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a while back i came head to head with the work of one of my design heroes, eike k?nig. i’d been asked to redesign the logo for the german band booka shade, after many years of eike having been their go-to design guy. it was frankly a terrifying prospect. whilst i was quite sure eike would probably never see the work i did, i would be immediately compared to him by both the band and their large fan base. settling down to create the logo i realized of course that you just do the best thing you can, and make sure that at the very least it’s nothing like the other guy’s work.

when matthew pusti of makeup and vanity set asked me to do the cover for the soundtrack EP to anthony scott burns‘ forthcoming sci-fi short, manifold, i sighed a similar breath of despair. why? because ash thorp had done the film’s poster and of course once again i would have to be compared to someone of considerable status in the graphics world. suffice to say here’s the poster ash had made –

turning away from it, going for several walks listening to the soundtrack and spinning the film’s ideas around in my head, i realized of course that ash had the visual concept wrapped up. particularly in terms of subtly explaining what the film was about, but not so much as to spoil the film. every idea i wrote down or got momentarily excited about felt too similar to what he was saying with his treatment.

what he didn’t have however, that of course applied in particular to the job i had to do, were the tracks on the EP that had remained unreleased up until now. these were tracks that had been written for, but not actually used in the film. in particular the track ‘yearling,’ which featured original foley work, vied for my attention every time i put the record on.

mulling over these differences i decided to take a different route, one that i’d been flirting with for a while but never really had the chance to test out – a route i like to call the ‘polish’ route. now i must stress this is a route i still haven’t fully explored, but the work i was to do on manifold?certainly gave me the impetus to do so. it is afterall a firmer step in that direction, and excitingly so.

after watching the film several times i began to feel a tingling, almost aching pain in my face. furthermore i began to think about how much value we put in the face and what it means in terms of not just our identity, but our chances in life. how being beautiful can both be a blessing and a curse, and how in many regards you can either be born with a ticket on a certain kind of ride, or a ticket on an entirely different ride. all of this based on your face and how it develops as an image to others.

i then started thinking about how technology is really quite an organic extension of the human form and mindset, and that it wouldn’t be too long before these things merge imperceptibly. in fact i’d written an essay for the IFP on this subject just a few weeks before, so to say the idea was on my mind a little was an understatement. the sense of menace one feels as we start to worry about the increasing amount that technology governs our lives, is really just a greater understanding of our own constant need for distraction from ourselves.

this is when i started to realize what i had to do for?manifold, and furthermore i knew exactly where i was going to start. skipping through the film to a very particular shot, i cut it out and began work. i had to make an image that encapsulated, for me at least, that sense of terror beneath the ever prettier face of technology, and at the same time capture that actual physical ache i felt in my own face after watching the film. as i worked i began to realize that i was also edging closer to this aforementioned ‘polish’ route.

now, by ‘polish’ route i of course mean making a film poster that uses little or none of the imagery from the film and instead offers a more emotional, impressionistic interpretation of its narrative. the eastern-european film posters that have been created in support of US films (with particular reference to poland), are a powerful lesson in creating an image that, to paraphrase jim steinman, you’ll never know the meaning of, but you’ll know how it feels. much in the same way a piece of music moves you in a fashion you cannot put into words, eastern-european posters often remove all trace of the film’s visual, its recognizable characters and its story, and delve headfirst into making an entirely original image. an image that still conveys the film’s ideas, but often in a darker and less conventional style. consequently it’s this approach that has come to feel so incredibly liberating to designers working in US and UK markets. to quote?brandon schaefer?on the subject?–?”there?s something captivating about those things that feel inseparable from a haze of abandon, existing to give hope to the creatively forlorn.”

left: philip gips, US. right: wieslaw walkuski, poland.

when i presented the final cover to matthew pusti, he said it was perfect. i know he would have let me take it even further into the horrifying abstract had i wanted to, but then we both agreed that it was as important to keep things familiar this time around. after all it wasn’t our film and we could just as easily go to poland next time.

