2013
2013
23 November
Corroboree Sydney, Celebrating Culture and Connecting People
18 November 
The 2013 Foxtel Screenwriter’s Address by Leah Purcell
Presented by the Australian Writers’ Foundation
28 October
26 October
SIGGRAPH digital storytelling – Shilo McClean
Story Sturctureand POV.
Syd Field’s Three Act Paradigm
Robert McKee’s Five Part Narrative
John Truby’s Seven Major Steps
Linda Seger’s Eight Sections with Three Acts
13 October
ACMI Shaun Tan’s The Lost Thing: From book to film
Tuesday 16 July 2013 – Sunday 19 January 2014
Open daily 10am-5pm (Closed Christmas Day)
Free entry
“Set in a city overrun by bureaucracy, Shaun Tan’s picture book The Lost Thing tells the story of a boy who befriends a strange creature that doesn’t appear to fit in any of the available pigeon holes.
Melbourne-based production company Passion Pictures Australia invited Shaun to direct an animated version of The Lost Thing. Several years later, the Oscar®-winning short film emerged.
This exhibition features Shaun’s exquisite original drawings and working sketches alongside exclusive footage of the animators and sound artists, demonstrating how the drawings were brought to life on screen with movement, sound effects, music and narration.”
from ACMI web page
11 October
International Day of the Girl Child
World Visionis proud to present a new feature film about the strength of the human spirit and the power of education to change the world.
This internationally acclaimed film tells the stories of nine extraordinary girls born into unforgiving circumstances, including World Vision sponsor children Azmera from Ethiopia and Ruksana from India.
Screened by Wake Up Sydney
I though the graphics giving information, the animated sequences and illustrations with live action expanding the visual storytelling were fantastic. They worked through out the film, enhancing the storytelling while bringing the story visually alive.
2 October
Sydney ACM SIGGRAPH – Digital Storytelling : the narrative power of visual effects in film. Shilo McClean
Some of the ways VFx work to enhance and build story craft, to creating the story world and sense of place is fundamental with its rules and logic, the big truth or is it what if………..? Considering how the character is part of the plot, setting things up, how the action unfolds, events occur and keeping you in the story. Creating and giving the audience and engaging experience with VFX which can be invisible and often the most powerful. It can give the storyteller control of the locations and being true to the story. The fantastical, imaginative and surreal can be outside reality while being set up in the story, within the rules and integrity of the story. Setting is real, the challenge is hugs, there are any number of outcomes, it extends what they know in life, questions what is going to happen and is it plausible fitting into the world they have been put in. What do we feel?
25 September
Art After Hours, New South Wales Art Gallery – Celebrating 10 years.
Live Music and Swing Dancing and we missed Sarah Blasko.
Photo Booth – dressing up and smiling, now these photos of Gerald, Wendy and Therese live on the fridge.
Collage Workshop – we made a modernist collage inspired by the harmonious colour of Roy de Maistre’s
1919 painting Rhythmic Composition in Yellow Green Minorthat is part of the in the Sydney Moderns exhibition.
Our masterpieces on my fridge
Our masterpieces on my fridge
Arranging pre-cut paper shapes based on the painting’s soft yellows, greens, blues and violets – a result of de
Maistre’s theory that colour harmonies were akin to musical harmonies. Real masterpieces were created.
Operation Art, Armory Gallery, Newington, Sydney Olympic Park, 7 September – 27 October
An initiative of the Children’s hospital at Westmead in association with the NSW Department of Education and Community in collaboration with Sydney Olympic Park Authority. Operation Art is the premier state-wide visual arts exhibition for school students from Kindergarten toYear 10.
With a record 897 artworks paintings and drawings by students from throughout NSW, this year’s exhibition offers Armory Gallery visitors a great opportunity to celebrate the creative talents of our young people at our unique riverside setting.
