John Piper Creative Partnerships exhibition

Currently being exhibited at the Hereford Museum and Art Gallery situated in the city library building, and well worth spending some time visiting is the John Piper Creative Partnerships exhibition. Featuring a range of work produced in collaboration with craftsmen, designers and friends A fantastic exhibition of Piper’s collaborative work with craftsmen, designers and friends that covers ceramics, prints and tapestries including those reduced for Hereford Cathedral, the lithograph poster of Canterbury Cathedral and painting of Selbourne Church, to name a few works amongst many others. Given the range and quality of the work displayed the only thing that seemed odd was there were so few commemorative/souvenir postcards of the work on show, which would surely have proven popular with visitors to the exhibition, although it does encourage subsequent visits to etch the work on show into the memory!

the many, well, two logos of Prometheus

Some years ago now Sir Ridley Scott was asked about how he would continue the Alien series which he helped create way back now in 1979, one that shocked the world and introduced a new style and viewpoint on science fiction/horror with his vision of a used future and menacing alien character. His answer then as it was for many years hence, was that the most obvious course would be to revisit one of the sources of intrigue in the first film, that of how the derelict craft containing the long dead “space jockey” and numerous alien eggs came to crash there in the first place.

A little over a year ago now, it was announced that there would be a prequel that would go back and reveal these events and herald the return of Scott to the genre, albeit as a producer. Months later and with Scott moved into the director’s chair and Damon Lindelof conjuring up and the wait began for what exactly this mysterious piece of cinema would amount to.

With filming underway, anticipation has started to grow for the release of any plot information, onscreen photo or leaked set report for the fans that have eagerly awaited Ridley Scott’s venture back into science fiction, a genre that had been lacking his directorial vision since Bladerunner. Whilst Fox and the participants in the filming of Prometheus have kept a high level of secrecy over the plot, tone and how exactly it does tie in with Alien, or indeed veers away into other storytelling territory, there was a first glimpse at a logo and a hint of a marketing style for the film at a licensing expo in Las Vegas in early June.

Whilst it didn’t reveal anything more about the film or offer and cast photos it did features a one sheet poster with a rendering of the title Prometheus, with a look that had something of an early 30′s era style about it, and not quite the threatening or foreboding style to it that you may expect.

However, fast forward a few weeks later to Comic Con and, with a fake plot synopsis making it’s way around the internet attendees at the Con were treated to footage from the film, the first official photo from the film as well as Damon Lindelof and Charlize Theron hosting a Q&A discussion on stage. One other note was that the typeface for the movie title had changed significantly, gone was the Expo retro feel to be replaced with a more thinner, more “Aliens”-esque typeface that fitted in more with what fans were expecting, given the connection, no matter how slight, to Alien. This link was heightened when according to reports from fans in attendance the title slowly appeared and formed the word Prometheus, directly echoing the hieroglyphic readout style opening title sequence to Alien. Obvious nods to the film with which Prometheus “shares DNA” with, but is it a bit of a step too far or even a disappointment?

As so little is still known about the film, especially the content and tone of the film it’s probably too early to judge or second guess how well the official, or latest, logo style suits the film, but at this early stage it would be a bit of an arguable disappointment if the titles for Prometheus do retread the Alien route, or echo it too much. Though as discussed in a previous post I thought Alien’s opening titles were a superb scene setter and the logo design was used to great effect in the marketing and advertising for the film, shouldn’t we expect something a bit newer or more unique for Prometheus. If it is the case that the film is only vaguely connected to Alien and not a direct prequel then it could be a dangerous path to tread to replicate or nod heavily to Alien and push the audience to expect the same experience, or something that will lead into that film. With 11 months to go though and one logo change already taken place it’s hard to say what will follow in the upcoming months as the marketing and PR for the film really gets going – if nothing else it should make for some interesting viewing both in terms of design and film fan, especially in the modern age of social media which wasn’t around in 1979, and in light of recent campaigns of recent years, notably the superb work produced in the build up to The Dark Knight in 2008 by 42 Entertainment.

Given the investment, expectation and possibility for a new franchise that could spring from the film (Lindelof already confirmed that the ending does not lead directly into Alien) it would be hard at this point to imagine a low key promotional push for Prometheus, like the film itself, the form it takes is something we will all have to watch develop over the next 11 months or so.

