Modernism..

Modernism lecture

Max nordau (left)
Lumiere brothers first films - ran screaming out of theatre as they though they were going to be run over.

Modernism is a subjective experience and is not a style,

Monet (above)- modernity blurred brush strokes. Paint the experience of the world.  New technology and new buildings allows a new view of the world. Tall buildings - different (higher) view.

Modernism in design. Responds to changes in the world. New is better anti-historicism.
Truth materials tube steel chair not painted to look like Anything, left to look like tubular steel
 Form follows function, good function is more important than colour. It looks good because it works well

This is the Herbert F Johnson museum of art at Cornell University
and its straight clean lines display typical modernist traits

Posters..

No real explanation needed i simply to the films shown above and changed their posters/ logos to redirect the film to a different audience. Mainly the audience has been redirected to people of my age and have used terminology and images which invoke different meanings coming from the films..

History of Advertising.

'An essential component of any competitive market economy: driving growth and dynamism' (Hegarty, 2011, p7


Advertising was greatly effected by the large scale colour printing technology developed in the 19C. This printing break through led to the Lever Brothers soap advertisements. The strategies used point towards the big advertising companies Bernbach and Hegarty. This was the beginning of ad's which used art and technology to display their product to the public. Such as the sunlight soap. The advances in printing means that the packaging was colourful and attracted the eye with the appealing colours

This advert, although not around at the same time as the soap one above still emphasises some of the great things about advertising. The simplicity of the advert means that the product itself doesn't even need to be seen if you have a Gorilla banging on the drums.

Typography..

Typography has been around for thousands of years and dates back to people using it to create seals (wax) and currency.

The Typographical Principal - The act of creating an new text by reusing identical characters.


This was first realised in the Phaistos Disc which was a printing tool invented by the Minoans on Crete between the years of 1850 and 1600BC. Much later on in history the Disc was abandoned and in north western europe small tiles were adopted with individual letters on them and this was used instead,
       Johannes Gutenberg made the next advancement with the mechanical printing systems in the mid-15th century. He used lead based alloys to print the letters onto the page. His creation was was successful it is still being used today. Gutenberg created cheap ways of making letter punches which means people could print vast quantities of text quickly. Gutenberg's designs were instrumental to the start of the printing revolution. 

Early wooden printing press. Despite its simplicity it could produce
up to 240 impressions an hour. 

This was Gutenbergs's printer. Even though wooden printers
are a thing of the past the lead based alloy is still being used today

Avant-Garde..

Avant-Garde is a term in English to describe people or their works which are particularly innovative or experimental, this can be applied across a lot of fields such as art, culture and politics.
        Avant-Garde often invokes controversy as the whole idea of it is to push the boundaries of the norms or art and culture. Avant-Garde happens every day and is also part of the changing education system and its advances in technology. For example art is more and more now being done on computers and electronically. There is now no need to print off posters as we now have electrical advertising boards which can hold thousands of posters on a constant reel for a relatively low cost in comparison to the money wasted on paper, glue and man power.

This the 'Matrix of Sensations' by Donald Kuspit and basically ratifies everything i have said about avant-garde.
This painting means nothing to someone who doesn't know the story or who isn't the artist themselves. Very abstract
and uses colours to be colours not make up the shade of someones face. 

      Avant-Garde can be traced back to the start of surrealism which was essentially the start of all things  controversial considering it was a very controversial movement anyway. The term was originally used to describe the first line of an army or the advanced-gaurd. These were the first soldiers to enter the fray and if we parallel this to artists they were the artists who were trying new things and breaking boundaries of normal social and cultural conventions. The Avant-Garde artists often come up with weird and wonderful creations but now a days the weird is more than the wonderful. Especially in fashion costumes and dresses are getting even more insane

Lady Gaga Turned up in a dress made of meat, to the MTV  music and video awards

Italian Cinema..

''Film is not the art of scholars, but of illiterates''
- Werner Herzog

Federico Fellini was a script writer/ director who was born on 20th January, 1920 in Rimini. Fellini was one of the most influential directors of the 20th century and made a significant mark of the industry with films like 'La Dolce Vita' in 1960 and '8 and a Half' in '63. He also stressed that there was a lot more to Italian films than just the film itself. He mentioned the use of economics and historical references and to know the right audience.

