Imagery, surrealism, and symbolism in film - Enemy

"Chaos is order yet undeciphered."

After hearing about Ridley Scott's fantastic Blade Runner getting a sequel not directed by him, of course my first reaction was to find out who this new director was and if he was worthy to carry on the legacy. I learned it was a man named Denis Villeneuve, a director I'm not familiar with from Canada. While searching, I found a movie that many people were ranting and raving about directed by him called Enemy. I decided to give it a try, and I was NOT dissapointed. Quite the opposite actually. It also has a lot of design elements that relate to my masterpiece, so I thought I'd give a short review of it. 

Enemy came out in 2013. I have never heard of it until now. But after watching it, I was blown away by all of the subtle themes it used both in it's writing and design that tell the story of inner turmoil between a man. (Also warning, there may be a few spoilers in here. Watch the movie first!) The basic plot of the film revolves around a history professer who finds out he had a doppelganger, and he sets out to meet this man. One major thing I noticed that flowed through the entire film was one thing.

Yellow.

In history teacher Jake's apartment, it's dark yellow and black. Outdoors and in actor Jake's apartment, it's light yellow. The lighter feels more safe, and healthy, while the dark feels dingy, and bad. The color and design used throughout the entire film helped bring the story to the forefront. This is something I am interested in working with for my masterpiece, and while it may not be film, telling stories through indirect design is a really interesting concept to me. There are many other things that help indirectly tell the story as well. History teacher Jake's hair is constantly a mess, his clothes are ill-fitting and mismatched, and look cheap. Actor Jake's clothes look expensive, he wears a watch, and his hair is always combed and styled. It's these small details that really drive this film. One other main point that really gives the film the psychological edge is spiders. (see pictures 3 and 4.) I don't want to spoil anything if you watch it and figure it out for yourself, but these spiders seen throughout the film are the main plot to the protagonist's battle with himself. He is his own enemy. The themes of lust, commitment, and mind battles are made into a fantastic thinking game with the design and symbolism in this film, and after watching it, I still wasn't totally sure if I had it all right. It really is a film that you need to pay close attention to every detail to really understand, which is something you don't get a lot in today's film industry. I highly recommend if you like a puzzling, intricate, well-made story you should watch this movie. At the end, if you still don't fully understand the bits and pieces placed in it (and that terrifying ending) to get the message across, watch this video. It helped me realize a lot of things I missed about it. Needless to say, I think the Blade Runner sequel is in good hands. 

Telling Stories Through Clothes

There are a fair amount of people who see fashion as an expensive waste of time. While you might see that $1000 coat as being insane and that anyone who buys it would be out of their mind, you or others might have no problem buying a $1000 dirtbike or gaming system. Everyone's got hobbies that mean a lot to them, and sometimes the price we have to pay for these things is just part of the game. One designer who recently had a runway show at New York Fashion Week really struck me in particular though. John Elliot + Co, a small, minimalist clothing company from L.A got their own runway show and the product was great. It really had a lot more elements to it than just the clothes it was presenting. It was an experience. The article I read about it was from right here, but I just wanted to share this because I feel like it really involved some of the things I would like to work on in the future, or in my masterpiece. (or both)

Also, his clothing can be found here!

Isaac Asimov's take on learning

I thought the interview of Isaac Asimov was eerily true to our society, with how we currently live and how we want to live. I agreed with everything he said! There's a terrible problem with technophobia in our society, and this is harming us. Of course, economically speaking, machines are taking jobs and somewhat dehumanizing the process of work, but I think that's how things will have to continue in our society and have been since the industrial revolution. Technology helps and hurts us, but the benefits far outweigh the cost. In a utopian society, everyone is happy and crime is low. A lot of crime happens because people need money to do things they love. If they could all work in fields they loved, and school was specialized for each student to learn more about the things they love, I believe we'd have so much less crime and so much less angry people in the world. No more spit in your burger at McDonalds, no more uninterested and unhelpful Best Buy employees, etc. If we had less people doing these kind of jobs and more people using their brains to continue learning even after school, we could solve the world's problems much quicker and much easier. We'd have real thinkers, creatives, scientists, etc that can follow careers they WANT to do, earn their money there, and use that for their relaxation and personal enrichment. Technology is your friend, not your enemy, and with that on our side, we could do so much more for ourselves and our species.

Designing Stories With Music

Everything has a story. The only difference between a movie and a piece of clothing or a cover of an album is that one has its story laid out for you to see, while the others are completely up for interpretation. Both are fantastic. But in this particular case, I put my design skills to use to help out some friends. A few years ago, 2 of my friends created a band and began making music. I don't play an instrument, but I was happy to help in any way I could. It wasn't until around July I was approached to make a physical copy for them. In the worldwide scene of independent music, cassettes are something of a novelty. For bands who are too small to warrant the money it takes to create a vinyl pressing, and for a world where everyone's pretty much sick of CDs, it seems that there's only one viable option left for collectors of physical music: 8̶ ̶T̶r̶a̶c̶k̶  Cassettes. Luckily, after a few days of research and a trip to the Santa Maria Electronic Parts Supermart (Rest in peace... and screw you Best Buy) I had everything I needed. They already had the basic square shaped album art done by a friend, but the rest of the J-Card was up to me. I went into photoshop and got to work on something that I thought fit the overall aesthetic and theme of the album, and worked from there. There was only a small run of 10 tapes, but they sold out and even after I had a lot of people asking for more.

Fast forward to early February, and there's a new EP on the way. This time, with more Photoshop experience under my belt, I was tasked with creating the entire album art and J-Card. It was a bit more work coming up with an idea and theme but the entire band was there to throw out ideas this time, so the aesthetic was captured. You are welcome to make your own conclusions of it. As I type this I'm sitting next to 14 blank cassette tapes, ready to be made. Despite design being only one of the many things I'm interested in pursuing, I really enjoy doing stuff like this and it's a contender up there for career choice for sure. 

also, if you want to check their album out, listen here!