Post by JoJo on Oct 23, 2005 16:56:08 GMT -5
Just something that sounds interesting, but I don't think it ever was made into a home release:
www.daumier.org/22.0.html
About Paul McCartney's "Daumier's Law"
Story behind Daumier's Law
Brian Peterson Nov 26 1993
This article was written by Mark Lewisohn for Club Sandwich in the Summer of
1992. In order to save myself some typing I will excerpt and paraphrase a
little bit. Any mistakes are mine.
Paul McCArtney is about to surprise us all once again. Over the last 4 years
he's been putting together a short film animating the work of 19th Century
artist Honore Daumier, and recording what the public will perceive as some
very unMcCartney like music for it.
The film is Daumier's Law. Brought to you by the team behind Rupert
and The Frog Song. Paul, Linda, and director of animation Geoff Dunbar. For
too long Honore Daumier has been an unsung hero, a clear but usually
overlooked influence over artists such as Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec and
Picasso. Daumier's Law will ensure that his work finally receives the
attention it merits.
Linda was the first to be enthused by Daumier - back in her school
days. "I went through all periods of different painters and along the way
there were several that grabbed me including Daumier. He was very satirical
about the different classes and fantastic at capturing people's characters."
In 1988 Paul found himself with the time, while preparing for the
Tour, to record some experimental music. It wasn't meant for the film, that
come only after the music was completed. "I wanted to get into some
minimalist music so I came to the studio and started trying to think of very
simple pieces, based around the theme of injustice. .. I got intrigued by
the idea of thinking 'how few notes couls I use, then?' You start off
thinking of just one note and then you embellish it a bit, trying to keep in
the back of your mind to be as minimal as possible. And in the end I think I
abondoned the idea of minimalism and just got into this slightly
experimental music."
Soon the two projects came together. "I went through every drawing
he ever did and really got involved," Linda says, "I got every book on
Daumier and read all about his life and thought that it would be incredible
to do a visual thing for Paul's music. Daumier worked for a newspaper as a
satirical cartoonist and went to prison a few times for his Art. A lot of
his work was about injustice and it's a theme that is so right for our
times."
"I did about 20 minutes of music." adds Paul, "then Linda and I were
looking at some Daumier drawings, so we hooked up the idea of injustice with
my musical pieces, came up with the idea for the film and called Geoff."
"Paul and Linda called and asked if I would like to make a film on
Daumier and I said yes," recalls Geoff Dunbar, "Before Rupert came along I
had made a film on Toulouse-Lautrec so the Daumier idea was very exciting."
"Paul did six pieces of music and they each had a title - Right,
Wrong, Justice, Punishment, Payment, and Release. Then we pored through the
works of Daumier, got everything that was available, and structured the
story from the material. And where we had to link it we invented 'in the
style of'. We hung the story on one character, a man from one drawing by
Daumier."
The injustice theme is skillfully put across during the 15 minute
film, with our Mr. Average wrongfully accussed, wrongfully arrested,
wrongfully convicted in a particularly powerful courtroom scene(Act 3:
Justice), cruelly punished, forced to pay dues and then, at last, expelledby
the tyrannical system, free to rediscover artistic beauty in his midst. "It'
s all topical stuff ," comments Dunbar, "It's a heroic tale I suppose. He
goes through the system and comes out in rags, he's lost all his wordly
possessions and his dignity but regains them at the end by finding beauty
and music."
The most visually stunning section occurs in Act 5 (Payment), when
Daumier's remarkable Gargantua, drawn in 1832, is brought to life. Depicting
the great pear-head of Louis XIV and his swallowing up of ordinary people
and their riches, it was a drawing for which Daumier was fined and
imprisoned by the French government.
