November 2, 2017
Self Portrait
No other artist has attracted more legends than Vincent van Gogh. Variously labeled a martyr, a lustful satyr, a madman, a genius and a lay about, the real Vincent is at once revealed in his letters, and obscured by myth and time. Van Gogh himself said in his last letters, “We cannot speak other than by our paintings”. We take him at his word and let the paintings tell the real story of a great visual artist.
In producing the cinema art, “Loving Vincent”, every one of the 65,00 frames of the film is an oil-painting hand-painted by 123 professional oil painters who travelled from all across the world to the Loving Vicent Studios in Poland and Greece to be part of the production. As remarkable as Vincent’s brilliant paintings, is his passionate and ill-fated life, and mysterious death.
Dock
”Loving Vincent” was first shot as a live action film with actors, and then hand-painted over frame-by-frame in oils. The final effect is an interaction of the performance of the actors playing the artist’s famous portraits, and the performance of the painting animators, bringing these characters into the medium of paint.
Van Gogh’s paintings come in different shapes and sizes, so the design painters had to work out how to best show these paintings within the frame set by the cinema screen. This required breaking outside the frames of Van Gogh’s paintings, while still retaining the feel and inspiration of the artist’s originals. They also had to work out how to deal with ‘invasions’, where a character painted in one style, comes into another Van Gogh’s painting with different style. Moreover, for the purpose of the story, sometimes change daytime paintings into night time paintings, or paintings which were done in Autumn or Winter, had to be re-imagine for summer when the journey of the film takes place.
Sunset
The Character Design Painters specialized in re-imagining the actors as their famous portraits, so they would retain their own features and at the same time recognizably take on the look and feeling of their character in painting form. They were 377 paintings painted during the Design Painting process.
The painting animators then use the reference footage, and paint over this with reference to the style (brushstrokes, colors, impasto) set by the Design Paintings to paint the first frame of their shot on canvas, sized 67 cm by 49 cm. Then they animate the shot by re-painting, matching the brushstrokes, color and impasto of their previous frame, for all parts of the shot that are moving. At the end, they are left with a painting of the last frame of the shot. Each frame is recorder with a Canon D20 digital stills camera at 6k resolution. So the audience will be seeing 65,000 high resolution photographs of actual paintings.
Starry Night
LOVING VINCENT will mesmerize audiences this November, exclusively distributed by Solar Pictures. For more details, visit @solarpicturesPH on facebook, twitter and Instagram. (Press Release)
QUEZON CITY, Philippines – On Thursday, August 3 at Seda Vertis North, the first-ever Pista ng Pelikulang Pilipino, which is spearheaded by Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP) in cooperation with Globe Telecom recently kicked-off the festival and revealed the 12 participating, top-rated locally-produced films; and two of which are from Universal Harvesters Incorporated’s To-Farm Film Fest 2016 —‘Paglipay’ and ‘Pauwi Na’. The two films were the festival’s top-grossing and the moat-awarded entries in its last year’s competition.
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‘PAGLIPAY,’ directed by Zig Dulay, is about the adaptation of Aetas as they deal with changes brought about by the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in 1991. The Aetas were forced to come down from the mountains to live in the resettlement areas the government had provided them. The said film starred actress Anna Luna paired with a real-life Aeta named Garry Cabalic. They won Best Supporting Actress and Best Actor respectively in the previous ‘ToFarm Film Fest’ awards night.
Locally, apart from these acting awards, the film also won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Cinematography, and as Audience Choice. Abroad, it also won Platinum World Award for International Feature Film for the World Film Awards, International Award of Excellence - International Film Festival for Environment, Health, Culture (IFFEHC), and Best Director at the Canadian Diversity Film Festival 2016.
Recently at the 40th GAWAD URIAN, it had 11 nominations—Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, Best Editing, Best Music, Best Sound, Best Actor, and Best Supporting Actress (for both Anna Luna and the Aeta non-actor Joan dela Cruz). At the International Filmmaker Festival of World Cinema LONDON 2017, it also has five nominations—Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Foreign Language Feature Film.
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‘PAUWI NA,’ as directed by Paolo Villaluna, is a reflection of a struggling Filipino family who lived in a slum area, with Mang Pepe as the head and his wife Remy; (portrayed by Bembol Roco and Cherry Pie Picache). Their incomes as husband-and-wife team are not enough to support their family; even when combined with the earnings of their two children—JP and Pina. Because of their poverty —the family decided to pedal home back to Bicol. The story is inspired from a news article featured in Philippine Daily Inquirer (Family pedals way back home to Leyte, 7 September 2003).
The film was honored with the Golden Goblet for Best Film at the Shanghai International Film Festival 2017. At the Gawad Tanglaw 2017—it won the Presidential Jury Award and Best Supporting Actor for Jess Mendoza. Last year at the first ToFarm Awards Night, it gained six awards—Special Jury Award, Best Actor for Bembol Roco, Best Actress for Cherry Pie Picache, Best Story for Paolo Villaluna and Ellen Ramos, Best Editing, and Best Production Design.
It had seven nominations at the 40th GAWAD URIAN as well, including Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress for Cherry Pie Picache, Best Supporting Actress for Meryll Soriano, Best Screenplay Best Editing,, and Best Music. Also at the FAP LUNA Awards 2017—it also has five nominations—Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Cinematography.
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The two films are going to be shown in 60 theaters each nationwide. To know more about the show, download the PistApp on Google Play.
