Be myself and level-up!

Yesterday evening as I was editing some new songs and composing some random themes on my synthesizer, I discovered a new key formation which sounds great. I can't say for sure what the official terminology of this would be as theory was never my strongest point but I would say that it was some kind of variation of inverted 7ths....regardless of what the aficionado's would call it, i'm looking forward to experimenting with this further to create some wonderful new music to makes hearts flutter.

This has come at a good moment actually as i've recently been on a slight downwards incline with regards to my music, every so often I try searching for other producers/singers/lyricists (not always local) who are interested in making the same kind of music that I like because i'd really like to get some kind of collaboration or group going. But whenever I do go looking for these people I end up finding nobody with the same style or enthusiasm and it does bring me down slightly, i've been on the look out for like-minded lyricists to collaborate with for years because even though I do have a bash every now and then it really isn't my thing.

I suppose that one major problem about this is that the kind of style that I want to create doesn't really see the light of day here in England so it's quite a niche genre. The style is known as 'Shibuya-kei'....or simply 'Shibuya Style'....the sound of Shibuya, Japan. Ultimately it's just a name and i've often liked to think of it as 'Pizzicato Pop', it's an uplifting kinda style which I would say is a mixture between pop, jazz (,indie) and dance with slight variations.
My own personal element has always been a touch of the accordion and to have these two blend together would really make me happy. The closest thing outside of Shibuya-kei i've ever heard to something like this was on the song 'The Life of Riley' by The Lightning Seeds.

I first discovered the Shibuya-kei style at the turn of the Millenium when I found Pizzicato Five, one of the pioneers of the genre, the producer Yasutaka Nakata is currently dominating the style thesedays with his numerous groups and songs he writes for other artists (such as Capsule, Perfume, Coltemonikha, MEG, etc.), he's become a big influence for me in recent years.
I sometimes try to replicate the mood of some of his work and usually end up failing completely, but I know that I should just be confident in my own unique style and hope that I will find those like-minded creatives one day....maybe....

Claymation

Here's my first attempt at clay modelling, I was just messing around really and not making anything in particular. Having said that i'm pretty pleased with the general head shape that I got and I feel quite confident that I could do something pretty creative on a future project if I put my mind to it.






Thought I might aswell just record a little something with it before I pound it into a clump of clay again, I messed around with the colours a bit which is why it looks a bit odd.

Work experience

Those of you who follow my random amusements on facebrick or twatter might have noticed that I was ever so slightly crapping myself about my interview yesterday regarding some work experience. It went alright....I didn't crap myself.

It's a studio in one of the old 'Cottonopolis' renovated mills in Ancoats going by the name of 'Studio Distract', they seem to focus mostly on 3D animated projects but claim not to specialise in any one medium and they also do film production and interactive work.
When I arrived the team were sat together on a sofa watching TV and the studio owner pulled up a bean bag for me to sit on, in fact they were actually in a production meeting watching back their footage to date (a 3D animation for kids) and he asked if I could just wait and watch until they had finished. It was a good 30-40 minutes that I was sat there but the experience of observing this process was good to see, they were playing through the sequence shot-by-shot and picking out elements that needed to be reworked or tweaked....right down to the very finest of details.
It was just like the presentation days really....

Once they'd finished this and made a list of things that needed to be done, the various tasks were distributed amongst the team members and then they were off. At which point I had my meeting with the owner, we basically talked about where i'm at and he decided that instead of just spending a week in the studio shadowing people on their current project it would be better for me to be on-call as I explained that i'll be free for most of the time until the 2nd year begins. So what they're going to do is let me know when there is something specific happening on particular days (such as video production, motion capture, animating, etc.) so that I can come in and get involved.....this way I can get a more varied experience into the different areas.
I'm particularly looking forward to seeing the process of motion capturing as this is something i've been trying to find out about recently with little luck, he was telling me about this new kind of sensory suit they use which means that you don't have to mess around with those blobs on all the joints.

I had picked up all my work from college before heading to the studio so he noticed the big folder that I was carrying and asked me if I wanted him to have a look at some stuff, I just showed him one of my work books and some mood boards telling him the process in which we've been working and I asked a few questions in relation to it to see how they as professionals do things....this was pretty interesting and he gave me some pointers which made a lot of sense to me.

So it went pretty well initially and i'm looking forward to getting involved.

Not so sure if i'll be much use with any of the 3D aspects although I think they use After Effects to animate so that could be interesting as i'm quite confident with this now. I am at the moment trying to learn the very basics of 3D though so it could be worthwhile seeing some of the process in action....hopefully if I can get my head around the basics then I may incorporate this into my 2nd year work....where appropriate.

Top-up failage

I've been having a little shufty around the video games courses offered by MMU and Salford University over the last few days, and i'm a bit concerned at this stage to be honest. I've e-mailed the course leader of the MMU course to ask for some general advice and offered a little bit of information regarding my situation that he might be able to comment on, the concern is regarding a top-up year.

Based on the information provided on both university's websites, it seems that whilst the first year of the 3 year course covers the general principles of design they also teach a basic grounding in programming. So i'm assuming that they wouldn't accept any foundation students bypassing this and going straight onto the 2nd year.....but i'm not sure which is why i've enquired about it.

I've been looking at some profiles of people on LinkedIn who work in games though and quite a few seem to have come through via other pathways, so it's still all out in the open.

The main concern is that the media courses seem to be focused more towards television broadcasting....a bit too detached from where i'm wanting to be.

Starting a revolution

Recently I setup a facebook group for Kung Fu film fans in my area of Greater Manchester, it's something that i've been planning on doing for a few years now. The aim is to get a proper group website organised but I am using facebook to rally numbers initially, if it takes off and quite a number of people join then i'm hoping that people will be encouraged to start up screenings and events. But at the moment the numbers aren't growing and no one is passing on the word.

It is quite de-motivating when you don't see the numbers change at all, and also when fans who do join the group don't tell others about....i've started putting up adverts for it on places like Gumtree and i'm going to hit some of the martial arts film forums and plug it there also. Hopefully that will generate some numbers for it.

However, my brother showed me this video earlier on of why I should persist with it even if the numbers don't grow for a while.....because they will grow eventually.

Watch it, it's quite amazing how the trend catches on after the third person joins in.

Manufactured Landscapes

I watched this docu-film yesterday called 'Manufactured Landscapes', it was basically a display of the work by a photographer called Edward Burtynsky who captures scenes affected by technology. Mainly in China.

It's quite an interesting to watch if you get the chance, but if you can't be bothered then i'll just post the intro to the film which is what I found amazing. It's just one continuous shot from one end of a factory to the other showing people working, but it goes on forever....it's like that factory from Indiana Jones which goes on for miles.

I wonder how long it'd take to get to know everyone working here?!




....I realise now why everything has 'Made in China' written on it. WOW.


I just looked this up and it turns out it won a few awards, if you have access to the SKY Arts channel then it's currently doing the rounds on there....so have a ganders.