The sheer enormity of work in making Daumier's Law is best explained
by some vital statistics: Production began in mid-1989 and the animation
took two years to complete. With between 12 and 24 drawings per second the
film runs up to 21,000 drawings. Before that they are all done in pencil
too, so that make's 42,000. THe celluloids also have to be shaded or painted
before being photographed, plus all the prepatory photos and layouts of the
scenes, another 35,000 drawings. "The sequence of the mandolin player (Act
6, Release) along took one artist three months," comments Geoff, "plus there
were scenes, only natural in a film project, that wouldn't fit in, which
were heaved out and confined to the bin."
It's a mark of the team's achievement that no difference between the
original work and theirsis discernable to the naked eye. "Doing a film like
this has it's bonuses," remarks Dunbar, "and one learns so much more than if
you just studied it. You're actually in it, you've got to make it move, to
create new scenes which will dovetail with the original."
Paul supplied 20 minutes of instrumental music, of which 15 is used.
It may not be minimalist in the true sense of the word, but certainly, in
places, it is pretty minimal. And it changes dramatically depending on the
Act, from subtle tinkling percussion effects to more strident piano and
electric guitar passages and some lovely acoustic work. "The great thing in
animation is that they need the music before the film," comments Paul' "In
animation they follow what you lay down."
"Paul was inspired by Daumier and I was inspired by the music'"
comments Geoff, "And we do have a good sense of what we're both thinking and
saying. With the Daumier music it's so much a departure for Paul ,such a
brave direction to go in, that I had to sit down and listen to it many times
over"
"What was especially thrilling was when we did the sound mix and
Paul and I are sitting at the bakc of the theatre. There it was again - the
strength of the music was still there. WE had been listening to it every
day, sections of it repeated again and again, and it had become an object of
work. So for the strength to still be there two years later was remarkable."
Delighted to be "probably the only animator in the world who has a
gold disk", pointing to his award for 'We All Stand Together', Dunbar is
usually occupied making animated TV commercials and is presently engaged in
bringing to the screen another beloved British children's character, Beatrix
Potter's Peter Rabbit.
As for the musical element, Paul comments, "I've also got two other
pieces of the same sort of theme and of similar length, so the idea at some
point may be to release everything together on record, We'll see."
www.daumier.org/22.0.html
About Paul McCartney's "Daumier's Law"
Story behind Daumier's Law
Brian Peterson Nov 26 1993
This article was written by Mark Lewisohn for Club Sandwich in the Summer of
1992. In order to save myself some typing I will excerpt and paraphrase a
little bit. Any mistakes are mine.
Paul McCArtney is about to surprise us all once again. Over the last 4 years
he's been putting together a short film animating the work of 19th Century
artist Honore Daumier, and recording what the public will perceive as some
very unMcCartney like music for it.
The film is Daumier's Law. Brought to you by the team behind Rupert
and The Frog Song. Paul, Linda, and director of animation Geoff Dunbar. For
too long Honore Daumier has been an unsung hero, a clear but usually
overlooked influence over artists such as Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec and
Picasso. Daumier's Law will ensure that his work finally receives the
attention it merits.
Linda was the first to be enthused by Daumier - back in her school
days. "I went through all periods of different painters and along the way
there were several that grabbed me including Daumier. He was very satirical
about the different classes and fantastic at capturing people's characters."
In 1988 Paul found himself with the time, while preparing for the
Tour, to record some experimental music. It wasn't meant for the film, that
come only after the music was completed. "I wanted to get into some
minimalist music so I came to the studio and started trying to think of very
simple pieces, based around the theme of injustice. .. I got intrigued by
the idea of thinking 'how few notes couls I use, then?' You start off
thinking of just one note and then you embellish it a bit, trying to keep in
the back of your mind to be as minimal as possible. And in the end I think I
abondoned the idea of minimalism and just got into this slightly
experimental music."
Soon the two projects came together. "I went through every drawing
he ever did and really got involved," Linda says, "I got every book on
Daumier and read all about his life and thought that it would be incredible
to do a visual thing for Paul's music. Daumier worked for a newspaper as a
satirical cartoonist and went to prison a few times for his Art. A lot of
his work was about injustice and it's a theme that is so right for our
times."
