AWT FILMS - BLOG

The Future of Cinema: You heard it here first.

Ever since Avatar came out, the buzz word has been 3D.

Cinema progresses technically, and with progression come new experiences and new stories to tell to entertain the viewer.

Let's put this into perspective.

1900: First there was the moving image. People worked out you could make little films, though they were silent.

1920's: Then came the microphone. These silent films were suddenly obsolete. Why would you have no talking or sound effects on a film, when in the real world footsteps make a sound, and people have conversations?!

But there was still something missing, despite this wonderful sound, the film was in black and white.

But the world is colourful? Objects all around us have colour, pretty much nothing is pure black and white.

1940's: So along comes colour film. Another little tentative step towards the goal of making film as realistic as possible.

1950's: And then, at around the same time as colour (few are aware of this) 3D came along! So we're nearly there in the effort for realism in the cinema.

It should be noted that in parallel with all these progressions in viewing technology, that sets were becoming more realistic, directors and cinematographers were working out how to make a film look very real (with that added cinematic element of course).

3D unfortunately didn't last very long in the 50's because the viewing technology was pretty awful.

However with recent developments in projection 3D is having a renaissance. James Cameron, a major figure in the adoption of 3D by the film industry, has reinvigorated interest, and 3D films are now paying the studios back with huge rises in audience attendance because people are going for the 'experience'. 3D is a way of getting people to go out to the cinema, instead of waiting for the DVD. (The profits are higher for cinemas and films are judged on audience attendance, not dvd sales).

However, as 3D televisions become a viable product, it won't be long before we see 3D versions of films on blu-ray discs. In fact, Avatar has three releases of the dvd. The first is just the film, the second has special features, and the third will be 3D, so pulling people into the cinema for the 3D effect is only short term.

3D also has drawbacks, because after the initial excitement of the 3D effect in a film, people actually settle down and forget about it and instead get absorbed into the film - like any other. The film industry is aware that although 3D will probably become a major feature of big-budget Hollywood films, the hype will die down and it will become a standard, just like a colour film was in the 70's.

So what's next for film?

I wish I could give it a definitive name. But I can only describe it.

Video games in recent times have in effect turned into interactive films. Graphics technology is fast approaching a point where - in around three years - we will be seeing graphics as good as Gollum in Lord of the Rings. Semi-photo-real graphics which the player can manipulate in real-time around a virtual world. Think the realism of Avatar, but you can control where and what happens.

Not only will graphics improve to a huge extent, but if you look at what is happening in video games, story lines are becoming more and more developed, with hundreds of different possible strands that the player can take.

New artistic opportunities will be found and pioneers of this technology will discover incredible things, artistically, visually, and narratively. New technology always opens new doors.

Sometime, in certainly the next 10 years, we're going to see some sort of video game/film convergence when films become not only highly realistic visually, but highly interactive where the viewer is controlling how the films storyline develops. What will be really interesting is how these narratives will develop, and how a viewer would control how they develop. Would the viewer be part of the film, or would they be another character, or would they be seeing the film unfold from 'outside'? And to what extent would the viewer be in control of what is happening?

How this will be done is a real mystery. Will it be like video games are today - in that people sit down and control everything through a handset, or what?

What can be almost certain is that this convergence is bound to happen soon, a new form of entertainment will be born, opening up new opportunities for real innovation and radical new thinking in the entertainment industry. Like the iPad will revolutionise computing.

As a viewer, all you can do is sit back and wait for something that will blow your mind, a lot more than 3D ever will.

Abstraction: When People Run Out of Ideas

The last series of the popular television show 'Ashes to Ashes', about a detective who has mysteriously gone back to 1983 after being shot, is a classic example of what happens when people run out of ideas: they go abstract.

The first two series were fine, fun, entertaining and had an element of mystery that the viewer was trying to work out throughout the series, and then came to a satisfactory conclusion at the end when everything was made clear. The last and final series of the show however, was so hard to understand, so 'abstract', that it even took a newspaper to write an article explaining to its readers what on earth had actually happened in the series, and what on earth that ending had to do with... anything?

Why was the series so hard to understand? Why was the storyline so abstract?

The writers had run out of ideas.

