Pictures of Yaffo

A few more pictures from the weekend, from the port city of Yaffo (Jaffa). More than other cities, Yaffo embodies the combination of the ancient, the rather new and and augmented. The city itself is dived into two sectors:

Ancient Yaffo

Modern Yaffo

Auto-Iris

The film is meant to be carried by it's environment. Since it would be rather still, the lion's share of the movement will be from the camera and from the light. I've set my brother's camera to Auto-Iris, which means the camera adjusts to the light automatically, not unlike the way our eyes work. When a bright spot takes up most of the frame, everything else becomes dark. When the light switches off, the eye adjusts itself to the darkness.

Below are some simple reference videos that I've taken in my home in Israel. I will later attempt to simulate these lighting effects, whenever a window is opened or a light is switched on and light floods into the the dark abandoned room. Sans the purple streaks.

Reference Photographs

In the past few weeks, I traveled to several cities in Israel, taking photographs of the architecture that I would like to reference in the film. Below are just a few of the photographs from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Jerusalem

 Photographs by Michael Fallik

Tel Aviv

Photographs by Michael Fallik

Inspiration Strikes

 My hopes with this project was that after creating several short and seemingly unrelated animation sequences, that an overall theme would naturally form which will allow me to create a single cohesive piece of work.

This cohesion came sooner than expected, not more than a few hours after I finished shooting a short reference scene for the first sequence.

Kowloon – The Walled City

Image taken from The Dry Facts

More than a month ago, I stumbled upon a book named City of Darkness - Life in Kowloon City. The book records the history of this now demolished Hong Kong city, accompanied by candid resident interviews and simply unbelievable photographs.

Looking at the images, I immediately drew parallels to the 60s architecture in Tel Aviv, and imagined the possibility of constructing a Kowloon style city with Tel Aviv's structural design and perhaps even some of Jerusalem or Jaffa's ancient construction style. A concept or story was missing at the time and I didn't feel like following the project on visual merit alone.

After returning for a visit in my homeland of Israel, several weeks ago, the mentioned concept came together. Thanks to a very special muse.

The concept in one Paragraph

The film is seen entirely from a first person perspective. The viewer is taken on a journey through a fictional abandoned city in the Negev – the desert of southern Israel -- following a mysterious cicerone, who occasionally reminisces over the little stories and happenings that once took place in this completely unregulated and organic urban environment. As the cicerone speaks and the viewer witnesses... the tale of the city unravels.

Underlining Themes

There will be two underlining themes that will guide me during my process. A conceptual, as well as an aesthetic. I will explain them below, without getting too artsy fartsy.

The Conceptual

Taken from the book The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle:

“When someone goes to the doctor and says, "I hear a voice in my head," he or she will most likely be sent to a psychiatrist. The fact is that, in a very similar way, virtually everyone hears a voice, or several voices, in their head all the time: the involuntary thought processes that you don't realize you have the power to stop. Continuous monologues or dialogues.

You have probably come across "mad" people in the street incessantly talking or muttering to themselves. Well, that's not much different from what you and all other "normal" people do, except that you don't do it out loud. The voice comments, speculates, judges, compares, complains, likes, dislikes, and so on. The voice isn't necessarily relevant to the situation you find yourself in at the time; it may be reviving the recent or distant past or rehearsing or imagining possible future situations. Here it often imagines things going wrong and negative outcomes; this is called worry. Sometimes this soundtrack is accompanied by visual images or "mental movies." Even if the voice is relevant to the situation at hand, it will interpret it in terms of the past. This is because the voice belongs to your conditioned mind, which is the result of all your past history as well as of the collective cultural mind-set you inherited. So you see and judge the present through the eyes of the past and get a totally distorted view of it. It is not uncommon for the voice to be a person's own worst enemy.

Many people live with a tormentor in their head that continuously attacks and punishes them and drains them of vital energy. It is the cause of untold misery and unhappiness, as well as of disease.”

-Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now,  published by New World Library, 1997)

The Aesthetic

Photographs by Laura Emel Yilmaz

The aesthetic theme of the project will rely on the landscape and architecture of my homeland, Israel. Over the next week I will travel across the country photographing various areas that may serve as the settings, insipiration and visual guide for this endeavor.

The Illusion of Time

Painting by Michael Fallik

The current plan is to spend no more than two weeks on each segment (or episode) of animation. This means that during the period of each two week, I will go through the process of story boarding, animating and completing a rough post-production process for a segment that is only a few seconds long.

When the production deadline arrives in May 2010, I will have about 12 animated pieces, each with its own style and technique, while still maintaining an overall theme.

As time progresses, I will take each subsequent episode and attempt to arrange it with the last. This process will be very organic, which is not a method that I am used to working in. But my hope is that working within the two-week confinement will allow me much more freedom to explore the process, while still being able to produce the desired product.

Clarity is coming...

Come Clarity chronicles the development of Michael Fallik's animated MFA thesis project at The University of Southern California, DADA Division.
   
This project will be constructed out of various short animated segments, each a few seconds long. Every segment, will conceptually be drawn from my subconscious imagery, and at first glance will have no connection with its count parts.

As I continue to create these segments, I will try to find connections between them and consolidate them into one whole piece.