Love Like a Sunset, Part I by Phoenix

Ryan McGinley: Entrance Romance

Carolyn Murphy Lights Up the Photographer's Daringly Spiritual New Film

“I knew it was going to be wild when I signed on,” says Carolyn Murphy, who stars in Ryan McGinley’s exclusive short filmEntrance Romance (it felt like a kiss). “Next thing I know, my manager is telling me that they're going to break glass on my head and my leading man's a dog. I'm like, 'That's it?' I was so sure I'd have to take my clothes off,” she says, laughing. Shot with a Phantom camera (capable of capturing video at over 1000 frames per second), Entrance Romance sees the all-American beauty (since 2002 the face of Estée Lauder) cheerfully turning a can of WD-40 into a flame thrower, passionately kissing a dog and smiling serenely as a bowl of goldfish smashes over her head. Murphy notes: "We did the fishbowl scene in just one take. As soon as it cracked against my head, everyone dove down and scrambled to pick up the goldfish. None were hurt in the making of this film!" The film's collision of innocence and thrill should be familiar to fans of the photographer's previous work—carefree, hazy shots of teenagers jumping off cliffs, skinny dipping or cavorting in remote locations (earlier this year, McGinley debuted a film for Pringle of Scotland featuring Tilda Swinton in a forest and caves)—but here the action is exquisitely drawn out, with the camera registering the most minute changes in Murphy's expression. Despite the relentless focus, her face remains unflinchingly calm, emphasized by beachy makeup, luminous golden lighting, and a meditative, chant-led soundtrack, all of which provide an intriguing contrast to the film’s explosions of glass shards. “We thought about going with a really rough punk rock look,” makeup artist James Kaliardos says. “But Ryan loved the idea of showing this iconic, fresh-faced California girl in an entirely new context, so I did fresh, 70s “no-makeup” makeup. We wanted her to look happy and in control, but still vulnerable.” So she does—and her bliss is infectious. 

Spike Jonze: Mourir Auprès de Toi 

The Celebrated Filmmaker and Designer Olympia Le-Tan Co-create a Tale to Pierce the Heart

Designer Olympia Le-Tan's embroidered clutch-bags spring to life in director Spike Jonze’s tragicomic stop-motion animationMourir Auprès de Toi (To Die By Your Side). On a shelf in famed Parisian bookstore Shakespeare and Company, the star-crossed love story of a klutzy skeleton and his flame-haired amour plays out amidst Le-Tan’s illustrations of iconic first-edition book covers. "It's such a beautiful and romantic place,” offers Le-Tan of the antiquarian bookstore. "The perfect setting for our story!” The project started after Jonze asked for a Catcher in the Rye embroidery to put on his wall and the plucky Le-Tan asked for a film in return. Enlisting French filmmaker Simon Cahn to co-direct, the team wrote the script between Los Angeles and Paris over a six month period, before working night and day animating the 3,000 pieces of felt Le-Tan had cut by hand. “I love getting performances from, telling stories about and humanizing things that aren’t human,” said Jonze of working with Le-Tan’s characters. After spending five years adapting Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are, Jonze’s recent shorts include robot love story I’m Here and an inspired G.I. Joe-starring video for The Beastie Boys. “A short is like a sketch,” he says. “You can have an idea or a feeling and just go and do it.” Here the iconic director reveals his creative process to writer Maryam L'Ange.

How did the film come about?
I met Olympia in Paris through friends of mine. She was just starting to make the bags for her friends. She had a bunch of the scraps in her bag, all of the cut-out pieces of felt. I just loved it. I loved all the artwork she picked, the texture of it, the stitching of the felt. We joked about making a film and just went for it. It was this thing with no schedule, no pressure and no real reason to be—other than just that we thought it would be fun.

Did you write the story together?
Yeah we did. We would look at all the artwork over lunch whenever we would be in the same city, noting any ideas that would just make us smile. It was done like that, with no real plans.

What’s your creative process?
You just start with what the feeling is. For this one the feeling definitely started with the handmade aesthetic and charm of Olympia’s work. Instantly I had the idea of doing it in a bookstore after-hours, imagining the lights coming down and these guys off their books. Me and Olympia both wanted to make a love story, and it was fun to do it with these characters. It evolved naturally and it all just started with the feeling. From there you entertain yourself with ideas that excite you.

Do you go with your gut instinct?
If it cracks me up. We were talking about the skeleton coming off his book and the girl in the Dracula book waving at him. Olympia is someone who is just absurd, she’s used to just saying anything. She just started making the blowjob gesture as a joke to make us laugh but I was like, “We’ve got to do that.” It’s about taking things that could just be a joke while brainstorming and actually going for it and using it.

What inspires you?
People inspire me. Humberto Leon and Carol Lim [from Opening Ceremony] and the confidence and creativity in how they run their business. Pixar’s really inspiring, they make films in the best possible way. They’re always focused on story. I could list a million people that inspire me all the time. David Bowie’s music, Charlie Kauffman, David Russell. A lot of people that I work with too, just conversations I have with them about what we want to do.

To read an interview with Olympia Le-Tan about the making of the animation visit our Facebook page here. 

