The Grand Overlook Hotel: We really love ‘The Grand Overlook Hotel’ by Steve Ramsden which is a very clever mashup between the movies ‘The Shining’ and ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’. The universe of Wes Anderson meets the world of Stanley Kubrick and Stephen King – Fantastic work!
Vivid Sydney 2015: We love the Sydney Opera House‘s contribution to VIVID Sydney 2015 which is a global animation project by Universal Everything, collaborating with over 20 different animation studios worldwide to create a living mural on one of the world’s most iconic buildings. Embracing emerging technologies, Universal Everything’s process always starts from drawings, with techniques seen in this film akin to the early pioneers of animation including Len Lye, Norman McLaren and Walt Disney. Using these timeless techniques mean this film could have existed in 1920, albeit with a 21st century twist – bringing influences of global pop culture, modernist graphics and physics simulations into a playful exploration of this Sydney icon. Awesome work! 🙂
Creative Director: Matt Pyke
Animation Director: Chris Perry
Sound Designer: Simon Pyke / Freefarm
Producer: Greg Povey
On-Site Producer: Mic Gruchy – grup.tv
Coco de Mer: Under The Skin writer Walter Campbell and legendary photographer Rankin have paired up for X, a short film about sex that’s something of a sensory overload, made in partnership with underwear and sex toy brand Coco De Mer. Using a combination of found footage, seductive acting and an at times brutal soundtrack, X invites you into an otherworldly erotic realm; mixing danger, violence and sex. “The film embraces the sense of the ambient mind and what it might be inspired by, the transgression from banality into wonder”, says Campbell. “More and more I feel we enter the hinterlands of that dream state simply because the mind seeks something wilder, that unpredictable thing, the surprise moment. The film speaks about the morphing of these possibilities, and evokes Coco de Mer’s evolution of erotic thought. Coco de Mer embodies those wonderful flights of imagination that steer the mind to more extraordinary, more vital energies, and this campaign is an exciting platform for the brand to open up the erotic conversation even further.” It’s contemporary, erotic and a lil bit naughty, check it out – LOVE! For the official Coco de Mer website, click here
Berlin: So this is how Berlin looked just after the Second World War. This fascinating colour footage shows the state of the city in the Summer of 1945, just after the Second World War and the capitulation of Germany. The vision gives us a rare glimpse of the slow return to daily life in Berlin after years of destruction from the war. Footage from the destroyed city includes the Reichstag, Brandenburger Tor, Adlon, Führerbunker, Unter den Linden, women working in the streets amongst the rubble and Berlin slowly coming back to life. Amazing stuff!
Fantastic Four: Just dropping overnight, Fantastic Four is a contemporary re-imagining of Marvel’s original and longest-running superhero team and centres on four young outsiders who teleport to an alternate and dangerous universe, which alters their physical form in shocking ways. Their lives irrevocably upended, the team must learn to harness their daunting new abilities and work together to save Earth from a former friend turned enemy. With a cast including Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell and Toby Kebbell, Fantastic Four hits cinemas on 7th August 2015. Check it out – this looks awesome and is a definite must-watch!
David Hasselhoff: We love watching David Hasselhoff ride a T-Rex in his new music video for the song ‘True Survivor’ from the Kung Fury soundtrack. Kung Fury is an over-the-top 1980s-style action comedy about a kung fu cop who travels back in time to fight Hitler and was written and directed by David Sandberg who successfully raised the money to finish the film via a Kickstarter campaign. The Hoff has done it again – Love, Love, Love it!
One Bright Dot: ‘One Bright Dot’ is a beautifully animated short film directed by Clément Morin with music by Etienne Forget and sound design by Hugo Thouin. Check it out & enjoy!
Visual Effects: We randomly stumbled across this excellent montage created by Jim Casey showcasing the evolution of visual effects from 1878 to 2014. Check it out – hypnotic!
VHS: We love this awesome series of fake VHS covers imagined by Golem13 as an April Fools Day joke entitled ‘La VHS n’est pas HS’ (VHS is not dead). The modern movies and television series adapted for VHS include everything from ‘Game of Thrones’ to ‘Gravity’ through to ‘Dexter’, ‘Breaking Bad’ and ‘Interstellar’. Very cool!
Jean-Paul Frenay: In order to kick off the ‘OFFF Quebec 2015’ festival, the filmmaker Jean-Paul Frenay has written and directed a surreal yet fascinating visual art, transforming the creations of other artists into a truly hypnotic experience. OFFF comments about Jean-Paul Frenay’s piece “They say you should observe a piece of art deeply to understand its concept and interpret it in your own way, we think that Jean-Paul Frenay took this idea and twisted it into something even bigger than just an interpretation. He made sure to create an introspective ‘sarcastic’ adventure. We were so astonished when we received this and proud to present to you a visual piece communicating social behaviours in different sceneries that will put you into a hypnotic experience.” OFFF is “an entity in continuous transformation, alive and evolutionary. More than a decade ago, it was born as a post-digital culture festival; a meeting place to host contemporary creation through an in depth programme of conferences, workshops and performances by the most relevant artists of our time.” Jean-Paul Frenay is a Film Director/Creative Director and multidisciplinary Visual Artist living in Belgium. Born in Siegen, he spent his youth in Germany before moving to Brussels to begin his studies. His particular vision and the quality of his films made him graduate with honours from the InRaCi Film School. After a specialisation in visual effects, he started his career as a flame artist where he developed his skills which gave him the confidence to start directing. He took his first steps directing commercials and quickly became known for his ability to mix many different techniques, including live action, stop motion animation, CGI, miniatures, motion design, video mapping and photographic artworks. Several of his projects such as his short film ‘Artificial Paradise, Inc.’, the collaborative project ‘Resonance’ or his ‘VW Bluemotion’ and ‘Nike’ commercials gave him the opportunity to be featured in numerous leading national and international industry festivals and publications such as Onedotzero, Stash, IDN, OFFF, Motionographer, Shots and Repérages. Always looking for new challenges, he sometimes works as a video artist in performance pieces creating visuals and interactive installations for plays, choreographies and experimental work. In parallel, he’s developing his photographic skills creating artworks and a personal series and as a passionate musician, he is leading the electro rock project I, The Phoenix which already got great reviews for their first stereoscopic album. It seems Jean-Paul Frenay is always trying to push the limits, changing his style and explore beyond boundaries while continuing to combine storytelling with a strong sense of art direction.