Quark 9 makes an appearance

So the next iteration of Quark is ready to be unleashed upon the design world and once again it seems to be focusing on its interactive and digital design features, at least in the email promotion that did the rounds. The Quark website, once you get past the image promoting the digital design aspects of Quark 9 does have two sectioned headers, one for print aspects of version 9 and one for digital publishing. The digital section, perhaps not surprisingly given the release of the iPad since Quark 8 hit the shelves, promotes the ability of creating iPad apps and publications with Quark’s App Studio, before going on to make mention of designing interactive content for the Blio eReader and exporting to Flash and HTML. The accompanying text highlights amongst other highlights the ease of converting a design from print to digital, something that given past experiences is something of a bold promise in itself and will be interesting to see exactly how well this process does work. On the other hand the export to Flash option on one hand is a slightly odd feature to highlight given Apple’s move against Flash implementation on the iPad in recent months, though given InDesign’s digital exporting tools it’s not surprising that quark would try to highlight this feature.

In the print section of the Quark 9 features site, following on from the bold claim (literally) of Quark being “The Best Professional Print Design Software Available” there’s a claim made about the print output contained within Quark 9. Now given how troublesome Quark 8 was when exporting PDFs, especially when compared to InDesign as covered in an earlier post, this is a major area that Quark needs to improve and the question remains whether lessons have been learnt from past editions of Quark that seemed to trumpet digital design features at the expense of some poor or inconsistent performances in terms of the print design and export aspects that Quark used to do simply.

In the “What’s New” features page, again after some digital trumpeting, there’s a shortlist of a few new design features that Quark 9 offers. Notably several of those features mentioned such as Story Editor and Image Grid already have comparison features existing in InDesign CS4 (nevermind the latest CS5 release), how well the Shapemaker feature will work is also something of a big question given that Quark’s handling of vector shapes is still behind that of both InDesign and Illustrator – however, Callout, a feature that allows picture boxes and groups to stay aligned to a specific point in a text box, regardless of any reflow of text in a story, is an interesting development and one that is certainly welcomed, providing of course that it does work as expected on a consistent basis.

And that is the issue that Quark, for me, still faces. InDesign has been, in my opinion, the superior programme now for several incarnations and there’s still the matter of both cost and reliability when it comes to  Quark’s releases, especially in light of the problematic version 8 and the further trumpeting of digital design aspects and features. Though designers would of course welcome features that make the switch from print to digital within projects easier these features are going to be something of a waste if Quark does not perform better as a print design publication and improves on version 8. Competition for the title of best layout programme has the potential to take both InDesign and Quark to new heights, and is certainly healthier than say 15 years or so ago when Quark easily dominated the page layout design arena, but I would hope that the progress Quark, and for that matter InDesign make, is not entirely towards digital at the cost of getting things correct and consistent on the print design side of things. InDesign is for me the better of the two and it’s up to Quark to step-up once again and deliver a real challenge to Adobe and a real choice for designers everywhere in terms of a top quality programme that does the basic things well, as well as the headline effects and features.

Photo exhibit by Joe Dzioba

Currently at Hereford Library is a display of photos by Joe Dzioba featuring some great shots of Antarctica, Peru and the Far East which formed part of a world tour he undertook. More of his photos can be found on his Flickr site here and it is well worth a few minutes of your time, in my humble viewpoint at least!

In space a title sequence could make you squirm

Probably the blu-ray release of last year was the Alien Anthology set, featuring two version of each of the four films in the series as well as a wealth of documentaries, photos, notes and other material covering the first 2 classic films, the missed opportunity that was Alien 3 and the immense letdown that was Alien Resurrection, in more detail that any series fan or film buff could hope for. The release of this film gives fans and film aficionados the chance to view the the various trailers, promotional materials and clips for the films themselves, the standout effort of all of those for me is the trailer for Alien which still has for me one of the best trailers released.

Having completed principal photography and with editing and other tasks to undergo to complete the film the question arose over the style to use for the titles and marketing of the film, one which not only sparked a new interest in the sci-fi horror genre with a distinctive future world but also introduced a alien creature with a genuine menace coupled with undertones of sexual suggestion in it’s design and elements of it’s lifecycle thanks to the designs and artistry of HR Giger. Initially director Ridley Scott invited graphic designers Steve Frankfurt (who was appointed president  at Young & Rubicam at the age of 37, the youngest to be given such an appointment, and went on to be associated with the productions of Arthur, Superman, All That Jazz, Kramer vs. Kramer, Sophie’s Choice, and That’s Entertainment) and Richard Greenberg (who would go on to setup R/Greenberg Associates – who would go onto design the penning titles for the 1987 sci-fi horror film Predator, which would later go on to crossover with the Alien creatures in the forgettable Alien v Predator series – which further developed into R/GA Media Group Inc) to help with the poster and press work when he saw their proposal he asked them to get involved with the title sequence as he felt that the title sequences never really echoed the poster or artwork the film. The brief he gave to them was that Scott wanted a hieroglyphic to come up at the beginning to infer that the Alien could have been from a sophisticated society, albeit not comprehendible as the more sophisticated the Alien seems the more frightening they are. They produced one of what Ridley Scott still regards as “one of the best he’s seen in years”. This featured the film title appearing in a series of blocks which gradually built-up to reveal the title, tracked across the full frame of the film in a stark, uppercase san serif design which gave off viewer a feeling of unease and discomfort right from the start of the film with each individual letter almost unconnected and distant from each other, aided in creating atmosphere by Jerry Goldsmith’s score which gently but threateningly ebbs and flows with the developing film title (a piece of the score which Goldsmith did not particularly like and as detailed on the Anthology set spent years getting kudos for scoring “the obvious thing: weird and strange, and which everybody loved”).

