Renaissance (film)/motion capture/warning: lots of graphics

[RainDog]

I don't know how I missed this one but I did. Has anyone here seen this movie? It's somewhat like Sin City, but not as overwhelmingly brutal in depictions of violence.

I know Richard Linklater used the same technology in Waking Life and his PKDick cover...Scanner Darkly...but those were in color. (and I also wasn't so impressed with Scanner beyond effects b/c - I dunno why. I guess because the characters were movie stars not graphic art characters, if that makes sense.) I think people in the U.S. will naturally associate the black and white style of Renaissance with Sin City, but the style also comes out of a group of bande dessinee/graphic novelists that is a signature, imo, of the french group that calls itself "L'Association."

Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel -- (now movie I want to see badly)-- Persepolis uses this same style.


In Renaissance, there is no gray..or so little it passes the eye too easily in the starkness of the lines. The entire story is told in black and white.


The cityscapes remind me of Frans Masereel's early expressionist graphic novels,



--and of course all the old b/w film noir out of the U.S. after WWII and on through the rise of a hard-right McCarthyism. When I see this b/w style, especially in work like Sin City or Renaissance, I can't help but be reminded of expressionism as a sort of "early-warning signal" of the fascist zeitgeist --which seems to have reached an apex with Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will.


True "fascist art" is treacle - the images of the happy mother spitting out babies for Hitler youth camps, doing their duty for the homeland, all that. The perfect beauty of the "aryan" form. The worship of surface in order to avoid looking at what lies beneath. War propaganda, however, is all about brute force.


I didn't know, before I started writing this post, that Futurism is credited as the precursor/inspiration for cyberpunk...but interested to see because my reaction, apparently, isn't mine alone. Apparently Ridley Scott cites Futurism as inspiration for Blade Runner. I find it really interesting that graphic art noir is the signature art of this time. Years ago I would tell people that graphic novels are *the* art form of the turn of the century and most all people outside of the whole scene (I'm not a part of it, btw) looked at me like I was... a traitor to words or something.

But -- doesn't this work speak to you? It does to me. It tells me about the world we live in now, about might making right, and about the breakdown of the systems our society thought could be taken for granted.


Dystopia isn't anything new. I guess Dante was one of the early practioners...and Bosch. I think the work being done in motion capture and experiments in black and white "film" are comparable to the innovation of adding color to movies. Maybe I'm just reacting to the strength of the images.

anyway, I wanted to talk about this subject, if anyone is interested. anyone? bueller? bueller? I'm gonna kick this one, even if I get dead air here... just warning you...

[RainDog]

1. ah one-two-three KICK n/t

[RainDog]

2. kickstand...

[porphyrian]

3. I think people are often intimidated when someone begins talking about art,...

...afraid that their opinion might be wrong or too uneducated, or simply not wanting to admit that they really hadn't thought that much about it. And, sadly, there are art-world elitists out there perpetuating the stereotype that makes laymen uncomfortable discussing art. This may be why, when I came across your thread, anyway, no one else has/had responded yet. However, I have no problem with discussing things I know very little about (nor with looking stupid), so I'll bite.

First, I believe art is defined more by the audience and the context than by the artist's intent. Thus, there can be no "wrong" interpretation of art, only a dishonest one. Sometimes I make statements that assume you already know this.

I have not seen Renaissance, but now I want to.

I really like Linklater's style, and the technique is called "rotoscoping" (or "Rotoscoping," I'm not sure).

And I think you may be on to something - there definitely are emergent themes to work done under totalitarian, and specifically fascist, regimes. One thing about recurring themes is that their associative definition is cumulative. In other words, each successive incidence of a theme references the previous incidences of that theme, adding their meaning and reference to their own. Does that make sense? I think I just did questionable things with pronouns.

[RainDog]

4. well, they shouldn't be intimidated

because, yeah, like you say, art is about someone's response to it, which is why I posted the thread in the first place. I wanted to share. I wanted to post those pictures close to each other to see what they looked like. and as far as posting, sometimes I just start "talking" and my posts are...not incomprehensible, but... too many typos of words for words, not just misspellings. I'm trying not to do that on this one. :)

sooooo after feeling like an idiot when I read your post... yeah, I think you're right. Do you think Roman or Greek art fits, if you look back on it? They were democracies or republics but they also had slaves. but maybe in comparison to what was going on to the north of them, they were the freaking anarchists. :)

Renaissance is available on iTunes movies if you have iTunes. It was one of those "you have this, you might like this" things I saw when I redeemed a Christmas present. so I came onto it without any prior info except the idea that it's a lot like Sin City. Roderiquez and Linklater - interesting those guys from Austin are the ones who took up this challenge in U.S. films. It's wide screen aspect so watch it on the largest screen available. on a laptop, it could only fill up about a third of the screen.

thanks for playing, btw. :pals:

[porphyrian]

7. I hope I didn't make you feel like an idiot, that certainly wasn't my intent.

The thing about Classical art is that only some of it survived the barbarians and the Dark Ages, and even less of it survives today, and this art is where much of our understanding of Classical cultures comes from. So, did their art reflect, say, an obsession with the perfection of beauty because of the brutality of every day life at the time? Or is this a meaning we've imparted onto the art subsequently based on our interpretation of the context in which it was created? And, once it's influenced another artist years later, does it really matter what the artist's original intent was, especially if no one is sure of that intent? If I had to guess, though, I'd say Greeks and Romans clung to order as a form of rebellion against the chaos of their world (not that they didn't cause some of that chaos themselves).

Netflix has Renaissance, and I have Netflix, so I'm putting it on the top of my list.

