Greg Barth

0:16Guys hello hello hey hey sorry last speaker of the night I'm a bit tipsy don't hold that against me.

0:24So yeah I'm a designer and a director from Geneva Switzerland currently based in London then I'm actually a typographer and a designer turned art director turned motion graphic artist turned CGI specialist turned stop frame animator turned artist and director with a brief history as a music producer and a rapper hence the sideways appearance of anything sitting on my head basically I I like to make films these days I like to make films they use design and and kind of propose it in a a three-dimensional space and I like making films where all the special effects are usually done in camera so kind of very retro and finding sort of weird cool crazy mechanisms and since I'm a Swiss graphic designer at heart I try to incorporate that sort of strange minimalism and all of my work which can get a little surreal sometimes like chocolate milk legs spilling over my living room floor all over the place it was a mess someone who is literally shaving their Bush someone inflating their own head to symbolize the meritocracy of the IV League schooling system in the US destroying a collector TV to turn it into a treadmill spewing consumer products two boxers hitting a punching ball unless you can see anything else sorry a cheeky one someone opening the wrong kind of door which is a spray painted tomato knob hands coming out of a flower pot as a symbolic portrayal of the Arab Spring in Bahrain so it can get political sometimes or a security guard who is kissing a golden triangular canvas question mark before getting rejected by a big catapult firing 8 lit of gold paint so this is the mechanism here.

2:27This is a this is a test so yeah I mean I tend to be a bit DIY so I mean you can see that's clearly not a clever or stable mechanism but you know we try to have fun and make things work with a zero budget here I'm making a statue melt just by playing rubbish tracks really loudly so this was really fun to make what we did here is we 3D print printed a Greek statue just to get its physical shape mold it.

3:04So we could create it out of 6 kilos of white chocolate just to melt it just for two seconds of screen time so a bit you know a bit masochistic but yeah it was fun so so yeah recently I've been having fun kind of exploring different mediums and different ways to do new work I guess so this is an art installation I did in Paris so I physically suspended all these rackets and balls and basically I'm using a projector to projection map on them to create kind of a live animation and bring it to life B ♪

4:18[Applause]

4:40and that's me entering the frame just to show that people could actually do that and actually no one came.

4:45So I was the only one so I also experimented a bit with 3D printing which was kind of fun as well so doing like a physics simulation in 3D on various objects 3D printing them obviously and then you know retouching them with paint like model makers would just to get that extra detail in the print and then film them for real actually the camera right.

5:13There is the one I used to film it so thank you Harry or building a DIY gravity defying spinning machine which was really fun and once we buildt that like adults very serious ones we proceeded to throw things in it which is to create a commercial for Apple's iPhone 6s ♪

6:01so it's fun I mean what was fun about.

6:02This is that you know like little boys we got to be like oh we have this machine Let's just throw you know really random stuff in there or let's make some really crazy things because you could play with objects you can play with gravity and I've been wanting to kind of recreate this Memphis pattern in midair using physical objects I was like Ah that's going to be so cool so we tried this.

6:22So we were using glass tubes as molds filling them with jelly creating these really weird jelly snakes to get that sort of squiggly line pattern to work in midair and you know it's one of those things like in my head it was going to be amazing it was going to look great and in reality it it it was a kind of a disaster and it took a long time to clean and basically it was a nightmare so yeah 2016 has been the year of VR it has been my year with VR I mean who doesn't want to be in that picture right now like this is so cool no I mean no okay not really.

7:00But anyway I wanted to create a video in 360° more precisely a music video in 360° one that felt a bit different both how it was shot but also you know how it was serving the music itself so really instead of being a structured music video that follows the track it's more one that kind of explained the process of how each sound came into creation.

7:27So this is my concept this is the mood board I sent over to the clients who are fascinated by my style so these are basically human powered instruments so the whole thing was the future of Music in my future the music is powered by humans because we're going to need to exercise because there's going to be drone deliveries and VR chat rooms and we're just basically going to have to work work it.

7:53So this is my human Kick Drum is using a custommade studded bum suit which is really fun and getting friends to come down. And wear that suit for half a [Applause]

8:15day okay yeah did the spikes go into your box that.

8:19That's a very worried producer there just being like oh God no rules no regulations no standard procedures and health and safety that you usually have on shoots and speaking of sugar glass this is my snare which is very fun another lucky guy who got to come over you know you know how it's like have fun get really nervous and be like oh I don't know if I'm my head's going to hit the wall Do's a glass actually cut you yeah it's fun and so it ended up looking like this have any of you ever heard of King m Magic Touch Chris snare wow so yeah I mean it's pretty it's pretty crazy this is my melodic percussion.

