Maxine Sheppard http://maxinesheppard.com Experimentations into music, photography, design, film, patterns and words. posterous.com Sun, 07 Mar 2010 15:03:46 -0800 Objects of Desire: Ten Designs by Dieter Rams http://maxinesheppard.com/objects-of-desire-ten-designs-by-dieter-rams http://maxinesheppard.com/objects-of-desire-ten-designs-by-dieter-rams Some shots taken at Less and More: The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams exhibition at the Design Museum in London. To see more, view my Flickr set here.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/245617/eye.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36PzapE8jFuh Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Sat, 06 Mar 2010 16:46:57 -0800 10 Chairs by Designer Ron Arad http://maxinesheppard.com/10-chairs-by-designer-ron-arad http://maxinesheppard.com/10-chairs-by-designer-ron-arad
These shots were taken on my iPhone at the Ron Arad: Restless exhibition at the Barbican in London. To see the rest visit my Flickr set here

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/245617/eye.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36PzapE8jFuh Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:48:49 -0800 Autumn Leaves of Central Park in 10 Photos http://maxinesheppard.com/autumn-leaves-of-central-park-in-10-photos http://maxinesheppard.com/autumn-leaves-of-central-park-in-10-photos
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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/245617/eye.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36PzapE8jFuh Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:32:18 -0800 The Music Posters of Hatch Show Print http://maxinesheppard.com/the-music-posters-of-hatch-show-print http://maxinesheppard.com/the-music-posters-of-hatch-show-print This sort of place is heaven to me. Hatch Show Print is a 125 year old letterpress print shop in downtown Nashville. It's been a few years now since I was there but I still remember the smell of it and the feeling of wanting to stay all day. Or even to move in. Americana, music, posters, cats, history: perfect.

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images via http://www.ryman.com/HatchGallery.html

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/245617/eye.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36PzapE8jFuh Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Sat, 31 Oct 2009 06:22:05 -0700 Incredible soundtracks: Werner Herzog's 'The Wild Blue Yonder' http://maxinesheppard.com/incredible-soundtracks-werner-herzogs-the-wil http://maxinesheppard.com/incredible-soundtracks-werner-herzogs-the-wil I wrote something in a previous post about my love of Werner Herzog's use of music in his films, especially choral music. He seems to be able to synthesise imagery and sound into a single creation in a way that very few films achieve. The Wild Blue Yonder is a film that really seems to divide people (it's won awards and also appeared on 'worst films of all time' lists), but the soundtrack is extraordinary. He also made a short documentary - 'Requiem in Space' - which shows how he worked with the remarkably diverse set of musicians - a Senegalese solo singer, a small choir of Sardinian shepherds and a Dutch jazz cellist - which the second two short clips are taken from.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/245617/eye.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36PzapE8jFuh Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Sun, 25 Oct 2009 15:42:00 -0700 10 iPhone Shots of the Great British Seaside http://maxinesheppard.com/10-iphone-shots-of-the-great-british-seaside http://maxinesheppard.com/10-iphone-shots-of-the-great-british-seaside

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Took these pictures today down at West Wittering beach in West Sussex. A proper beach. Grassy dunes, beach huts, low tide, ripples in the sand, dogs chasing sticks, sandcastles, seaweed, kites, cups of tea. OK, so there are 12, not 10. I can't count. 

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/245617/eye.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36PzapE8jFuh Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Sat, 24 Oct 2009 08:23:00 -0700 10 Tilt-Shift Travel Photos http://maxinesheppard.com/10-tilt-shift-travel-photos http://maxinesheppard.com/10-tilt-shift-travel-photos

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Would love to have the time and the patience to make some films like the ones below but for now I'll stick to photos. These were taken in Nice, Poland, Portofino, Austin, Lviv, Oxfordshire, New York and Venice. They look better if you click to enlarge. 

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/245617/eye.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36PzapE8jFuh Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:04:00 -0700 Synaesthesia - Seeing Sounds, Hearing Colours http://maxinesheppard.com/see-sounds-hear-colours http://maxinesheppard.com/see-sounds-hear-colours

Since discovering a few years ago that I'm synaesthesic, I've been really interested in how [or if] it affects what I do creatively, particularly with regard to writing music. I don't have any of the really extreme kinds of synaesthesia, like hearing certain words and tasting mustard or smelling cheese - that would be really insane - but I do have the more common types. Here's how I experience it:

