Tal Rosner: Visiting Lectures

Moving image designer Tal Rosner came to give a lecture to The Design and Visual Arts Students of Stockport College in November of 2008.

Tal Rosner started out his career by studying graphic design and was quite onto composition, poster design and magazines. After getting a Degree in graphic design he found that he had thing for rhythm, with that in mind Tal Rosner went to pursue a moving image pathway. Tal Rosner recommended to us, the student for this type of work you need to get a ‘flow!’ he said he gets a flow when flicking through a newspaper.

After studying moving image he came out with his final piece called ‘Doppleganger” 2004-2005. There was a collider scope effect and feel to the video and it also exhibits a great understanding and representation of rhythm. There are certain sounds that are in sync with the music such as when you see clouds of smoke in the film they are matched perfectly in time with the anticlimaxes that occur in the music. The sound and the visuals certainly complement each other. For this project Tal Rosner says that he work purely digital and that the software he used was Adobe After Effects.

video from talrosner.com

Tal Rosner then proceeded to show us his next piece, which was called Stravinsky Concert 1. This was a split screen movie that approaches many angles and carries on the them of rhythm the two sides of the screens both have their separate activity but do interlink with each other through out the video. Tal then explained to us that there was colouring effects used in the video. He also told us that for this film he grabbed lot and lots of footage some of which was reused.

 video from talrosner.com

Tal Rosner got the job for making the title sequence for the E4 teen drama ‘Skins’. E4 saw his Stravinsky work and wanted him! Tal told us that the title sequence for the first series of Skins was very low budget and that he had made 72 versions of the sequence to see which one was the best and weirdly the 72^nd version was the one he like the best and was used for the show. The title sequence was representing all the main characters in the show and allowed the viewer to have a brief introduction into what the show was going to be like. Tal also said that at the endings of each title sequence for each single episode had a different ending as the drama focused on one specific character each week, so then the title sequence showcased that quite successfully.

 video from youtube.com

Tal Rosner also worked on the second series of Skins, creating another awesome title sequence. The concept behind the title sequence was the same for the second series by representing all the characters then focussing on the character that the episode was predominantly about at the end of the sequence. This time though there was a new effect in the transitions of the film. He used the Skins letters S-K-I-N-S mingling in and out of each other creating masks in front and behind footage. In my opinion this sequence for the second series is definitely better that the sequence for the first series. It had a certain richness to it. Tal then revealed that he is working on the next series of Skins as well! Which is likely going to be aired in January 2009.