Post 16: Back to the Animated Paper Doll Idea

     I sent an e mail to the Artist I had mentioned in a previous post that sold very whimsical Marie Antoinette paper dolls on Etsy, asking if it would be OK to use them in an animated sequence, and she said it was fine. I suppose I could design my own, but that's a lot of extra work and time for a result that may not be any better. Her dolls come already equipped with my trademark "Steampunk" wheels(well, I might change them), clockwork and winding keys, but retain a frilly appearance. They could be used as puppets in a 2D Animation made in After Effects. I started cutting them up, in a bit of reverse engineering, and just to see, placed them in front of a stylized Versailles:

   I think they look pretty good, and would bring a bit of whimsy to the obligatory solemnity of the Requiem.   I will do a short Animation Test in After Effects, and see how it plays...

Post 15: How About a Cherubini Requiem Music Video?

   I think I have said before that the time when I first wake up is often for me a time to generate new ideas and brainstorm.
   The idea that dawned on me this morning is to produce an adapted 1920 x 1080 version of the show, and sell it as a Classical Music Video. I wonder have not found anything like it done by another Symphony orchestra. If we could make a recording of the music in advance, it could be actually be sold the day of the performance. Or we could take orders for it.
  Of course, I am throwing the idea out not knowing whether Carlos and the Symphony would want to do something like that...

Post 14: Injecting a Steampunk Flavor into the mix...

    I am as you may know "into Steampunk", and have an ongoing Steampunk Project. I have studied early balloons, dirigeables, airships, steamships and submarines at length, including Monturiol's 1850 beautiful wooden Ictineo .
   So I wouldn't mind introducing a "Steampunk flavor" to the whole thing, with wheels, spring motors, clocks, period vehicles. After all , the first steam powered vehicle, Cugnot's clumsy "Fardier" was built in 1769:

and Trevithick's wonderfully whimsical and fanciful London Steam Carriage was built in 1803:

   One could imagine such a contraption would have made it to the court. After all, the King was known to be a keen locksmith, and more interested in mechanics than in economics or politics.
   Steamboats were also experimental at the time, and we could conceive of one gracing the "Pièce d'Eau" together with rowboats and sailboats... Actually, the very first steam-powered ship "Pyroscaphe" was built in France in 1783 by the Marquis Claude de Jouffroy and his colleagues as an improvement of an earlier attempt, the 1776 Palmipède. I was a paddle steamer powered by a Newcomen steam engine, and we know what it looked like, as there is a model in the Maritime Museum in Paris:

   Also, the American engineer Robert Fulton, then living in Paris, designed the first working submarine, the "Nautilus" between 1793 and 1797, while living in France. It's design is even more whimsical than that of the London Steam Carriage:

    He asked the French Government to subsidize its construction but he was turned down twice. Eventually he approached the Minister of Marine himself and in 1800 was granted permission to build. The shipyard Perrier in Rouen built it and it sailed first in July 1800 on the Seine River in the same city.  When tested his submarine went underwater for 17 minutes in 25 feet of water, an amazing feat. 
    Just fantasizing guys!

Post 13: Another Side Trip, this Time Through Paper Doll History

   One thing tends to lead to another when I start brainstorming, and the playing card research led to another king of paper product that started to be created in the early 19th Century, about the time Cherubini was making landscapes cutting up playing cards.
   Even though I am working on a Light Show, everything here is revolving around paper it seems: the written music itself, going from Cherubini's manuscript to published printed score

the prints from the period that I have collected and gathered to tell the story in images

the documents and manuscripts by Royal hands

 the portraits of French kings and queens:

the playing cards I started designing

 and now the incredible wealth of paper dolls inspired by Marie Antoinette, to this day. There are delightful 19th Century plates:

old advertisement paper dolls

whole books , cutout figures and  sets of clothes still being designed by Artists

 especially the almost three dimensional collection of whimsical scenes by Rhonda Knauf on Etsy:

     These really got me thinking theatre, with the two sided design, the accessories, the spring winding key, the wheels(I love wheels). I then ran across these two jointed paper dolls:

and started brainstorming about a 2D animation sequence with paper sets.

