Invisible Cities: Crit Presentation

Invisible Cities Crit Presentation by Georgia Nicole Betteridge on Scribd

Invisible Cities:(3)Build up Gifs

Establishing Shot

Street View Shot 

Interior Shot

Thekla: (Gradients)Street View

Thekla: (Gradients) Interior shot

Invisible Cities ideas for interior angles/shots (1 of 3)

(In progress would be more cluttered to the left etc with construction resources..

Here I have been trying to get an idea of an interior of the architects workspace and the builders. 

I looked at the reference of a warehouse to get this and the conveyer belt gave me the idea of putting the models of the big structural project/s they have been thinking about and how many times they could have repeated this process. The model at the bottom however is broken foreshadowing that the project is doomed to fail and end in conflict. Im also trying to think about how it would be in motion..the conveyer belt with models maybe lots of ideas could be thrown away or just left the people are like sleep deprived, stressed etc crossed out blueprints ripped ones..I tried to give the sense that even this building is still in construction and the people are nowhere near their goal. theres a sense of repetition and continuation so you get an idea it could be a big room without showing all of it and I'm trying to think about liveliness even without the people like a sense they have been in there. And thinking about how to show a story in a picture about that place. I thought of metropolis when I drew the conveyer belt as I reminds me of the whole machines operating and constant work etc..I might rotate or do a stranger angle to make it more uneasy/chaotic or unstable looking.

This is a more simple interior but it gives the sense of a catwalk with ladders and how it looks old by mixing in the post war look into the ruined walls and the hole in the roof etc.. I am trying to mix the modern (today construction and past influence of post-war in the spaces this kind of unfinished space. 
I was thinking that drawing all the angles will give me a sense of what is believable for a structure or the story and I was going to paint into the better ones on photoshop to get the style to match how I see the world to get the balance id like also the colours before but looser and look at some tutorials on painting. Any advice or feedback would be great. And also I'm trying to figure out what I need in the drawing and what I don't. :]

Metropolis: Review

METROPOLIS-1927 REVIEW 

Fritz Lang is the director of this Science Fiction Drama Film (Hybrid Genre ) who worked along side his wife Thea Von Harbou who wrote the screen-play and novelisation. This Silent movie was created in Germany and was set in a futuristic urban distopia However he didn't seem to like what his wife had done,they separated and she joined the neo-nazi revolution. One interesting part about this film is its social/historical context it includes.

"This vision of plutocracy vs. labor would have been powerful in an era when the assembly line had been introduced on a large scale and Marx had encouraged class warfare."- (Ebert, 2010)

After Watching Metropolis i noticed that the lower class was working for the higher class as they made Jon Fredersons Metropolis for him and then were disregarded and used as slaves whilst his son Freder tried to help these depressed half humane people by giving them work hour breaks underground all of the mechanics are done by hand and the feelings of exhaustion and Industrialisation by using smoke and time continuation and showing how people go crazy. Freder is the go-between the sympathetic character that shows what doesn't work with the system., Religious References and Communist messages are also included in the film.
The Set is done really well as it includes the tower of Babel which is a myth/legend which follows the idea of the creators wanting to reach the stars but the building never got built due to misunderstandings and conflicts between them and there is also gothic areas in terms of religion. Also how these different buildings that show these ideologies from the high dominion and indulgence of what people imagine of consumerist quality with spotlights and music that seeks entertainment.

Bauhaus,Cubist,Futurist and Art Deco designs are clearly used in Metropolis to provide the aesthetic appeal with its miniatures. Which is seen as rather impressive and practical for the way the machine age was shown. The setting also has a Pathetic Fallacy to it when it look drudgery -industrial it looks like the way the workers must feel on the other hand it can look how the owner feels proud an indulged even though he used slave labour.

Metropolis resembles H G Wells Time Machine by the leisure of this city for the higher class but the fact that the workers are downtrodden and actually acts as a worry of what could happen in the future if put in the wrong hands The German Expressionism suits well because of the Neo Nazi Party that was taking place at the time and Hitler was actually reported to be a big fan of the film.

