29.Mar.2000
Buddha Bar
When the New Venue premiered Rodney Ascher's "Alfred" in 1998, the filmmaker sent over another digital flick with the disclaimer, "I wanted to see if I could make a movie for $20."
After two years, the New Venue finally presents the prototype for Alfred, "Buddha Bar", an award-winning digital film which has received kudos from international and online digital film festivals alike as well as write-ups in Release Print and RES magazines.
Animator, Photographer
Rodney Ascher
Photographer
Louisa Van Leer
Shot on Location
Buddha Bar - 901 Grant Ave, SF
Music by
Tipsy
from the album Triptease
Stills from "Buddha Bar"
Shot entirely as still images with a disposable camera and Re-Animated® in Adobe After Effects, "Buddha Bar" offers a succinct portrait of an exotically comfortable San Francisco Chinatown watering hole. (Be sure to ask for a shot of the mysterious liqueur in the ceramic bottle against the far wall.)
Hailing from the vanguard of digital film, Ascher spends his time bouncing between directing, shooting, animating, editing and hustling up opportunities. Currently, he teaches a class in desktop filmmaking at the SF Film Arts Foundation where he is busy preparing the next generation who will make people like him obsolete.
New Venue:
What is the appeal of digital filmmaking?
Ascher:
Accessibility. In the other kind of filmmaking you gotta get a whole organization together and win a competition for the privilege of making a movie. Digital tools allow a huge amount of freedom, at least after you drop a few grand on equipment and teach yourself to be an engineer.
For me, so far, the best thing about the Internet is the amount of people these little films can reach.
New Venue:
What advice do you have about working around the constraints of the Internet?
Ascher:
Keep it short and don't underestimate the appeal of novelty.
I could do a lot more to make things appropriate for the web, using Flash or whatever but I always want things to look good on tape and I'm addicted to After Effects so I wind up with pretty big QuickTimes.
I'm planning on making a Shockwave version of my new piece which will incorporate a lot of stills, so we'll see how that works.
New Venue:
What was your inspiration for "Buddha Bar"?
Ascher:
It really came together by mistake. We ducked into the place to shoot some stills and I had to use the pictures for something, I mean I spent 12 bucks getting them processed. I was experimenting with the technique of Re-Animation® so I put 'em into the computer to see what I could do with them.
I was pretty happy with the effect so I went on and did Alfred, only this time with a little planning and foresight.
New Venue:
You directed the first movie to officially play on The New Venue - "Alfred" - When it comes to movies and animation on the web, what would you like to see more of?
Ascher:
I'd love to see it develop it's own style and become a whole new mutant form. With the exception of Troops, which I loved, I get very bored very quickly when I see anything online which looks like conventional film or tv.
My favorite movies on the Internet are the government sponsored airplane crash tests on the NASA site.
New Venue:
What technology did you use?
Ascher:
A Kodak disposal camera, photofinishing by Walgreens, Adobe Photoshop and After Effects. Compressed for QuickTime 4.
New Venue:
What's the next project?
Ascher:
I'm bidding on a pair of commercial projects and I'm also working on a pair of personal projects - one's a sort of open ended documentary that I'm doing fairly conventionally and then another messed up religious piece in the vein of Somebody Goofed, the short I did with Syd Garon.
New Venue:
Where else can we see your work?
Ascher:
No matter where people go to check out this whole new-fangled digital film thing they're bound to trip over something I was involved in - New Venue, D.FILM, UD99, RSUBox, and iFilm.
View this movie.
You can find out about other digital flicks in the New Venue Archives.
