silencieux
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
January 16th, 2012 by NorseGamer | 14 comments
NorseGamer is the product manager for LOOT Entertainment at Sony Pictures, as well as the founder and publisher of HomeStation Magazine. Born and raised in Silicon Valley, he holds a B.A. in English/Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and presently lives in Los Angeles. All opinions expressed in HSM are solely his and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sony DADC.
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“trois poémes pour annabel lee” by Hubert-Felix Thiéfaine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTFpf6WaU7I
Norse, i just hope the angels do not really have kidnapped your love …
sorrow.
Very interesting piece Norse, it is amazing what can be portrayed without a word spoken in film. This is true of movies as well as machinma, music can quite literally say it all. One of my favorite newer movies, August Rush, uses this technique quite a bit and pulls it off brilliantly. If you have never seen it, watch it I believe you will be surprised.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvifS2QOun4
“COCORICO”^^ (cock-a-doodle-do in french,rallying cry of the french whose national emblem is the Cock)
Constructive criticism: terrific video but …take off the glasses, both of you. They detract from the ‘mood’ of the film.
Well, I felt kinda bad about writing a harsh review of the Gothic Manor, so I figured I’d get imaginative with it and see what I could come up with.
“silencieux” is an attempt at minimalist filmmaking. No furniture pieces, no dialogue, nothing. I wanted to see if a story could be told entirely through images.
The challenge, of course, is how to capture the sense of a haunting with the limitations of Home machinima. How to capture the disjointed sense of fractured time, disembodied apparitions, and so forth. It’s a story told very indirectly, solely through intimation. The only hint to the story, which isn’t in the film, is the excerpt from Poe’s “Annabel Lee” poem. When it comes to gothic poetry, it doesn’t get much better.
If we’ve pulled this off correctly, the film should have a melancholy and slightly unsettling feel to it.
Regarding the glasses: I’ve never been able to get the eyes quite right on my avatar, so I just dispensed with it and put on aviator glasses. Terra’s glasses actually produce a very creepy effect at about 3:06 in the video (blow it up to full screen to see); the way the lighting effects hit her glasses, it looks like her eyes are just these black, soulless voids. Which, considering she’s a ghost in the film, makes it highly appropriate.
It’s not a creepy effect -- it’s art imitating life. Being ginger, I’m supposed to be soulless. :p
Une vrai oeuvre d’art.I suggest watching this on YouTube XL.
Merci du compliment! Nous espérons des personnes comme “silencieux” — c’est un film très différent.
Norse, is your hair orange now?
I’ve actually darkened my avatar’s hair color to a deeper shade of brown, and gone with a longer hairstyle. The lighting effects in the Mansion likely play a factor in how it looks, particularly for the very last shot in which we deliberately messed with the color spectrum in order to give it a sort of hellish appearance.
Another example of this hairstyle (and color) in different lighting can be found in the Periselene video.
I continue to be impressed with the quality of the stuff you’re making, Norse. You’ve got camera movements in here that I’d be proud to execute. Another excellent effort.
High praise indeed! Thank you for the kind words, HIW. I’m messing around with this stuff, but I freely admit I’m strictly an amateur compared to the kind of work you’re doing.
The niche I’m personally focused on with my own HSM machinima efforts is dramatic storytelling. My personal theory is that if I can tell a sufficiently compelling story, the audience will forgive (and, if I’m exceedingly lucky, perhaps not notice) the technical shortcomings. That said, I’m trying some different stuff that isn’t normally seen in Home machinima — step printing, warp effects, overcranking, color spectrum manipulation, different kinds of transitions, even breaking the fourth wall by intercutting real-world photographs — in the hope that it feels more seamless and slightly different than the normal fare.
Question: think I should invest in Sony Vegas? I know you use it for the HomeCast, which is a consistently brilliant product, so I’m curious as to what features it offers that you use most frequently.
He uses the Cactuar feature..
I also use Sony Vegas but I am expanding to get After Effects as well as a 3D software program. I can’t wait to see what comes out from you next NG…