Cinematic

By WGSN CREATIVE TEAM, 13 July 2010

MACRO TRENDS SPRING/SUMMER 2012

Primal Futurism

Cinematic

JPEG Gen

Cinema is a frame in which the world is distilled; sharpened into a concentrated reality. The film genres of
a century of cinema evoke many moods, all of them different, all of them poetic and sensual. Light and
colour trigger nostalgic memories that inform palettes and textures. The grain and quality of classic film
stock inspires tactile surfaces and vintage treatments.

From cinema to TV, and PC to hand-held device, the moving image has shifted from a nights
entertainment to an indispensible stream of information. The seductive quality of movies means
designers have started making films instead of catwalk shows, while publishers produce films instead of
magazines.
"No other medium is pushing the boundaries of creativity like video." Nancy Spector, chief curator,
Guggenheim Foundation, June 2010

Research & Reference

STYLE IS SUNBSTANCE / ICONS OF SUMMER LIGHT / THE MOVING IMAGE / FREEZE FRAME

STYLE IS SUBSTANCE
Creatives are more confident about pushing style for its own sake. A developed and intricate sense of
style has replaced grand concepts within design - it has become the new substance.

Performance

I Am Love directed by Luca Guadagnino, 2009

Experimental singer and

performer Janelle Mone
recently launched her second in
a series of concept albums The
ArchAndroid,in which she
performs as her android alterego. She plans to shoot a video
for each genre-muddling song
which together will make up a
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Source: As seen at deanchalkley.com

Character coding
I Am Love is a film in which the
style-over-substance approach
references the cosmetic facade
of a Milanese dynasty. The
technique is consciously
employed by director Luca
Guadagnino in everything from
the cinematography to the
clothes worn by the central
characters. His intentionally
over-stylised project sees Raf
Simons at Jil Sander
collaborate with actress Tilda
Swinton to create a wardrobe
reflecting the subtleties of
protagonist Emma Recchi.

complete film, as well as

launching a graphic novel for
the album. Her cinematic
fantasies, see-sawing between
retro and futuristic, are laden
with references from sci-fi and
early musical film.

Giallo

Source: As seen at stylites.net

Quoted images
Like the Mods, these modernday Chinese have a very
particular look, balancing
specific pieces such as the
historical Zhongshan suit with
global style influences from 80s
western capitalist culture. This
style exploration mixes precommunist photographs of their
families, blogs, global style
icons and Chinese old-world
elegance.

Amer, launching later this year,

is the latest release in a recent
revival of the Italian giallo
genre. Popular in the 60s and
70s, these films promote
sensation over plot. Composed
of fragmented shots of eyes,
lights, shadows and gestures,
the focus is sensory overload
and stylisation. Giallo films are
operatic, dream-like, colourinfused works of suspense,
violence, sexuality and fashion.

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New purists
The Mod subculture makes a
contemporary return after
emerging in the 60s, having a
UK revival in the 70s and a
Southern Californian revival in
the 80s. The New Faces is a
series of photographs by Dean
Chalkley of a group of young
Mods encountered at the
Boogaloo pub in London.
Intrigued by their extreme
purism within our multireferencing culture, their sharp
dressing and dance skills,
Chalkley immortalises their look
and attitude on celluloid.

ICONS OF SUMMER LIGHT

Specific textures and light in film denote different eras and atmospheres. When thinking about the
summer, be inspired by light explorations rather than specific locations. Imagery captured on film triggers
memories of summers past.

Neo-languid

Album artwork by Grant David Keyes for Life of

Leisure by Washed Out, 2009

Washed out

Another branch of the surf-pop

movement hails from the shores
of California with a distinctly
Fauvist feel. Heavily influenced
by veteran surf bands such as
The Beach Boys, artists such as
Best Coast have a sound
harking back to retro California,
while visually disrupting this
nostalgia through contemporary
colour overlays.

Coined last summer, chillwave

or glo-fi is a new genre of
laidback synth-pop. It is lo-fi and
hazy, a beachy summer sound
with a bright but faded
aesthetic. It has been described
as a sonic shoulder shrug,
languorous and musical.
Washed Out, the stage name of
musician Ernest Greene, is one
of the leading lights of the
chillwave movement with a hazy
summer sound and look.

Source: Robert Doisneau: Palm Springs 1960 (ISBN:

9782080301291)

Blazing
In 1960 photographer Robert
Doisneau was invited by
Fortune to cover Palm Springs,
the hottest travel destination of
the day. He took hundreds of
photographs, just a few of which
were published in the magazine.
The complete set has been
rediscovered in his archives and
the best are featured in the
book Robert Doisneau: Palm
Springs 1960.