  • I have colours for most (but not all) letters of the alphabet.
  • I have colours for most (but not all) numbers 1 to 9.
  • I have colours for all days of the week and months of the year.
  • I experience or 'sense' people very strongly by the 'colour' of their name. For example, my mum is green, my dad is maroon and my brother is orange. The first letter of the person's name lends the biggest influence, but the other letters give the overall effect a 'tinge'. For example, my friend Krzys is bright blue, because I experience both 'K' and 'R' as different shades of blue and the second 'R' letter just reinforces the first, adding to the overall effect. My friend Katharine however, is much more of a purply-blue, because I experience 'A' as a deep red, and there's a kind of 'bleeding' effect between letters, which subtly changes things.
  • When I think of letters, numbers, days or months, I see them laid out before me in space, in a specific, never-changing pattern. For example January (grassy green) is behind my left ear, September (pale peachy orange) is over by my right arm.
  • With music, I have colours for chords and key signatures, but not really for individual notes. And I only really experience these when I'm playing the music myself, not when I'm listening to it. If I'm playing Chopin's Nocturne No.2 in E Flat major on the piano, I experience a warm, creamy-coloured 'mist' around me. It's hard to explain. If it were in E, rather than E Flat, then it would be brilliant white. The key of D major is forest green, the key of A major is dark red, F is brown, B is orange...
  • I experience different instrumental timbres as different textures, as well as different colours. For example, a flute (soft grey) sounds/feels like touching felt, whereas a piccolo (white) sounds/feels like polished marble, and an oboe (earthy purply brown) sounds/feels like dry twigs. 
  • The colours that I experience are *extremely* precise. They are exact and specific shades. For the last three years, I've tested myself on a synaesthesia research website, where you get to select your colours from a total colour spectrum, and my results have remained more than 97% consistent each time I've done it. 
  • It makes me feel very uncomfortable, uneasy, and sometimes almost a bit physically sick to read or see other synaesthetes' descriptions of their own colours for the same things, because they are just plain wrong, wrong, wrong! 
  • It might be just coincidence, and it actually feels ridiculous writing this, but there are some people with specific letters/colours/names that I feel drawn to. For example, within the circle of people I know, I feel very comfortable, calm and at ease with those whose names begin with K, P, D, J, R - all different shades of blue or green - and find that I have slightly more difficult, awkward or antagonistic relationships with people whose names start with G, M, T, A - all browns and angry reds. 

As I look back at pieces of music that I've written over the years, I'm starting to notice some patterns in terms of keys that I often use, chord progressions that I find compelling, instrumentation, etc. I'm wondering if subconsciously I've made creative choices based on not wanting colours to 'clash', or steering clear of particular keys or timbres whose corresponding colours I find a bit yucky. (I know that this is true in other areas of life - for example, if a friend gets married and changes their name, it takes me ages to accept because suddenly they are a whole different colour. When my friend Katharine got married she suddenly had a completely clashing first name and surname, which grated for years. I breathed a sigh of relief when she got divorced and went back to her maiden name.) 

I became even more aware of all this when I first started getting really interested in writing music for film, or for the accompaniment of any visuals. I've looked back at some examples, and it seems in nearly all cases that the chosen key and instrumentation has been heavily influenced by the dominant colour of what's happening on screen. It seems obvious that this would be the case, really, but I'd not really examined it before. I'm not sure if this matters or not. Perhaps it's a good thing. Or perhaps it means that I'm massively limiting myself.

I guess that now I'm more aware of it, I can keep it in check.

However, unlike the woman in this video, I don't think it's got anything to do with God. 

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/245617/eye.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36PzapE8jFuh Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Wed, 21 Oct 2009 05:19:33 -0700 Ice: Athabasca Glacier, Canada http://maxinesheppard.com/ice-athabasca-glacier-canada http://maxinesheppard.com/ice-athabasca-glacier-canada
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I hiked up this glacier a few years ago. When we started at the very bottom it was quite sunny and warm, but within an hour the weather had changed to monstrous, bitter winds, icy rain and snow. It was hard work; a steady but slippery uphill climb, navigating fissures and crevasses and holes. But worth it to witness the amazing colours and textures of the ice.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/245617/eye.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36PzapE8jFuh Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:52:29 -0700 Keith Loutit's Tiltshift and Timelapse Films http://maxinesheppard.com/keith-loutits-tiltshift-and-timelapse-films http://maxinesheppard.com/keith-loutits-tiltshift-and-timelapse-films

Keith Loutit is a Sydney-based photographer. These are my favourite three of his films. I've had a lot of fun making some tiltshift photos which I'm quite pleased with, but the thought of the editing hours and the amount of shots that must have gone into making these shorts is mindboggling.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/245617/eye.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36PzapE8jFuh Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:31:00 -0700 Khalid Mohtaseb - Egypt / Lebanon Montage http://maxinesheppard.com/khalid-mohtaseb-egypt-lebanon-montage http://maxinesheppard.com/khalid-mohtaseb-egypt-lebanon-montage

I would dearly love to be involved in the making of something as beautiful as this one day. Reminds me of the feel of Baraka.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/245617/eye.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36PzapE8jFuh Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Sun, 18 Oct 2009 17:12:49 -0700 Soundtrack excerpt - Winter Waltz http://maxinesheppard.com/soundtrack-excerpt-winter-waltz http://maxinesheppard.com/soundtrack-excerpt-winter-waltz
Winter Waltz.m4a Listen on Posterous

