National Media Museum & a bit about Visual Essay

 15/02/12

National Media Museum? MONKEYS! Well, also elephants, 3D, "Outposts" and a Dalek. That is what the National Media Museum in Bradford is all about. BOOM! Cute little baby monkey!
 Alright, to be fare I did not expect anything particular out of this trip. A bit more, well, a lot more stuff to read I guess. The fact that we had to find 3 practitioners there now sounds even more unrealistic than before as the place had hardly any. With that said I definitely think it is still a great site to visit. I thought the place is great for what it was, probably, created for. It introduces people to the media industry without going into huge details. It hooks up young minds and just makes them want to be film makers, animators and/or TV producers. In fact there were a lot of children there when we visited and it made it quite stressful to get around and find what you need. I do love children though, and so, in order to make the most of our trip, some of us left the building for an hour, and, since we all were very hungry, we went to a restaurant, ate, returned, and what do you know, the place is pretty much free. Great. Unfortunately some time was lost and we had to make haste. That was the time I realized there were more things to consider looking at. Cinema research labs and TV booths where you could book an old TV program and watch it on your own or with a friend. Unfortunately it would take a lot of time so I had to pass. Either way, we've already been to the IMAX to see monkeys and elephants, and boy oh boy, was that great. And I took some 30 minutes to watch commercials on a small screen in the TV section. After all, one of the ideas for my VE was to do something with commercials.
 The museum turned out to be a pretty interesting and engaging experience, but my job was to find some practitioners for my Visual Essay. I found three. Two were had interesting ideas I might use and the other one had an interesting visual style:

 First it was Donovan Wylie, a photographer that had his own exhibition. There I found a video of him talking about the "Outposts" project (photographs & video are at the bottom, number 1). At the beginning of his talk Donovan talks of his fascination with the power of the visual aspect, how fortifications are built not to last in the fight, but to prevent from attacking (that's what I thought it was). I might not use him as a practitioner in my Visual Essay, but I'm certain I will use his idea as one of the bases for my project.

 Second was Daniel Meadows, who also had an exhibition of his early works. I liked his visual style, the vibrant colors that were present in the pictures he made (the ones that were in color of course) (photographs are at the bottom, number 2). http://www.photobus.co.uk/?id=1 was his early project and attracted my attention. It seems that it was doing something for the people of his generation what the internet is doing for us today - a chance to express ourselves. I might be wrong, but I will look up his photographic style and his early project and maybe I will find something.

 The third person that interested me was Bill Kroyer. He was quoted on the wall of the animation section next to a shot form "Tron" (1982). It stated - "If you can't make it good, make it loud and fast". As I found out Bill was actually in charge of the storyboard production (later I found out he was unofficially a visual effects animator) for "Tron" (1982). With that said I found our, in the same animation section, that the film was a commercial disaster. Quite weird as it was the first film with actual computer graphics and even had a sequel after "Tron: Legacy" (2010). Further more - I really liked both of them. Keeping that in mind I am interested if Kroyer was speaking ironically, because "Tron" (1982) is quite an action film, or was it something else. Still, for me, that is a great idea to base my VE on, as "loud and fast" movies are now all over the place and some of them are really good both in visuals and story, and everything else. So I am going to look forward into Bill Kroyer, as he was a Visual Effects Animator, Animator, Writer and Film director. I like his idea, and maybe I will go from there. (photographs are at the bottom, number 3).

 I didn't learn a lot form the museum itself but it definitely gave my VE progress a push. I will start from there and we'll see where it goes.
 Thank you for your time, Ed.

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