Juan Carlos Oganes' film-making and work blog.

Saturday, September 6, 2008

Edward Gorey

I have always been a fan of Tim Burton films.

Starting young as an animator in Disney projects, he quickly made a name of himself by concetrating on his style that ranges between the dark, kinda film noir and gothic.

There has been an author and illustrator that I stumbled upon researching art galleries and odd concepts like Salvador Dalí's beautiful paintings and what Im talking about are the drawings of Edward Gorey. His visual style resembles much or at least transports me to the turn-of-the-century british era in the streets of London. When one sees his work Im sure that many have (and defintely any shrink that likes to analize anything) guessed he was a british or he was into death stuff or something. When I read his bio it was quite interesting to learn that he never ever stepped on english soil nor he had an adiction for that kind of stuff. In fact, many of his books were children's books....yes!! Children's books (ok, If I had a kid that loved that type of drawings and was attracted to all that dark stuff...im sure I'd send him off to the school counselor!).

His topics always inpired macabre, cemetery, dark and contrasty looks that revolved around the goth and the surrealist. He was into "literary nonsense"...much like Lewis Caroll.

Anyway, Im sure Tim Burton has come with ideas of his own watching his drawings as inspiration for The Corpse Bride, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Batman, Sweeny Todd and others in the same horror/gothic type of gloomy atmospheric films.

I'd like to give the Utopia videoclip that look and air. Keep it dark, contrasty, lury, gothic....yes, that Gorey type of look. The lens I'll use together with the HVX200 will help to give it that tight flat sensation. Definetly, a lot of post work will be done in grading it to a darker picture. Plan to hue it toward the dark blues and greens.

Let's see how it develops. The day for principal shooting is getting closer.