This is a reject from the last film I was working on, which I've just rediscovered while deleting a load of old files. I've decided that I quite like the chords and am going to play around with it a bit more and see if I can salvage something. I'm toying with the idea of bringing in a very soft, muted brass band-ish element as it repeats. Might post back some ideas soon.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/245617/eye.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36PzapE8jFuh Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard - Sun, 18 Oct 2009 16:09:00 -0700 Berlin: Symphony of a Great City http://maxinesheppard.com/berlin-symphony-of-a-great-city http://maxinesheppard.com/berlin-symphony-of-a-great-city

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Walther Ruttman was an experimental German film director working in the 1920s and 30s, who originally studied architecture but became a graphic designer before moving into film. This short film is probably his best known work, and I'm currently playing around with writing a new score for a ten minute section of it.  

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/245617/eye.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36PzapE8jFuh Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Sun, 18 Oct 2009 04:53:17 -0700 Film excerpt - Born Yesterday End Credits http://maxinesheppard.com/film-excerpt-born-yesterday-end-credits http://maxinesheppard.com/film-excerpt-born-yesterday-end-credits

This is a brief excerpt from a short film I made last year. The film is made almost entirely from old family Super8 footage shot in the late 60s and early 70s. I love the special, nostalgic quality of Super8; the graininess, the vignetting of the periphery, the flickering and the flaws. This excerpt here is the very final scene; the end credits. The soundtrack for the film was constructed entirely in Logic, and the full version also contains a fair amount of live audio and found sounds, including insect and birdsong, stream and river noises, children playing, traffic, trees and general chatter. For complete authenticity, I recorded all the sounds myself, in the exact same places where the original footage was shot, which was a bit of a labour of love as it was hundreds of miles away. These final credits were a bit trickier, however, so the aircraft sounds were sourced elsewhere. The most difficult part of this sequence was the sound design for the planes - getting the right sound for the right type of plane, and trying to get the spatial and surround elements right - attempting to follow the planes' trajectory, etc. The text on this clip is too small, has a nasty drop shadow and is just not how I want it. I'll change it one day when I get round to deciding on a better typeface.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/245617/eye.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36PzapE8jFuh Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Sat, 17 Oct 2009 14:08:17 -0700 The Big Lebowski - the Gutterballs Dream Sequence http://maxinesheppard.com/the-big-lebowski-the-gutterballs-dream-sequen http://maxinesheppard.com/the-big-lebowski-the-gutterballs-dream-sequen

Funny, beautiful and surreal. The greatest scene in one of the greatest films ever made.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/245617/eye.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36PzapE8jFuh Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Fri, 16 Oct 2009 12:53:00 -0700 Life through the eyes of Mario Cavalli http://maxinesheppard.com/life-through-the-eyes-of-mario-cavelli http://maxinesheppard.com/life-through-the-eyes-of-mario-cavelli

Mario Cavalli is a filmmaker who also happens to be a friend of my boss, and he came into our office today to discuss possible ways of working together in terms of getting short destination-based travel films onto our website. For me personally, it will be amazing if this happens as I think his work is incredibly beautiful, and exactly the kind of visual aesthetic I most like to work with, compositionally speaking. The colour, movement, and dreamlike quality of his films is mesmerizing.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/245617/eye.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36PzapE8jFuh Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Fri, 16 Oct 2009 09:21:51 -0700 Patterns in Modernism http://maxinesheppard.com/patterns-in-modernism http://maxinesheppard.com/patterns-in-modernism These photos of Embassy Court, Brighton - one of the best examples of British Modernism in the UK - were taken with my iPhone and processed with the camerabag app.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/245617/eye.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36PzapE8jFuh Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Thu, 15 Oct 2009 16:37:00 -0700 Werner Herzog's Encounters At The End Of The World http://maxinesheppard.com/werner-herzogs-encounters-at-the-end-of-the-w http://maxinesheppard.com/werner-herzogs-encounters-at-the-end-of-the-w

This is probably the first of many Werner Herzog clips, but it has to be one of the saddest and most affecting. I've always found Herzog to be an absolute master of the use of choral music in film. And I love how he describes himself as an ambivalent unromantic, which is pretty apparent in this sequence. No Happy Feet penguins in here. 

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/245617/eye.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36PzapE8jFuh Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:29:32 -0700 Water and the Sea http://maxinesheppard.com/water-and-the-sea http://maxinesheppard.com/water-and-the-sea I've always been drawn to coastal landscapes, beaches, the sea, lakes. These were taken on various different trips over the past couple of years.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/245617/eye.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36PzapE8jFuh Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Wed, 14 Oct 2009 17:10:00 -0700 Wings of Desire - the library scene http://maxinesheppard.com/wings-of-desire-the-library-scene http://maxinesheppard.com/wings-of-desire-the-library-scene

One of the most amazing examples of creative sound design from one of my all-time favourite films.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/245617/eye.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36PzapE8jFuh Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard Maxine Sheppard