In fact, all the way through history you see abstraction appearing whenever the ideas dry up. When people have done everything there is to do, they start doing things nobody had until then thought about - because they were simply crap ideas, they weren't even ideas, they were just crap. It goes round in circles like fashion, but sometimes that circle has a huge kink in it, and before we get back to what came first, everyone has to hop on a little bus that detours to look at the beauty of nothing.

Which by the way, isn't very beautiful.

I'm thinking about the Renaissance and Mannerism here. When Michelangelo had designed and created some groundbreaking works which looked amazing and fitted in with the classical style, he ran out of new ideas. So he started messing around with architectural elements, putting niches and columns in the wrong places, adding unnecessary details and subverting traditions. The result wasn't anything that looked any better than what had gone previously, all he created was odd rooms that were unsettling on the viewer and, simply, didn't work.

But he did this because he didn't want to keep doing the same old thing - even if it looked better than his later work.

The classical architects from Roman times had worked out what dimensions worked on the eye and what didn't. There isn't much scope for development if people all keep having normal human brains.

This was called Mannerism, and appeared all over Italian art in the 16th century, characterised by the heightened use of colour, the elongated human figure, and the exaggeration of everything.

Same thing with Titian. You take a look at his early work, its neat and contained, but as his style progresses, the more and more abstract his style becomes. To the point that one of his late works could be mistaken for an entirely abstract painting if you were to zoom in on any area of the work where you would find wild and weird colours and broad brush strokes.

Take this theory forward a few hundred years to the beginning of the 20th century and you find exactly the same thing again.

Monet makes a storm in the art world with his work 'Impressionist Sunrise'. Why was that such a storm? When you consider what the French art establishment wanted to look at, uniform neat and precise paintings in a very traditional style which harks back to the Renaissance masters, you discover Monets impressionist style with heightened colours and brush strokes was very revolutionary.

And as this new impressionist style developed slowly the brush strokes become broader, even more free, and the colours become further distorted. We have reached pure abstraction. The impressionists had run out of ideas. There was no where else for impressionism to go.

And ever since the impressionists ran out of ideas, abstraction has never gone further than Rothco or Warhol. Who both managed to create paintings which were just one colour. Amazing. You can't get any further abstract than a single colour on a canvas.

So where else does abstraction exist?

It exists everywhere. Architecture, painting, sculpture and music. Most especially in the modern western world where the arts have 1000 years of progression. And now the ideas have run rather dry.

Music provides an excellent example of abstraction. Through the ages, before the 20th century, music followed conventional forms. These forms developed, new cadences gained popularity, and much like all the other arts, styles followed fashion.

But in the 19th century, composers suddenly found that there were no new musical forms to be discovered. There were no new instrumental inventions. Everything was the same.

A dilema for some visionary composers. Take 'The Rite of Spring' by Stravinsky. He took the helm and decided to use the bassoon out of its normal tonal range. By doing so he achieved a new sound, and was able to exploit the new sound for compositional purpose. The Rite of Spring was a ballet, and not only the music was going someway towards abstraction, but so was the choreography of dance.

As music continues to 'develop' further (or become increasingly difficult to listen to without ear muffs), modern composers have had to rework what was conventional, creating whole new scales called modes on which to base their compositions. Or just slam together whatever and present it as music.

Thomas Ades is a particular pioneer of modern music. However, modern compositions do not follow any symmetry, because of course all the symmetrical forms have already been worked out, the result is that most modern classical music is near on unlistenable. The reason why modern classical music is unlistenable is because the brain continually looks for symmetry in everything it sees or hears, thats why the Colosseum in Rome looks great, and the Lloyds Building in London looks shit.

So why does Thomas Ades write music that makes no sense?

Modern Classical music has run out of ideas, and lots of rich 'cultured' people must pretend that what makes no sense is pure genius.

In fact the only reason abstraction exists and continues to thrive is because people are worried that if they say they don't like it they lose their friends. You could say it's a bit of a class issue.

But the honest truth is, nobody really likes abstraction - at least abstraction that looks and sounds crap - and people like Thomas Ades have conned us all into thinking it's something to be marvelled at and admired - even appreciated! Mad.

