This trailer for a new animated short The Chase directed by Philippe Garner of french animation studio Space Patrol is pretty visually impressive, however it’s his earlier work, Stop Pain, which really caught my eye. A sad tale with a surreal twist at the end. Worth a watch.
Philippe’s Vimeo channel is here – worth subscribing to for future use we figure.
Boom. Here is the new video for M.I.A’s single ‘Bad Girls’ – it only premiered live on Noisey about an hour ago.
‘It was dope to have so many people from so many different backgrounds speaking so many different languages come together to create something that we believed in,” says M.I.A about the video. “I thought I was gonna die on the shoot when I saw the drifting. It was a four day shoot so everyone was on edge the whole time specifically ME when I had to do bluesteel singing to the camera while the cars did doughnuts on the wet road ten feet away. In my mind I was thinking how I was gonna deliver the video to Vice with no legs.”
Subscribe to Noisey here for more of this sort of shit.
Ever wondered what happens when the door shuts on the world’s taxidermy collections? Thanks to this video from The Erratic Man, we now know:
The single is the first from Worker Records – an internal label at BETC London – the younger British brother of the Parisian adfolk behind those Evian roller babies.
And that’s not all. If you’ve got a pet (either living or deceased) who you’d like to see warbling along to ‘Back In The Day’, you can do just that at Petchoir.com.
The creative team responsible for the taxidermised troubadours are a young placement duo, Mike Whiteside and Ben Robinson, who’ve managed to find the time for a quick chat with SSZ about their experiences, ambitions, and that video.
SSZ: So guys: where are you from and what has been your journey to date?
B&M: Well, Mike’s from Bournemouth and Ben’s from Reading. We met on the excellent Creative Advertising Course at the University of Gloucestershire in Cheltenham, which is always bit of a mouthful. That’s why we’ve now moved to London. Easier to say.
SSZ: How did you find yourselves at BETC? Are you finding the placement useful?
B&M: We exhibited at D&AD’s New Blood, which was visted by Neil Dawson, our creative director. Neil saw our work and must’ve liked it, which is surprising considering the focal piece was a gross spec ad we did for Veet for Men.
Anyway, we’re very glad he did and we’re learning a lot. It’s great for us that BETC isn’t a huge agency here yet. It means we’re learning from people who, in most agencies, it’d be hard to get any time at all with.
SSZ: Where did the inspiration for this taxidermy masterpiece come from? And where did you get all the critters?
B&M: We were briefed to come up with some album covers and posters, around the concept of ‘broken joy’. We scribbled down the taxidermy idea, half-formed along with a few others, on a piece of paper. Neil saw it and sort of went, ‘yeah! Let’s do that!’
The critters were all part of the collection at London Taxidermy, which is an amazing, if slightly unnerving, place. We were spotting new dead things all day and we think you could probably say the same if you were there for a whole year. That’d be a weird year.
SSZ: You guys are on placement at BETC right? How did it feel to have such an exciting creative brief so early on?
B&M: Yeah it’s been a really great project to be involved with. This is our first placement, so we dunno, maybe they’re all like this. But we suspect we’ve been pretty spoiled here on that front.
SSZ: It seems unusual that an ad agency would not only set up a record label but devote so much time to what is effectively an internal project. What do you think BETC are looking for out of this?
B&M: BETC’s got a fantastic attitude to creativity and they want to foster a really strong creative culture here. The office in France has set the bar incredibly high and the London office are keen to do the heritage justice and just make great things, some of which will be ads.
SSZ: 30,000 views in under a week – does this make you viral superstars yet? What are your ambitions and are you now addicted to the medium of the music video?
B&M: We’re really chuffed with how it’s going down. Saying that, we saw a video this morning of a dog with human hands eating Dairylea Dunkers. It had over 400,000 views so we’ve probably got a little way to go yet.
We don’t think the best creative stuff’s necessarily advertising, so we’d love to get involved with more projects like this in the future. For now though, we’re just enjoying learning and improving.
SSZ: Any advice to other young teams or single creatives? Any golden rules?
B&M: In one word, persist!! We’ve got more detailed advice on our blog though, so have a read.
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For more on Mike & Ben’s work, visit their website – the aptly-named www.mikeandben.co.uk.
As someone who loves videogames and has attempted on more than one occasion to build one (I’m proud to boast of a 100% failure rate) this looks pretty much like my dream film. The passions of a few ubergeeks as they create their games -it’s gotta be good right! Check out the website here.
As the first of a series of regular events, ShellsuitZombie brings you a film screening from the largest short film network in the world, Future Shorts.
The creators of Secret Cinema, Future Shorts are world renowned for supporting short film and the lineup for this festival is no exception. A haul including Oscars, Baftas, Sundance and Annecy Festival awards just goes to show that the films you will see are amongst the best in the world.
