Root recruitment

Beloved Van Gogh/Love for Van Gogh/Exploring Van Gogh's Life and Death

Director: dorota? Cobeira/Hugh? Welchmann

Type: Plot/Animation/Biography

Duration: 95 minutes

Release time: 20 17-06- 18 (Shanghai Film Festival)

Synopsis: 20 15 is Van Gogh's125th birthday. In memory of Van Gogh, the famous British film studios BreakThru Films and Trademark Films began to make an animated film from 20 12, trying to explore Van Gogh's spiritual world and the mystery of death through 120 hand-painted paintings by animators. This is the first hand-painted oil painting in the history of world movies.

Flowers bloom beautifully, trees breed promising fruits, tadpoles swim at the bottom of streams to celebrate their new life ... There are many ways to express themselves in the world, and language is not the only one. In his last letter, Van Gogh told his younger brother Theo that I don't know how to express some words. In fact, I have no other way to express them except painting. Is this sentence moved dorota? Cobeira, she hopes to tell his inner world in Van Gogh's artistic form. This film is a love letter written by an excellent animator to Van Gogh.

Image source: prose net

The ideal is full, but the reality is very skinny. The budget of the whole film is only 5.5 million dollars, which is equivalent to the average level of the whole animated feature film with European characteristics. The patchwork funds consist of 40% pre-sale, 40% private equity, 15% government funds (Polish Film Academy, British tax credit, media, Wroclaw city government) and 5% from Break Thru Studio. Under this budget, the technology put into use is amazing, that is, oil painting animation (PAWS). In the eyes of commercial investors, such a "retro" and time-consuming project is definitely a loss-making business.

In terms of production time, there has never been a hard and fast rule in the film and television circle. Aside from the documentary, the 20 14 literary film "Youth" was shot by 12, but the125th birthday of Van Gogh has passed. In order to get the film released as scheduled, the producers finally had no choice but to hire more people in a short time. Fortunately, more than 200 million advertisements were broadcast, attracting painters and animators from all over the world.

Image source: Breaking through official website

Although we can't reimburse everyone's travel expenses, there are still many people flying in from Australia, Canada and the United States trying to be part of this unique production. Although these animators are experienced oil painters, they have no relevant working experience in designing animation. Therefore, on the one hand, they should learn how to make static oil paintings more dynamic, on the other hand, they should abandon their own personalized painting style and keep moving closer to Van Gogh's painting style. To this end, most painters have to undergo a three-day test in Gdansk, followed by a training course of about three weeks.

It may not be difficult to copy a work, but it is not easy to recreate it by imitating the author's style. As an artist who has a great influence on later generations, we may have known Van Gogh's Starry Sky and Potato Eaters from primary school textbooks a long time ago and lamented his tragic life experience, but for an expert, his artistic sense and painting skills are really amazing. The team of animators need to learn its essence before they can have a great impact.

Image source: Sohu culture

The experiences in different stages of life influenced Van Gogh's view of the world and indirectly influenced the style of his works. Van Gogh's school of painting can be summarized as realism-impressionism-post-impressionism.

Most of Van Gogh's early works include the periods of Nongnan, The Hague and Drenthe. Influenced by the academic school, Van Gogh paid attention to restoring the familiar pastoral scenery and working life in his early days, and his color was gloomy. 1886, he came to Paris with his younger brother. Influenced by the French contemporary art movement and ukiyo-e painting style at that time, Van Gogh was attracted by the wonderful and enthusiastic effect of light and color in impressionist painting, and began to change the original painting method, and devoted himself to the color expression of impressionist painting and other forms of experiments with great enthusiasm.

/kloc-the middle and late period of the 0/9th century is an era of ideological change and turbulence. Many impressionist-inspired artists began to seek change. They are not satisfied with being rigid and one-sided, pursuing light and color, and pay more attention to expressing their feelings and subjective feelings through their works. So I began to try to consciously use the factors of color and body expression, and post-impressionism came into being.