Linking in beautifully with this visual style and sense of terror and dread a trailer was released which echoed these themes and atmosphere of the film and took them a step further in terms of creating an atmosphere of dread and anticipation for the viewer. As the title slowly appears the camera slowly and over an egg (albeit more of a dinosaur style egg than the egg featured in the film itself, from which the facehugger would violently lunge at John Hurt’s character Kane), which then sits on a piece of rough terrain before cracking open. This is then followed by a series of unconnected images from throughout the film, with no score and minimal sound save for a shrill beacon forming a shrill scream and an electronic beat mimicking that of a human heartbeat, growing ever faster as the trailer continues, which then climaxes with the Nostromo’s cat Jones hissed cry before lapsing into silence and a beautiful wide shot of the spaceship Nostromo heading towards the source of the alien signal, and the simple yet so memorable tagline “In space no one can hear you scream” appearing in the centre of the screen.

This style of trailer was repeated for the Aliens teaser trailer several years later, which again featured a series of disconnected clips from various points of the film, this time employing a nerve tingling use of a string based music after the initial scream of an Alien opened the trailer, before re-using the original Alien trailer of a screaming beacon and stylised heartbeat, albeit in a faster pace than the original. The slight difference here is that there are several split second glimpses of the aliens in the trailer before several shots of the Queen interspersed with scenes involving the marines and Ripley appear as the trailer concludes.

The teaser trailer for Alien 3 also used the approach seen with the Alien trailer, albeit in a much shorter version than either Alien or Aliens, utilising a thinner typeface albeit keeping the same wide spacing between the lettering used so eye-catchingly on the Alien trailer, marketing campaign and film titles, and featured an egg more in keeping with those in the film than the one which featured prominently in the Alien teaser, as well as a voiceover artiste, as the egg cracks and the atmosphere of the Earth passes underneath. This teaser would of course prove to be one of the bigger red herrings in trailer history as the script was rewritten several times before Vincent Ward’s script was green lit, then re-written and sets redesigned as David Fincher was brought on board to direct the film which ultimately disappointed in comparison to it’s predecessors due in the main to the extensive and rushed approach to the film both in pre and post production – as Jon Landau expresses on the Alien Quadrilogy and Anthology sets they “set out to make a release date and not a movie” to the detriment of the finished product.

Years later the fourth film in the series Alien Resurrection would first announce it’s arrival with a trailer that, as one of the actors accurately states, starts slowly before flying out the traps. Whilst there’s nothing wrong with this approach the trailer for Alien Resurrection does fall much more into the middle “action” ground than many of it’s predecessors did and it is a shame that given the history of the series that the 4th installment, as would happen with the film itself, couldn’t conjure up an approach that would echo the mystery, thrills or terror of other films in the series and communicate that to the audience in the trailer, or produce anything as visually striking as the original Alien trailer and marketing produced nearly 20 years before it.

Over 30 years on from Alien, Ridley Scott is now hard at work filming Prometheus, a film that started out as a straight sequel to Alien but has now in the words of the studio, scriptwriter Damien Lindelof and firstly Scott himself “evolved a new, grand mythology and universe in which this original story takes place. The keen fan will recognize strands of ‘Alien’s‘ DNA, so to speak, but the ideas tackled in this film are unique, large and provocative. I couldn’t be more pleased to have found the singular tale I’d been searching for, and finally return to this genre that’s so close to my heart.” Lindelof added “In a world flooded with prequels, sequels and reboots, I was incredibly struck by just how original Ridley’s vision was for this movie. It’s daring, visceral and hopefully, the last thing anyone expects. When I sat in a movie theater as a kid, feet raised off the floor for fear that something might grab my ankles, I never dreamed in my wildest imagination I would one day get to collaborate with the man responsible for it. Working alongside him has been nothing short of a dream come true.” Given this return to the sic fi genre and the placing of Alien as a jumping off point for the script it will be interesting to see if Scott or indeed the marketing department at Fox or whoever is assigned to the project can come up with something as visceral and memorable as the original Alien’s advertising and marketing that so superbly echoed the film’s feeling or unease and terror so well. With so many trailers these days intent on delivering most of the plot in 90 seconds and big “money shot” moments it will be a nice change and a standout effort if something much more atmospheric hits our screens to build the anticipation for Prometheus which may in the future to come make everyone scream again.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

to all out there, have a great festive season, a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Bodies……

One more exhibition that featured at Fotografiska recently was the Bodies exhibit by Joel-Peter Witkin, which was certainly eye-catching and provocative, though which side of those borders his work falls on would definitely be up to the individual viewer.

