Christopher Kippenberger

maximum reduction from STUDIO KIPPENBERGER on Vimeo.

I found this video after watching American Hustle (which is a great film by the way strongly recommend) and it kind matched the mood I was in afterwards, I think because of the retro car and song choice (also excellently matching the period), really spoke to me. Things that made it stand out to me include the opening shoulder shot where it swoops round with the person walking, I love that shot. I think it's just pure dreamy magic, I'd really like to try that in an animation but I imagine if you were hand drawing it, it would hurt your head thinking about all the different angles, so you'd have to break it down to do it. I think actually I might do something like that over summer for my showreel, because I imagine if it's successful it would just look phenomenal. The other striking feature that short has is it's use of sound, which apparently in car adverts is pretty common, but I really like how the music cut's out the engine growls and then theres birds and then there's more growling. I think driving shots are so cool. I think the best driving shot is in Breaking Bad when he's listening to Neil Diamond driving along in the sunset, the camera obeys the thirds and there's sunset and he's singing along with all his cash it just oozes the epicness of the show.

Another short from Christopher Kippenberger which also took my fancy. Mainly because it's like all those beautiful Rapha cycling films, which if you have seen I recommend Assynt being the first one you watch, the colour scheme and cinematography is to die for. The way they combine the natural landscape with the bridges and anything man made on the island is mirrored in the way the cycling and man and machine is captured. It's all very poetic, which is probably why they have a poem being read on top of it, but to me that's just a bit too much and is quite over the top to be perfectly frank. So just turn the sound off and it's much more enjoyable.

This short film has equal levels of beautiful cinematography obviously Vandeyk is as big if not bigger in the cycling world as Rapha but Rapha does have it's very own section for cycling films, probably why there cycling clothes are so expensive, so they can pay all these cinematographers a boat load of money. In this short the shots that are particularly impressive to me are the ones that are filmed at more frames and then slowed down. There's a lot of that, and it's obvious it's been done on a superduperwooper camera. It emphasises the tranquility of the landscape. I think as well this might be quite interesting to mimic in an animation. I can't think of any off the top of my head that match that kind of pace. I think where animation is going it's going to have to get so much more sophisticated and maybe we need to learn from these sophisticated cinematographers.



MACHINE FOR RIDING from VANDEYK on Vimeo.