Marrakech Film Festival

Part Two: Francis Ford Coppola Holes Up with NOWNESS in La Mamounia Palace

Four days after wrapping the gothic fable Twixt Now and Sunrise in California at his Napa estate, Francis Ford Coppola made a pilgrimage to Marrakech to appear as the headline guest for the city’s 10th International Film Festival. Filmmakers Roberto de Paolis and Carlo Lavagna met the 71-year-old legend in the library of the Art Deco hotel La Mamounia Palace for today's NOWNESS exclusive. “Coppola told me the whole idea for his new film came from a dream—more of a nightmare—he had in Istanbul, which involved children escaping from a cemetery,” says De Paolis, who counts the director as a longtime family friend. “My dad [producer Valerio de Paolis] worked on the first two installments of The Godfather trilogy in Sicily,” he explains.Twixt Now and Sunrise, starring Val Kilmer, marks the latest in a series of more experimental visions for Coppola, following on from pre-WWII love story Youth Without Youth and last year’s monochrome tale Tetro. The director's anti-big-budget stance has enabled him to sidestep the industry and play by his own rules. “He’s doing more individual, personal movies now,” says De Paolis. Keeping it in the family, daughter Sofia’s stylish new feature Somewhere closed the festival. To see other high points from the Marrakech Film Festival, click here.

Tree of Life poster, printed by Degree

Alicja Dobrucka: i like you, i like you alot (2008-2010)

Kid Acne: Kill Your Darlings

Jessica Sarah Rinland- Nulepsy

Pakayla Biehn

Pakayla Biehn used work from Flickr photographers and painted these double exposure paintings. 

Ute Klein

see more ute klein

well i want to incorporate illustrator designs for screen print laser cut etc, maybe make animation from lazer cut peices, burn them etc. also about journey, and how everything is so individual, and getting lost and findig things. and costumes.

Jessie Ware & Sampha - Valentine

Damien Barlow

Damien Barlow is a paper cut illustrator, originally from Newcastle, currently based in Leeds. He mostly works with pencil and scalpel, carefully cutting away paper to reveal his over all image, however he also dabbles in a little digital design. Damien is most influenced by outer space and the hidden places on earth. He designs mainly for book illustrations and prints but there is no restriction on the scale or detail that a paper cut can reach.

Charles Burnes

Burns is renowned for his meticulous, high-contrast and creepy artwork and stories. Charles Burns' earliest works include illustrations for the Sub Pop fanzine, and Another Room Magazine of Oakland, CA, but he came to prominence when his comics were published for the first time in early issues of RAW, the avant-garde comics magazine founded in 1980 by Françoise Mouly and Art Spiegelman. In 1982, Burns did a die-cut cover for RAW #4. Raw Books also published two books of Burns as 'RAW One-Shot': Big Baby and Hard-Boiled Defective Stories. In 1994, he was awarded a Pew Fellowships in the Arts.^[1] In 1999, he showed at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Aleksandra Domanovic

Aleksandra Domanovic creates sculptures by printing on the sides of three stacks of paper (each with 7,500 sheets) to create unique portraits.

The White Stripes - Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground

.specialized.globe

http://www.specialized.com/gb/gb/globe/GlobeProduct.jsp?spid=62854&scid=1105&scname=Globe

Barbara Kruger: Remote Control

Edicisum by Candas Sisman

edicisum by candas sisman

This video is heavily based on sound, visual interpretations of sound. i think the sound has been edited to sound different that what it was coming from. which makes a disjunction between the movements and object making noise (the sound that it would normally make) and the edited alien sounds that are used in the video.

FILM 1 by Martin de Thurah

FILM 1 by martin de thurah

I mostly like this video because of the spoken narrations. i especially like that the spoken words are not synced with the film. it gives a slight nostalgia feel. like they are looking back on memories, and commenting and re-analysing. i also really like how the voices are almost free from any extreme emotion, which is quite contrasting to some of the visual atmosphere that is created.


At the beginning of the film an uninvolved person reads out a paragraph. it is a detached way of getting a message across. 

Directed by Will Davidson Music by New Look Cut & Graded by SWELL

Directed by Will Davidson
Music by New Look
Cut & Graded by SWELL

good use of animated images and shapes projected onto people and smoke- this mixture produces really interesting visual effects. why is smoke so popular in films at the moment?

Theatrical smoke and fog, also known as special effect smoke, fog or haze, is a category of atmospheric effects used in the entertainment industry. The use of fog can be found throughout motion picture and television productions, live theatre, concerts, at nightclubs and raves, amusement and theme parks and even in video arcades and similar venues. These atmospheric effects are used for creating special effects, to make lighting and lighting effects visible, and to create a specific sense of mood or atmosphere. If an individual is at an entertainment venue and beams of light are visible cutting across the room, that most likely means smoke or fog is being used. Theatrical smoke and fog are indispensable in creating visible mid-air laser effects to entertain audiences. Recently smaller, cheaperfog machines have become available to the general public, and fog effects are becoming more common in residential applications, from small house parties to Halloween and Christmas.

Militaries have historically used smoke and fog to mask troop movements in training and combat, and the techniques and technology used for generating smoke and fog in theatre and film are similar.

Dry Bones by danDifelice

Dry Bones by danDifelice

This project was a collaborative effort that spanned countries & time zones with several artists working long hours to finally put this piece out. The passage comes from an Old Testament prophecy, taken from Ezekiel 37. Not only is the text extremely descriptive and visual, lending itself to beautiful imagery, but show that where there is death and exile, hope and life can be found.

i think the main positive point i can pick out from this film is the atmosphere that is created. how is it created? by telling a story through audio. how is the atmosphere created visually? extreme location, weather conditions, panning of the landscape shows that it is very isolated. when it is isolated and something magical happens it seems all the more subtle, which is a nice quality. for example there are no reactions/drama from people in the surroundings, which makes it seem like it is almost normal.

obviously the digital effects are awesome. i think the use of wind symbolises change- almost in a mythical way. any improvements? use more then one actor?