“Life buoy” is my project for my degree at the National University of Arts from Bucharest. The film was made in mid 2010 and it is a music video for the song “Life buoy” by the band “The Pixels”. I used a mix of stop motion animation techniques in order to tell the story.

Worth mentioning:

Won Best Music Video at Filmul de Piatra Festival 2011, Piatra Neamt, Romania. Link

Selected for the Romanian Film Days 2011 at Vienna, Austria. Link

Shortlisted for YouTube Play – A Biennial of Creative Video in collaboration with Guggenheim Museum. See the shortlist here.

Selected in the Romanian Visual Survey 2011 that gathers the work of over 40 Romanian visual artists. Link

Selected at Crosstalk Video Art Festival 2011, Budapest, Hungary. Link

Selected for the Advertising and Music Video Category at Anim’est International Animation Film Festival 2010, Bucharest, Romania. Link.

Selected for the FESTIVAL TEMPS D’IMAGES 2010 in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Link.

Selected for the Animation Category at Kinofest International Digital Film Festival 2010, Bucharest, Romania. Link.

Selected for the Cooper Video Wall at the Cooper Design Space Building. It can be seen Monday through Friday 9am – 6:30pm, at 860 S. Los Angeles Street, LA, CA 90014. The projections are randomized to show the work twice a day and keep it fresh as it’ll be up for a while. The work will be up for the next year, and possibly indefinitely. Organized by Flux.

Synopsis:

A modern day knight slips into an imaginary where he is not welcome. He undergoes daring challenges to stay in the world where he is alone. This journey is a tribute to the tales of 1001 nights and to classic Romanian fairytales, but it all happens in a modern world, where the bicycle replaces the horse, a cardboard dog replaces the dragon, and some chairs stand in for the mountain, the place where the truth lies. Whether he finds the truth or not will determine the fate of the young knight: he will either go back to the real world, or he will live this imaginary experience as if it was a dream. Everything can happen all over again.

The story behind my movie. Hidden meanings and refferals from my movie.

The first scenes introduce us to the character. He is a modern day hero who is living his own fairytale. To prove this, I added the coloured cloth, an element which gives us a preview of what is about to come. The character encounters a flight of stairs shaped as a spiral and starts climbing. He then disappears, only to appear again in the next scene.

Here, we see the character again, but from another point of view. He starts falling through a lot of toys and tries to hang on to the coloured cloth as if it was a rope. The rope ends, and I suggest the fall of the character by making the background cloth disappear. The room’s floor creates a new, more dinamic decorative element of the scene. The character lands on a bike and continues his evolution. A menacing red dog appears behind him. The movie reaches its climax when the dog nearly bites our hero. Right in this moment, the flow of the movie stops. This is a cultural quote towards the work of David Hockney.

This moment, when I stop the image is also a referral towards the control I have over the visual narrative and an agression towards the viewer, who must accept that these images do not tell their own story.

The ascent of the character suggests the idea of a neverending pursuit. Its end is marked by the appearance of a phone booth. When the character begind to speak on the phone, I suggest the presence of another person at the end of the line using cut out letters which substitute sound. Thus, I try to develop some issues raised by communication. The multitude of communication channels and their alternation does not guarantee the reception of the message in its complete form.

This also reflects in the control I have over the filmic narration. This control, together with the manipulation of the images does not guarantee the reception of the message in its integrity.

Towards the end of the movie, I made a visual collage using fragments of photographs made from different angles and at different periods of time. I am trying to simultaneously present the action of the character, from different angles. It is a referral to Cubism and the photographic experiments of David Hockney.

The last scene closes the narrative circle and represents a return to the debut scenes. Thus, I don’t draw conclusions, but suggest a possible different progress of the same events.

Technical aspects of the film:

Over 5400 photographs were shot for the animation, using a Canon 40D with Canon EF-S 10-22 F3.5-5.6 USM and Canon 24-105 F4 L USM lenses. For the indoors scenes I used three 250 watts Hensel Flash triggered with Pocket Wizzards. The camera was controlled through a MacBook laptop using the Canon EOS Utility and a long USB cable.