I know people don't like modern music, because I also know we all have similar brains, and as mentioned before, the brain seeks out symmetry and finds abstraction difficult to deal with.

What about popular music?

You remember that band Blur? They did a few good albums, produced a new genre in music and wrote some cracking songs.

But again, they ran out of ideas. They took a trip to the middle east and recorded a load of rubbish in an effort to find a new sound and somehow progress musically as a band. Shame it never really works when you literally have no more ideas. People still believed this was a great work - because people like to pretend somewhere in abstraction is genius.

Take the Rolling Stones' 'Exile on Main Street'. That album is 'hard to listen to'. There aren't any good songs on it. But still, films are made about it, people hoot about it being a work of genius. But secretly, everybody knows, its not actually very good. When writing the songs they resorted to writing random phrases out and sticking them together in an exhaustive effort to create some sort of song. The Rolling Stones, had run out of ideas.

The Who released an album recently. No one bought it. It was abstract because they'd run out of ideas, ideas which only existed when in their youth.

Paul Macartney also released a new album recently, another abstract work, and like the stones, read out random bits of poetry in an effort to create songs. The fact is, he's already written everything he can think of. And the only way to write anything else, is to make it abstract.

But thats not to say abstraction is necessarily bad. Monet's paintings look good, Rothco's works look good, Albert Irvin's paintings look good too, and there are numerous examples of modern architecture that look good. Abstraction comes in different forms, but strangely in music, abstraction is the hardest to take. Sometimes abstraction can be original, it can be used to deconstruct things to their simplest form, and of course there are multiple examples one could provide of abstraction which does have meaning. But usually only early abstraction has meaning, later abstraction is just a lack of ideas.

In a lot of art films also, directors rely on abstraction to convey what isn't really there, but manage to con people into thinking what actually is rubbish, is in fact incredible genius.

There is one film however, which on initial inspection is 'abstract', 2001: A Space Odyssey.

But this film is just minimalist. The film is a work of genius, not mistaken genius like a lot of other abstract work, but incredible genius in the clever use of metaphors and a very solid narrative underpinning the visually stunning film. Thats one of the reasons I admire this film so much, because what Kubrick did was strip everything down to it's simplest form. What one director would have done using a two minute montage showing the progression from ape to space, Kubrick did with a single shot. Thats not abstraction, that is pure genius.

We have one of the finest murder scenes in cinematic history in this film also. No stabbing, no blood, just simple beeping sounds accompanied by the familiar image of a graph showing heart rate etc slowing down to a single dead line. No embellishment, no explanation, no movement, just a series of shots to show the simplest murder scene ever.

To avoid running out of ideas, people invent. Take 3D for example. Television manufacturers are just catching on after developing HD televisions. It's the next big thing, and pretty much the only way television sets can go. After high quality images, comes a new type of image.

It's now just a question of what comes after 3D? Probably 5K screens (thats about as detailed a picture as you can possibly get and what a lot of films are now being shot in with digital technology). And what comes after that? Who knows. But because televisions are commercial, you can bet your bottom dollar they won't touch abstraction with a barge pole.

But in the mean time, I think abstraction has gotten boring. Art is moving forwards again, and it's past that kink in the circle. Look forward to more conventional painting, visually stunning films and installations, which are accessible, skilful and symmetrical and follow what the brain wants to see. Not what the artist pretends you should be seeing.

(additional content from Livvy Harman)

Music for film: The new Classical music

Every now and then, somebody will say "oh classical music is boring, nobody listens to it anymore - let alone writes it anymore!"

Hello? Did I hear that right? Nobody listens to classical music anymore? Nobody writes classical music anymore?

I'm sorry, but I think who ever said that, just didn't have their hearing aid in the right place when they last went to the cinema.

Lord of the Rings, Star wars, every single Speilberg film, Avatar, you name it they've got it. It's called classical music - or as most would call it "film music". But its plain and clear for everyone to hear, they all use large orchestras, and they all could be compared to works by Chopin and Beethoven. Composers like James Horner, or John Williams are all classical music composers - working with large orchestras, writing themes and using the expression in classical music to follow a narrative on screen.