The Dr Frankenstein, Avante Garde professor, CA Rotwang creates the Machine Man, Bridgette Helm. influenced the character C3PO in Star Wars and the film In general could be argued the first science fiction film, it influenced others like Blade Runner.. and as a women Bridgette was represented as a damsel in distress sexist view when she is abducted and replicated to become the aesthetic of the robot in the film and later becomes sexually objectified when the men are drooling over her, she winks her eye or subjectively you could say she becomes empowered in terms of manipulating and deceiving the workers into destroying the work they had done in hopes that they will all flood themselves. She also has these two sides shown of her one of that of a sign of hope an angel type figure then the other version a devil robot.

You could say that this film that's ideology is that society's technology is what actually drives or controls the development of the social structure and cultural views or values This is called Technological determinism which is a reductionist theory, However Lang saw his movie as anti authoritarian see quote:

Freder: "Of where they belong?...In the deeps? ...And if those in the deeps one day rise against you?"-(Rotten Tomatoes, Film Quotes 1927) 

Ironically the Nazis liked the film and offered him control of their own film industry so he went to America and the ideas in Metropolis are kind of echoed in "Triumph of the Will" (1935) a pro-Hitler film by Leni Reifenstahl.

"Maria/Robot: The mediator of the head and the hands must be the heart."- Metropolis 1927 quotes ( Rotten Tomatoes Film Quotes 1927 )

Right at the very end of the film the two forces end up becoming equal and work together as if a statement about conflict that arises from industry and rebellion. The Anti-Humanism could be to emphasise how fighting against each other in terms of that power is wrong. and Anti-Science could be trying to show what is included in conflict and the impact the dictators actions have on the rest and that science is not political,conservative,liberal..its more neutral and that's how the right system should balance out to have more peace.

Bibliography

Ebert, R. (2017). Metropolis Movie Review & Film Summary (1927) | Roger Ebert. [online] Rogerebert.com. Available at: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-metropolis-1927 [Accessed 12 Oct. 2017].

I.makeagif.com. (2017). Cite a Website - Cite This For Me. [online] Available at: https://i.makeagif.com/media/10-31-2015/npObJ_.gif [Accessed 12 Oct. 2017].

Thumbs.gfycat.com. (2017). Cite a Website - Cite This For Me. [online] Available at: https://thumbs.gfycat.com/FriendlyBeneficialKawala-max-1mb.gif [Accessed 12 Oct. 2017].

@Phil Late OGR

 Thekla-Invisible Cities

 I decided to pick the city Thekla because the other cities didn't interest me as much, I really liked the idea of rather than a city already built the idea of a city constantly being built on but not finished was interesting besides this base is what a city is built up of in the first place..and it is focused on the interesting structures,shapes the wooden catwalks, walkways.. i looked at the details for my inspiration board to try and keep this details whilst finding my own view on it..and i felt could be visualized in lots of ways. When i read about this city i thought it had quite a mystery about it a code of enigma..lots of unanswered questions. Which leaves it more open. For example the people building have this kind of anxiety about the construction falling as everything is described as supporting one another e.g. the part looking through the fence seeing the scaffolding supporting other scaffolding etc. ..This makes me think i should look at temporary builds too that are only necessary for further building and not inhabiting. The city's blueprint is the stars and the sky which means this is a really important detail for the mood and telling the story in my own way..Some people have taken this as the structures following shapes that of star constellations and taken a more science fiction,pattern approach whilst some have gone more print based and completely imaginative. The work stops only at sunset and even when asking about the city in progress they are still working this kind of reminds me of metropolis because i can imagine the same kind of color schemes and the workers constantly going towards one goal could it be to get higher?, Or is it supposed to look unfinished? Is that the beauty of it. I like how this city had a lot less description than the other cities in the book but it kept me questioning it.

This Influence map was a generic start but it did inspire alternative ways to visualize it and i found myself looking at references, sculptures,prints,constellations.