I love discussing things on a more cerebral level occasionally. Thank you for starting it.
;)

[RainDog]

13. no, you're fine

yeah, it's so true about the meanings we give to the past that's not our past. I see that all the time in all those socio-biology "just so" stories about the ways homo erectus, etc. lived.

some ppl argue we can't see our present or our own past either because we're living in it. (that was Althusser, iirc) I think that's something good to consider in order to have a little... grace.

Same thing with medieval cathedral decoration as the greco-roman - we see the columns as austere stone, but they painted them... and had dogs running around in the cathedrals... just like now. :eyes:

[RainDog]

5. step kick shuffle shuffle - last kick for the pacific timers-

you know you want to talk about those pictures.... :)

[Fire Walk With Me]

6. Good post. I'm not sure what to comment about...

But I've enjoyed reading and viewing the images, more deeply than surfaces.

[CGowen]

8. Just watched the trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh7s32XRScQ


Yeah it looks like it uses only black and white and nearly no grey. Or grey is created by using black, but Sin City uses colors for blood or red lips etc. Although I wasn't impressed with the story and Sin City the movie, I was somehow reminded of the game Max Payne ( Probably the Frank Miller comic style or narrator voice)



here is an interview with the artist mentioning Sin City as an influence

..

FS: What are your own comic and non-comic inspirations for the look?

MM: I think that Renaissance has a lot of different influences. For sure its main influences are from US comic books; Sin City is one of them. But also European comic books like Super Asia (?) is one. Everything (sort of is a) big picture of black and white drawings in Europe. And then I have two sets of Japanimation, (which) is also a big one in Renaissance. Both on the technology side because I mean technology is better; and has been shown a lot in Japanimation movies. But also because Japanese people are used to (being at) adjunct audience movies with animation (for) about 15 years, which is something we didn't do in Europe and that we don't do in the US. That was very exciting for us to see that (there were so many) successful movies in Japan for an adjunct audience and (we tried) to do the same thing with Europe and (Renaissance).

FS: What film styles influenced this movie?

MM: The main inspiration for Renaissance, in terms of style, comes from film noir from the US in the 30's and 40's. But we want to do it in a… in taking a cliché character of film noir and put it in the stories that were based a futuristic city.

FS: What is the process in which the film gets translated into the final animation?

MM: So when we started the movie, the main idea was to make this black and white, very pure design style with this reticent animation and to put these two things together, which was through CG animation and motion capture. So basically the process was the following: we first perform on stage with actors and these actors have been motion captured, which means that we have put some dots on their body to be able to record their movement and we use this with animation to animate real-time characters. So we've got kind of CG scenes with the government, and we have different black and white lighting to give the final results.
...
http://www.firstshowing.net/2006/07/27/interview-with-marc-miance-of-attitude-studios/

[RainDog]

17. here's a six-minute video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGCp12RgRZA

I found it when I followed your link. This can give you a good idea of the way it looks, but they didn't show some of the more amazing perspective things.

[CGowen]

18. Looks great if there is a lot of detail, but when the two people kiss

it looks a bit of flat/simple to me. Nevertheless I will probably watch it, because everyone says it has a story.

[MagickMuffin]

9. My cable company is showing it "On Demand"

2006-"A stunning black and white motion-capture animation, set in Paris, 2054, finds an intrepid cop hired by a mega corporation to locate a kidnapped scientist. An action-filled treat, for fans of Blade Runner and Sin City."


While checking out movies to catch up on, we came across this movie. "On Demand" claimed it had a preview, but it wasn't for Renaissance:-(

We haven't watched it yet. But we are big fans of anime, and we can't wait to watch it.

Maybe tonight after Iowa finishes up, we'll be up to vegging out.

However, I'll bookmark your thread so I can post my thoughts on it later.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

10. Looks intriguing, Bookmarking this, I want to see it.

Thanks for the heads up.

[RainDog]

11. thanks all!

when I posted this I thought people would be interested because of Sin City. I loved/hated Sin City. It was so violent I just couldn't watch some of it. I look forward to hearing what you thought.

I should have been more specific about the b&w - I think it's for the characters. I watched it again last night and I just have to say that it is stunning. amazing. I love the look of the movie - the story - at this point I'm sort of like... oh, there's a story?

Yeah, European adults aren't weird about reading graphic novels. I love some of them. Frank Miller, of course, and Jason Lutes' Berlin, City of Stones. I read Alan Moore first - erm, what was the name of that superhero one where the guy says erm? I suppose I could look it up, but I bet someone knows. Then I read V for Vendetta - this was way before things going on now and after the movie I read it again... I think the comic is more successful with that story in many ways. And From Hell (that movie sucked, imo) and there's no way they could capture Moore's paranoid footnotes. I think Road to Perdition was a successful adaptation.

I really like Joe Sacco's stuff too. I have The Dark Knight Returns but haven't read it b/c I wanted to sell it - it's brand new.

I'm not really into superheroes. Tried Moore's Promethea but didn't do it for me. I read Neil Gaiman a looong time ago - he's such a -- romantic.

anyway, I just wanted to say again that this film is stunning. I might have to watch it again later, just to avoid caucus stuff around here.

[Bucky]

12. Some of the athletes in that Riefenstahl photo are doing girl push ups

What weenies. Not even girls do girl push ups anymore.

[RainDog]

14. can't see it

I see a couple with their behinds in the air, and a couple who are down when they should be up... but no girl push ups.

to me they look like the legs on a bunch of centipedes with no bodies.

[CGowen]

15. Proper push ups require a straight back, at least that's what I remember. n/t

[RainDog]

16. yeah, but

when you do girl push ups, you get on your knees instead of your toes.