If You Go Down To The Woods Today.

Fashion feature short we just wrapped with D1 Models. Massive thanks to everyone involved, big heads up to Apparat for being extremely cool about the music, and one of the few electronic artists capable of making australians cry. Support.
Backstage stills and more available on the Offworld Project Facebook Page.

The Craftsman

Things have been busy recently, leading up to the big Offworld Project launch. (More on this later).

As a teaser, here's The Craftsman; a short we made recently for the RSA/Philips/BAFTA competition. It's currently in the Top 5, having been selected by the panel and public vote, with Ridley Scott choosing the final winner in a couple of weeks. Enjoy.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Matrix

VERY excited.

The Seven Sins: Coming Soon

Offworld Project is proud to present the poster for the new collaboration with Butterfly Wheels.
Opening 29/06/10 in Shoreditch Church.
Photography Dan Deckard, Chris Chudleigh & Nick George.
Watch this space:
www.shoreditchsins.com

Girls On Film

Something exciting is happening with music videos again, I can't put my finger on it exactly, but space is opening back up for semi-professional productions. Until fairly recently it's either been zero-budget 'quirky concept' or Rihanna, but something in-between is on the rise. Whether or not mid level directors are benefitting is obviously in contention, but I digress from these visual treats.

Hurts have always intrigued me, despite their underground overexposure... a straight pop effort dressed in Joy Division Dior Homme and referencing The Night Porter is definitely something to support, even if everyone is telling you as well. Lady Gaga must approve. UNKLE's latest collaboration with Warren & Nick comes off like a fashion film hybrid, and does it very very well.

Erwin Olaf's Chessmen

Erwin Olaf turns the chessboard into Terry Gilliam-esque fairytale characters.

Explosions In Space Are Silent (2008)

'I' is generally something that's avoided on this blog, mostly because the non-original material that gets put up wouldn't benefit much from a dear diary accompaniment. This entry is a slight exception however, as there's not really a way to post a piece of work I've been sitting on for two years without some words of explanation.

Once upon a time in a land geographically pretty close but shortly after the first iPhone was released I came up with the idea of Offworld Project, and having nailed my concept, was literally exploding to make something that would encapsulate my style completely, that was every bit my baby from beginning to end. Which I did.

In hindsight, obsessive control is never healthy; spending every penny I had (and more than a few I didn't), months of pre-production, directing and very physical acting (my first time at both), no sleep, and learning colour grading from scratch whilst barely leaving my windowless cave doesn't allow for much distance.

Tragically (but fantastic at the time), I managed to suck a load of very talented people into my black hole of enthusiasm who all worked brilliantly together, and expected something to come of it, but as (ambition - distance x expectation = time), it's apparently taken a long while to work out what it was we made, and it's place in the scheme of things. In other words I never showed it to anyone.

You know when you blow a load of money on something stupid, run out a while later and can't help thinking what you could be spending it on (NTS: 1 Tracey Island = 57 Sainbury's Basics vegetable soup & noodles)... This was kind of like that, except if I used my life savings all over again I might send it to someone this time.
At the time I guess it was hard to watch, having put so much into it, and having to see yourself on screen, or it was just stupidity. Either way I realised the other day it was probably about time to put it online...
(There's also a great little making-of that Kyri made, both songs are M83)

Snow White Identity Crisis

Willy Vanderperre shoots Mariacarla Boscono for i-D in a surreally sexy editorial that looks like it would be more at home in an older Dazed & Confused.

Acts Of God

Some images taken from the latest fury of nature. Via The Guardian & Spectre Group.

Health & Cheer To All Gingers

Ummm... so a couple of shock-tactic new music videos that both happen to be pretty amazing.
First is for HEALTH's We Are Water by Eric Wareheim (via City Slang), and second is another slice of teenage apocalyptica by Romain Gavras (remember Stress?) for M.I.A's new song Born Free (great song as well)...
I like them, if that's the right word....

New Butterfly Wheels Shoot & Fundraiser

Here is the poster and a couple of extra shots I did (with the help of Nick George) for the new theatre/performance arts company Butterfly Wheels. They are an extremely exciting new arts project, and this should be the first of many collaborations.

The poster is for a fundraising event at Punk club in soho, which we're helping run. Come down and support something worthwhile, it will be an interesting night.

Mer Girl

Via Models.com, shot by Solve Sundsbo for Vogue Nippon.

One Amazing & Two Very Good Songs. One Amazing & Two Very Good Videos.

Chiharu Shiota

Some amazing installation work by Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota (F), who recently put on a surreal exhibition at Haunch of Venison.

Enter The Void Trailers & Stills

Is anyone ready for this? Apparently not the distributors anyway... Gaspar Noe, director of such sensory-overload nightmares as Irreversible is set to release his new troubling 'psychedelic melodrama' Enter The Void. The story follows a brother and sister who get lost in the drugs underworld of Tokyo, he dies and continues to watch over her dark past as a ghost...

As of yet there are no full trailers, just some graded stills and some epileptic mini teasers. Oh, and the music is done by Thomas Banglater of Daft Punk...

Daily Image - Ladies From The Sea

From the NOWNESS report Ladies From The Sea.

Business Of Fashion: Top Ten Fashion Films Of The Season

Who knew that the founder of PayPal has a space program called Space X?

There's a lot to say about fashion films (by someone else); it's a medium still very much finding its feet... but it is, rapidly. Typical of the recurrent downsides of the industry, there is a lot of The Emperor's New Clothes syndrome, but through this we are seeing the genuinely interesting and innovative work rise to the top.

Luckily the website The Business of Fashion has compiled their Top Ten Fashion Films Of The Season to save you some all-important time you never get back. This one for Rodarte is a standout, all filmed in the above mentioned Space X grounds, others include ShowStudio, Fred Butler and umm...

Books - Geek Love

Just finished an incredible book by Katherine Dunn (1989), the story is of a travelling carnival run by Aloysius "Al" Binewski and his wife "Crystal" Lil. When the business begins to fail, Lil gobbles pesticides, experiments with drugs and douses herself with radiation to ensure that she prodcues infants grotesque enough to keep the turnstiles clicking... the result is a dark pre-Chuck Palahniuk masterpiece that is both shocking and heartfelt...

Many died. Many burned.
Babes snuffed to grease smears in the blacked arms of their charcoaled mothers.
Sudden switches, lean and brittle, had started as dancing children only seconds before.
All the dark, gaping corpses, in their fire-frenzy ballet, flexed and danced in the dreams of the finders.
The fire-fighters and ambulance shriekers who had worked arson-struck tenements
and the crashes of jumbo jets puked and retreated, or quit their jobs to grow lettuce, but still dreamed,
after wading the ashes of Binewski's Carnival Fabulon.