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Shortlisted for a Beck's Futures Award, Tony Kemplen's short film How Will it Be? is an exploration of youth and growing up.
By Karen Charlesworth |
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| Artist Tony Kemplen has just finished an MA degree in Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University, where he was introduced to computers - and Adobe software. Immediately fascinated, he began to experiment with Photoshop and Premiere, and produced the short film How Will it Be? which earlier this year was shortlisted for a Beck's Futures award. "I wouldn't call myself a digital artist," Tony says, "more an artist who works with a variety of media." How Will it Be? is his first venture into digital film, although he has already produced several pieces using digital sound, including a piece using manipulated clock ticks in a disused factory, and Polyglot, a commission from Birmingham's Ikon gallery for an art installation using 32 animatronic toy parrots which squawk to a digitally-produced soundtrack. |
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| The inspiration for How Will it Be? came last year when Tony's parents began packing up their belongings prior to moving house. "They'd been in the house for years, and so there was a lot of junk," Tony says. In a long-unexplored corner of the attic, he discovered an official school photograph from his days at Tiffin Boys' Grammar School in Kingston-upon-Thames thirty years ago: "one of those long, long photos with every boy in the school scrubbed, brushed, washed and lined up in front of the camera," he says. Looking at "all those hopeful young faces" he conceived the idea of a film which would fade between the faces in quick succession. "It seemed somehow poignant when I looked at the photo, and I wanted to show that quality by starting out with the youngest boys, progressing up the school years and on to the teachers, who of course are adults," he says, "with the aim of showing all the hopes and expectations you have when you're young, and then, suddenly, before you know it, you're old. Quite a gloomy message, really." Tony's idea gained momentum when further attic explorations turned up his teenage record collection, including the Beach Boys' single When I Grow Up (To Be A Man) which seemed the perfect soundtrack. "It fitted the idea I had of showing the speed of the growing-up process - and the phrase "how will it be?" was repeated several times in the song," Tony explains. |
How Will It Be? clip 2 View hi-res QuickTime clip View lo-res QuickTime clip Time: 0:30 |
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| Armed with a soundtrack and his title, Tony spent hours scanning each individual face on the photograph - nearly 700 in total, including sixty teachers - and resizing and cropping each in Photoshop using the Target Size crop function. He used the Guides feature to position each face in a similar position in the frame, using the eyes as a constant. He then imported each picture into Premiere, setting the duration of each to a tenth of a second and adding crossfades between each, "so as soon as one picture comes up to full strength, the next immediately begins to fade in." He also used Premiere to digitise the Beach Boys soundtrack and match it to the length of the film: "It's the perfect length - 1m 58 seconds - you wouldn't want to watch the film for much longer than that," he says. Working with digital tools was a voyage of discovery for Tony. "I'm constantly surprised by the things digital tools throw up that I don't expect, that can be used to good effect. With How Will it Be? I was taken aback - but pleased - to find that the effect of the quick succession of crossfades was to make the mouths move, and they look as if the boys are talking, or whispering," he says. Having completed How Will it Be?, Tony is keen to do more digital work. "Using digital tools allows you to do things you might have thought of doing but dismissed for lack of time or money. And for me, when I start out playing around with digital tools, I find they generate ideas I might not otherwise have had - often things develop that I might not have thought of working in more conventional media." How Will it Be? can be seen online at Lovebytes, or email Tony Kemplen for more information about his work. |
How Will it Be? clip 3 View hi-res QuickTime clip View lo-res QuickTime clip Time: 0:09 |
| At the age of 12, Adobe contributor Karen Charlesworth featured in a school photograph that made her look so outstandingly ugly that she felt compelled to bribe, extort, blackmail and otherwise cajole all extant copies of it from her schoolmates and destroy the lot. |
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