Music is one of my greatest passions and in this project I was lucky enough to work in that. UCA Canterbury were contacted by Graphic Designer Vaughan Oliver with an opportunity to work with/ for him on a moving image piece to be used for The Pixies' 'Come on Pilgrim, It's Surfer Rosa' tour.
I acted as a Producer, Editor and Animator on this project as well as submitting a film myself (above). The brief was to capture the tone, emotion and feeling of the bands' sound and music through a visual and moving sense. These videos (if chosen) would get played behind the band at their gig and tour. I lost my mind when given the brief as I'm a massive fan of The Pixies as well as Vaughan Oliver himself: his graphic design is actually how I came across the band.
This was a big group project of multiple students putting work forward to which, they would be filtered and edited into a 11520x1080 format: effectively a long (6 attached together) screen for the gig. The venue for the tour was The Roundhouse in Camden, London (a spherical venue) which meant the screen would sit on the perimeter of it, behind the band as they performed.
Some edits showed text moving through the long screen whilst others just played visuals, interacting with the 'screen' next to it: having a mixture of 16mm film, live action, motion graphics and animation.
My submitted film (at the top of the page) is my interpretation of the Pixies' music through image. Their sound is quite edgy and grungy so I wanted to replicate that erratic nature especially in the vocals and screeching interference from the guitar: attempting to merge that into one.
I used live action footage, motion graphics (glitches, moving dot lines, moving shapes), 16mm footage, spray paint, fire and typography. As there was no narrative to the piece and because it was a replication of the music, there isn't any sound to the final video, I worked in this way as I wanted to look at the film as a whole and 'see Pixies' instead of catering it to one song. If I did that (in my eyes), the video would be made from a song on the whole album and not reflect the album as the brief desired.
In addition to the main film, I made short videos where I used the glitch technique I'd put on the type but over the 16mm and live action footage too. These created an eerie atmosphere in one sense but also reflected the chaotic tone I was aiming to achieve without being messy.