Filmed on an old decommissioned military submarine with 35mm cameras, Deeper Than Yesterday tells the story of a Russian crew who suffer a rather savage form of cabin fever. Directed by Ariel Kleiman, a graduate of the VCA at the University of Melbourne, recently said “The more uncomfortable I feel making a film the better it will be.” Jurors have compared the film to “The Lower Depths,” Maxim Gorky’s best-known play – very Russian with long period of isolation and madness.
Winner of International Short Filmmaking Award at Sundance.
A boy learns to play the piano in this rather dark but occasionally humorous mediation on the anxieties and fears of a modern civilized society. Created as a lo-fi animation, The External World is a surreal seventeen-minute collection of vignettes which borrows themes from pop culture, cinema and videogames – classic and contemporary. Some have heralded this short as “a unique reconstruction of the universe” while O’Reilly recently noted in an interview, “I like creating experimental films that have an emotional function.”
A detailed and humorous account of a failed bank robbery: A single take where roughly 100 people meticulously recreate an actual event that took place in Stockholm in June 2006. Directed by Ruben Östlund, these events were witnessed first hand along with his producer Erik Hemmendorff while on the way to the Swedish Film Insititute. The film questions the reality of how, really, robberies happen, and what they might or, should, look like. “Making ‘Incident by a Bank’ is a way to correct the false images of robberies we see almost daily in action movies made in Hollywood,” says Östlund.
Winner of the Golden Bear at Berlinale.
The Eagleman Stag is a unique 9-minute stop-motion animated film that depicts a man’s haunting obsession with the passage of time and his unorthodox relationship with a beetle. Directed by Michael Please, the production was a highly ambition final year film produced while studying at the RCA – it is based on a story he previously wrote entitled “The Life and Time of Peter Eagleman.” Orchestral music was integral to this film and composed in tandem with the animation process.
Winner of Best Short Animation at BAFTA, and Special Jury Prize at SXSW.
5. God of Love
Matheny, who wrote, directed and starred in this 19-minute inventive comedy about love-inducing darts won the Oscar for Best Live Action Short in 2011. A recent film student graduate at New York University, God of Love was produced as his thesis film project while enrolled at NYU’s MFA program. At the Oscars, he was hailed as delivering one of the best acceptance speeches of the evening and thanked his mother for her contribution to the movie.
Oscar Winner in 2011 for Best Live Action Short Film.
6. Luminaris
Inspired by the Argentinian instrumental tango piece entitled “Lluvia de Estrellas” (Star Rain), Luminaris tells the story of a man living in a world controlled by time by light. Each day inhabitants of this fictional world awake and are pulled, as if by some otherworldly force, to their jobs by sunlight. Combining pixilation and stop motion techniques; the surrealist short pairs styles reminiscent of art deco with black cinema. Zaramella explains, “Originally, I approached the project as a puppet animation story, but doing some pixilation tests in the gardens of Fontevraud, just for fun, the seed of the present short was born: the idea of sunlight as a magnetic force.”
Winner of the Audience and Fipresci Award at Annecy 2011 International Animation Festival
The best thing is, the whole thing will be introduced by one of the Future Shorts team. Plus you can go to the bar and still see the screen! Yeah boi.
see you there chums.
The Agents of Change are a loose group of street artists based all over the UK and beyond. This video from last year has been criminally underwatched for such a fascinating little insight into not only their working paractices but also a strange little corner of Britain, a deserted Scottish 1970′s village built to house workers for an oil rig that was never built.
Check out a profile on them as one of several Honda Cultural Engineers here.
A few days ago ShellsuitZombie (along with Paris-based Triangle Mag and italian blog FrizziFrizzi) was invited out by Vice Magazine to a beautiful city on the outskirts of Venice, Bassano, to visit the HQ of 55DSL, a streetwear company founded by the son of Renzo Rosso, the guy at the head of Diesel.
Andrea Rosso, unwilling to accept a job in his fathers company, chose to take his own path producing a line of clothing inspired by surf skate and snow and with emphasis on collaboration with exciting artists, designers and photographers. The company is now 16 years old and has stores in 22 countries around the world. Not bad eh.
Upon arrival we were immediately treated to traditional italian food (meatballs and lasagne ftw) before getting our hands on the SS2012 55DSL collection. A collection of their collaborations including Will Bryant and Gavin Watson continue the long line of artists and creatives 55DSL have worked with and supported during their time – not only a refreshing change to the nameless tees of rival brands but also a nod to the keen eye of Andrea, who (along with his design team) select each artist personally. After pocketing some clobber we had a chat about the brand before heading off to Bassano to stand on the bridge and sip a delicious local drink called Mezze mezze*.
After that we had a long and delicious dinner before a grappa to send us to bed. My hotel-mate, a lovely blogger from Triangle Mag in Paris, then stayed up until 4am writing articles for her ‘day job’. Not me, it had been a long day.
Check out our flickr photos here.
*definitely could have got that wrong.
