Cabinet of Curiosity - a graveyard romance

a graveyard romance on vimeo

2009-07-05T21:32:00.001+01:00

A Graveyard Romance - Flatpack 09 installation trail from Alec Chalmers on Vimeo.

the record of our Flatpack Installation Trail project...

2009-07-05T21:29:00.001+01:00

Cabinet of Cur...

a graveyard romance

By Rosemary Knowles

Book Preview

Cabinet of Curiosity - a Graveyard Romance

2009-03-07T12:11:00.007Z

Our Cabinet of Curiosity, Up and Running, Temple Street

2009-03-06T09:54:00.002Z

Above is the animation in its installation context. As you can see it would be much better to see it in the flesh! See it quick before it disappears on the 15th! Up and Running is a running shop opposite Swordfish Records just off New Street.

People passing by and Opening Night!

2009-03-05T10:04:00.002Z

This is a video of the installation piece we created as a part of the installation trail for flatpack film festival 09. The second part of the video was taken on the opening night of the trail, on 5th March. It was hard to get everyone in to the film as the crowd was really big.

The piece can be seen until 15th March 09 in the window of Up and Running, Temple Street, Birmingham.

Collectable promotional cards

2009-03-04T10:10:00.000Z

There are four designs available to collect. If you pick some up, we'd love to hear from you! They are available at Swordfish, Temple street; Tempest, Upper Bull Street; and Coffee Lounge, Navigation Street.

Read about us in the news...

2009-03-02T10:17:00.006Z

Moving pictures
By Tessa Burwood

"Spooky films and weird inventions celebrate Birmingham's movie going history as part of Flatpack Festival 2009."

so it is set...

2009-02-27T22:26:00.004Z

take a sneaky look inside our cabinet of curiosity...

2009-02-26T01:29:00.005Z

Some more experiments

2008-12-12T23:42:00.000Z

Some more images for the Flatpack idea. Just some experiments of the scenery and a character. As a test we should get some hand drawn animation over cutout film done next.

Flatpack festival animation treatment

2008-12-12T12:49:00.001Z

Overview
A deceased couple awaken from the ‘big sleep’ to reminisce, possibly through dance, the ups and downs of their relationship.

As they re-enact their life together certain mishaps will occur; a head falling off here, an arm stretching there, to parody the slapstick ‘stop trick’ and substitution’ effects of Victorian cinema, such as by Georges Méliès.

As the couple perform creatures of the night will start to appear and watch them. Also, slightly surreal characters will emerge inspired by bizarre objects in Victorian Cabinets of Curiosities and Sideshow subjects. To further add to the comic effect the creatures might be used as props (sometimes disobedient ones!) in certain scenes.

Setting
The couple will perform in a moonlit, Victorian graveyard. We have mainly been influenced by Warstone Lane Cemetery in the Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham.

Style
We will create a collaged aesthetic for the animation by compositing live action footage (cut out frame by frame) on to drawn animation (with certain aspects of rotoscoping).
The backgrounds will be built up with bits of photographs and drawings to make a vivid scene. We will experiment with combining 3D and hand drawn textures. We will use a mixture of found footage and first-hand resources.
We will draw inspiration from Osbert Parker’s style, and Méliès humour, and illustrators such as Dan Hillier and Lynn Olofsdotter (see moodboard).

Links
-Group blog
-Live action collage of found footage test movie

Flip book Fanatical

2008-12-10T20:14:00.002Z

My Proposal is to produce a set of short, flip book animated loops presented side by side (similarly to the Black dogs progress).

My first idea is based on an old cinema projector. The projector will be broken down into segments to make more manageable, flip-book sized parts. Elements within each segment will loop and join up to the segments surrounding it. I have also added in little Victorian 'helpers' (top hats included!) into the machine to create a small narrative in the work and to add an element of comedy. Below is a quick sketch of how the projector will look;

Below is an example of how the projector would be split into segments.

Alternatively I also have come up with another similar idea where none of the segments are joined through narrative, only through the theme of cinema. For example one segment may be 35mm film looping, another may be a zoetrope spinning and one would be a carrousel of film rotating.
In an attempt to encourage the audience to interact with the work more a guard and peepholes have been introduced. This would force the viewers to have to get close up to the window to peer through the holes in order to see the looped animations. See below for ideas sheet and diagrams.

Photo Montage

2008-12-10T19:33:00.001Z

In an attempt to experiment with the aesthetics I've produced a rough photo montage using the photo's gathered from our trip to the cinema. I feel this has produced an interesting result and could also be useful in splitting up the projector into sections for the flipbook idea.

Thaumatrope Idea

2008-12-09T13:01:00.001Z

I had this idea as a way to get the public and festival goers to interact and have a influence on the festival.

The idea is to have sets of blank thaumatrope cards made up and encourage people to draw their own 2 frames of animation and submit them.

Prizes could be offered to encourage entries and once submitted, and after the Flatpack pixies assemble and filmed them, a short film could be made for the festival.

See the below 'notes' image for more detail.

Rough tests of collaged film on photograph

2008-11-26T09:09:00.000Z

We decided to get some preliminary visuals made so that we can get a feel for our idea. This test is an example of how we may collage moving film on to our own backgrounds. It was also the first time we tried collaging film and making photographs look like a live action setting.

We cutout each individual frame using photoshop and composited it as a film in after effects. We then applied vintage film effects and colouring to make it look more authentic. We were actually hoping it would look a bit more jerky than this, but it's nice to know we can make cutout film look almost seamless. Making it look more hand rendered would involved simply removing frames and cutting it out badly next time.

Preliminary character designs

2008-11-26T09:01:00.000Z

For the characters in our animation we brought in Victorian references other than cinema. We are looking to create some creatures inspired by pseudoscience, cabinets of curiosities and side shows, hopefully to add some humour.

2008-11-24T10:18:00.000Z

This is a mood board for a idea for a short film idea, with an Osbert Parker inspired style for Flatpack festival 09. The premise is that two deceased people meet up everynight in a graveyard to dance or re-enact their first meeting. We'd like to give it the victorian cinema look of shakey old camera style. This is a project that will continue personally if not picked for Flatpack.

The Black Dogs Progress

2008-11-17T12:18:00.003Z

Here is The Black Dogs Progress, made by Stephen Irwin its a channel 4 commissioned piece of work. It tells the story of a dog, thrown out by its owner and forced to seek shelter somewhere...

It is a somewhat dark story yet we both really like the feel to this and the aesthetic look created by created by the multiple flipbooks.

Some projector snaps+ our flatpack image gallery

2008-11-17T08:13:00.000Z

We ventured back into the cinema where I used to work to get some images the old 35mm projector. I was glad to get some shots of it as it was a great machine to operate, if not a little nerve-wracking. We'd like to make parts of it come alive, possibly by animating over it and making a sort of collage or simply drawing parts of it again.

Phonographantasmabobscope

2008-11-14T10:55:00.001Z

Here's an video of someones art project where they recreated an old victorian cinema style machine using a record player and animating on it. The people passing the cube look very convincing. I like the idea of doing something like this on a bicycle wheel, maybe I'll have to take a trip to the scrap yard if I'm going to use one. It would fit in with the re-using waste ideals that people have at the moment and that homemade aesthetic.

More ideas

2008-11-13T13:50:00.001Z

Initial Ideas for Flatpack 3

2008-11-13T13:44:00.000Z

These are the initial ideas for the flatpack brief window display.