Modernism

Modernism in it's broadest definition is modern thought. The term describes the modernist movement in the art, it sets cultural tendencies and associated cultural movements which originally arose from wide-scale western society in the late 19th century.

Max nordau
Lumiere brothers first films - ran screaming out of theatre as they thought they were going to be run over. This new way of cinema had taken the world by storm, and some people literally couldn't believe what they were seeing

Modernism is a subjective experience and is not a style, 

Monet - modernity blurred brush strokes. Paint the experience of the world. 
New technology and new buildings allows a new view of the world. Tall buildings - different (higher) view.

Modernism in design. Responds to changes in the world. New is better anti-historicism.
Truth materials tube steel chair not painted to look like Anything, left to look like tubular steel 
 Form follows function, good function is more important than colour. It looks good because it works well 

Auteur

An Auteur is a filmaker usually the director whose movies are characterized by a filmaker's creative influence. Auteurs often start the conventions of genre, but do not follow them. They have their own personal language with creative control and like artists produce their own original work.

The technical competence of the director is early cinema was story telling in the silent era. Conveying a story is hard today without the lack of dialogue and sound. The directer would also need to think about the expressionist lighting, use of subjective camera and the use of the dolly zoom. A lot of directers used clever montage's with cutting in order to create tension in the usual production code.

Directors vary from style to style, what makes these styles different are the expressionism of the director and the form that evoke emotion from the audience. How the story is told often separates directors from their styles, if the narrative is often visual rather than told through dialogue. How the director builds suspense or not and the Cameo appearances of the directer

Typography

Typography is the art and technique of arranging type and text in order to make language visible and bring the words to life. The arrangement of the type is involved in the selection of typefaces, text size, line length, linespace, the space between the groups of letters (tracking) and adjusting the space between the pairs of letters (kerning). Typography is all around us in everyday life, advertisements, film, television. We are all subjected to a variety of words and thousands of different ways they are put across to us. Typography in our day and age is extremely important, especially in the advertising business. The cross between visual communication and verbal communication is writing itself. With typography you can extort these communications making them stronger or to make a point in communication to the reader.

The history of typography can trace it's origins to the first punches and dies used to make seals and currency in ancient times. When there were printing techniques, there was typography. People wanted to express words in their own way. This only grew bigger when the printing press was invented.

Reservoir Dog's

This brief for me has been a slow start. Grasping an idea for what i'm going to do for my practical in OUDF401 has been tough.
But i've finally come to an idea that i am confident to per-sue.

I've decided to take Quinten Tarantino's 1992 Reservoir Dog's and mix it with Roger Hargreaves Children's books, The Mr Men series. I am planing on shifting the genre from the adult target audience to child friendly characters

Practical

For my practical i decided to take existing films aimed for adults and reverse the target audience for children. I made 3 posters for 3 different films 

 Inglorious Miniatures, a play on Quinten Tarantino's 'Inglorious Bastards'

The Lion King's Speech a parody of Tom Hooper's 'The King's Speech'

A parody with the Mr Men characters with Quinten Tarantino's 'Reservoir Dog's'

Graffiti

Graffiti is not a new form of art. it has been practised for centuries since the prehistoric times. There were Drawings and paintings on cave walls from the Paleolithic period (17, 300 years old) discovered in 1940 by some teenagers. These paintings were stories and depicted the live of the caveman and what they did day to day, such as hunting


These are obviously not as complex as some of the intricate designs that there are today but it shows us that even thousands of years ago people wanted to tell stories and expressed that through graffiti. 
Graffiti was used heavily in Ancient Rome and it's traits and use of Graffiti is steal seen in modern Roman culture. In Ancient Rome Graffiti was used for advertisement and spreading news about the empire.












When i think of Graffiti to me i think of the london and Berlin train lines, and the movement in the 90's that all started with the Berlin wall and still goes on today. Graffiti is all around us and although by many not seen as Art, is a beautiful thing.

