Made-up Worlds Part 2

Creating the physical model was an entirely separate task to developing the idea. Thankfully I had some packaging cardboard to space - slicing this created simple tower blocks with readymade floors.

Gluing these together was a simple and effective way of making unique (whilst still incredibly brutalist) forms. Using pinking scissors to cut paper staircases was also a terribly lucky coincidence - whilst I wish the scissors had created smaller forms, they did in fact create the perfect suggestion of stairs. I spray painted each building and several pieces of cardboard, and then saw about assembling the model. 

My plan for lighting the city relied heavily on what I had learnt from a youtube video explaining the process used to create the model city from the film Bladerunner. As explained in the video, 2D cutouts are used towards the back, 3D models at the front of the shot. Lights shine up from the base, with the wiring concealed below the floor.

Obviously we were working at a much lower scale of production, with the base of the model being composed of two A1 sheets of cardboard. After spray painting the bases, I painted on a vague roadmap that perhaps resembled a circuit board more than anything else. I found that this worked very well, as it suggested a structure to the city without looking too familiar in comparison to any existing place.

The lights I used were in fact outdoor christmas lights, as this meant that I would at least be able to reuse some of the materials I had purchased for the construction of the model.

          

 After I had finished assembling the model, the group and I all filmed the final video. This took the better part of the day, as we experimented with lots of different angles and potential shots. Thanks to the help of another group, we had access to a coloured LED lamp which was controlled remotely, so we had the opportunity to experiment with a far stronger lighting element than originally planned.

The lamp not only let us view and discuss the immediate effects of changing the colour, but allowed us yet another way to manipulate various shots of the video. Switching between blues, reds and oranges, we could very easily dictate the mood without permanently affecting the model itself.

And as an additional bonus, on one of the shades of yellow the centre of the lamp glowed orange and the edge was a green ring. By moving the light we could control the length of the shadows, and the combination of the two created what was by far one of my favourite pieces of footage, which when sped up resembles a time lapse of a city using perhaps a tilt-shift lens.


One element I felt the model was missing was smoke - although the paint work and lighting at the back of the model suggested night and vague pollution, it was not explicit enough without the presence of traffic noises in the soundtrack.

I would have liked to add smoke to the model in some form - a low hanging mist, even a breath of cigarette smoke over the top to create an additional sense of depth and physical air.

If I had more time I would also have wanted to spend more time making smaller and smaller 2D buildings in the background in order to give a greater field of depth for the camera, and perhaps install lighting of some kind beyond the fairy lights in the base.

I attempted to have the top of one of the towers light up by placing it directly on top of a light and have the ceiling constructed of parcel tape (as the windows of the model building I made previously had been) however as you can see (the top of the tower is visible at the very front of the image above) the light was not strong enough to make the tower look anything but brown.

Whilst I didn't manage to create any successful hollow buildings, I purposefully created structures with the towers to have courtyards, through which light could shine and light up several surfaces at a time.

Our group produced three final videos. Below is the one that I created - model made, filmed, sound design and editing all myself.

Made-up Worlds Part 1

For the last two weeks before the Christmas holidays we took part in an interdisciplinary project. I chose to create a short video of a model of a made-up world - a world and model of our own construction.

 Starting off with absolutely no limits besides what we believed that we would be able to produce, I found the freedom a welcome turn, and generated a host of ideas and conceptual sketches.

We found that the two most striking ideas were that of a world of diamonds (and nothing else) and a world of endless staircases, not unlike the famous piece by Escher with infinitely looping staircases.

The staircases were inspired by a set of concrete steps that pass through a narrow alleyway, steps that are lit by dim orange streetlights. I was particularly interested in how they seemed to glow orange after it had rained, due to the reflection of the streetlights.

Given that the area is very quiet (people only use the steps for access to the back of the station, as so there is a stream of people every twenty minutes or so) and the high walls of the buildings either side completely enclose the light, I felt that the staircase became entirely muted, and a bubble of a world. However, we decided that because of the warm orange glow, we would make the staircase world a loud, exciting place, full of movement and life.

The diamond idea I particularly liked because again, it held a sense of isolation - diamond structures suspended in an endless void, like stars in space without any planets or debris. It also seemed to be particularly elegant, and had the potential to be oppressive (some force that may have destroyed the surroundings) or hopeful (the last, repopulating ships in the galaxy) depending on whatever sound we applied to the video footage. We felt that the cool blue tones and severe shape of the diamonds would lend itself more readily to being perceived as 'cold' 'hard' and therefore, oppressive.

By combining the two we would create a city of staircases, living and dying underneath the cold eye of the diamonds, which would float alone in the night sky.





To accompany the initial design of the world, I created some characters.

This is because I felt that a story world is inseparable from the characters that inhabit it, the world should reflect the character, and thus the character should reflect the world.

As a result, I created two young girls - to be innocent and ignorant of any social corruptions in the worlds they represent, that were just reflections.

The diamond girl has sharp eyes, straight hair, neat and plain clothing, and bone structure that suggests she may be from East Asia. However her colour scheme is kept at a silvery blue, alike the diamond ships.

The city girl has larger, rounder eyes (to take in more light) and wider, softer features. By giving her darker skin and a chaotic curl to her hair, I made her resemble someone of African descent. She has a hand-me-down coat, and a long floppy scarf that I imagined to trail behind her as she ran clumsily up and down the steps.

I found that this exercise really helped me gain an in depth understanding of the world we had begun to create, and as I continued to develop a 3D realisation of how this world would work, I used the characters as a measure against which to judge creative decisions.

At the end of the first week I had created a model building that represented the average architecture that could be found in the city; corrugated iron ceilings and panels much alike  Dharavi in Mumbai, Asia's largest shanty town. Then, with the added element of the staircases to give a height to the city, the shanty town built up and up towards the stars.

To the right, the cardboard model was spray painted rusty brown, black, and a metallic silver to suggest age and weathering. I then placed several candles inside to show that it was inhabited.

This practise provided a further reference when considering the final model.