These Thumbnails were not very stylistic, Just more about how i could visualize the spaces of the city for example more claustrophobic or through a crack in a fence as it describes..i tried to put something like a beam or a pipe in most to describe what it was thinking about the foreground mid ground and afar and to focus on the anxiety they have about it falling and causing destruction..Maybe this has happened before? maybe that's why its never finished? But this is what i got from these i think some are too built up or too vague but it was a start.

I looked at more references in terms of objects and height,angles and small details described these helped me with my thumbnails to get an idea of what it would look like.

  

These Thumbnails are rather crazy and quite kinetic but i went full fictional and just drew whatever shapes and parts i could visualize with the sci-fi element to see what i could get personally..this is to fictional and doe-sent work too well either both are not the right balance but it did make me think about more interesting ways i could change the structures so that they are not bland.

After Reading about this city in the book and being in the film analytical lessons and essay structure ones we spoke about social and historical context when sat that i though to myself what could be interesting what could i try that i would want to visualize and in the blurb of the book it says about Italo Calvino being a post war Novelist and i thought incorporating structures influenced by these kind of buildings would be interesting maybe the people are trying to build everything up back from conflict either way i thought it would give more of an interesting take on this city. This allows references like Italian postmodern buildings, the debree the mix of old and the new like it cannot be forgotten or it is all but repeated all the time. In the digital painting sessions i get really inspired because the ways in which they build a narrative or more structures by chance or from previous ideas..The digital paintings i ended up with were done from thumbnail drawing went over and tweaked around with to build up these quick pieces better to help visualize it all.

The Megalomania video got me interested in how it looked kind of like a hybrid of structures gave

unity and variety. cranes overcunumbered and this atmosphere from the light and the noises gave an anxiety or idea of the work this inspired me because when a building did fall it created another structure which was open to the viewer to contemplate whether it was beautiful or not or what the structures do after being worked on also decoding structure that video pushes the idea of the shapes and the angles with the repetition and pattern. I like the idea of a really dark undertone to the city that makes it anxious or like it has a background but also ironically aesthetically pleasing to see.

Looking at all of this helped with getting me thinking more about what i can put together and how i can invest in it. The idea of using Post war as a reference can give me ideas of texture like grain lighting and make same think things like maybe the stars that are the blueprint is post war in terms of star icons in the war maybe those are the fallen in the sky, maybe the structures are monuments. Maybe its an anxiety about past tense and maybe its closer to home than expected.

In the early twentieth century had a rise of fascism after rallying after Benito Mussolini who had a lot of dominance in terms of his power in the government and so he had his own personal dictatorship. Once he was defeated after World War 2 Italy could then move forward from this. However he had 'brown shirts' which were his foot soldiers and they rose to power in what was called the chaotic period After all of this there was a lot more followed by it but it resulted in an economic recovery and rebuild. This made me think chassis of buildings etc the wire frame would be a good place to start and just researching more and developing my own city views.

Thekla: Quick drawings after Influence Maps

After Reading about Thekla and the social/history context of Italo Calvino being a post war novelist (adventurer) I thought it would be interesting to merge both Post war narrative/structures to the construction and add the details described too for example the walkways and destruction/to see if I can find something new but from references ( See Influence Maps. )

Thumbnails of Thekla

Chosen City: Thekla (Invisible Cities)

Invisible Cities Caligari: 2d/3d from previous drawing Photoshop

Invisible Cities Octavia: Strings and Webs

Invisible Cities Thumbnails

The City of Water ( Zig Zags )

 Decided to do something crazy and quick.

Inspired by the Cabinet of Calgari/German Expressionism.

(Paper)

Invisible Cities Thumbnails

Inspired by Metropolis, L.S Lowry 

Invisible Cities- Initial Thumbnails

Invisible Cities/ Observational Study Pencil

Initial Venice Thumbnails-

To get some ideas of structures, I have decided to initially look at Venice for ideas as some of the cities Italo Calvino describes take inspiration from Venice, an example of this would be Esmeralda.