Dariusz Dziala Oxford based video-maker

People, Place, Protest

Dariusz — Wed, 16 May 2012 23:59:29 +0000

MUE is going to perform at Jacqueline Du Pre Building, Oxford, on this Saturday, and this a very good news for me. My VJ kit for this gig includes a camera directly connected with a projector for indoors part of the performance, and a follow spot light for the outdoor part. Bruno focuses on playing cello this time and Macarena has a lot of energy and a wheel-barrel to play with.

We rehearsed for the gig at the location today, and I managed to capture a few pictures with my Galaxy toy. The poster was designed by me this time.

April

Dariusz — Fri, 04 May 2012 22:05:48 +0000

A few things worth to get on the record happened in April.

First of all Kathryn Bishop’s “Becoming A Trusted Advisor” won the EFMD Case Writing Competition in the Euro-Mediterranean Managerial Practices and Issues Category. I filmed the interviews for this case and together with the good news, Kathryn sent me a cheque that I am going to spend on a dinner tomorrow to celebrate the success.

I also finished working on another projects for Kathryn, which included interviews describing management practices at LOCOG.

Second Monthly Tonic organized by Oxford Improvisers hosted a Synaesthetics performance, that was dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the tragic sinking of the Titanic.

Premiere and Post Oxford AUG members met again together with Oxford Digital Creatives group. The meeting was dedicated mainly to the forthcoming Adobe CS6 and involved presentations on topics such as new features of Photoshop CS6, After Effects and Premiere Pro, as well as the news about Adobe Creative Cloud. The guest star of the meeting was James Gwilliam, who delivered a detailed tutorial on creation a walking cycle in Adobe Flash.

MUE continued rehearsing during the month and we are going to perform on the 19th May at Jacqueline du Pre Music Building, Oxford.

My latest short film “The Puppet”, made in collaboration with Ana Barbour, is taking a part in the ongoing OXDOX festival and was screened on Sunday 29th April.

I am switching from Nikon to Canon mount system and have bought two new lenses so far: Canon EF 70-200 mm F/2.8L IS II USM and Canon EF 10mm F/2.8 IS USM. I am also getting a new camera soon.

Skoll World Forum 2012

Dariusz — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 19:18:11 +0000

I am working these days as vision mixer for Skoll World Forum 2012. Today’s sessions are already uploaded on youtube.
The one below is titled “Sustainable Capitalism: Integrating Sustainability from the Copy Room to the Board Room”.

More sessions are coming tomorrow.

Adobe User Group meeting – March 2012

Dariusz — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 09:13:09 +0000

The latest Adobe User Groups meeting hosted two speakers. Glenn Clarkson started the meeting talking about CSS3 features that allow to create simple animations on a web page. He presented the list of syntax for basic transformation effects, such as rotation, scale, skew and timing. All the transformations were demonstrated in practice. Glenn also talked about the current issues that browsers have with support for the effects.

The next presentation was exclusively dedicated to sound editing with Adobe Audition. Efthymios (Tim) Chatzigiannis talked about audio restoration and sound enhancement that can be achieved with the help of the application. He played sample audio files, that needed to be repaired for reasons such as distinctive background noise, hiss, clicks, clipping or simply needed an extra touch to improve the quality of sound. The list of filters and effects that he presented included Denoiser, Hiss Reduction, DeClicker, DeClipper and the FFT filter.

Next we could get more familiar with dynamic processing and listen to the results of application of different types of compression and limitation. During this presentation Tim talked about the advantages of usage of such effects for audio enhancement and also showed how to manipulate the settings to get the best results.

Dance On Screen

Dariusz — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 13:42:23 +0000

The Puppet is going to have the premiere at the Ultimate Picture Palace cinema, Jeune Street, Oxford on Sunday 18th of March 2012. The film is still work in progress and this is really a taster for the bigger project that we are going to work on.

The screening is a part of Dance On Screen, the event featuring dance films made by Oxford filmmakers.

