Oskar Fischenger

The work of Oskar Fischenger consist of using light in simole shapes over lapped in order to create a psychadelic effect and the movement of the shapes are very much integrated with the musical composition that accompanies the film.

This is how Fischenger found himself making graphic art:

“To write about my work in the absolute film is rather difficult. The only thing to do is to write why I made these films.

When I was 19 years old I had to talk about a certain work by William Shakespeare in our Literary club. In preparing for this speech I began to analyze the work in a graphic way. One large sheets of drawing paper, along a horizontal line, I put down all the feelings and happenings, scene after scene, in graphic lines and curves. The lines and curves showed the dramatic development of the whole work and the emotional moods very clearly.

It was quite an interesting beginning, but not many could understand this graphic, absolute expression.

To make it more convincing, more easily understood, the drawings needed movement, the same speed and tempo as the feeling originally possessed. The cinematic element had to be added.”

In 1921 Fischenger worked in Frankfurt where he invented a a wax slicing machine that created film titled “Wax Experiments”. He also worked Munich and then Berlin, leaving Munich to escape financial trouble he decided to walk to Berlin. There is a short film that includes these stills: “Walkling from Munich to Berlin.” In Berlin he worked doing special effects in his own studio. He also produced a series of abstract Studies that were synchronized to popular and classical music. A few of the early Studies were synchronized to new record releases by Electrola, and screened at first-run theatres with a tail credit advertising the record, thus making them, in a sense, the very first music videos.

In 1933 the Nazis took over Germany and Fischinger was soon to arrive in Hollywood in 1936.
He worked for MGM, Paramount. Frustrated in his filmmaking, Fischinger turned increasingly to oil painting as a creative outlet. Although the Guggenheim Foundation specifically required a cel animation film, Fischinger made his Bach film Motion Painting No. 1 (1947) as a documentation of the act of painting, taking a single frame each time he made a brush stroke -- and the multi-layered style merely parallels the structure of the Bach music without any tight synchronization. Although he never again received funding for a film, the breathtaking Motion Painting No. 1 won the Grand Prix at the Brussels International Experimental Film Competition in 1949.

His work is fluid and relies on pure shape and movement to reflect his emotions and ideas, proveing that you don’t always need fancy special effects to get a reaction out of people but good ideas.

The simple approach to graphics is relevantr ot our class because it is a good example of what can be accomplished with our knowledge of After Effects.



http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5095385112130615024&q=Oscar+Fischinger&total=38&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=3

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5095385112130615024&q=Oscar+Fischinger&total=38&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=3