Prima Visione - Upper class, sophisticated and the audience chose a film to watch
Seconda Visione - Middle class still as sophisticated as Prima the audience selects a film
Terza Visione - In less populated areas, cheaper tickets, audience goes to see a film out of habit.

Old Italian cinemas from the '60s 

Italian cinema was much different in the 70s (Terza Visione) to how we are used to watching a film in the Uk, both in the 70s and now. Going to the cinema was a social occasion and people would talk eat and drink during the film and it would be essentially like going to a restaurant with a film in the background. People would just drop in at random times regardless of how much or little of the film was left. People would meet friends catch up and a lot of the time the film would be ignored but served its purpose as background noise. 

            The working class film industry was also needed a lot of films to keep it going which would mean that most people would go to the cinema every night. But as i said it was not to just watch films it was like meeting up at your favourite cafe for a drink. 

Filone/Genre..

Giallo - detective novels 

Spaghetti Westerns 

Poliziottesco - police procedural. 

These were the main genres around at the time and this was the case because this is what the public was most interested in. The 'Mafia/Mob' were always a shadow in italy and making films about these people means people can experience them without having to be killed by the mob. 

             

The UFO

These are some Maya screenshots of my almost finished UFO to go in the crash site on my game level. I say almost finished because i may change my mind about the colours and need to add bump maps. But so far i'm pleased with the results.

Graffiti / Street Art

Graffiti is not a new thing like the bold letters on the side of bridges, designs of this nature have been around for thousands of years by way of prehistoric cave paintings. There were some Drawings and paintings on cave walls from the Paleolithic period (17, 300 years old) discovered in 1940 by some teenagers. These paintings depict everyday life such as hunting. 

These are obviously not as complex as some of the intricate designs that there are today but it shows us that the want to record experiences and thoughts so your experience can be passed on. Not so much today but here was where it all started.
        Graffiti also also popped up in roman history with markings made on the walls in the ancient city of Pompey. The romans carved what appears to be small human figures and some latin scrawled over the top.

Killroy/Mr. Chad was a worldwide graffiti phenomenon of which no
one is sure of the exact origin

Graffiti is everywhere but we only think of graffiti as the sprayed paint on the concrete walls. Graffiti is in adverts. The Vauxhall corsa with the moving graffiti on the walls which follow the car. The graffiti is obviously not actually painted but even technology which doesn't use paint is inspired by wall art.

Title Sequence..

We have been asked for our PPP module to essentially do a title sequence but changing colours, darkness and contrast to affect the message that the opening scene gives across. For example the opening to spider man 3 has a very foreboding soundtrack which makes us think theres something wrong or something evil on the way, however if we were to change it to a up beat piano tune then the whole mood the dark brooding colours have captured is lost in an instant.

So far im thinking about changing a movie title scene to be viewed in another vein. To start im going to experiment by changing colour, contrast etc on some movie posters, starting with inception

French New Wave Cinema 1950s - 1960s

Modernist film is very much like in some ways modernist art by way of saying it focuses on only doing films which are non-fiction, nothing fictional or fantastical made its way into the films of this era. One such modernist film maker: Andre Bazin believed all film should be about real life and events that happen every day. This was eve taken to the extreme by having longer takes and fragmented editing to further make it as real as the Auteur can.
             What Bazin says is a bit extreme but films like this or scenes like this have been very good in the past. Such as Reservoir Dogs' opening scene is shown in a coffee shop with the main characters just talking. This is one of the best scenes in a film and Tarantino captures the beauty in conversation so well on film.
     Agnes Varda started the wave with La Pointe Courte which was about a couple living in a small fishing town working through their relationship. This small summary of La Pointe Courte is a shining example of the French New Wave. The simplistic style, setting and story are all what Andre Bazin thought film should be as well as her film be vey modernistic anyway.

Varda also scrapped the track and dolly for her films and used a camera mounted on to a car bonnet.The one above is obviously not the one she used but you can see how far that simple idea has come by looking at the image above. 

        Prohibition and mafia themed films were also very popular at the time. One such FNW inspired film is Mickey One where a night club comedian goes on the run from the mob directed by Arthur Penn.