  A while back, I got interested and researched old children toy theaters:

 and some of their contemporary re interpretations:

   I can envision building one of these in 3D in After Effect, cutting the paper dolls into parts, adding wheels, sets based on Versailles, and coming up with a sequence technically similar to the dancing écorché's "Danse Macabre" sequence in my Light Dreams Show:

   Except that the puppets would be Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, the Princess of Lamballe, and other "courtisans", and the sets would be the Hall of Mirrors, the Gardens, the Lake, the Trianon, the Farm, any part of Versailles I could rebuild as a 3D stage:

Post 12: A Side Trip to Playing Cards History

    How this came about, I don't remember exactly... Something to do with Marie Antoinette's taste for games, and games that people played in the 18th Century. Also, there is this little teasing tidbit of information about Cherubini being so dejected and depressed around 1807-1808 that he stayed home cutting up playing cards and assembling them into landscapes. I could not find any corroboration or any images of the landscapes in question anywhere else:
     "Disappointed and discouraged by lack of recognition, Cherubini produced scarcely anything in the two years which followed. He was broken-hearted and in ill health.He divided his time between drawing, botany, and cutting up playing cards into figures and landscapes which he framed and placed on the walls around his study. Not until 1809 was he aroused from this morbid indolence". 
   Still, it is an interesting visual proposition, so I looked for and found a bridge deck of French Royalty Playing cards. 

  They are not bad, but really a bit too traditional for my taste. Platnik Austrian cards...
  So I suddenly found myself designing my own deck of Royal Playing Cards in Photoshop... Things are still very fluid, but just to give you an idea, here is what I have so far: 

Louis XVI

 and Marie Antoinette

                  Louis XVIII

and Marie Josephine de Savoie

Henri IV

                                             and Marie de Medicis

                                                      Francois Premier

  I also have a few variations  for the backs of the decks, using a border from  Masonic Board, and old prints from the period:

 I don't know yet how I will use them in the show, but have no doubt they will find their place. The projection is a huge  5760 x 1080 pixels, so I am designing the cards 3000 x 2000 pixels, which is about as large as possible with material found on the Internet. 

Post 11: What is Carlos' Requiem Interpretation be like?

   It is going to be a serious problem for me working on the images until I have a reasonable approximation of what Carlos' final interpretation will be. I can allow for a certain amount of adjustment by breaking up the video in clips that are cued precisely to the final performance at dramatic musical moments. But that has to be within reason.
  When I was originally approached by Pierre about the Project, I wasn't familiar with this particular Requiem and went straight to iTunes to find the music. I found a number of different versions, and clicked my way through most of them listening to snippets until I figured out which one I LIKED. That happened to be Matthew Best and the Corydon Singer. But there are a lot of other versions out there.
  I actually went back to look yesterday, and found 16 recordings +, going back to Toscanini's in 1928:

  There also seem to be some variations on exactly how the Requiem is broken up in performance. The score I have, which is old, has 7 parts:

   INTROIT, GRADUEL, DIES IRAE, OFFERTOIRE, SANCTUS, PIE JESU, AGNUS DEI.  

   In the version I am listening to, Matthew Best breaks things up in 8 parts:

     INTROIT AND KYRIE, GRADUATE, DIES IRAE, OFFERTORIUM:DOMINE JESU CHRISTE, OFFERTORIUM: HOSTIAS, SANCTUS, PIE JESU, AGNUS DEI.

   Martin Perlman does the same thing with the Boston Baroque.

  On the other hand, Carlo Maria Giulini does it another way, grouping sections to make only 5 parts:

 INTROIT, GRADUEL DIES IRAE, OFFERTOIRE, SNCTUS PIE JESU, AGNUS DEI

    Toscanini stuck with the original 7 parts score, and so does Ricardo Mutti.

   All this is a little confusing, and I need to know what Carlos is going to do, and what version out there is closest to what his interpretation will be, so I have a sound track to set images to that is reasonably close to the final ASO performance.

Post 10: Setting up my Studio Workspace

   As I explained earlier, I want to recreate as closely a possible in the studio the situation in the Concert hall, mainly in order to get a good idea of how things will look like in the dark on the three big screen, and rehearse the performance. It will also allow me to show Pierre, Carlos, and other people at the Symphony what I have in store for them, and get their approval for my material.
 I have received the two new Mitsubishi Projectors and the Matrox box. I have set up the 3 projectors on tripods on top of my desk, and have hung the piece of Spandex high up in front of my computer:

 But I have been struggling to get things going, and the computer was going crazy when I plugged in the 3 projectors. So I plugged instead in 3 old 1920 x 1080 monitors into the Matrox Box, and plugged the Matrox into the computer's Graphic Card second DVI output and a USB plug for power. I went ahead and reinstalled the drivers, and did a firmware update.
Things now seem to work properly, and I have a desktop stretching across the 3 monitors: