Saturday, April 24, 2010
John Lamb - Tom Waits: For No One (1979!)
Tom Waits performed in 1978 live at the La Brea stage in Hollywood, photographed and rotoscoped. The original live action was shot with 5 cameras - 2 high, 2 low and one hand held.. shot by Dan O'Dowd and crew. The music from "The One That Got Away" blared in the background as Tom sang the lyrics. Donna Gordon is the dancer performing as the stripper, 6 takes and 13 hours of video footage were edited to make a 5 1/2 minute live action short which we turned into animation. A total of 5,500 frames were captured, re-drawn, inked and painted by hand onto celluloid acetate to create this film. Produced by Lyon Lamb Video Animation Systems and directed by John Lamb, the film bore some cool new technology and talent ..and was created specifically for a burgeoning video music market that didn't yet exist and arguably may be the first music video created for the MTV market. However, a series of unfortunate events prohibited the film from ever being released or sold commercially, consequently catapulting it into obscurity. In 1979, an Academy Award was presented to Lyon Lamb for the technology used in this short.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Monday, April 12, 2010
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Friday, April 2, 2010
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Philosophical inquiry
What is an animated music video?
Is it just when a band commissions an animator to do a video?
I watch a lot of animation, and a lot of wonderful films I've seen beg the question: Am I an animated music video, or an animated short, or both?
Lots of animated shorts have no dialogue but just music. Clearly that doesn't mean anything with just music and no dialogue is an animated music video.
Why does it matter? Because I ponder just what I should and shouldn't post here. My inclination is to stick mainly to things that are obviously animated music videos in the conventional sense, while throwing in some things that straddle the line.
For example, Robert Valley's Massive Swerve feels like an animated short, but it's set to a pre-existing piece of 'pop' music, just not commissioned, and it works great as an animated music video IMO.
Then there's the pioneers of animated music videos, Oskar Fischinger, Norman McLaren and Noburo Ofuji.
I may be doing special feature posts in the future to highlight videos that straddle the line.
Is it just when a band commissions an animator to do a video?
I watch a lot of animation, and a lot of wonderful films I've seen beg the question: Am I an animated music video, or an animated short, or both?
Lots of animated shorts have no dialogue but just music. Clearly that doesn't mean anything with just music and no dialogue is an animated music video.
Why does it matter? Because I ponder just what I should and shouldn't post here. My inclination is to stick mainly to things that are obviously animated music videos in the conventional sense, while throwing in some things that straddle the line.
For example, Robert Valley's Massive Swerve feels like an animated short, but it's set to a pre-existing piece of 'pop' music, just not commissioned, and it works great as an animated music video IMO.
Then there's the pioneers of animated music videos, Oskar Fischinger, Norman McLaren and Noburo Ofuji.
I may be doing special feature posts in the future to highlight videos that straddle the line.
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