The Castling

The Film:

Kasia Kwiecinska and I created this short film for an architectural research project. It is about how a simple house can turn into a chess academy.
Special thanks to the KwaThema Chess Academy for all their help.

The Corner Shebeen

#1 Job Maseko was abuz this Friday, with a re-enactment scene of the shebeen (pub) that Anthony Shoba used to run in the structure. The music was blaring, the fake drinks were flowing. A big thanks to our very good actors.

KwaThema Chess Tournament 2007

This film was taken in KwaThema, it is of a chess tournament organised by Anthony Shoba and the KwaThema Chess Academy. (Created by Kasia and I)

The Castiling

Creating a time map for research and relating it into a film is much harder than I imagined. Many things emerge, what part of the story will we tell, from who's viewpoint will it be from and what media would best represent it.
For example, with regards to ERGO and the time that Anthony worked there:

What Story:
Portraying the ritual of going to work
The hundreds of people from KwaThema that worked at ERGO
How Anthony rose up the employment ladder from attendant to Snr operator.
Who's Viewpoint:

Anthony, viewed from his eyes (this could quite possibly even become literal, using his eye as the frame)

From ERGO's eyes
From an impartial viewer (such as a bird in the sky)
What Media:
A pure film format would be unrealistic, as a reconstruction would be beyond our means. For such a story a collaged animation would seem the most appropriate choice. Using photographs, sound, 3d animation, hand drawn animation and photoshop editing will create a highly layered piece. The graphic style could lend the hard industrial quality of ERGO.

The preliminary result, text storyboard:
Ergo in the distance in a photoshoped surreal format, moving parts and smoke sets back ERGO into when it was still in production. Workers stream into the factory, in perspective (These workers could be hand drawn).
The process ERGO undergoes could be shown with a highly complex 3d flyover of the processes showing the mine dumps with their shimmering aqua blue water and the pipes that transport the sludge to ERGO, this scene could be very graphically appealing.

hi

How did the shoot go?

#1 Job Maseko Street

Select one of the images to see the higher quality versions.

A Zed and Two Noughts Network Diagram

This is a network diagram of the characters in the Peter Greenaway movie, A Zed and Two Noughts.

Peter Greenaway’s A Zed and Two Noughts (1985) shows how layered the simple aftereffects of an event (car accident) can be. His tale is in actual fact not really about an accident at all. The collision of a car with a swan is merely the catalyst for a narrative that links three disparate characters; twins (whose wives have died in the accident), Darwin (with his theory of evolution and Vermeer (the famous Dutch painter) (Greenaway 1985). Thus by adding a random event or character Peter Greenaway manages to warp the narrative of his film allowing ever bigger circles of satellite characters to begin orbiting around the three characters.