Sunday, October 8, 2017

Showreel and Video Essays

A few weeks ago I have finally come around to compile a new animation showreel. These are mostly scenes from films I have been working on. The music is by Christian Wallner and performed by his band Piri Piri:

Animation Showreel 2017 from
Oswald Iten.

Video Essays
If someone asked me a few weeks ago, I told them that I would never do a video essay on Christopher Nolan's films because there are already so many out there and his films get a disproportionate amount of attention compared to many filmmakers I wish would be household names by now.

Besides, I think that formally (how he structures plot/narrative) his films are much more interesting than stylistically (blocking, framing, editing). But when I studied the temporal structure of all his feature films for a lecture on DUNKIRK (2017), I just found too many interesting aspects that I have never seen somebody analyze in detail. So whenever I have some time at my hands, I am trying to shape these observations into video essays.

In the meantime, here is a silent video essay about a prop from DUMBO (1941) that hasn't found its way to this blog so for:
 
Inanimate Objects #1: The Versatile Bathtub from Oswald Iten.

Apart from the really obvious ones like the bicycle in LADRI DI BICICLETTE or some McGuffins, props as storytelling devices have been neglected in comparison to many other aspects of film making for too long a time.
This video essay is an attempt to highlight what I have thought to be a perfectly economical use of a visual element and a prop in DUMBO.