What made me write this blog was walking past a poster on the tube. "Star Wars, projected in High Definition, accompanied Live by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Not to be missed!"

This has been done with Lord of the Rings as well. People may think this old style of music is dead and boring, but there we have it - millions upon millions are paying good money everyday to go and listen to it! They're even paying to go and listen to it live!

Playing a film accompanied by a live orchestra. What does that remind you of? OPERA! It's just the same! The only difference is that its progressed in such a way, and advertised in such a way many people just don't realise it. Just like my article on Film being the new Art; Film Music is the new Classical music.

Everyone knows Hedwigs Theme from Harry Potter, dum dum dee dee dee doo doo doooo dum dee dee doo doo doooo. Played by a massive orchestra, and not unlike a theme by the classical composer Strauss. And everyone likes that, and if you've ever tuned in to Classic FM, watched Harry Potter in the Cinema or on DVD, everyone listens to it too!

You could say the same for the Bond films, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Titanic.

A lot of people just don't really realise this, and insist on not listening to classical music because it's not cool and for boring old people. But the jokes on them, because we all go the cinema, and these screenings with live orchestras are always sell-outs!

However, what is formally known as 'Modern Classical Music', really is a load of **** that one could easily find a child playing by putting their arm across all the keys on a piano. No melody, not much fun to listen to, and just like Modern art, the emphasis has been put on the 'story' behind the work, instead of the work itself. And a small minority of clever people think this is something to be rewarded and played. Bit of a shame really. It'd be far nicer if some of these modern composers were forced to write music for film - then we might get something descent!

So there you have it. Music for film, is todays equivalent of classical music from centuries past. Enjoy it.

Alexander

Progressions in projection

You've seen a lot of projectors around recently haven't you? Yes, so have I.

But people aren't really exploiting projectors for what they can do, in my opinion at least.

Projectors and the surfaces they project onto have innumerable possibilities for new looks and incredible styles, and I believe this is going to be a massive boom in the presentation of media and viewing solutions.

Just recently I got a commission to do up the lighting at a shop called Whittawer in Oxford. It was looking pretty drab, and no one came in because it looked closed. So I installed new lights, put in a great window display etc etc, but one little idea I had was to use a very innovative idea of mine to create a large digital window backdrop display using a very advanced fabric, and an untapped technique of projection. I'm not gonna give all my ideas away here, but its a technique used in the film industry way back in the 1930-80's in film - so right down my street here in film technology.

This allowed Whittawer to show their promo videos on a large vibrant screen that attracts the attention of passers by. And now projection technology is so cheap and advanced its crazy that this new digital display hasn't already been used anywhere else!

There are draw backs of course, but the fact is that this innovation in display solutions could really revolutionise window displays as we know it.

You could say "why not just use Tv screens?" well yes, good point, you could - but you tell me how you would fill 3 metres by 2 metres with an entire screen surface? You just can't - they don't make screens that big! - unless you like the idea of spending god knows what on about 7 big expensive screens with black divisions between each screen and the requisite of an advanced computer system to synchronise the image between all the different screens.

With this innovation of ours, you can fill whatever space you need with an entire unbroken image that could transform your window display and for example create animated snow scenes that can 'continue' the shop display further creating a new world in the window. All you need is AWT Film's expertise and experiance of how to make this all happen.

So AWT Films will be very soon taking this idea round various companies and selling display solutions advice and media content advice - because, after all, AWT Films is a production company!

This has the potential to be really big. And AWT Films is right at the precipice of a revolution using the combination of projection technology, the latest fabrics, film techniques and creative and media input that could really change the way we all shop.

But its not just shops. We're exploring clubs, events, homes, company foyers...

No one else is doing this. And no one else can do it.

This is just the start.

This is, AWT Films Display Solutions.

Stay tuned.

Alexander

FILM vs ART

I think many would agree that contemporary art holds little meaning (other than to the artist) and shows little skill. It is easy to compare a work by Damien Hirst to a work by the Renaissance painter Rafael. One shows little artistic or technical merit, and the other shows incredible technical ability and a brilliant artistic mind.

This could be because Damien Hirst was never taught nor interested in technical ability, however perhaps he could quite possibly be the next Rafael - if only he could actually paint anything.