Malcolm Atkins has done a great job composing the soundtrack for “Puppet”. One of the short themes that he created is presented below.

M U E

Dariusz — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 12:27:33 +0000

M U E was once a collaboration between Bruno Guastalla, playing cello and electronics, and Macarena Ortuzar, who is a butoh dancer. Macarena and Bruno have recently invited me to join forces and do live projections for them.

We had the first rehearsal on Thursday and a long chat about potential ways to go with the visuals. Bruno suggested I could try and explore something that could be described as analog Vj-ing, where with a simple camera-projector setup I could manipulate physical objects in front of the lens and play with light, blurs and other natural effects to achieve visually pleasing results. This sounds interesting to me and my only little worry is that soon after I start collecting materials for the VJ-ing, my place is going to turn into a cosy and friendly junkyard.

The First Monthly Tonic

Dariusz — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 22:26:14 +0000

The first Oxford Improvisers’ gig at Old Fire Station last Tuesday was also my first opportunity to play with visuals together with the Improvisers orchestra. Additionally I could play with smaller, three-four person ensembles, as the evening was divided into a number of sets, with different constellations of musicians and singers performing in each of them.

The concert was hopefully the beginning of my flirt with live, improvised music. I find the collaboration very challenging and while performing I have all these ideas how to visually respond to the music that changes all the time, sometimes gradually and sometimes in an abrupt way.

The Doll (all in red and with a dash of green)

Dariusz — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 22:35:42 +0000

The second filming day for “The Puppet” was very busy, with a lot of loading, unpacking, rigging, dismantling, packing, loading, unloading and doing some creative work in between. We had two meetings prior to the shooting, checking what had been done in the first day and also planning ahead. All the conclusions were written and it is good to have such guide and stay on the course.

The whole concept for the film is to show the relationship between the puppet and the master, that shifts over the time. “The Puppet” is related to dance and the story develops through the movement of the puppet body, the master and the camera. These three influence one another sometimes directly and sometimes in an ambiguous way.

Designing the camera’s language we decided to employ a jib and also track and dolly. The tools gave us the freedom to make the camera angles and movements a crucial element of the choreography and let them be equally important to the motion of the puppet body.

Ana have thought hard about the set design. She built a model of the space and presented to me talking about her idea how to obscure the camera view while shooting wide angles and some of the close-ups. The pieces of clothes and jewellery that she has brought to the set helped to enforce the surreal atmosphere.

Now we have entered the post production stage. I hope to finish editing the video this week and pass it over to Malcolm, who is going to work on the soundtrack. We are going to submit the film to Dance on Screen, that is at UPP cinema on Sunday, 18/03/2012.

Galleria Edieuropa

Dariusz — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 12:24:11 +0000

I am on the couch to the airport now, looking at the rainy Oxford and listening to the driver whistling over the wheel. If everything goes according to the plan I’ll see Chiara in Rome tonight.

I have a very good reason to visit Italy’s capital these days. My pictures documenting Chiara’s Mi dimentichero’ di te tutti i giorni project are going to be hosted in Galleria Edieuropa. Tomorrow is the opening of the exhibition and I have been invited to come and take a part in it.

The exhibition can be visited between 23 February and 21 March 2012.

UPDATE: I managed to take pictures with my phone camera during the opening and now they are on flickr.

Shooting the Artists

Dariusz — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 09:32:50 +0000

Albion Beatnik is known as an atmospheric bookstore run by Dennis Harrison in Jericho, Oxford, but perhaps not everybody knows that the venue also hosts live events, including music, readings and performance.

The latest event was all about dance and rhymes. The audience could watch MUE duo (Bruno Guastalla and Macarena Ortuzar) and listen to Steve Micalef, who was reading his poems. I was invited to film the evening and it was one of the most entertaining shootings I have got so far this year.

Below is a snapshot of Steve Micalef’s reading, with the accompaniment by Bruno Guastalla.