Monday 1 June 2020

Artists and Friends Podcast, Matte paintings, and the point of view gun from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

And another week just slips by scarily quickly…The podcast is continuing to take up a lot of my time but I’m really enjoying it! And I would prefer to be over prepared than under prepared. And I’m especially enjoying it now that we’ve got people coming on to be interviewed and we get to talk to them about their process and particular work; that really makes it very fulfilling and so different to just discuss people without them being there. We’ve got an episode coming out tomorrow with Robyn Nichol who’s an artist we’ve really enjoyed for some time and have actually bought some of her work previously. We’re also doing an episode on Channel 4 Random Acts videos and interviewing a couple of really great artists, Zaiba Jabbar & Cath Shayler, who have previously produced films with them. 



But things are still slowly progressing with our own work. We’ve decided which fictional weapon will be the first to be cut out of foam; it’s going to be the point of view gun from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The way the gun works in the film is that when fired at someone it makes them see things from the person that fired it’s point of view. And this feels like the most appropriate one we’ve found so far, considering it’s very similar to what writers, or set designers, or directors are doing when they produce a film, or a book, or a play; enabling people to see your point of view, building a story or item from your mind and putting it into the physical world so an audience can see it too. We’ve decided that all the foam pieces are going to be black on the top layer and then colour beneath is going reference the colour of the original weapon or tool, in this case yellow. I’ve included an outline and reference image to both the weapon and the foam example below. 


The first matte painting test arrived! It looks really great on the wall and it’s lovely to see one of these in the flesh! I’ve been living with it in the house and it hasn’t felt too dark and dingy to have up which is something I was worried about. A slightly strange turn of events is that another company that I asked for a quote has accidentally completed another painting of the same scene. This painting actually looks a bit better than the one we already have; the detailing is just that little bit more defined and it’s an overall more accurate copy of the original image. We’re getting sent that one as well and we’re potentially just going to give the first one away to someone as an undocumented piece – or perhaps it’ll be an edition of 1 with 1 artist proof, who knows! I've linked both paintings below, I feel like you can definitely tell which is better.