It's easy to see that all great artists are bubbling with ideas, but with the advent of pop art it is not the patron who is in control of what he buys. More so it is the artist who is in control of what the patron should buy. Artists now make work for themselves and then try to sell it. Commissions are rare, and it is artists who catch the eye and can sell their product who attract the wealthy patron. The result is art has become a fashion. Most contemporary art does not hold any value once the name of the artist fades, and if the market collapses. A Rafael however will always hold its value (though it may fluctuate) because any one of us can recognise and appreciate the technical skill that is hard to find, and very unique to Rafael - even if his name was wiped from the records and no longer held as museum worthy, anyone of us would still see value in it.

Though a series of coloured dots on a white background, created by a studio assistant and not the artist whose name is attached will never hold a value as a work of art in itself, and will only ever be as much as the market (those few very wealthy individuals) will pay, not for the actual art itself, but for the name.

And thats why if Damien Hirst ever falls out of favour with the art world and loses his high value as an artist, his work will in an instant become completely and utterly worthless.

Why does his work become worthless? The answers simple. Most of his work doesn't look very good, has little meaning to anyone other than the artist, and shows little personal technical skill, and only his good business sense to get other people to make his works for him.

So why, you may ask am I talking about two artists in relation to film?

Film IS art. Film is todays version of what we used to call art. Ok, most of it is highly populist, but the fact remains that film requires huge technical skill and ability. Especially in huge Hollywood special effects films like Avatar, as well as many others, like art films. But lets face it. Art house cinema has as much value as art as contemporary art, because its undeniably dull, lacks story and is generally self-indulgent. However art house cinema has far stronger foundations because a lot of it generally looks very good.

But I digress.

Avatar is the accumulation of some of the greatest artists in the world, all working together to create a moving narrative. If you stay for the Avatar credits, what are most of them for? Artists! Rotoscope artists, graphic artists, render artists, movement artists... Ok, they're not artists like we call Rafael, but then if Rafael was alive today, he would probably be working in film as a graphic artist. A graphic artist in a film like Avatar quite literally draws on computer each and every single frame of the film, using state-of-the-art technology to draw in entire worlds.

What about the live models? Well they're still there too! They're called actors, and now they have to speak and move! And with Avatar, a technology called 'Motion Capture' was used to capture the actors movements digitally - much like Rafael looking at a model and precisely getting the right mark on the right place.

The Dutch artists of the 17th century spent years of their lives on works that tried to emulate to the smallest detail real life in a technique called tromp'oeil. Artists all the way through to the invention of photography tried to create real objects on the flat board. The difference now? That flat board is now called the cinema screen.

And that tromp'oiel those Dutch artists were trying to do? They did a great job, but technology limited their ability! Art is technology, and the oil paint and brush limited their ability to add the finest detail and colour. Todays technology allows an artist to create a photo-real picture in ultra-high definition, then make it move, and then to top it all off, make it appear in 3 dimensions - the ultimate illusion.

But all these visual effects are an accumulation in themselves from years and years of refining and skill. 'Fifth Element', made in the mid-nineties, had the first sequences of visual effects created on computer in the form of a car chase in a futuristic city. Now we see these 'primitive' visual effects they look like computer game graphics, but the point is visual effects in film are incredibly difficult to make - photo-realistically - and it has taken almost 20 years for technology, human skill and knowledge, building up from knowledge learnt in film after film, to reach a point at which almost an entire film can be created on computer - and you'd never know which bit. Seamless integration between art and reality.

So these graphic artists, directors, and concept artists are the REAL artists of our time. Films today may have input from a huge number of artists, but even Rafael had studio assistants who would have had input into creating his works.

So why do we generally not think of a film like Avatar as a piece of art?

It's too popular, its on too large a scale, and of course it's called a film and shown in a cinema.

If only we could rename the cinema an art gallery? Cinema is the logical step in every way, from a static narrative religious work of art made in the 15th century hanging in the National Gallery, to the moving narrative of secular art being shown in your local cinema.

Time can only tell I suppose, but the fact is one can draw almost every parallel between the artists of the past, and the filmmakers (and technical workers in film) of today.

Something which cannot be said of the contemporary artists.