OFF BLOGGER / SEE YOU ON gabrielcamelin.com

I decided to move all my blogging operation to my new website: www.gabrielcamelin.com. This website features my work in a much better way while I still can continue my blog.

Creating timelapse on the go for Echoes 2012

Poster design by Pornthip Phimanaporn

It was invited by the Silpakorn University faculty of music to use my VJ skills again this year for the Echoes Festival at Bangkok Art and Culture Center. On the 5th of April, I was vijaying outdoor of Bangkok Art and Culture Center, improvising visuals with VJ Hype, one of my students. On the 6th of April, I was giving a similar duty but this time with a playlist, I knew exactly what was going to be played and the organizer gave me some visual suggestions to match the work of the student. The event was indoor this time, 15 experimental tracks performed by Silpakorn University. I was a bit frustrated by the fact that they requested a lot of footage from Bangkok and especially timelapse, I didn't want to rip other's people work, knowing that one of the best timelapse of Bangkok available on vimeo was shot by a friend of mine...

View Larger Map

While showing google street view to my girlfriend, a new function in Thailand, I wondered... what would happened if... I animated the damn thing? I looked at the challenge... a considerable amount of screen capture, a limited time (2 days), let see what I can do. I first try to locate some interesting spot in Bangkok: Bridges, highway, slum, etc... Then start to screen capture what I was doing, 30 minutes of capture, frame by frame for a 5 sec animation at 12 fps... my fingers starts to hurt after that. I guess using scripts could have facilitated the process, but well, I still find the result quite worth the work.
I will post a video from the performance later on. But here are some of the video I played during the performance:

The Standards - Where you go

This is the third time I worked with The Standards but this time it was a slighly different task. The band wanted a music video that could reflect their band presence on stage. They came up with the ideas of mashing up footage from all their tour into one music video. While working on their footage I felt that the result would be stronger if I also shot some more footage.

I went to Cosmic Cafe in December for one of their gig and shoot a few takes with a Panasonic AG-AF 100. These shots are important as most cameramen couldn't come too close on the stage, while I could. Editing was a bit challenging due to the different level of quality of the footage given but I definitely learn a new approach as I had around 7 hours of footage to cut down to 3 minutes and 40 sec...

Visuals for Ladytron live in Bangkok

Dudesweet, a Bangkok based party and event organizer contacted me in november 2011 to design and play visuals for the band Ladytron. They came to play at LED club, RCA on the 7th of December 2011. For this project, I teamed with the Wetcarpet studios, another VJ collective I work often with.




We decided that using the LED screen from the club was too bright and preferred to use projection instead. It was not an easy installation as we needed to install a screen behind the band with no budget.



We used my 12mx3m curtain that we fold 3 times and placed it right in front of the LED screen. We placed the projectors sideways and use a circle mask to hide the distortion from the projection.

From time to time we used the LED screen in the background, which could be seen as the curtain is semi-transparent. For the visuals we played a large array of mixed vintage videos with effects.

Vijaying for Delicate Decibel

On the 8th of October 2011, I joined theWetCarpet studios for a VJ session for Delicate Decibel at Motorcycle Emptiness. Vijaying on different style of indie music, we set up a curtain to cover the stage and did a double projection on each side of the stage. We also set up 2 other projectors that we used as lightings on the performers. Similar to my previous music video, the semi-transparent fabric allows to receive lights and visuals as well as see through. This technique creates a strong sense of depth.



Most of our visuals that night were motion graphics, high contrast (with lots of blacks, allowing more transparency on the curtain) rather than my traditional selection of 60s-70s film, ads and scopitones.

Stylish Nonsense - Ninja

For my final project for my MA in visual communication with Birmingham City University, I decided to move on to something more challenging. I explored the potential of using live concert and performance techniques to strengthen Music Video as an interactive media. Being a part-time Vijay in clubs and concert, I found it quite challenging to work on such approach as both music video and vijaying are giving a visual representation of music.

Being aware of the existing barrier between concert videos and music videos, I had to find a way to combine live visual elements such as projection and interactive visuals, with more classic music video techniques such as rhythmic editing, split screen and multi-camera cinematography, techniques I explored in the first 2 stages of my MA.

The final outcome of my project is a music video designed for the Thai indie band “Stylish Nonsense” using front projection on scrims and interactive lighting techniques.

Stylish Nonsense - Photos I took and compositedfor my pre-production

To get a more challenging result than a simple projection on background, I studied the use of scrims for front projection. Scrims are semi-transparent fabrics which depending where is the light source coming from, becomes transparent or opaque. Following the recommendation from Deyan, another fellow VJ (theWetCarpet), I decided to go for a dark grey fabric that I could set up in front of the 2 band members, allowing to see both visuals and the band in the same time. To achieve a better result, I also collaborated with Go Kun (Go Ueda), a japanese lighting sequencer who designed a set of interactive lights placed in different part of the stage.

We shot the video at Opposite, a venue own by the WTF franchise, sukhumwit soi 51

Interview on Slowreverse - Monster music video by a Day magazine

I was interview last month by the famous thai hip/design "A day magazine" and the publish the article last week. I was interviewed on the process of the music video from concept to post-production. If you can read Thai, enjoy!

Open publication - Free publishing - More a day magazine