you can buy the full manifold soundtrack here, and you can watch a trailer for the film here.

if you spend enough time working on the internet and living up to today’s social networking standards, you certainly begin to feel your mind ache in a way that’s perhaps hard to put your finger on. my latest IFP essay is a brief examination of why this might be and some musings on the future of this situation. here’s an excerpt –

“in 1983 donatella baglivo?filmed an interview?with the russian filmmaker andrei tarkovsky. it was an extensive interview that covered a number of subjects, and fortunately so as tarkovsky was to die but three years later. about an hour into the piece baglivo asks Tarkovsky what advice he had for young people, to which he responded with the following –

‘i think i?d like to say only that they should learn to be alone and try to spend as much time as possible by themselves. i think one of the faults of young people today is that they try to come together around events that are noisy, almost aggressive at times. this desire to be together in order to not feel alone is an unfortunate symptom, in my opinion. every person needs to learn from childhood how to spend time with oneself. that doesn?t mean he should be lonely, but that he shouldn?t grow bored with himself because people who grow bored in their own company seem to me in danger, from a self-esteem point of view.’

what immediately struck me upon hearing tarkovsky?s words is how they contradicted not just the lyrics of the?beach boys?song i?d had on in the background (don?t worry, baby), but also they seemed at odds with my overall instinctual grasp of the situation. after all, it?s not unfair to state that a recommendation that one spend adequate time alone in order to be comfortable with oneself is unexpected advice. what?s more interesting however is that looking around now, 40 years since tarkovsky said these words, our culture has made it increasingly difficult to find the solitude he recommends at all. the latest advances in technology have filled even those moments when we are physically distanced from people with the constant sense that we have? a distracting amount of company. it would be no exaggeration to claim that it?s actually difficult to be by ourselves, nor do we feel like we want to, a situation that the psychologist and MIT social studies professor sherry turkle has suggested is more symptomatic of our loneliness than a cure for it. so as tarkovsky suggests, perhaps despite our social pretensions we are all hiding from ourselves in plain sight.”

you can read the rest of the article here.

the aurora movie theater shootings on july 20th of this year compacted with a series of events in my own life, and ultimately lead to me writing an article about it all for the IFP. i realized that what these events really bring into question is the difference between ideas and reality, and where you choose to draw the line. here’s an excerpt from the article –

“march 23rd, 2012.
two kids get in a fight on the platform of an L train stop in brooklyn, new york. both fall in front of a train coming into the station. one of them leaps from the tracks just in time and flees the scene. the other is dragged down the platform by the train, right in front of my eyes. his body half under the train, his arms grabbing at the side of the train, his torso spinning like a propeller, his blood smearing down the side of the carriages. i turn away in disbelief, my brain numb as people run past me screaming in tears, vomiting as they run. there?s one girl standing still in front of me as everyone rushes past both of us. she?s looking at me, her face all wet, her eyes pleading at me as if somehow i can provide an answer. the best i can do is not look at her.

the kid is still alive. there?s a woman crouched down by him trying to help him in whatever way she can. unsure about what i can do i turn and leave. halfway up the steps i curse at myself, and turn back. a few of us gang together try to push the train away from the body, so we can get him out. it?s a hopeless exercise. soon the fire department arrives and we are all ejected onto the streets.

people are opening their front doors and letting those clearly in shock come in and rest a while. i call my friend, whose apartment i?d just left 15 minutes before, and he talks me through it. he invites me back over to his, but it seems to make more sense to walk home alone.”

you can read the rest of the article here.

my latest IFP article is a call to arms to designers and those employing them, to raise the standard in terms of what is aesthetically acceptable. it’s very easy to dismiss the need for a good looking visual design, when money is short and the immediate gains are negligible. the article strives to point out however that the long-term affects of these decisions can be quite damaging, both psychologically and sociologically. here’s an excerpt from the piece –