Credits:

Written, directed, photographed and edited by Dragos Bardac
Starring Ovidiu Naclad
Art director: Sebastian Oprita
Photoshop collage: Vlad Jerca
Credits soundtrack: Radu Oprea
Thanks to Florin Costache
Music Life Buoy by The Pixels

Stills:

Related Information:

Clarice Accessories started out as a hobby for a girl which is passionate about creating colourful and unique jewellry, that provide you with just the amount of energy you need in order to forget about everything that upsets you, and enjoy the day.

Related Information:

9 Grade la Paris (9 Degrees at Paris) is a mix show between film and theater after a real story. The story is told at the same time, from two different perspectives: the theater side and the film side of the show.

Concept:

To understand this woman’s point of view in the moment of her departure, the show combines two different ways of expression: cinematic and theatrical. The cinematic one shows the way the woman was seeing herself from outside. The theatrical one shows her inner world and thoughts.

Synopsis:

The show creates a woman’s portrait in a crucial moment of her life: leaving her family. It is a story of her last 56 minutes in her house, alone, before she leaves. She doesn’t have any remorse, nor guilt. Her only worry is to leave everything perfect, but as she prepares for her “perfect” departure, things start to get complicated and slowly everything gets out of control.

Cast:

Actress: Alina Berzunteanu
Written and Directed by Peter Kerek
Scenography: Cristi Niculescu
Make-up and Costumes: Teodora Mardare
Director of Photography: Florin Costache
Editing: Alex Borundel
Sound: Mihai Bogos

Time: 56 de minute

What Flower is an app that helps you pick the right flower for an occasion and discover its hidden meanings. You can find it the iTunes AppStore, or the free version, What Flower Lite, so you can get a feel of its bigger brother. It has all the functionality of the full app, but contains 21 instead of 250+ flowers.

„Point of view” is a mix of video and stop-motion animation. I wanted to create a personal universe having as starting point the pictures I shot in that period. The plot consists of diverse personal experiences from May 2008, which I have mixed and made a retrospect of. The set pieces and actors which appear in the animation are made out of cut-out black and white stills of my photos. I made diffirent constructions and positioned them at variable distances to create the illusion of perspective. The miniature world that I have created is a replica of everything that I have seen in the above mentioned period.

Worth Mentioning:

The film was selected in cinemaIUBIT 2009 Student Film Festival.

Technical aspects of the film:

For this film, I have used a HDV camera (Canon HV30) with macro and wide adapters and continous light (2 x 500 watts reflectors) to light the scenes. The movie was edited in Final Cut Pro.

Credits:

Written, directed and edited by Dragos Bardac
Illustration Artist: Sebastian Oprita
Music & Sound Design: Radu Oprea

Stills:

Looking Back Inside The Fridge

Hanging In The Fridge – Last Floor

Hanging In The Fridge – Second Floor

Watching Over

Chillaxing

Imitating A Fridge Magnet

Waiting On The Table

Searching For the Fine Detail – First Floor

Waiting For The Water To Dry

Siting On A Socket Plug

Waiting For The Right Moment … Any Moment Now

This is my first visual-narrative animation, made for the “TeachMe ADrevolution” advertising workshop, organized by ADVICE Students in 2006. They gave us a brief that stated we had to raise awareness towards wearing a seatbelt. Titled „Poartă centura! Ignoranţa ta distruge vieti!” (Wear a seatbelt! Your ignorance destroys lives!), this animation is based on a small story I wrote, with drawings made by Sebastian Oprita and music by Radu Oprea.

Technical aspects of the film:

This animation was made in Adobe Flash, using scanned drawings.

Credits:

Written, directed and edited by Dragos Bardac
Assistant Director: Sebastian Oprita
Camera Assistant: Ovidiu Naclad
Music Composer (except Lullaby – Brahms): Radu Oprea

Stills: