cinema of noise

Two short animations to accompany the Scala!!! bluray. Online to view here.

Tentacles is a 90 second animated short that brings a magic mushroom trip by a staff member working at the Scala vividly to life. Inspired by classic Sci-Fi, Horror and B-movies, Tentacles is crafted in-camera using real Octopus tentacles, objects and cut-out photographs in stop-motion. The film is an experimental and playful attempt to explore how animation, particularly mixed media animation can be used to communicate narratives in unexpected and exciting ways to enhance story.

Primatarium was made in-camera using a multi-plane set up to create the illusion of a jungle at dawn where paper primates, cut-out from Victorian engravings commune. Secretly looking through foreground bushes to give a sense of mystery and wonder that matched the tone of Ali Catterall’s brilliant David Attenborough impersonation. Viewers are invited to journey through the heart of this environment and be surround by nature constructed from an animated collage of cut-outs and dried leaves from Guyana.

Article and interview with the filmmaker here

1.10 / 0.40 mins • Stereo mix

Director: Osbert Parker

Sound Designer: Rob Szeliga

The project, known as Azabudai Hills, is the culmination of a thirty-year regeneration process steered by Mori Building Co. Ltd., Japan's leading urban landscape developer. The new neighbourhood is made up of residential buildings, retail spaces, a school, two temples, art galleries, offices and restaurants, all set within 2.4ha of green, publicly accessible landscape. Heatherwick Studio is the lead architect of the public realm and the podium level architecture. The design encourages purposeful connections between commuters, residents and the public, and the 8.1-hectare district is filled with trees, flowers and water features.

https://www.heatherwick.com/

4.40 mins • Stereo mix

Director: Marcus Hawk

Music and Sound: Rob Szeliga & Simon Adcock

High Street Repeat, is an experimental collage film commissioned by the Migration Museum for its Taking Care of Business exhibition (2023). Film online to view here.

The film uses a range of animation techniques to explore the story of migration and enterprise, told through the changing face of Britain’s high street. Stop motion, is playfully combined with digital techniques and manipulated with photographic cut-outs, creating a continuous transition between past and present - while the filmmakers avoided paper cuts in the process!

4.20 mins • Stereo mix

Director & Animator: Osbert Parker & Laurie Hill

Sound Design: Rob Szeliga

Promotional video for the Tree of Trees of project - a living sculpture, 70 foot high, made of reclaimed surplus steel, holding 350 saplings, designed to inspire the next generation of tree planters. The sculpture was unveiled as part of the 2022 Jubilee celebrations.

For more information visit: https://www.heatherwick.com/studio/video/

2.52 mins • Stereo mix

Poem: LionHeart

Director: Marcus Hawk

Music and Sound: Rob Szeliga

Sound and music editing/mixing for American podcast network Wondery. Recent projects include the ongoing story series ‘Against the Odds’.

Listen online here.

More information at: https://wondery.com

Gasping for Air combines sculpting, clay stop-frame animation with ceramic kiln-firing, to investigate what it looks and feels like to struggle for breath in polluted air.

This installation has been made especially for On Air, an exhibition about air pollution at Ceramic Art London 2022 8th-10th April at Central Saint Martins in The Crossing public foyer.

More information here

2:40 mins • 5.1 / Stereo mix

Artist: Jo Pearl

Sound Design: Rob Szeliga

Promotional video for the BAY VIEW campus located in the city of Mountain View, California. Designed by BIG and Heatherwick Studios.

For more information visit: https://www.heatherwick.com/studio/news/google-opens-bay-view-campus-in-silicon-valley/


2.42 mins • Stereo mix

Director: Marcus Hawk

Music and Sound: Rob Szeliga

Promotional video for the FRICTION table design by Heatherwick Studios.

For more information visit: http://www.heatherwick.com/studio/news/launch-of-friction/


2.30 mins • Stereo mix

Director: Marcus Hawk

Music and Sound: Rob Szeliga

Ten minute animated Timeline. Artist film loop commission for The Migration Museum exhibition, DEPARTURES - exploring 400 years of emigration from Britain.

Cannes Lions 2021 Shortlisted Film

WINNER: Best Animated Film of the Year [AHRC Research in Film Awards 2021]

WINNER: Wildcard [British Animation Awards 2022]

Trailer and article online here.

10 mins • 5.1 / Stereo mix

Director: Osbert Parker

Sound Designer: Rob Szeliga

Promotional / concept video for the Institute of Making project led by Heatherwick Studios.

2.00 mins • Stereo mix

Director: Marcus Hawk

Music and Sound: Rob Szeliga

Promotional video for the AIRO concept car designed by Heatherwick Studios.

For more information visit designboom.com here


3.30 mins • Stereo mix

Director: Marcus Hawk

Music and Sound: Rob Szeliga

A series of animated films commissioned by The British Red Cross exploring the power of the internet to help refugee women connect, share and learn about life in the UK.