“to reiterate once and for all, it?s our responsibility as human beings to remember there?s a lot of people on the planet who have no control over the look of the world around them and who are ruled by those who want to ?make a buck?. those of us that must suffer living beneath billboards towering above, promising soulless dreams, the garishly coloured junk food wrappers sitting in the gutter, the television commercials selling drugs for pains that don?t exist, the dying buildings built with cheap materials slumping under the weight of their own short lives, the angry faces and the lack of respect for anything. these people aren?t idiots. they know better than anyone that the look of the world around them massively affects their subconscious state of mind. they know it when they walk out of their rotting front door, glance at the grey sky, the paint peeling from the walls of their neighbour?s house across the street, scrape the ice from their car?s windshield with the splintering lid of a margarine tub, curse as the car won?t start and their foot goes through the rusted bottom of it as they lash out in anger. they know it when some of them later get drunk and walk around smashing windows, keying car doors, spray-painting church walls, and beating people up ? all scenes I?ve witnessed in my years growing up in england in the suburbs of cambridge, 3 years at university in manchester and later living in bedford-stuyvesant in new york city. It?s a level of rage that I can support and forgive when places like that?are?your reality. try getting mugged at 8:30am on your way to work, as i was in 2008, and being told by the cops that there?s no point in reporting it.

some of these people?hate?the world around them. they know what the end-game is better than the thoughtless assholes who make the products, create the ads for them and leave those ads gathering mould on some rusted old bus-stop sign, 23 stops out of town in some relentless nightmare of a burnt out suburb. the sorts of places that otherwise only filmmakers dare frequent in order to make their gritty melodramas. we have got to remember that every small gesture toward making things simply functional, that disregards how much ?greyer? you are making the user?s day, is a very valid negative point.”

you can read the rest of the article here.

i’ve just handed in my latest article for the IFP. in essence it’s a piece that questions how easy it is to assess the quality of a film (or any work of art) in an age where hype is everything. the article starts out with a proposed set of rules and then attempts to qualify them. these rules are as follows –

rule 1.?(to kill expectation)

go into the film without having read or watched anything. trailers are acceptable, as they are sometimes created by film directors themselves, though even?that?sometimes is questionable.

rule 2.?(to kill projection)

assess what the film is trying to say or achieve within the realm of what kind of movie it is trying to be. do not project your own expectations. let the film dictate the level of expectation, be that tonally, narratively or conceptually.

then, assess how well you think the film reaches whatever goals it set out to achieve.

rule 3.?(to kill hype)

don?t talk about the film with anyone who has not seen it, except if you?re encouraging them to go see it. only discuss the film with those that have seen it, and discuss it?hard. that?s what it?s there for.

you can read the rest of the article here.

we’d like to thank gus mantel for allowing us to use his incredible animated gifs to illustrate the piece. you can view more of his work here.

to accompany the release of 65daysofstatic’s new record, a rescoring of the 1972 science fiction film silent running, i have written a fairly in depth article that discusses the creation of the artwork. the article is the third in a series that i’ve written for the independent filmmaker project and you can read an excerpt of it here –

so a week passed, the hurricane was about to hit and i knew where i had to go with this. i chose not to run the idea by the band, mostly as I simply had no idea whether i could successfully pull it off any way. i?d never really drawn spaceships before and whilst i had an inkling of how i was going to do it, i truly expected a messy failure of some description to result from it. sitting down at my machine as people along the brooklyn waterfront were taping big Xs in their windows like hundreds of fox mulders with too many unanswered questions, i began to piece things together. all of the while i couldn?t stop repeating over and over what sara goldfarb says at the beginning of the film?requiem for a dream,?as her son is stealing her television to pay for drugs –

?this isn?t happening. and if it should be happening, it would be all right. so don?t worry, seymour. it?ll all work out. you?ll see already. in the end it?s all nice.?

by which i think my brain was saying that sometimes you have to trust there?s a reason for your motivations, because sometimes your subconscious is simply way ahead of you.

you can read the rest of the article here.

