Posts Tagged COFA
A Morning with Gilbert & George
Gilbert & George Piss Mooning (1996)
Unlike Hollywood celebrities, contemporary iconic art figures rarely visit Australia. I had a glimpse of Gilbert & George in the talk at COFA. I did not know which one was which but it did not really matter because they declared that they were two people and one artist. Fair point.
Unfortunately, just over an hour could not even briefly represent 40 years of the career. And I thought of live tweet but was afraid I’d get lost along the way. So here is some point I caught they made in the morning:
- Even though they didn’t have a studio, at least, they were well dressed from the start of the career. “We are the subject of our art.”
- Singing Sculpture became Drinking Sculpture.
- Shit asks questions, apple doesn’t.
- If your images don’t grab the audience, you lose them.
- An artist doesn’t change the world, the emotion from the viewers from the arts could.
- When they are creating an artwork, everything they see is not the same as normal and it changes back when the work is finished.
- Istanbul is their favourite city because the chaos. Chaos creates tolerance and they depend on it for their works.
- They never look back and believe in new ideas. Society changes but a picture doesn’t.
- No alcohol or food in their house and they only drink outside or a tiny bit when having guests in the house.
- Question
- Q: Do you disagree? (working together)
- A: Oh! That’s a great heterosexual question.
- Later explanation: They don’t use artistic hands, just idea and tools like computers.
- You have to be very organised otherwise you get lost in your archives.
- They are optimistic about the world right now and believe in connecting to world.
- Two pieces of advises:
- Each day, before you get out of the bed, tell yourself “What do I want to tell the world today.”
- Fuck the teachers!
COFA Prize 09
COFA Annual 09 Winners
I have just seen the photo of COFA Annual 09 Awards night when I google my name. This is a good chance to congratulate others of The School of Media Arts who also won prize from the year of their hard work.
Autodesk Storm FX Award for Best 3D CGI Animation
John TurelloAutodesk Storm FX Award for Best 3D CGI Modelling
George Varettas and
Cosmin HrincuAdobe Award for Best Overall Production
Anthony RussellWacom Award for Best Motion Graphics
Toby PedersenWacom People’s Choice Award
Peter ShortComputers Now Award for Best Video
Trinn (‘Pong) SuwannaphaDigital Media World Magazine Honorary Mention Prize
1. Luke Jefferz
2. Tachadol Buppapirak
3. Tom Phillipson
4. Peter Short
5. Beverley Wong
6. Paolo Sta.BarbaraVital Peripheral Supplies Award for Best Illustrative Work
Amelia Turbiarz
There is the full winner list on COFA blog.
And I have to say the best thing of the night was free bubbly.
The Screening
The hard work in the past few months on my short film as the major project for Master of Digital Media at College of Fine Arts is done. Memory of You | Reflection of Me has been viewed on a big screen at Chauvel Cinema and to see it in the environment made me sob. There was not a big cheer, just a small pause before applause.
Unlike other graduates works, it was not a really entertaining film. Some people walked off in the screening at COFA. I could see why. It was slow and quite long. A nine-and-a-half-minute live action film about depression could hold an attention span in an uncontrollable room at COFA.
However, ultimately, I have told the story and expressed it the way I wanted and it paid off. The film was awarded Computers Now for Best Video at COFA Annual. The prize was very handy for mea commercial licence of Final Cut Studio.
What is it going from here? Now that the course is finished, I am broke and still living on a dole. I have a casual job at Class Movies for a few weeks. This would help me to duplicate a number of DVDs for the people who helped me on this project (and pay the bills). I will look for film festivals to screen and television channels to broadcast the work. And now I am developing a new project and look for the way to get it funded. Still a long way to go.
The Final Touch
Finally, the major project for this course has come to the end with week13 presentation and I have done pretty much everything I wanted to achieve. There will be another big day on COFA Annual Screening at Chauvel Cinema. Unfortunately, the audio in the night will not be surround sound 5.1 as I would like it to be.
In fact, we had to compromise the presentation on a TV monitor since no room in COFA that is equipped for surround sound except CG15. The film was squished into 3:4 aspect ratio in the monitor and the colour was de-saturated. That was the trade off when you want to present your project in surround.
I learned a lot about surround sound design from previous semester and I applied to this project but it is different this time:
- It is sound design with visual whereas the other one was just an audio piece.
- I mixed in stereo first then imported the session in surround later. Every track was in mono to avoid the confusion in surround.
- There is music involved. The composer sent split tracks to me to work on it and I find it is tricky since the original is in stereo. Hopefully he is happy the way I treated his music.
Frankly, I do not see why this film will not get selected for Chauvel night. The next challenge is to distribute it and step my foot in the industry. Finger crossed.
To summarise, I am very happy with the outcome of this project. What was a dream I had in the beginning of the year has become a short film I wanted it to be. And I hope this film will, at least, help someone realise his or her self-significance. In making it, it certainly helped me find myself again.
This project could not finish without help of all the lecturers, classmates in Master of Digital Media at COFA and everyone, cast and crew, involved in this film. Thank you everyone.
25 October 2009
PS: This post was the last one I put onto the School’s blog. I find that it is posted here on the day the film is premiered at COFA Annual 09 Screening. At the time I am writing this, it is very retrospective what it has been done in past few months and this project is very personal and introspective. The process has taught me about myself as I used it as a therapy for myself in many ways. It is still a rocky road but there is always hope.
The Tangible One
Finally, I have done DVD artwork and the label looks great in print. The front cover is not change much for the sketch. The lines are inspired by classic Thai drawing (I have to do something with at least one Thai influence). It is easy enough to crate in Illustrator even though it is not my ground of expertise. The background is the photography I took to animate in DVD Extras menu and played around in Photoshop.
The greatest thing I learn is what standard information they put on the cover and label: DVD logo, surround sound, DVD region and so on. The only thing I skipped is the rating since it is not classified even though there is a little bit of nudity.
Mixing surround sound design is a very interesting process. I will share it later. Next stop is the last stopgetting ready for the final presentation.
21 October 2009
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