"I did about 20 minutes of music." adds Paul, "then Linda and I were
looking at some Daumier drawings, so we hooked up the idea of injustice with
my musical pieces, came up with the idea for the film and called Geoff."
"Paul and Linda called and asked if I would like to make a film on
Daumier and I said yes," recalls Geoff Dunbar, "Before Rupert came along I
had made a film on Toulouse-Lautrec so the Daumier idea was very exciting."
"Paul did six pieces of music and they each had a title - Right,
Wrong, Justice, Punishment, Payment, and Release. Then we pored through the
works of Daumier, got everything that was available, and structured the
story from the material. And where we had to link it we invented 'in the
style of'. We hung the story on one character, a man from one drawing by
Daumier."
The injustice theme is skillfully put across during the 15 minute
film, with our Mr. Average wrongfully accussed, wrongfully arrested,
wrongfully convicted in a particularly powerful courtroom scene(Act 3:
Justice), cruelly punished, forced to pay dues and then, at last, expelledby
the tyrannical system, free to rediscover artistic beauty in his midst. "It'
s all topical stuff ," comments Dunbar, "It's a heroic tale I suppose. He
goes through the system and comes out in rags, he's lost all his wordly
possessions and his dignity but regains them at the end by finding beauty
and music."
The most visually stunning section occurs in Act 5 (Payment), when
Daumier's remarkable Gargantua, drawn in 1832, is brought to life. Depicting
the great pear-head of Louis XIV and his swallowing up of ordinary people
and their riches, it was a drawing for which Daumier was fined and
imprisoned by the French government.
The sheer enormity of work in making Daumier's Law is best explained
by some vital statistics: Production began in mid-1989 and the animation
took two years to complete. With between 12 and 24 drawings per second the
film runs up to 21,000 drawings. Before that they are all done in pencil
too, so that make's 42,000. THe celluloids also have to be shaded or painted
before being photographed, plus all the prepatory photos and layouts of the
scenes, another 35,000 drawings. "The sequence of the mandolin player (Act
6, Release) along took one artist three months," comments Geoff, "plus there
were scenes, only natural in a film project, that wouldn't fit in, which
were heaved out and confined to the bin."
It's a mark of the team's achievement that no difference between the
original work and theirsis discernable to the naked eye. "Doing a film like
this has it's bonuses," remarks Dunbar, "and one learns so much more than if
you just studied it. You're actually in it, you've got to make it move, to
create new scenes which will dovetail with the original."
Paul supplied 20 minutes of instrumental music, of which 15 is used.
It may not be minimalist in the true sense of the word, but certainly, in
places, it is pretty minimal. And it changes dramatically depending on the
Act, from subtle tinkling percussion effects to more strident piano and
electric guitar passages and some lovely acoustic work. "The great thing in
animation is that they need the music before the film," comments Paul' "In
animation they follow what you lay down."
"Paul was inspired by Daumier and I was inspired by the music'"
comments Geoff, "And we do have a good sense of what we're both thinking and
saying. With the Daumier music it's so much a departure for Paul ,such a
brave direction to go in, that I had to sit down and listen to it many times
over"
"What was especially thrilling was when we did the sound mix and
Paul and I are sitting at the bakc of the theatre. There it was again - the
strength of the music was still there. WE had been listening to it every
day, sections of it repeated again and again, and it had become an object of
work. So for the strength to still be there two years later was remarkable."
Delighted to be "probably the only animator in the world who has a
gold disk", pointing to his award for 'We All Stand Together', Dunbar is
usually occupied making animated TV commercials and is presently engaged in
bringing to the screen another beloved British children's character, Beatrix
Potter's Peter Rabbit.
As for the musical element, Paul comments, "I've also got two other
pieces of the same sort of theme and of similar length, so the idea at some
point may be to release everything together on record, We'll see."