Upon completion of the exhibition, 50 selected works will go to the 
permanent art collection of The Children’s Hospital, Westmead to help brighten up the lives of sick children. A selection of 50 works will be shown at the Art Gallery of NSW and tour major regional galleries. Works are also selected each year to form Operation ArtBank. These works are shared with other children’s hospitals in NSW and overseas.
30 August
Opening of the exhibition ‘Serve the People’ at The White Rabbit Gallery. “The White Rabbit Collection is one of the world’s largest and most significant collections of contemporary Chinese art. Founded by Kerr and Judith Neilson, it focuses on works produced after 2000.”
I enjoyed the film made up of black and white images about China’s history. They used bold strokes and silhouettes to make the shapes and edited the still drawings into an interesting film.
The exhibition is open until 2 February 2014.
9 July
Cultural Office – Frame by Frame: Korean cinema from script to screen
The exhibition has been organised to highlight the 100th screening of films at KCO and the up coming Korean Film Festival.
Australian story board artists were given a section of script from the box office hit “Masquerade” and have been exhibited alongside the original storyboards. I enjoyed seeing these different interpretations along with the sections of the film from these storyboards being screened. When I arrived for the free guided tour, there was me and I was joined by the exhibition curator and had a wonderful experience chatting about Korean films, culture, language and the exhibition. One of the Australian storyboard artists wanted to include words as part of the storyboard , using google translations the translantion has created some humour among the Korean community.
‘The Stoker” has been included to show the work of Korean director Chan-wook Park and Australian actor Nicole Kidman.
6 July
Shopping and F***ing at Parade Studio, NIDA
The plot follows a crowd of drifters and sex traders in a seedy area of London in the 1990s. Five main characters are linked loosely and intermittently and at the center of the play is an ever-changing love triangle of petty criminals. It is a gritty, grimy urban society, a depressing microcosm of drugs, shoplifting, prostitution, and sexual adventure. The characters have shunned morality and conduct hedonistic and destructive lives in this shocking, humorous, nihilistic play that examines a completely corrupted society.” by goodreads
The production and acting were excellent. The fallen characters, explicit homosexual sex scenes, heroin junkies, sexual violence, male masochistic hooker, phone sex, oral sex, a 14 year old boy begging to be sodomised with a knife, a woman in love with her gay roommate and shoplifting being displayed on stage added nothing to my theatre experience. This shocking drama presented graphic gay sex scenes on stage leaves me wondering why it has been translated into ten foreign languages.
3 July
Sydney ACM SIGGRAPG – showreels & getting a job in VFX
Patricia and Nick from Animal logic have both been working in recruiting VFX artists for well over a decade and came with excellent and practical information about applying for jobs and attending interviews. They explained many points and details about putting reels together , applying for work, answered questions and spoke about their perceptions of how they see working in the industry.
11 June
4 June
Introduced by Stig Gruman, Vice President of M & E working with customers in areas such as Film, Television, Games, Advertising, Publishing, Graphic Design.
Matt Estela from Animal Logic spoke about his experience on ‘The Great Gatsby’ as lighting lead. It was interesting to see how they used the hologram shader and only two main lights with the environment light, which comes from all directions and an expensive light. Made reference to ambocc.
Two suggested web sites :
David Zwiezchaczewski from autodesk who is a 3D specialists spoke about Maya, 3DSMax, MudBox and Motion Builder. He is starting up a youtube channel for tutorials and welcomes questions.
davidz@autodesk.com
0406 232 199
Justin Bromley and Tom Corbet from Fin Design spoke about his work as a compositor and vfx artist on the Holden Colorado commercial. How they outsourced the maya modeling of the stadium around the world and the rotoscoping to India, the use of scene linear, 16 bit workflow, dmm plug in and luster for grading. Mark Toiadid the amazing shoot.
Rob O’Neill spoke about autodesk’s Smoke for macs, 16 bit, connect effects node base system and using FBX files from Maya.
1 May
ACM SIGGRAPH – Meet the Artist : Charles Santos – concept artists and Illustrator.
