Kyle Cooper lecture

I just finished watching a lecture by the one and only Kyle Cooper - a man who, in my opinion, reinvigorated main title design, on the Boston University web site. It's from November of 2010.

I first noticed his work on the movie se7en, as did pretty much everyone on the planet, and after seeing that particular piece I took notice of everything he was doing afterwards. But as I watched this lecture I was surprised to see pieces I hadn't been aware of.

I tried my hand at embedding the video but it didn't take (the BU site says I can share but it won't let me), I ended up just doing a screen cap so please don't try clicking the image up top. You should be able to check it out if you go here: BUniversity

So sit back, relax and enjoy.

2011 Calgary Expo Volunteer poster

The Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo is beginning the process of recruiting volunteers for this years Expo and I was asked to come up with a poster idea. I had designed a series of propaganda posters that I was really excited about for the Expo last year but they never saw the light of day except as re-purposed graphics for the various volunteer, media, celebrity badges…maybe this year we can use them for their intended purpose. But in the mean time I decided to pull this one together based on an image that was shot for the upcoming outdoor posters that I worked on, designed to announce a portion of the guest line up (I'll blog about that another time).

Can you tell I like propaganda posters.

I had this idea in my head of doing an Uncle Sam style poster ever since the photo shoot for the above mentioned outdoor series - our model had an amazing, screen accurate, ANH Vader costume (once he was in it I'm afraid I geeked out a bit). I got him to do a couple of "I want you" type poses which worked out really well. I used most of the same elements on the previously mentioned poster series, so on this new recruitment poster I decided to take a cue from a series of posters made last year to promote the movie Kick Ass, which gave the imagery a bit of a painterly feel.

I quite like how it turned out, and I hope that we end up using it somewhere. We'll see. But for now, at least I have it on my blog.

Tokyo Story

The Calgary Cinematheque will be presenting the film Tokyo Story, by Yasujiro Ozu, on February 1st and 5th, and here's the poster I designed for the presentation.

It's a movie that will stick with you after viewing.

I have to admit that when I saw it I didn't think too much of it. I can't say it's a film everyone will like, Hell, I don't think I really like it, but I am glad I saw it, and as I watched it I could see things in it that I could relate to, things like how, no matter what, families do grow apart in varying degrees. You try to keep the family ties, you want to keep the family ties, but sometimes, they just come untied. We all grow into our own lives, and it's up to us to make the best of the time we have. At least that's what I got from the film.

Like Joni says: "Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone".

Stanley Kubrick's - The Lord of the Rings Part 2

So here is my book end piece that I did for the current Super Punch contest. This time the focus is on The Beatles. Composition-wise I like it, I also like some of the textures I was able to achieve, but I think I might try re-doing it someday down the road, tighten things up a bit and maybe attempt a Drew Struzan style of poster (one of my favorite poster artists ever).

Stanley Kubrick's - The Lord of the Rings

Super Punch is having an art contest this month and I thought I would throw my design hat in the ring, so to speak. The project is to design a movie poster for a project that might have been - based on the fact that John Lennon had apparently wanted to do a Beatles version of Lord of the Rings to be directed by Stanley Kubrick. So I was trying to decide whose ego would win out on this dream film project, and inevitably it would be Stanley's. The Beatles would have hired him, but it would be HIS film and I don't think he would have wanted a picture of the Fab Four on his poster just to put bums in seats.

So I decided to incorporate Kubrick's love of san serif type and simple iconic imagery, I wanted it to have a little Saul Bass flavour and I also decided to play with the billing block at the bottom to incorporate some of the people, both actors and technical staff, that Kubrick either worked with in the past, or wanted to work with on his failed attempt at a Napoleon film (which was being developed around the same time), I also wanted to include The Beatles good luck charm in the form of Victor Spinetti. And I figured that it would be a United Artists film since The Beatles were still under contract to give them another film.

A lot of fun, I may have over analyzed it all but that's what I do sometimes and that is where the fun is at. I hope to be able to do up another one, before the clock runs down, that would highlight The Beatles - you know, bookend Kubrick's ego with theirs (although I don't think The Beatles would have brought an ego to the project, but I'm sure the film company might have said "where the hell are The Beatles?").

Ugetsu

The Calgary Cinematheque is presenting a wonderful film by Kenji Mizuguchi from 1953, titled Ugestu. It's a film that deals with greed, ambition, love and loss. Until I was asked to create this poster I had never seen this film before and I really enjoyed it.