Avant-garde

Avant-garde come from the word "advanced guard" or "Vanguard' The term represents pushing of boundaries of what we in society accept is the norm or the status quo. Avant-garde is at the forefront of higher culture vs lower culture and it said to be a hallmark of modernism. Many artists have aligned themselves with Avant-garde thinking trying to push to new horizons to discover their own art.

The concept of Avant-garde refers exclusively to marginalised artists , writers, composers and thinkers  whose work is not only opposed to mainstream commercial values, but often has an abrasive social or political edge. Many writers, critics and theorists made assertions about vanguard culture during the formative years of modernism.

Lady GaGa's Bacon dress can be seen as Avant-garde, pushing social boundaries against the norm.

Italian Cinema

"Film is not the art of Scholars but of illiterates."
-Werner Herzog

Cinema Federico Fellini was a writer/directer is the age of early Italian cinema. Fellini was taken very seriously as an auteur with his production commenting on the superficiality of the middle class. He held that all of his films has "style and sophistication" and that they were seen worthy for critical appraisal.

The historic and social context of Italian cinema was huge. And the industry brought a new economy to Italy. The Italian working class was at the centre of this new media. A lot of Italian working class families would go to the cinema everyday and watch movies like people watch Television at home. People talked, eat and drunk in the cinema bringing a casual atmosphere to the cinema with people entering and exiting the cinema when ever they wanted.

Prima Visiona - Cinema's that attracted a middle class sophisticated audience usually in major cities, the audience selected a film they wanted to watched

Terza Visiona - Less populated area, cheaper tickets, audience went to the cinema based on habit rather than selecting a film. Films were more formulaic than popular.

Filone was another word that Italian cinema use for genre, it was based on the idea of Geology. Examples of Filone -
 - Giallo: Based on detective novels
 - Spaghetti Westerns
 - Mondo/Cannibal film
 - Poliziottesco: Police procedural

The beginning

OUDF406

We now move onto the games module for OUDF406. It is the module I have been apprehensive for since the start of the course, so it was fair to say i was slightly nervous on my first lesson. However my first lessons with Annabeth felt like a weight off my shoulders. The frustration and anxiety i faced with learning how to use Maya i did not feel with learning to use Unity with Annabeth. To me she taught the programme in a clear and simple way in which i seemed to grasp the programme faster than Maya.
Although Unity is a great tool though, you can only make basic shapes to model. I will still have to improve my Maya skills in order to produce a realistic and convincing game enviroment

Birth of a genre

Facebook post by Plastician that summed up my love for deep music. The story for me inspires me in my work. It's the start of something new in media. Determination and the pure love for the music made this unknown basement genre into a world wide craze.


- I agree with Skream that this right here was the track Neil Joliffe was referring to when he used the term "Dubstep" for the first time to describe the fusion of dark 2 step garage with dub reggae. 

We may have had people doing stuff before it - that was perhaps the seed being planted by the likes of Zed Bias, El-B, Steve Gurley, M Dubs, Dem 2, DND etc.... Then we had Horsepower productions making this sound which inspired people like Skream to go on and make the stuff he was making in 2000 / 2001. 

Alongside this sound, influences were drawn from the dark, breakier side of UK garage produced by people like Zinc and Oris Jay / Darqwan. As well as the emerging, stripped down and at the time what was often described as "juvenile" sound of grime, this is what pretty much made up the early influence which was taken on board by a group of producers in Croydon - most notably Skream and Benga.

Hatcha would play a lot of it - particularly the more tribal influenced sounds. The stuff I was making at the time probably took a lot more influence from grime. Skream was doing full on tribal dubby stuff close to the Horsepower sound, Benga sat neatly in the middle with the deeper basses of the dubby stuff mixed in with catchy sounds and riffs often noted in grime productions. Outside of Hatcha's radio show, not a lot of people were taking any interest in what we were doing. Most people into dark garage at the time were beginning to move onto grime and were focusing on stuff being played by DJ's like Slimzee. We (the croydon producers) also used to send our stuff to Slimzee, but he didn't pick up on too much of it. He eventually started playing some of my own productions which prompted Hatcha to play a few of my early stuff too. Not long after, Slimzee was also spinning the odd bit of early dubstep being produced by Skream and Benga.

