in responding to the prompt, I wanted to create a piece that merges the history and beautiful architecture of The Capitol with the rich cinematic history rushing through its walls. With the course being named ‘Phantom Cinema’ the notion of ghosts and phantoms became a strong point of inspiration as I considered how many films have visited cinemas such as The Capitol over decades and decades and how those films have left their mark on these locations. This lead me to imagine these movies interacting with these spaces as well as one another, as if The Capitol is haunted (for lack of a better word) by this beings. My mind instantly jumped to the work of Melbourne based artists ‘SodaJerk’ who produce features and shorts in which characters are cut out of their original piece and placed into the world of another. As a big fan of the band ‘The Avalanches’ (who make similar art in musical form) a collaboration between the two artist outfits titled ‘The Was’ became a frequent source of inspiration, with characters ranging from ‘Beavis and Butthead’ to ‘Grease’ and ‘Seinfeld’ being transported to an urban environment through the magic of VFX.

I wanted to create a similar piece that not only expressed how cinema lives on through places like the capitol but also explored how techniques in film have died out of time, becoming phantoms of cinema’s history. Over the past 3 or so years I have been exploring rotoscoping, a technique which involves drawing over shots frame by frame to create a timeless form of animation that is reminiscent of the early days of profession. I felt this project would be the perfect chance to explore this format on a deeper level, utilising to not only create ghostly transparent figures but also portray a technique that has since been replaced by modern technologies.

For pre-production I scoured hours of film to find shots that I believe could easily be ‘cut and pasted’ into the capitol. After paying multiple visits to the capitol on location scouts (or in this case shot scouts), I had a good understanding of how the space is lit and laid out. I kept this at the front of my mind when looking for movie scenes, as I had ensure lighting and scaling could fit the type of shots I would be taking on location.

with a collection of shots in mind I began filming on location, looking for areas that would present opportunities for multiple inclusions of characters. I filmed a lot of establishing shots with the floor in frame and areas of the stage, as a I knew they would provide the best options.

To insert the characters I utilised two techniques. The first was reminiscent of the ‘SodaJerk’ style, I would drop the desired scene into photoshop as individual frames and remove their backgrounds frame by frame before dropping a green background behind it, exporting it, and speeding back up to normal speed. The green background acted as a green screen which could be removed, leaving me with just the characters. I elected to use photoshop rather than premier for this as I found the imperfections made by my own selecting, created a rough and eye catching texture. The second technique involved the perviously rotoscoping. I drew over a shot’s outline frame by frame and used the same the green screen technique  to create a moving sketch.

I drafted out 3 short scenes ‘Tussle in the Capitol’, ‘Jazz in the Capitol’ and ‘Boogie in the capitol’. I wrote original music to accompany these scenes to create a coherent atmosphere.

After inserting all the characters I virtually lit the environment in premier (crafting my own shadows to ensure it looked realistic) before adding the music and original dialogue to heighten the mood.

 

I came out of this work really proud of what I had achieved and although the work is short for the amount time and effort, I like to believe it paid off

 

hope you enjoy