Animated short "Seventeen" on piratebay.org

[Peter Wassink]

Do you think it was rotoscoped? I can't put my finger on why I dislike it so much.

At the holland animation festival showing of Bashir, one of its animators in her prescreening adress made it a point to mention that it was NOT rotoscoped.
Somehow animators are always sensitive about this.

i also didn't particularly like the look of the animation, its rather stiff and sometimes the movements feel like the result from automatic tweening.
Still its an impressive film, i'd recommend you'd see it.

[Paul Fierlinger]

It just won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film.

[hisko]

I finally saw some clips from Waltz with Bashir. I agree the animation is unattractive.

[/quote]

The animation is good at times, but there are very strange things going on. The walks are very, very slow and robotlike, and it does look rotoscoped at times.
I spoke to one of the leading animators of Waltz, and she told me that they didn't rotosope, but that they used actors for reference only.

I think that the power of the film is not in the animation itself (apart from some haunting nightmarish scenes), but in the visualisation of the memories of the soldiers that were involved in the massacre of Sabra and Shatila. Because the memories have been so coloured, animation is a perfect way to tell the story, the animation is subjective and artificial from itself.

And of course Waltz will win an Oscar too, because of the horrible masskilling of people in the Gazastrip at this very moment.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Politically charged films are becoming all the rage in the past 2 or 3 years. At some point people will hopefully get fed up with this fad as we do with all fashionably noble acts. It reminds me of my days behind the Iron Curtain; if an artist wanted to get a permit to exhibit abstract paintings or a very poor painter wanted the same, all that was needed was to give the works a noble name such as War is Bad.

[hisko]

Politically charged films are becoming all the rage in the past 2 or 3 years. At some point people will hopefully get fed up with this fad as we do with all fashionably noble acts. It reminds me of my days behind the Iron Curtain; if an artist wanted to get a permit to exhibit abstract paintings or a very poor painter wanted the same, all that was needed was to give the works a noble name such as War is Bad.

Yes, and probably no war was ever stopped by art. John Lennon might have inspired some people to demonstrate against the Vietnam war, but the real reason for the protests was probably that there was still draft in the U.S., and most young middleclass guys were smart enough not to want to be killed in country far away.

But war is a legitimate subject for art and there are many great films and books about war (Obchod na Korze, Paths of Glory, The Cranes are Flying).

[Paul Fierlinger]

Obchod na Korze

"Shop on Main Street. This slight deviation of the topic brings back another memory; whenever editing one couldn't find an easy way out of a tight spot, usually a good matching cut, the other person would say; 'fade out to the Kremlin' by which was meant no matter how out of place and nonsensical it would be to use a picture of the Kremlin it would work because no one would have the guts to say that the Kremlin is nonsense. The wonders of complacency!

[malcooning]

I think that the power of the film is not in the animation itself (apart from some haunting nightmarish scenes), but in the visualisation of the memories of the soldiers that were involved in the massacre of Sabra and Shatila. Because the memories have been so coloured, animation is a perfect way to tell the story, the animation is subjective and artificial from itself.

More accurately, the power of the film is the horror in the slowly unveiling memories of the involved characters, not in the visualization of them. Because I think that the animation was graphic and illustrative, but was a conveyor only - a mere subjective, obscure suggestion of the real events . The real horror lied in the fact that none of the characters could remember the events clearly, which reflected on the phenomenon that such a terrible event was swept under the psychological carpet of the nation (and the media at the time probably helped to make this trend into a sport even. I wouldn't know. I was 5 then). Exactly here the animation came in great, because everything was taken as if from a dream world - a world of vector lines and mouths which move too rigidly and un-eased keyframes - all this provides a light visual rendition of what we find (as the film progresses) to be more terrifying than what we can imagine. As usual with films, the true power of a gesture is achieved by our imagination, as our imagination always completes a picture into the optimal picture - even when that optimal is negative. This is reflected back at us when we see the few seconds of real footage at the end of Waltz With Bashir.

[malcooning]

'fade out to the Kremlin'

Nice that's hilarious. Even more so because it's true!
(I am considering using it regularly...)

[hisko]

More accurately

That's definitely more accurate.
So, what do you think of the current invasion in the Gazastrip? I've read many times in our Dutch newspapers that the right and the left in Israel welcome this action.
What is Israel's future perspective? What do you think?

In my opinion this is going absolutely nowhere. Their seems to be no masterplan, just retaliation from one side, and than retaliation from the other side, feeding extremism on both sides and worsening things constantly. This suffering could go on for another thousand years.

It reminds me of a quote from my big hero Frank Zappa:
"Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe."

[hisko]

And going back to the original topic.
Here's another thing that a lot of people told me in advance that I couldn't do. Of course it made me insecure first, but later on extra-determined to proof that they were wrong.
I got a special mention for it from a jury of composers at the Dresden short Film Festival: the filmmusic for Seventeen.

Here's a short clip of the orchestra, conducted by Joan Berkhemer, composed and arranged by me (with help from my girlfriend Carmen Eberz).

http://s301.photobucket.com/albums/nn48 ... enteen.flv

[Paul Fierlinger]

a lot of people told me in advance that I couldn't do.

I don't understand; what was there so impossible to be done?

[hisko]

a lot of people told me in advance that I couldn't do.

I don't understand; what was there so impossible to be done?

I don't know....can you write music? Were you trained to do that?

[slowtiger]

I can, so it's no big deal.

The real big deal is to get a real orchestra to play it. But it's nearly always well worth the effort (and money) spent.

[hisko]

I can, so it's no big deal.

The real big deal is to get a real orchestra to play it. But it's nearly always well worth the effort (and money) spent.

You can write your own filmscores, wow.
Where can we hear your music?

[Paul Fierlinger]

I don't know....can you write music? Were you trained to do that?

No, I am not a musician so I prefer to leave this part to the best musicians I can find for the project. I have never, in all 50 years of my career, used anything else but original music composed by skilled composers and I've been told that I won't be able to do that because not all budgets allow for original music. All I can say is that every budget I have worked with permitted me to hire a composer.