/ Year three / Kino4: Rollerball

 Rollerball (1975) Directed by Norman Jewison

The story follows Johnathan E. (James Caan,) the star player for the Houston Rollerball team. He's the highest scoring player in the league. Fans adore him. He never loses. And the executives are frightened by his celebrity. Rollerball is designed to be an outlet for violence in society run by mega-corporations whilst also demonstrating the futility of individuality. Johnathan's success enrages the executives at Energy, the corporation that fields the Houston team, they are pressing him to retire but he refuses as rollerball is the only thing that keeps him going. 

I found Rollerball to be an enjoyable film, i think the thing that interested me most was the sharp contrast between the scenes of dialogue and the scenes of rollerball being played. i think that the calmness of the predominantly dialogue scenes is what made the Rollerball scenes so exhilarating to watch.

/ Year three / Summer Brief: Kino4

KINO4 Live Brief
KINO4 is to be the new weekly screen club of classic ‘Arthouse’ films, animations and cultural documentaries, run internally for the course.

A logo identity is required for Kino4’ and a poster for the first few films 
Produce either or both

1. A body of experiments in any media and final Poster designs for one or more of Octobers featured films

2. An identity for Kino4


* This work will be pinned up in the new studio and discussed on the first week back
 
 October films ( see the blog for more details ) 

‘Good night and Good Luck’ Directed by G.Clooney 
‘The Corporation’ Directed by Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar 
‘IF’ Directed by Lindsey Anderson


The Andrei Tarkovsky season’

‘Stalker’
‘Mirror’
‘Solaris’

 Since i hadn't seen many of the films that were listed i decided to focus on creating a logo design that would be fitting for most 'Arthouse' films, rather than watching the films and spoiling my experience of Kino4 to get posters that would fit the individual films.

/ Year two / Summer: Personal Project

Over the summer i decided i wanted to work on my skills with After effects. I started to mess around with the Trapcode Form plug-in. Here is one of my experiments, an abstract Music video for Afx237 v7 by Aphex Twin.

AFX237 V7 form test from SapB on Vimeo.

/ Year two / Lecture: James Torry

Based in Manchester, James is part of doodledoMotion who specialise in creative motion graphics, animation and pre & postproduction for TV and corporate clients. He is also an ex MMU D&AD student. He showed a selection of his motion graphic work including TV spots and Title sequences.

This was an interesting and very relevant lecture for me not only because he is an ex student but because Motion graphics is an area of design I would like to pursue.  After his lecture he gave a short tutorial on some of the capabilities of After Effects and demonstrated how to use the puppet tool. This is something that no lecturer has done before but I think it was worthwhile and useful information. I also managed to talk one-to-one with James and ask him some specific after effects questions in relation to one of my projects, which proved very helpful.

/ Year two / Lecture: Si Scott

He is a graphic designer from the Uk who is originally from Leeds but has moved around the country quite a bit. His work is mainly innovative type work with an illustrated feel. He went Leeds College Of Art & Design (Where he is now a part time lecturer) to study a BTEC in Graphic Design and then a foundation in Visual Communication, before going to Buckinghamshire Chilterns University to study a degree in Graphic Design.

In the lecture he gave us an insight in to his design career and explained the different steps he went through to get to where he is today. He also talked about his third year final project at university for which he received a DN&D award. Si took a much less formal approach to the lecture making it very engaging and appealing. I am a fan of his work and was glad I was able to meet him.

/ Year two / Lecture: Paul Farringdon

In his lecture Paul talked about his experiences in the design industry and showed examples of his portfolio work. Studio Tonne is a multi discipline agency but specialize in interactive web based design. It is clear that Paul finds a great deal of his inspirations in music and sound design. They design games, which the user can interact with to make music or just play with different sounds. I checked out their website to play on a few of these games and spent quite a lot of time mucking about with them, Very entertaining. Overall an interesting lecture, it showed me how important and useful interactivity can be in certain types of design.

/ Year two / Lecture: Steve Smith

Steve Smith who works under the name Neasden Control Centre is a London based artist whose output is not confined to one medium or message. He can be found drawing and painting his way through work encompassing illustration / design / typography / motion graphics / installations / art exhibitions and one off projects. He works with many different companies / artist groups / friends and so on and collaborates with a small network of like-minded freelancers from project to project. I particularly liked the motion graphic pieces he showed in the lecture, they have a very obvious hand made aesthetic but there is also a lot of computer graphics used, a nice mix.