You can keep your pop-up calvados and chutney tasting bar, constructed entirely from reclaimed tamagochis, I’m going here:
Currently addicted to British Pathé’s Youtube channel and website. In the early 1900s, the company was one of the first to make short news and lifestyle video bulletins to be played in cinemas around the country – at a time when cinema attendance was at it’s highest ever. Now their free online archive provides us with a time-warp to a bygone era where everything was brightly coloured and slightly camp (and provides them with a tidy income through licensing). The 90,000 videos on the site are quite overwhelming but there are some absolute peaches in there if you care to dig.
The latest video from ShellsuitZombie’s favourite band Keston Cobblers Club is now up and it’s an absolute tearjerker. The story of a couple realising a lifelong dream is KCC’s most ambitious work to date and reportedly caused a few headaches (and bruises) but the end result is totally worth it.
In other news, Keston Cobblers Club are now (finally) on Spotify - add them to your chillout playlists motherfuckers.
Bit of an odd one this… but it’s great and the soundtrack is done entirely by our friends and favourite folksy band EVER, Keston Cobblers Club. The last episode has just come out on ‘the tube’ – worth checking them all out for some B-road Britain style antics.
Whoever said we weren’t rock and roll eh.
A couple of weeks ago we held a zine workshop with Alex Zamora from FEVERZINE - have a watch of this video to see what we got up to. We’ll be putting up photos of some of the zines shortly (the video barely scratches the surface of the body of work produced), but until then be content with pausing the HD footage and salivating/giggling over it.
We absolutely loved this workshop, there’s nothing better than getting people to stretch their creative muscles in new ways and producing a magazine in 3 hours is definitely a good way to do it.
More New Blood videos to come…
A week ago we bopped up to Leeds to run a workshop as part of the uber-hipster Diesel Island campaign (which you can check out here) – our brief was just to do something ‘ShellsuitZombie’ up there, but instead we decided to do something completely over-ambitious and as far as we were aware at the time of their publicity going to print nigh on impossible to pull off.
Isn’t it great, this whole revolution of streaming cloud-based media, taking on the world of TV head on. Why even as I type I’m watching Stewart Lee whining with a guitar in a program that aired a week ago, all through the magic of the internet. So we thought, what with the Diesel island being an island, why can’t it’s inhabitants do some sort of pirate broadcast. The world will finally see, live, what we few can do. And so the idea was born.
A month later, a monday night at 6pm (an hour before the workshop started) and we couldn’t get our £9,000 rented camera working. We had yet to fully sort out our lights, props, costumes, script, sound or cast and we were due to go live in three and a half hours. Yet this was all part of the plan. Our workshop members would eventually form cast, crew, set dressers, props guys, cameramen and boom operators, a feat that they ended up handling admirably despite there being cool beers for free at the end of the room. Somehow we managed to put on a half hour show involving three musical numbers, a bizarre quiz, several sketches (including a disturbing rendition of Tom Hanks and Wilson enjoying each others’ company) and an island QVC flogging bananas, cocktail umbrellas and ‘half a bottle ‘o beer’. It may have been raw, but it definitely happened and some people definitely watched it. Job done.
Here are some photos by James Mitchell – for more check his flickr.
Thanks to everyone who came and those who tuned in. Never again (until next time).
Looky here, a nice bit of promotional prettiness for degree show G R A F T from the students at Liverpool art and design academy. Only for a selected few creatives, the lucky bastards.
They say:
The invite is hand bound 3mm gray board with buckram book makers cloth and spine tape. The motif on the front is heat pressed tee-shirt vinyl.
The message is silk screen printed white, on to photosensitive ilford paper in dark room conditions where it was cut to size and packaged in light proof envelopes. These were sent the next day.
The exhibition runs from the 26th of May at the Art and Design academy in Liverpool.
Watch this doc about 12 East London ‘shirt-done-up-all-the-way-to-the-top’s who have formed a kick-ass collective called This is it. There will be dozens of these things happening around the east end, what with all the squats and hipsters, but these guys are different in that they’re really creative. A video they made to celebrate their new working space went a likkle bit viral and led to a show in Jaguar shoes and the above edgy Vice mini doc about their work.
Now where can I get my hands on that hammer costume?
See here for the full video:
Bad Things That Could Happen from This Is It on Vimeo.
We’ve been all over the country this month – at one point nipping up to Leeds where we presented a whole pile of waffle to students from the three universities at an event called ‘don’t be an idiom‘, a curious mix of caravans, haybails, wax eyeballs and other often experimental pieces of design and illustration. It was great to meet so many of the guys up there and the moment we got everyone dancing to a song of our own composition (garageband, boom) in the middle of our lecture was both bizarre and exhilarating in equal measure.
We are constantly being excited by the creativity and comradeship of the northern bunch – it sometimes seems like everyone knows everyone, regardless of which college they’re at. As a thank you to them (and you) here’s the song we all danced to. Bangin’.
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Our latest issue is out now. Click here to get it!
We have a new facebook ‘page’ (finally) – you can visit it here… w00t!
To see some of what we got up to click here…
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