The Bodies exhibition features handicapped individuals, dwarves, prostitutes, fetishists and the “sideshow freak” in a range of sets and landscapes, twisted around barbed wire, servered human heads, morphed together with a horse in a twist on the mythical centaur beast amongst others. Some of the images would have been disturbing to some people and children, and it was an exhibit that left a mental mark and in some cases was intriguing viewing. Whether any of the pieces were ones that you’d necessarily want to have around the home is another matter, but it was an intriguing series of images to go and see, at times disturbing but worth a look for an exhibition that does carry both a haunting yet interesting viewing experience.

More on Joel-Peter Witkin can be found here

No jelly and ice cream at this one…….

Another interesting and memorable exhibition at Fotografiska recently was The Birthday Party by Vee Speers, formed by a series of photos depicting children on their way to an imaginary birthday party. The children in question aren’t dressed casually or even for a specific solitary fancy dress theme, instead they are dressed in outfits carrying objects, such as a young boy is dressed as a soldier complete with a rifle, a young girl is seen with and without an aged woman style mask and another young boy is featured as a prize boxer in what could be either pre-  or post-fight pose with one hand taped and the other covered with a boxing glove.

All of the child subjects were photographed against a nondescript background which did give the photos a timeless, almost dreamlike appearance, with the overall look almost like a hand-drawn picture thanks to the style chosen for the photos which did, I thought, help draw the viewer in. Again it was another exhibition that was well worth a visit and time spent on it!

Various photos that formed The Birthday Party exhibition can be found at Vee Speers website.

“A Photographer’s Life”

An exhibition bringing together almost 200 photographs from 1990-2005 by one of the world’s best known portrait photographers Annie Leibovitz was also on display at the Fotografiska, and given the enormity of the content and amount of space given over to the collection it really did feel like an epic exhibition.

Not only were there some of the famous portraits from Leibovitz’s career featuring the likes of Al Pacino, Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, Scarlet Johansson and the famous nude portrait of a heavily pregnant Demi Moore that featured on the cover of Vanity Fair in 1991, there were also many photos from Leibovitz’s assignments covering Sarajevo in the early 1990s as well as Hilary Clinton’s election to the US Senate.

Sitting alongside her assignment work are a series of landscape photos taken in Monument Valley in the west of America and in Wari Rum in the Jordanian desert, and a vast array of personal photography documenting scenes from her life including the birth of her 3 daughters, holidays and time spent with her parents and her lover Susan Sontag. Rather than just a simple collection of happy events or times however several of the photos in this part of the exhibition depicted sorrowful or painful times and events that had affected Leibovitz and were part of her life, including several of Susan Sontag on her deathbed.

Accompanying the exhibited photographs was a short film narrated and featuring Annie Leibovitz briefly discussing her past, family and following the discussion and selection process of the photographic work to be displayed in the exhibition. Certainly one of the largest exhibitions I’ve been to and one that does span several emotions across it’s content, though many people did recognise the Demi Moore pose and were drawn to that photo as a centre piece I suspect they left with a keen interest and appreciation for many of the other photos featured and the bravery in showing some of the more personal and affecting photos from what must be a huge personal collection.

“A Child is Born”

Recently on a visit to the new Fotografiska gallery in Stockholm I was viewed the extraordinary exhibition of in-the-womb photos by Lennart Nilsson entitled A Child is Born. A huge breakthrough in medical photography, to describe the exhibition as stunning would be something of an understatement, it is a truly outstanding series of photographs covering the creation and development of a human foetus in the womb, from the battle for it’s creation right through to the birth. Displayed at around 3 feet tall and backlit the darkened gallery at the Fotografiska helped to emphasise the colour and striking imagery Nilsson captured through experiments with electron microscopes, endoscopic cameras and other techniques over the course of 12 years, featuring striking colours and elements that wouldn’t look out of place in many a sci-fi tale.

The photos featured in the exhibition as well as others have been featured in a book entitled A Child is Born that so far has been published in 5 editions in over 20 countries. When Life magazine published a 16 page cover article entitled The Drama of Life Before Birth of his photographs the entire circulation of 8 million copies sold out in days. 45 years on and the imagery captured by Nilsson still has the power to inform and amaze creating an exhibition that something of a privilege to see.

More on The Child is Born photo series and Nilsson himself can be found here