Santa Fe Institute

The Santa Fe Institute is some kind of a research and educational institute based in New Mexico, USA.

I got interested in them a month ago because of their free online courses in fractals, complexity and chaos theory. I have been fascinated for decades by the patterns of nature, evolution, revolution, phase diagrams, punctuated equilibrium, emergence, the power law, the combination of opposites in phenomena and the messiness of the real world.

I want to incorporate messiness in future film and doco projects instead of some idealised preconception of the world.

Complexity Explorer is where the free training takes place. I have been finding it quite useful to get me thinking more about the subject.

Elizabeth

Last week I watched a DVD of the film Elizabeth (1998) made by Working Title and directed by Shekhar Kapur. He also made Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007). Both films won richly deserved Academy Awards. There was supposed to be a third film which sadly was never made.

Here are the Working Title web pages for Elizabeth and Elizabeth: The Golden Age.

Opening Sequence
In the Directors commentary on the Elizabeth DVD Shekhar Kapur says that the opening sequence of 3 protestants being burnt at the stake is "done with real people in there" and "everybody asked if there were any special effects" ..."There were none".

I thought the filmed sequence was very effective and tried to find out how that shot was done.

Update August 2015
I asked on the Facebook P.E.G Practical Effects Group and then on the Directors own website. Here is his reply.

"There was some smoke added initially, but as the fire built it was real and the people inside the fire were in covered in fireproof suits .. All the camera wires caught fire though as it was on the top of the flames .."

Architects Designing With Models

Architecture Van Brandenburg is a firm of Architects based in Dunedin, New Zealand. And they design with physical models first then go to CAD. The results - really beautiful buildings.

There are a pile more images at http://www.instagram.com/archvb/

They had an exhibition in Venice, Italy and also in San Francisco, USA.

I think good design needs to be done by drawing, sculpting, painting and making models. CAD is really great once that initial design process is completed to make the construction drawings.

I really like their design philosophy and creative process.

From their website:

"...Architecture Van Brandenburg place great emphasis on the ‘build-ability’ of its designs. The design process is similar to a sculptors process: beginning with rough physical model mock-ups and ending with highly detailed 3D computerised models.

This is achieved by continually building prototypes until the team is satisfied with their function, fit for their intended purpose. The advantage of this process, is that the clients and technicians know exactly what the buildings will look like, and how they can be constructed."

Great to see. They haven't been blinded by the current obsession with everything must be done digitally rather than using digital processes where it is really useful.