I have to say that I am thrilled to be able to work with the Cinematheque on their posters. I feel the same way now as I did when I was in art college. Back then I would talk to friends and they would recommend films that I had never heard of. Often times I would be pleasantly surprised, sometimes I would be amazed and sometimes I would wonder what the hell they were on, but I digress. So the Cinematheque is like a friend asking me if I have ever seen (insert movie name here)? Sometimes, with a smile, I can say yes and I know exactly how I want to represent it. Sometimes, with I smile, I say no…and that's the challenge.

Through the Olive Trees

A recent poster design for the Calgary Cinematheque presentation of Through the Olive Trees. It's the story of a director attempting to make a film about two people who marry shortly after a devastating  earthquake destroys most of their village. As it turns out, the male lead actor that the director has hired is in love with, and wants to marry, the lead actress.

I came away from it feeling that the director was somewhat like a god figure in the film, manipulating both the movie he is making, and his actors. Which is how I came about the image I created.

While I did enjoy some of the performances, and I appreciated the ambiguous ending, I have to be truthful here and say that it's not really my cup of tea. That's just my opinion though.

The Wizard of Oz

The Calgary Cinematheque is showing the Wizard of Oz on the big screen on December 18th, and I wanted to represent the movie in a way I hadn't seen before. I had already created a poster with the Wicked Witch of the East under something not long ago with my Fairy Tale Fiascos poster for the Alberta Dance Theatre, so my wife suggested I do a travel poster and I really liked that idea. All Roads Lead to the Emerald City was the approach I decided to take. A second version was suggested, again by my wife, to remove the characters and the cliffs – I have to say that I like that one the most right now.

After I had presented the poster with the Dorothy and the gang, I was asked to make the text at the bottom more prominent, which made sense because they want people to bring food donations to the Food Bank, so I decided to ditch the "All Roads…" and the "See the one, the only…" lines to accommodate other information that would allow me to bump up the bottom text a bit more. I don't think it has the same travel poster feel, I'm still happy with it, but I kind of like these better.

Here is the final one by the way.

METROPOLIS

Last night was the Alberta premiere of Fritz Lang's masterpiece Metropolis. It was presented by the Calgary Cinematheque, with live musical accompaniment by the world renowned Alloy Orchestra.

All I can say is WOW!

This was the first film I have ever seen with live music and, I'm not sure but, I think I'm converted.

To see the film (I have always been a fan of this movie and the image of the robot, in particular, has stuck with me over the years), now as close to Lang's vision as possible, was amazing- there were only a few minutes worth of intertitles explaining some missing scenes - but to see it with the Alloy Orchestra made for an incredible experience, you could not just hear the music you could feel it. Here is a quote from their website: "An unusual combination of found percussion and state-of-the-art electronics gives the Orchestra the ability to create any sound imaginable. Utilizing their famous "rack of junk" and electronic synthesizers, the group generates beautiful music in a spectacular variety of styles. They can conjure up a French symphony or a simple German bar band of the 20's. The group can make the audience think it is being attacked by tigers, contacted by radio signals from Mars or swept up in the Russian Revolution."

Before the performance began I got to meet the Orchestra and they signed a copy of the poster I designed (see above), which was very cool, so you can guess what will be going on my office wall as soon as I get it framed.

The orchestra has been to Calgary before but it took a film like Metropolis to draw my attention to these very talented performers. All I can say is that the next time they come here I will be in the front row of whatever film they are accompanying.

I also hope to check out a few more films with live music in the future since there is a theater in town that does this every once in a while around January, so I will be on the lookout for that.

Rainn Wilson: SoulPancake

There is a brand new book by Rainn Wilson, Devon Gundry, Golriz Lucina, and Shabnam Mogharabi called SoulPancake, based on the web site of the same name, available at Amazon (com and ca) and Rainn Wilson put a challenge out to the Threadless community to create a cover. Here is mine…and no, I wasn't inspired by the grilled cheesus episode of Glee. If anything I would say it's more like the Jesus in Surrey naan bread, or any other image of a religious figure found in everyday things, that's what made me think of this. And while I was sitting there thinking "damn, this is too obvious" I also had to say "what the hell".

The photo is a royalty free image from Shutterstock, and Mr. Wilson's image was supplied. Don't shoot me because of the crudeness of my photoshop, there was an extremely tight deadline imposed on the project…nothing like fire under the ass to get one moving.

The long list of entrants can be found in Rainn Wilson's profile on Threadless (mine is on page 3).