“He loves drawing very little things in a very little journal and dreams about funny, wondrous stories. Charles gathers inspiration from the curiosities he happens upon every day while going about his travels and weaves them together to create his whimsical narrative dreamscapes. Charles Santoso’s work has been exhibited in Sydney and also internationally in North America and France.
During the day he works at Animal Logic as a concept artist/art director working on various animated feature film and television projects including: Legend of the Guardians, The Great Gatsby, Walking with The Dinosaurs, The Lego Movie, and the Peter Rabbit TV series. Charles has also worked on major TV commercial projects for Coca Cola, Nike, the Sydney Opera House, Honda, and Hyundai.”
He spoke about films which are always about story and need to be believable, commercials which are about selling products or a company, short films which are also about stories and his personal work. Sometimes it is necessary to start again and always do your research. Charles initiated ‘daily random word doodles’. People twitter a word, he picks the first word that pops up and spends around 30 min to 1.5 hours drawing his ideas.
Google SketchUp
23 April
People Building Better Cities – participation and inclusive urbanisation for sustainable urban development. The project is travelling to ten countries working on ways to make cities resilient, equitable, inclusive, smart and sustainable where people are part of the conversation. They are involved in the collaboration of ideas and the exchange knowledge for their future. What is the right process to engage with for social issues, sustainability, entitlements, sanitation, buildings and other issues and what do people really care about?
Centre for Sustainable Urban Development
16 April
Story Telling in Video Games – NSW Writers Centre. There was a lively discussion about some of the aspects and directions of games writing.
Writing books and movies are linear and at certain points things happen, the audience is more passive. Story telling in games includes aspects of story, narrative, plot and action that come together to create the experience for the player requiring them to do something.
Are games story driven? Is there a need for structure? How is the game and story telling coming together? Is it the character or the game that gets the player there? Are players being forced to watch long sections of story? Does this make game stores broader and deeper? Are the game play moments telling the story and becoming the reason to go from one event to another with the plot evolving with the story?
When asking the player to do something what is the motivation? Is it beat the enemy, creating conflict, solving conflict, moral choices, winning, a journey, historical or is it something else entirely? Does the player care ? What is the influence of moral trends? What are games asking the player to do?
In games there can be branching narratives, it can be structurally dense and the player can be setting their own goals. The narrative links become part of the game, giving freedom to the player where it may be less likely everything will be found. The protagonist can be the player, an active participant working to find where they are going and what is happening with choices that influence the direction and the outcome. They are confronted with a range of choices that influences decisions and are asked for emotional responses that are compelling, engaging and contributing to experiences. The game play is feeding into a story, not only binary moral choices but grey choices to make it interesting. As the narrative and the depth of the world develops the player makes decisions having reactions, conflict of feelings, attachment to experiences and consequences as processes are applied with an outcome that may end in the same place or it may vary all creating an interactive experience.
The story is being created by the player, setting their own goals and becoming their own character with personality such as likeable, reliable and being who they are wanted to be. There may be moral choices, lessons to be learnt, forced failing, reward for actions, giving something then taking it away thus becoming the nature of the medium.
With books and movies the reader and audience can have feelings about the ending without entitlement. In games the player is doing some of the emotional work and maybe consider they have some ownership about entitlement with the endings. Choices can matter, character is a product of choices, issues may not be resolved and there can be expectations.
Who does the story belong to, the writer or the player?
Some of the games referred to during the discussion : BIOSHOCK, HOUSE OF LEAVES, SHEPARD, BLANK SLATE, PORTAL, THE WALKING DEAD, HALO, FAR CRY, THE CONVERSATION.
15 April
13 ROOMS – found 12 of them and where was the 13th or was it the 1st or something else? A total adventure into art, was it living sculpture, was it performance, was it art at all, was it a social event bring the community together to discover, explore, question, challenge, confront, ponder or something totally different? It was not possible to have a favourite.
from the web site
There was $5 on offer in the exchange room and I could not think fast enough to find an item to exchange. The young girl there traded her thongs for that $5, even when asked how she would walk home she was still going to get that $5. The Lord Mayor of Sydney, Clover Moroe was enjoying the exhibition and at the exchange room was asked what she had to exchange, she offered her 13 rooms program.