the website for the feature film PAVILION went live today, and along with it my second blog article for the IFP in which i discuss the process that went into making the site. we were also fortunate enough to be asked to handle the film’s posters and the credit sequences. the article discusses this and explains why our treatment on all fronts aimed to reflect the very minimal, atmospheric nature of the film.

here’s an excerpt –

my co-worker zach referred me once to a film (portrait of jason, 1967) where a man is sitting there smoking a cigarette for pretty much the entire film. that?s it. talking about this on the way to get lunch one day we agreed that in a film like that, where that?s all that happens, the small things turn into huge events. zach then stopped, scratched his head and thought for a moment, whispering to the air in front of him, ?what was it that happened in that one??. i stopped too, waited, and then finally he said ?ah yes, he ran out of gas on his lighter. huge deal!? we both laughed and then stepped inside?jimmy?s, our regular lunch joint.

so to reiterate,?pavilion?really is one of those exact films. it?s almost fair to say that if you blink or cough, you could miss the entire ?reveal? at the end of it. there are tiny fragmented shards of dialogue that tell you what?s happening whilst all the while you?re watching the most detached, beautiful and mesmerizing footage of kids feeling out the moments in those long, long, useless days of our youth. in fact what i said when i came back from the bathroom after tim had screened his movie for us was ?congratulations?. congratulations for capturing that feeling of the abstract, aimless ennui of what it was to be young, with almost no sense of responsibility at all.

you can read the rest of the article here.

caspar has been invited to write a monthly blog for the independent film project.?the first article went live on monday and it’s on the subject of trust.?here is an excerpt –

in terms of the work i do for version industries, i have a healthy obsession with narrative and pathos, and feel that one should inherently lead to the other if you?re going to win the trust of your audience, whatever the medium. for this very reason i try wherever possible to tell a story with each project, be it a website, a record cover, a poster or a music video. i don?t mean a ?story? in the ?fashion magazine? sense, i mean a story with characters, scenes, events and climaxes. now of course it doesn?t have to be a sad story to be a good story, but without a sense of pathos somewhere along the line, you won?t glean any real loyalty for your work. take the funniest film you?ve ever seen and there?ll be a moment of sadness sitting right at the heart of it, and whether you like it or not it?s that moment that grounds everything else. why? because sadness feels more true than happiness. we might only recollect the happy memories and we certainly don?t have much memory of pain, but it?s a fact that it?s the sad moments that help us lower our defenses, bring us together and help us trust each other. trust being fundamental if you are an artist trying to earn the respect of your peers and garner support from your audience. it?s trust that leads them to follow your progress and consequently support for your next piece of work, be that financially or other.

you can read the rest of the article here.

thanks to the ladies and gents at topspin, we were asked to do a talk at the IFP independent filmmaker labs last week because of our work on tronsoundtrack.com. on thursday morning i spoke to a room full of documentary film makers hoping to find their way in the online world now that their various projects were nearing completion and needed some kind of apt promotion.

the talk went extremely well, which is surprising given it was literally the first thing of this kind that we’ve ever done aside from giles’s PACA panel discussion back in ’08. we’d like to thank rose vincelli and jonathan reiss for considering us for the task and for making us feel so welcome throughout the process. it’s looking like we’ll be doing more of these talks in future now that we’ve gotten a feel for it. we’ll try and post on twitter or similar when such things are about to occur. you know, should you want to come say hi or whatever.

i’d also very much like to add that i had no idea who jonathan reiss was when i met him over email, in person or when he introduced my talk. i mean i thought his name seemed familiar, but i never would have guessed this was the same jonathan reiss who’s work i have been in awe of for years. you see this is the man who directed the famously ‘banned’ happiness in slavery video for nine inch nails. a video that literally changed the lives of my friends and i when we first saw it in the 90s. few music videos come close to it in terms of sheer power, brutality and brilliance. suffice to say i thanked him not just for myself but for all the people out there who i know would want me to do the same, given half a chance.

you can view the filmmaker labs press release?here.