For further information please visit here

Multiple videos of various lengths • Stereo mix

Director: Anna Snowball

Sound Design and Music: Rob Szeliga

Made up of best friends Allan “Seapa” Mustafa – better known as Grindah from BBC’s People Just Do Nothing – Kieran Cavanagh and Marcus Adams, Taste Cadets have been touring the world since 2017 shoving everything in their greedy gobs from sushi in Tokyo to tacos in Mexico City and documenting their adventures along the way.

Arriving in Kent, leaving behind their phones, Deliveroo and the cosmopolitan ease of the capital, necessary survival skills include learning how to butcher an ox heart – with the help of Black Axe Mangal’s Lee Tiernan – stacking some hay and digging a hole for a makeshift bog. “We took things back to basics and appreciated the little things, which I guess is what Corona has taught us in a sense,” Seapa says. “A bit of human contact, cooking, eating… that’s what keeps us alive and brings us the most pleasure.” But before you have a look at Taste Cadet’s intensive Guide to Camping, here’s some food for thought, from a man who’s just spent several hours hacking up a large ruminant’s major organ to survive.

An original production from The Face

Promotional video for The Vessel (New York), designed by Thomas Heatherwick.

For more information visit: http://www.heatherwick.com/projects/spaces/vessel/


4 mins • Stereo mix

Director: Marcus Hawk

Music and Sound: Rob Szeliga

WhyTheFace? is a study of what emotions look like and feel like. A personal taxonomy inspired by Charles Darwin’s lesser-known thesis The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals in which he defined 6 emotions as fundamental to human evolution: Happiness, Sadness, Surprise, Fear, Anger and Disgust.

This exploration is both figurative and abstract. It combines installation, ceramic sculpture, and clay stop-frame animated film. A bust and animated film features a raw clay portrait of William Pryor, Darwin’s Great Great Grandson expressing the six emotions defined as key by his forebear. These facial expressions are interspersed with abstracted clay interpretations of the same feelings.

4 mins • 5.1 / Stereo mix

Director: Jo Pearl

Sound Designer: Rob Szeliga

At the end of 2019, The Face travelled to Jamaica's renowned Geejam Studios with a selection of the world’s finest recording artists and producers, for a weeklong writing retreat curated by UK producer Cadenza.

Directed by Marcus McSweeney, the film stars Cadenza alongside Jorja Smith, Guilty Beatz, Dre Skull, P2J, Miraa May, Marlon Roudette, Agent Sasco, Amine, Protoje, Kelvin Krash, Kasien, Sevana, Stalk Ashley and Bella Blair.

Steeped in a rich culture of music and a way of life that lends itself to creativity like no other, Jamaica has long served as a musical retreat for artists from around the world.

This film gives us a taste of the magic of the island and shows how it inspires the creativity and flow of this talented group of musicians while they make music and create some of the brand new unreleased tracks that you are about to hear.

Recorded at Geejam Studios, Jamaica.
Thanks to the Jamaica Tourist Board

An original production from The Face

Life on the Move showcases the important research themes and creative partnerships emerging from the London International Development Centre Migration Leadership Team (LIDC-MLT). The film's purpose is to explore how researchers can collaborate with artists in innovative ways to generate new kinds of knowledge and engage wider audiences in debates about complex social and economic issues.

This stop-motion animation explores the complex reasons behind migration, showcasing research from the Horn of Africa as a case study. The film brings to life a multitude of migrant experiences, exploring the personal, social and economic reasons why people move across borders. It illustrates how complex research findings can be disseminated in a clear and accessible style suitable for many public audiences. Visualising internal and external migration routes, it disrupts mainstream media coverage of migration as a problem, presenting a more holistic narrative.

Life on the Move has been shortlisted for two RIFA 2019 (Research in Film Awards) – now in their fifth year – in the Inspiration & Social Media Short categories. The awards, organised by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), are the only awards entirely dedicated to bringing to life arts and humanities research through film.

** Update: The film wins ‘Best Social Media Short’ at RIFA 2019. Info here.

For more information visit LIDC-MLT at SOAS University and positivenegatives.

Making-of video viewable here • articile discussing the project here.

3 mins • Stereo mix

Director: Osbert Parker

Sound Design and Music: Rob Szeliga

Price of Secrecy is a hybrid podcast series that addresses some of the legal, social, cultural and familial constraints that contribute to the silence around the issue of child sexual abuse in Iran.

The podcast stories are inspired by reality and developed through collaborations with psychiatrists, psychologists, lawyers and social activists working on the issue of child sexual abuse in Iran. The stories are told through dramatised scenes as well as interviews and conversations with the collaborating professionals. The main question the series aims to address is "why, as members of the society, are we failing to listen to the victims of child sexual abuse?". A question that takes the responsibility of breaking the silence away from the victim and introduces it as a social responsibility. Both the mode of storytelling and the detailed and crafted soundscape of the podcast engage the imagination allowing for the storyworld to be visualised in the audience's mind.