15 April
Drawing trip to the zoo, totally intimidated by drawing in a public space there I was enjoying the company of some of my class mates and drawing away. These animals could not stand still for a moment and those 2 minute class drawings were way too long. No chance to ponder or measure something, get that shape, line, feeling, size or whatever not to mention no time to ponder materials to use. When we found the kangaroos lying still in the heat what to do with a still shape? The sounds of the art lecturer saying when it did not work, change it and learning to draw what I saw.
3 April
Sydney ACM SOGGRAPH– Kym Wattstrained at the Enmore’s Design Centre and now works in Canada in 3D and VFx. Kym spoke about his experiences, worked towards his first industry position, the direction this has taken him, his work inspiration and challenges and gave his insights into how it has been working in Australia and overseas.
17 March
Jamie Engelkindly agreed to speak with our small dynamic group Inspired to Writeabout various ways to build an audience, multi-platform marketing, alternative funding and distribution, branding, interactive design and business models. How much can a person take in? Let’s see?
What about THE MOVIE?
Interview with the makers.
Is it all about creating a connection, communities, relationships, sharing, passion, empowerment, social currency and who would it appeal to?
Jamie’s web site, is well worth a look, also his Alchemy Fun House facebook page and on LinkedIn
Some other interesting places Jamie suggested to look and visit for inspiration.
General Assembly, Creative Mornings, Crowd Funding, Kick Starter, Veronica Mars, Double Fine, Kevin Smith – ‘Sundance’, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia – Airbnb, David Garland – ‘The Rise to the Top’, ‘The Naked Brand’, Meet Up, Bruce Lipton– ‘The Biology of Belief’, Cloud Atlas.
TED Talks : Seth Godin, Rachel Botsman – ‘What’s Yours is Mine’, Amanda Palmer.
Jamie is speaking at General Assembly in Ultimo on April 18, 6:30 – 8 pm 2013 and click here for booking information.
17 March
Notions of Portraitureexhibition, Alpha Gallery group exhibition as part of Sydney Art Month.
15 March
Sydney Olympic Park – ArtExpress, Newington Armory.
I’m interested in building a mixture of media in my movie making. This has started to include animating people’s art works. Many artists are building imaginative sequences into their drawings and paintings and artexpress is a wonderful expression of many stories.
15 March
‘Microstories’ pilot screening
Supporting Sydney Independent Filmmakers
21 February
Orientation week and I’m off to enjoy a public lecture at the College of Fine Arts about design – what a treat.
The event was organised by Social Innovation Sydney who’s aim is to build community and networks for like-minded people to share ideas and create sustainable social innovations.
Jeroen and Boukjefrom Netherlands who started Am I A Designer launched straight into their thoughts and experiences. This included what they have learned from the first few months of their trip in Africa and Asia. Where is the social responsibility of designers, is it contributing to the poverty cycle, are the designs sustainable, what is the environmental impact and are we becoming the solution or the problem? Do communities need the design? For design to work maybe we need to consider – are they functional, do they need to be new or reinvented, high end or locally made and when foreign aid steps out of the project does it collapse? What skills are needed – business, technology, information, support, empowerment or changing communities dependent on aid? Are the needs for animals, humans or social? What is poverty – is it money, possessions, family? Maybe it is different things for different people and different communities.
What is needed? So many questions were raised and I’m wondering as a film maker where does this sit? Some thoughts to turn my thinking on its head. What about the Africa for Norway project, MAGO East Africa or Yayasan Masarang Foundation? Maybe there is knowledge to be shared with developing countries with more international collaboration as it is not always about buying a solution.
We were asked – What is your opinion on design and entrepreneurship in relationship to poverty reduction? I ask you the same question?
Therese O'Leary 