Tal Rosner - Lecture 2

Posted by Jenn | Posted in | Posted on Friday, November 28, 2008

Most of the work created by Tal Rosner came across as extremely experimental, looking at split screens, shapes, movement and sound. In the lecture, he mentioned a lot about working with orchestras and being involved in live shows, producing pieces of graphic movement according to the feel of the music. This lecture came smack bang right in the middle of our Rhythm brief at the time, which i thought was lucky. Whilst i was experimenting with my pieces, although i did have a little influence from Tal Rosners work, i didnt want to start coming up with stuff that looked exactly like what he had done. For example, the 'concerto for two pianos' piece showed footage from a train mirrored to create expressive shapes in time to the music, it was that kind of symmetrical design that i wanted to steer clear from. I was more influenced by the way he designed the splitting of the screens - especially in both the 'Skins' title sequences, using the typography as the main way of splitting up the screen, i thought it was a clever idea. I also liked it when he mentioned that each of the title sequences at the end section changed depending on which character the programme was focusing on that particular week.
It was quite daunting when he mentioned there were around 72 versions that he had gone through to get to the final edit of the piece for the 1st series of Skins, and around 51 versions for the 2nd series. It made me realise it must be a long process, and a lot of hard work to develop each of the versions to get to the end piece.
One example of his work which i was drawn to was '7 days of creation' working with the London Southbank orchestra. The show had 6 screens above the orchestra showing visuals that Tal Rosner had designed to go with the music they played. But also in this particular piece Tal helped to write the music and designed the visuals at the same time to make sure it all fit in together, and the visuals complimented with the rhythm of the music.
The final piece he showed us in the lecture was called 'Without you' which was an experimental animation, but this piece was different because unlike the other pieces of work he had shown us, this one represented natural sounds instead of techno type music or piano music. This piece was edited by using the sounds created at the time he was filming. This piece in my opinion was the most experimental as he had no proper rhythm to go off, he had to bring it all together in his head to create his own rhythm, and with using natural sound that just makes it more experimental.
Overall it was an interesting lecture, with a good sense of rhythm and visual design in all the pieces he showed us, starting out as a graphic designer proves that with any graphic design experience, it can take you anywhere, and in this case he went into moving image.

Comments (1)

A great descriptive report. You could still write more about how he approached his work, and his influences.