9:08This is basically a guy crushing ice cream cones with his head Defying Gravity on an aseres staircase if that makes any sense of course I had to test this out and see how it didn't really work that well. And then.

9:25There was a synth sound which was kind of dub Steppy and I you know for Me Dubstep has always been kind of a you know this sound it kind of reminds me of a it kind of reminds me of a jammed up vacuum cleaner so I kind of wanted to represent that physically with a guy sucking toilet rolls with a vacuum cleaner which is really fun to do as well and another friend who came over wondering what the meaning of life was at that very moment sorry and this is my water drip sound because you know water drip sound is really cool to have in a music track these days especially if it's minimal Electro so I just imagine this girl diving through the wall as if it was made out of liquid and Diving to the other side I thought it would be an interesting thing to follow in 360° and most importantly this is our genius composer who's guiding us through the room he's showing us his human instruments and he's a musical genius who lives in the shadows because he has a special gift is that everything he touches becomes a gravity defying gift looped in human an instrument so it's a simple premise really. And in this mockumentary we were invited to kind of tour around the room and and see what he was doing so it was kind of fun so this is a little you call yourself music's biggest Revolution since Baroque what exactly do you mean well for instance this is the origin of grime music I'm carry BL I'm the future of music yeah.

11:08So anyway that was cool and we got to wear the Oculus Rift as a live monitor so that was really crazy because I wasn't actually on set but I was next door looking in my set and directing an old man wearing a Pokemon suit and telling him what to do without being there.

11:27So I mean instantly I thought this is going to be the future of client meetings you can be like cozily laid back in your bed and just like have those ppms fly by so it was fun and it was a long complicated project.

11:39But I got to learn a lot about 360 film making which is cool and so after that I had to buy a cheap headset to show the film to my friends because 360 film making is not the sort of thing you can just PR press play and like lay back.

11:53So I bought the headset I was showing the film to my friends and I was just fascinated ated by how stupid people look when they wear VR it's just like my God and they bump into walls and like you you're not even supposed to move in my video it's not even that extreme you know and you know. I mean this is next level stuff what is the world coming to so anyway at that point I had to make a music video for red axes and I had a few genius ideas for completely pointless virtual reality games that could possibly exist like walking up a circular staircase in in VR so I thought you know wouldn't it be cool to make a music video you know where people are dancing and they're doing a choreography but they actually don't know they're doing it because they're too busy like playing their own VR games and it's almost like accidentally they're creating a a sort of disco routine you know or or they're clapping to the beat or they are stomping to the beat as well like they were very dedicated so I imagine the sort of worst case scenario VR party possible the accountant Department of a fake energy drink company are having a VR party and obviously they have endless supplies of caffeinated drinks so what could possibly go wrong turns out a lot of things you know and with all this craziness happening we follow our lead character who falls in love with a virtual reality woman before things start start getting really dark you know and yeah it just becomes tragic and then you know. I mean imagine playing games like this where you're in a VR environment you know after playing VR all all night long and having too much caffeine and you're like oh it just becomes really crazy but it I mean it was a really interesting kind of process that led me to making this.

13:48And it was the first film I've done that has no practical effects and that has CGI and that was actually about people and how they react to things as opposed to like weird you know hands and legs made out of different things. And I also collaborated with the amazing Jack saxs who I'm sure most of you know who's an amazingly talented illustrator and designer to design this sort of virtual world and you know see what the games are going to be like and make a fake brand of energy drinks and so we were shooting this in Tel Aviv in Israel cuz the band is from there my friends are from there and honestly I've just had my second child this year. And I needed a bit of a vacay so I sorry so I I did I did take off for a short period of time. And I had to go there with a suitcase filled with props because it's like lowbudget super last minute don't know what to do and obviously Israel is a really difficult country to get into they're very strict so I had a really hard time explaining to them why I was coming in the country with one suitcase that was packed to the brim with like retro disco lights that were packaged together to kind of they almost L looked like a bomb I was really embarrassed when they opened the SU suitc case and ah they started getting really angry and then the other suitcase there was like fake cigarettes party plates party hats bunting VR headsets seashell bras there was like anything into the world.

15:11So they weren't happy at all and they they they thought I was going to sell these products and so they interrogated me for quite a long time and they must have kept my name on file because as I left they stopped me again and interrogated me again and they started going through pictures on my phone from that you know time just to like make sure I wasn't like selling anything.

15:32So these are a few of the making of pictures from my phone including our lead character who's a legend U and they you know at that point they concluded that I wasn't there on business just m you know creating some weird VR party somewhere. So they let me go and yeah that's it.

15:50So that's been kind of my year so far filming an old guy in a Pokemon suit showing the film to my friend seeing how ridiculous everything was in VR inspiring me to make a music video and yeah that's kind of it so thanks guys