To listen to all five episodes go to: http://price-of-secrecy.com
Supported by http://www.radioatlas.org/
* Winner of the 2019 Third Coast International Audio Festival / Richard H. Driehaus Competition. More details here.

Contents of series:

- 4 x 20-minute episodes forming a continuous drama
- 1 x 29-minute electroacoustic sound piece

Lanuage: Farsi

Artist / Director / Writer: Zoha Zokaei

Sound Designer / Composer: Rob Szeliga

Voice: Elika Ashoori


Notes on Episode 5: Lonesome Donya [29-mins]

Storytelling can take many forms. This alternative episode, the fifth and final in the podcast series, was an attempt to explore a different kind of storytelling form by combining interviews in the present between Zoha and the therapist, with a highly stylised treatment of music and sound to portray the (imagined) psychological journey of the lead character.

Sir John Lubbock’s true story and his scientific writings on Ants, Bees & Wasps stood out as contemporary for directors, Osbert Parker & Laurie Hill who worked in collaboration on the short film. Themes of environmental concerns, cultural displacement and empathy were found in their interpretation of Lubbock’s story still relevant today. A diverse range of techniques from, stop motion, 2D cut-out’s and digital animation is combined to tell a bizarre and beautiful love story with a sting in its tale.

2 mins • 5.1 / Stereo mix

Director: Ossie Parker & Laurie Hill

Sound Designer: Rob Szeliga

Music and Sound design for labworks.io skills:

Trivia Hero • True or False • Would you Rather?

Trivia Hero is one of the most popular games on Amazon Alexa where users are asked to answer as many questions as they can in under 60 seconds.

As well as being known for it's compelling communal gameplay, Trivia Hero has been celebrated by users and voice industry experts for it's high production values including custom composed audio designed to build tension and enhance the comprehensibility of Alexa's voice. 

More information: labworks.io

Music and Sound Design: Rob Szeliga

As one of the largest underground train stations in the world when fully operational, the new Hong Kong West Kowloon Station will serve as a gateway to the city of Hong Kong,

The Hong Kong section of the high-speed rail service between Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong will connect to the national high-speed rail network all the way to Beijing. The entire high speed rail network of mainland China is 25,000km long.

Suitable for the site’s prominence on Victoria Harbour immediately adjacent to the future West Kowloon Cultural District, Hong Kong West Kowloon Station has a strong civic element, acting as a new landmark with an immediate sense of arrival.

Construction completed in 2018.

For more information visit: www.andrewbromberg-aedas.com
 

5.00 / 1.30 / 1.00 mins • Stereo mix

Music and Sound: Rob Szeliga

BRAVE - engaged and empowered a group of deaf and hearing-impaired, predominantly South Asian, young people in Rochdale, UK to explore and address issues of youth isolation and loneliness specific to this community. The young people wanted to share their stories to raise deaf awareness internationally. Ashley Peggs's documentary, BRAVE received Honourable Mention at the Picture This International Disability Film Festival in Calgary, Canada. This 2018 extended animated film is an important part of that documentary.

1:30 mins • Stereo mix

Director: Osbert Parker

Sound Designer: Rob Szeliga

Promo video for upcoming feature film Winter Lake directed by Phil Sheerin.

Note: Whoever exported the final file failed to sync the sound and image up correctly - it’s out by almost a full second. Frustratingly out of my hands but hopefully you get the idea.
 

1.45 mins • Stereo mix

Director: Phil Sheerin

Music and Sound: Rob Szeliga

Hewlett-Packard logo / ident

Sound / Music design: Rob Szeliga

1:10 mins • Stereo mix

Director: Rose Glass

Music: Rob Szeliga & Tom Andrews

Aled Jones Explores the Causeway Coastal Route and the Wild Atlantic Way with Classic FM & Tourism Ireland.

https://www.tourismireland.com/

http://www.classicfm.com/

Adidas Pulse ZNE
u-dox.com
U-Dox‏ @udoxcreative
Sound and Music: Rob Szeliga

Video link here
 

NooMöo is a new milk created for an urban population. It’s made only from happy cows placed in un-used spaces across London. This makes our ethical, simply-sourced, low-impact milk probably the freshest and tastiest you’ve ever experienced

in the Arne Jacobsen’s Aarhus City Hall it links across time and space various European models of statecraft, soft power and its framing.
 

5.00 mins • Stereo mix

Sound Designer: Rob Szeliga

http://mistertibbs.co.uk • http://noomoo.co.uk
 

A short animated film about the epic journey of the stem cell from conception to adulthood, and beyond. Made in collaboration with King's College London.