Ace Hotel Palm Springs

Pastel
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The pioneering hipster hotel

chain Ace reinvents the desert
hotel with the Palm Springs
project. Featuring furniture from
thrift stores and a special Levi
Strauss 501 suite, the design
prioritises style and visual
referencing, specifically for the
creative class. Set in a
Howard Johnsons building from
1966, it recreates a 60s motel
style and atmosphere. For more
inspiration, see the film Palm
Springs Weekend (1963).

THE MOVING IMAGE

An increasing cinematic influence in fashion communication, combined with advances in the digital world
open up new possibilities in marketing and advertising built around the moving image. For style-based
industries this leads to an interactive, sensual connection with consumers.

Fashion film

Book film

Dior continues its

cinematographic fashion
campaign with David Lynch.
The director, famous for his
haunting work such as Blue
Velvet and Twin Peaks,directs
this extended commercial
entitled Lady Blue Shanghai,
which also stars Marion
Cotillard, Gong Tao and of
course the Lady Dior handbag.
Art-directed by John Galliano,
the film is suprisingly lo-fi but as
strange as you might expect
from Lynch.

The most recent Thomas

Pynchon novel, Inherent Vice,
was published in 2009 along
with a promotional film trailer.
Part noir, part psychedelic
romp, the trailer follows private
eye Doc Sportello through
Pynchons paranoid LA fog.
Since then, the popularity of
book trailers has hugely
increased and this year the
Moby Awards were established
in honor of the new genre.

Source: As seen at dazeddigital.com

Watch and buy

One of the most innovative
recent technologies takes
consumers from inspiring vision
on film through to online
checkout. Dazed Digital has
debuted this revolutionary
technology by Pokeware. The
viewer can pause fashion films
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to see clothing credits, get

further information and buy the
product. This translates a
creative vision into an
accessible, commercial world.

The moving street shot

YouTube art

Street shot obsession evolves

into moving images, as do
model test cards and runway
invitations. Circulated by email,
these new-generation images
have a broad-reaching impact
and are often well edited with a
soundtrack and a strong
aesthetic direction.

Guggenheim embraces the web

with YouTube Play Biennial.
New Yorks Guggenheim
Museum is launching a biennial
of creative video hosted via
YouTube. The Play Biennial
website says that "no other
medium is pushing the
boundaries of creativity like
video", and identifies a
"paradigm shift". In the age of
the portable device,
accessibility is key to how the
public engages with art.

FREEZE FRAME
Be inspired by the legacy of decades of film production, capture the cinematic imagery and the storyline
in a single frame. Consider treatments that play with texture, colour and light.

Source: Dead Eagle Trail by Jane Hilton (ISBN:

9789053307175)

Retro future
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Source: As seen at theimpossiblecool.tumblr.com

Hipstamatic by Synthetic Corp

is a fun camera app that
transforms an iPhone into a
small retro toy camera.
Characterised by vignettes,
blurring, over-saturation and
discoloured images, digital
photography has never looked
so analogue. The app brings
back the feel of old-school
photography with the ability to
swap lenses, film, and flash
settings with the swipe of a
finger.

Framed lifestyles
Dead Eagle Trail sees Jane
Hilton document and explore
one of the archetypes of
American culture and history,
the cowboy. Unlike previous
expositions of the American
West, Hiltons subjects are
photographed within their
personal environments,
surrounded by their artefacts
and memorabilia. This is an
empathetic portrayal of an
American hero today.

Ellen by Alex Prager, 2010

Cinema signs reach new audiences

Character

Box-office font

Photographer Alex Pragers

latest series, Week-End,sees a
cinematic approach where
every woman is cast as a
motion-picture heroine. Citing
David Lynch films as an
influence, her portraits seem to
come from an imaginary movie.
She says: Im documenting a
world that exists and doesnt
exist at the same time the
illusion theyve created is so
constant that it became more
real to them than the world they
actually live in.

Its not only old movies that

inspire. The buildings they were
shown in can influence a new
generation of visual
merchandisers, architects and
designers using nostalgic
graphics and architecture of the
great cinematic age. Look out
for box-office signage for VM
and print typography in cafes
and boutiques.

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The icons
Sean Sullivans The Impossible
Cool is a website that attempts
to capture the aesthetic values
of classic film stills and screen
icons. He asks What is cool
and where has it gone? The
website is an open-ended
image collection and study of
the notion of cool, which is more
mystique than tangible. Sullivan
has started another site, A
Conversation On Cool,where
people can contribute and help
define the aesthetic and attitude
of cool.