eyes out – don’t read the Japanese Super Safe Wii Safety Manual:

Wii Nun-chukka drumming videos and more…

Live Audiovisual DVD labels are few and far between, so it’s a pleasure to note the recent launch of Sydney based demux, who aim to promote ‘live audio-visual performance events, documentation and experimental works for screen’. The Performance Space in Sydney hosted the launch party in early March with 4 ‘live synaesthetic’ works by Samuel Bruce, Andrew Gadow and label co-founders Peter Newman & Wade Marynowsky ( aka Spanky / aka AC/3p / aka The Pink Gimp, aka The Geek from Swampy Creek etc etc), each represented on the initial demux DVD sampler ( available for $AU15 at www.demux.org – DVD PAL / all regions / stereo / 35 mins ). Stay tooned for a review…