On “Loving Vincent” and New Media

The extent of Vincent Van Gogh’s art has been far-reaching. “The Starry Night” remains to be one of the most popular paintings in all of history. The distinct, almost psychedelic style he adopts is called Post-Impressionism and was a movement away from the naturalistic approach popular in the 19th century. It paved the way toward two other major movements in the 20th century: cubism and fauvism, relying mostly on colours and lines to evoke both emotion and movement. It has been two centuries since the post-impressionist movement started, but the distinct style of painting has been one of the more prominent forms of western art until today, permeating even popular culture as Van Gogh-inspired everything seems to be popping up everywhere: Sip and Gogh painting classes, Van Gogh jokes and memes, and even sly references to the tortured artist’s popular cut-off ear. It is no wonder that the life and art of Van Gogh has become the subject of an upcoming feature film, “Loving Vincent”, to be released later this year.

“Loving Vincent” is no ordinary film. Conceptualised in February 2014, Hugh Welchman took to the crowdsourcing website Kickstarter a campaign to help fund the creation of a Van Gogh-inspired biopic. The catch? The entire film would be created and animated from oil paintings, rendering 12 oil paintings per second, using Van Gogh’s unique style to portray movement as the story goes along. The film features over 120 of the painter’s greatest works and reimagines the life of Van Gogh — from his early years up until his controversial and untimely death — placing the narrative in his paintings, through several key characters we have come to know in his art. The story was based on 800 letters that Van Gogh wrote himself, hopefully capturing the true essence of the painter’s life immortalised in his own writings. As of writing time, the production team is still looking for high-level oil painters who are willing to be a part of the project. Over 100 painters have signed up to be a part of the film, and have undergone training in Van Gogh’s particular style. A teaser trailer was released in February 2016, showcasing some of the film’s greatest highlights and what kind of visual treat awaits moviegoers once the film is completed.

Animating a feature-length film entirely from oil paintings is a noble endeavour and no easy feat. Helmed by Polish painter and director Dorota Kobiela and Oscar award-winning director/producer Hugh Welchman, “Loving Vincent” will certainly be the first and only film of its kind when released. The decision to make a movie through oil-painting animation is bold and groundbreaking. But the process, albeit tedious, is similar to other forms of production that have become popular in animation. The process of animating oil-paintings bears a striking resemblance to stop-motion and clay animation, techniques of animation wherein individual elements in a sequence are physically manipulated to create the effect of motion. These techniques in film production, although fascinating and beautiful, seem to be a reflection of a move backwards in today’s age of technology. After all, why would anyone bother to film an entire feature-length movie manually when computers could very well shorten the amount of time needed and optimise the animation process? Why employ techniques that take too much time, when certain software can eliminate the need for it altogether? Do these trends of individual manipulation mean anything in the midst of all the immersive and simulated experiences in digital cinema?

The use of technological media in “Loving Vincent” presents a different kind of progression into digital animation and cinema in general. Over the years, digitally animated movies have become the subject of discussion as technological advancements in both the drawing and rendering processes have propelled animation from the ranks of lowly sketchbooks to Hollywood giants such as Disney and Pixar. The advent of computer animation and the shift to digital cinema has shaped our generation’s idea of visual culture as one I would describe as somewhere between “realistic” and “futuristic”. Today’s visual culture is dominated by a realism so pervasive where the viewer knows that the images shown to her are not real — especially in the case of digitally animated films such as Big Hero 6, or Frozen — but the simulation and representations shown are very much like what she is accustomed to in real life: water ripples, flows, and jumps in the same way the viewer knows it to be true. The evolution of visual culture has roots deeply embedded in the history of art, the emergence of immersion, and the continuous development of virtual reality. This evolution has always been characterised by creating techniques that would make the viewer less concerned about the thought of whether what she was viewing was different or not from reality. We see this in the way media has changed over the years, from the creation and widespread use of photography to panorama to the emergence of concepts such as perspective and the camera obscura. From Alberti’s window to creating spaces for seemingly realistic and immersive experiences, the creation of “Loving Vincent” almost becomes a statement of counterculture against the popular notion of visual culture today. By creating a film through painting, and adopting a particular style of art that is far from what we consider to be “realist”, Kobiela and Welchman challenge the notion of virtual realism that shapes modern digital cinema. Through every brush stroke made for each frame of the feature film, the viewer is transported to a world marked by colours and lines, far from the world she knows of sharp corners and smooth curves. Instead of mimicking what is real and what we see in our own lives, “Loving Vincent” mimicks a different kind of reality — one that Van Gogh created years ago and one that paints the world in a different light. I would argue that their decision to create the movie out of oil-paintings is not a backwards move as it may seem, but instead a progressive, artistic choice and a new frontier in today’s visual culture.

The unconventional project, currently in production, also sheds light on the role of the Internet and its place in relation to media. It’s funny to think that without the Internet and the many people on the World Wide Web, “Loving Vincent” might not have been created at all. Its characteristic as a networked form of media is so integral to its conception and identity as a film. Both funding and employment of artists were made possible because of the Internet, as the project was promoted on Kickstarter and its own website. By crowdsourcing, “Loving Vincent” was able to get a total of 796 backers to pledge funding, contributing a total of £53,292. This sense of community that “Loving Vincent” brings together is an embodiment of what new media is today. The Internet can create a network of users so wide that its effects can be limitless. In the case of the film, it has brought together a network of eager fans waiting to see Van Gogh’s paintings come to life, a network of oil painters eager to hone their craft, a network of filmmakers eager to see what animating paintings would look like in a film, a network of actors eager to see what a movie like this could be, a network of producers eager to see what this could mean for the future of film, the future of Hollywood, the future of movie production as we know it.

As the team behind “Loving Vincent” continue to labor over creating the very first feature-length film made completely from oil paintings, it is also interesting to anticipate how it would perform as a wide release international film. Given its initial investment from 796 people all around the world, the returns on this crowdsourced funding would prove pivotal in the development of similar media forms and films in the future. Past films have been funded through crowdsourcing platforms before, such as the Veronica Mars movie, a Chevy Superbowl commercial, and several other documentaries. Should “Loving Vincent” prove to be a successful project in terms of revenues, the future in film might be one that is characterised by the rise of independent studios who turn to the Internet for help in terms of backing and funding.

“Loving Vincent” is an exciting foray into what media has developed into and what it continues to develop into today. It is a perfect example of what new media is — not in the sense that it is a new invention or a groundbreaking form of technology — but in the way it is digital, networked, and simulated and how these characteristics define the entire project. New media need not be a completely new thing, but it is new in how it challenges the current notion of visual culture and representation, uproots the traditional way of getting funding for a film, and provides an avenue for artists and art aficionados to celebrate the art and life of one of history’s most beloved talented painters: Vincent Van Gogh.

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