3:40 mins • Stereo mix

Director: Marcus Dawson

Sound Design and Music: Rob Szeliga

Facebook page here

An old man trapped in a mundane senior centre is living the memory of his beloved wide through his own shadow. But as his past sets in threatening his present, Prakesh finds himself facing a difficult question: Is he living a mesmerising, but unreal dream, or life itself?

10 mins • 5.1 sound mix

Director: Debanjan Nandy

Sound Editor/Designer: Rob Szeliga

Re-recording Mixer: Rob Szeliga

Foley Artist: Rob Szeliga

Nominated for MPSE Golden Reel 2016

1:48 mins • Stereo mix

Director: Rose Glass

Sound Design: Rob Szeliga

Music: Rob Szeliga

We Shall Trip the Light Fantastic appropriates elements from different eras of popular dance forms and collages them onto a single body in visceral and unexpected ways. A collaboration between artist and moving image maker Lucy Cash, and choreographer and visual artist Florence Peake.

3 mins • 2-channel stereo

Director: Lucy Cash

Composer: Fraya Thomsen

Sound Designer: Rob Szeliga and Duncan Whitley

In collaboration with Channel 4 • Random Acts

Since 2010 Angeles Duran became known everywhere as the 'the woman who owns the sun'. Documents issued by the notary public office in Vigo, Spain declared Duran to be the 'the owner of the sun, a star of spectral type G2, located at the centre of the solar system, 150-kilometres from Earth'. Inspired by the strange and true story of Angeles Duran, the film shows her capture of the sun and the distribution of solar energy across the world.

The full film can be viewed online here

The film was produced during Jo Lawrence's residency at Four Corners Gallery in London and was funded by the Arts Council.

6 mins • 5.1 / Stereo sound mix

Director: Jo Lawrence

Sound & Music Design: Rob Szeliga

Re-recording Mixer: Rob Szeliga

In 2005, Lucy Cash was one of five artists to witness a performance, given only once, by seminal performance artist, Anne Bean. Without any form of notation or recording, she was asked to perform what she could remember of it, exactly a year later. Then, almost a decade later, she was invited to make a moving image work that responded to the quixotic, shifting sense of those events, her replaying of them, and her sense of the time that had passed inbetween. Memory Has No Grammar is her response, filmed over two days in a domestic space, Lucy followed the sun as it moved around the building allowing the ways in which it illuminated the interior of the space to inform her decisions about what she could and couldn't remember.

Commissioned as part of Decade at Dilston Grove, London. September 2015.
Also exhibited as part of The London Group Open Exhibition, November 2015

7 mins • Stereo mix

Director: Lucy Cash

Sound Design: Rob Szeliga

Re-recording Mixer: Rob Szeliga

Film can be viewed here

We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us - Winston Churchill

1:30 mins • Stereo mix

Director: Pawel Stec

Sound Design: Rob Szeliga

3:30 mins • 5.1 sound mix

Director: Pawel Stec

Sound Editor/Designer: Rob Szeliga

Re-recording Mixer: Rob Szeliga

28 mins • Stereo TV EBU R128 sound mix

Director / Producer: Ciara Kennedy

Sound Editor/Designer: Rob Szeliga

Re-recording Mixer: Florentin Tudor

On her first day of school, little Louly is faced with a question: what should she wear? The ugly school uniform or whatever she wants? Luckily, she is visited by a magic teardrop-keeper who helps her make a choice by telling the story of how the women of her nation, Iran, have strived to answer this question for 200 years.

17 mins • LTRT / Stereo sound mix

Director: Fateme Ahmadi

Sound Editor/Designer: Rob Szeliga

Re-recording Mixer: Rob Szeliga

1:30 mins • Stereo sound mix

Director: Thomas Hefferon & Johnny Han

Sound Editor/Designer: Rob Szeliga, Ben Hensor

Chime Audio Post-Production Sound

A young man can't help but see his girlfriend as various objects - including a french tart. Perception, misunderstanding and indifference are explored in this darkly funny animation about the foibles of romance.

6:58 mins • Stereo sound mix

Director: Isaac Holland

Sound Editor/Designer: Rob Malone, Rob Szeliga

Re-recording Mixer: Ben Hensor

2:38 mins • Stereo sound mix

Director: Thomas Hefferon & Johnny Han

Sound Editor/Designer: Rob Szeliga, Dayo James, Rob Turner

Chime Audio Post-Production Sound

0:30 mins • Stereo sound mix

Director: Jack Davies

Sound Editor/Designer: Rob Szeliga

0:48 mins • Stereo sound mix

Director: Thomas Hefferon & Johnny Han

Sound Editor/Designer: Rob Szeliga, Florentin Tudor, Dayo James

Chime Audio Post-Production Sound