Image source: Douban movie

Van Gogh also went further and further on the road of innovation, and his personal style became more and more distinct: in color selection, he used bright primary colors and contrast colors; On the line, the point replaces the line, the line replaces the surface, and the dynamic feeling of the picture is pulled up with the sense of movement and the continuous and rapid brush strokes flowing like waves.

In terms of artistic expression, post-impressionism emphasizes composition, holding that artistic images should be different from the real images of life, and the objective images should be transformed with the subjective feelings of the author to show "subjective objectivity". While respecting the Impressionist achievements in light and color, they did not unilaterally pursue external light, but paid attention to expressing the concreteness, stability and internal structure of matter. Van Gogh, on the other hand, regards the depicted object as a medium to express his passionate subjective feelings, and expresses his subjective feelings and passions with his unique artistic skills. He developed the impressionist artistic method, especially the method of shaping the color and shape of things, to the point of being more independent of tradition.

Image source: Sina blog

Van Gogh was a prolific painter who created 864 oil paintings, 1037 sketches and 150 watercolors in his life. 35 selfies, sunflower 1 1. Similar creative themes also reflect his main line of life. Director Cobeira explained that Van Gogh shared with the audience more familiar things around him, from flowers and plants (sunflowers) to shoes (a pair of old shoes), from the house (arles's bedroom) to the cafe (night cafe) ... When people and things were combined, storyboards naturally came into being.

Of course, there are also many problems. Considering the plot of the film, some contents of the original painting need to be changed, either from day to night or from spring to autumn. Welchman stressed that although the picture of this film is close to the original picture, it is not a faithful copy. "They can't," he said. "As time goes by, there is a difference between a static single image and a dynamic art form. It took us a year to redesign his paintings to adapt to the film works and be as loyal to them as possible, but I need to work hard to adapt these paintings to the film form. " In addition, Van Gogh's canvas scale is 1.33: 1, which is not suitable for film projection screen and needs to be readjusted. Margaret beside the piano needs to add left and right parts to the original painting.

Image source: Douban movie

Every shot in early movies was a still picture. It is the smallest unit of a single image in a movie. Displaying frames in rapid succession will create the illusion of motion. High frame rate can get smoother and more realistic animation. The more frames per second (fps), the smoother the motion display. In order to enrich and correct the plot, the main creator collects materials and reads books. After getting to know Van Gogh constantly, he redefined his cognition again and again, and finally drew more than 65,000 frames with 898 shots, not including more than 3,000 abandoned plots. Think about it is a huge workload!

Unfortunately, there were only 1000 paintings left. After painting each frame, the animator will remove the complete picture with a shovel. So only a few hand-painted easels survived. At present, with the release of the film, 200 paintings will be exhibited, and another 800 paintings will be sold online.

Image source: beloved Van Gogh official website

Many people question that this creative technique is extravagant and wasteful. But think about it from another angle: Maybe they have the same fate. Van Gogh's art was not understood in his lifetime, but through the canvas, later generations felt that man's extreme desire for truth, goodness, beauty and freedom. So who can say that the beloved Van Gogh has no art of his own? Oil painting is a traditional art, and in today's fast-paced society, how to revitalize this ancient discipline is a topic worth discussing. In this regard, the beloved Van Gogh may have found a way out.

If you like this style of film, the article finally recommends an oil painting animation short film for you. Is that Russian animation master Alexander? The Old Man and the Sea directed by Petrov 1999. In 2000, this glass-painted animation won the Best Animated Short Film Award at the 72nd Academy Awards and the Best Animated Short Film Award at the 53rd BAFTA. In his creation, he drew an animation on the surface of the glass plate with his fingertips stained with oil paints. Using different layers of glass, when shooting the same shot, he often makes characters on one layer of the picture and background on the other. After the first shot is shot through the glass layer by layer, the next shot is shot by adjusting the wet paint on the glass. It took three years, nearly 30 thousand operations, and there was no mistake, which was a miracle.

Image source: Sina blog

If you can also fall in love with oil painting through movies, the efforts of these artists will not be in vain.