At the same time as this, I think the only DJ's supporting the croydon side of the dark garage evolution were DJ's on Delight FM based in South London - notably N Type and Walsh. They'd support the usual dark garage stuff being played across the board on all pirate stations, but also used to play a lot of exclusives from me and producers like Skream, Benga, Random Trio, Artwork, Horsepower and the likes all coming thru the Big Apple records shop on the weekends to swap new music.

Labels started to emerge. Tempa were already releasing stuff by Horsepower and Kode 9. The Ammunition Promotions company also ran other labels such as Vehicle, Soulja, R.O.A.D. and Bingo and were starting to release more of the new darker styles coming out of the garage movement.

At this time people were still not calling the sound dubstep. It was still garage to all of us, we never really thought it would evolve into anything more than a spin off strain of garage.

Around 2003 / 2004 the scene began to draw in more interest from other people involved in the garage scene in other pockets of the sound. It was around this time that Coki, Loefah and Mala began making stuff along the lines of what was beginning to mould into a small movement of croydon producers and DJ's spinning what we were now beginning to call dubstep. Outside of FWD on a monthly basis we now had a couple of new events. I remember Thriller Funk ran by Slaughter Mob down at Herbal, and Filthy Dub ran by myself and my mate Dave down in Croydon. We were trying desperately to help build the sound and branch out to new ears but the events predominantly attracted the same crowd you'd see at FWD - people were just willing to travel out to wherever the sound was being pushed. It was a real community. Nights began to pop up in Bristol soon after.

The DMZ boys (Mala, Coki and Loefah) began running their event at 3rd Bass in Brixton. After Filthy Dub and Thriller Funk stopped we didn't really have anywhere else to play regularly so it really came at a good time. By this time there was also a healthy movement gathering pace in Bristol, centred around Pinch's Subloaded event which would promote acts from London in line with all of the new blood coming thru from Bristol. The crowds began to pick up, and the sound began to gain support on mainstream radio stations. 

John Peel on Radio 1 was the first to pick up on it - he played stuff by Digital Mystikz, Mark One, Distance, Hot Flush recordings and also my own stuff. This was also around the same time Maryanne Hobbs was introduced to me at a DMZ event still in it's early days. She became a huge supporter of the sound. She played music from all corners of the sound which at the time was not as vast as it is now in 2012, but was still varied enough for her to be able to showcase the many styles without turning her electronic music show into a straight up dubstep broadcast!

Maryanne Hobbs' interest and support of the sound was the main catalyst for it being recognised as a legitimate genre as opposed to a small movement centred in south london. She showcased a handful of producers and MC's on her "Dubstep Warz" broadcast in the lead up to the DMZ birthday event. In the lead up to the event there was a definite buzz about it but nothing any of us expected to see was the sight of around 800 people queuing to get in before the doors opened. 

It's important for me to mention that prior to this birthday event, most dubstep events would be half empty. At best, the busier events would only attract around 400 people as the venues in use were small to medium in size. For us to see the surge of people in such a short space of time was actually unbelievable. I remember thinking just 6 months prior to the DMZ event that I might have to give up making music to focus more on a career as opposed to doing my part time work to fund my attempt at making a living from music. I was earning just enough money to pay for the dubplates I was spinning to be cut, and being paid to DJ in these events usually depended on how many people came thru the door - but this was all agreed in advance anyhow. It was only when you picked up the occasional booking outside of your circle of mates that you'd pick up any money, and this was never substantial enough to be considered "a living".

But... after that event, everything seemed to fall into place and all of a sudden it began to gather speed amongst people interested in new music. Events began to pop up, university events were bringing in dubstep acts to provide something new for their punters. We were slowly being bled into the room 2's of drum and bass events and all of a sudden, we were being respected.

The rest, as they say, is history!