10/03/2017

Inspired By... La La Land



It's again the 10th of the month and time for the "Inspired by" creation! But what is Inspired by? Every month awesome Marsha and I choose a subject to be inspired by. It can be for example an idea (link)a product (link)a person (link) or a book (link). Or anything! Then we make something inspired by that theme or a piece of art and share it with you and each other on the 10th of the month. You can browse the past "Inspired By" posts from here (link).


When thinking of the following "Inspired By"s in the beginning of the year we were fortunate enough to actually be face to face! That happened during the Frankfurt fair, the Creative World, where Marsha was demoing and I was just walking the show. Naturally we knew we would go there and meet and thus left the choice of the themes for that occasion. It's always wonderful to actually talk about the themes as we both get excited and throw in ideas and a simple conversation usually provides inspiration for a dozen projects, at least it does that for me!

This month's theme was a kind of happy accident. We tend to do films from time to time and just started talking about what we were planning to go see and such and realized we both were interested in this film - La La Land. I had already agreed with my husband that when the kids had their spring break and hit the cabin with the grandparents, we would go to see this movie. Marsha had a similar plan. So we chose to use that as an Inspired By as well. Naturally we both watched Oscars with a keen eye, too, because last year we used the the winning picture. Oopsie. I looked that up and it was actually back in 2015! Boy, time flies! But here's the link to that creation, Inspired by Birdman (link).

But back to the source! This time we used La La Land like I said. It's a kind of love story with a twist, the plot itself is actually quite seen and heard and read already but still La La Land is fresh. It bows to the great Hollywood pictures with song and dance but is still quite unique. The cinematography is beautiful, some of the moments are like paintings and the honoring of the old times makes the film seem familiar, like a lost relative or friend. It's a movie that leaves you humming and smiling. If you want to read more about the film, here's the link to the official site (link).


I think I was expecting too much as I didn't have that magical moment while watching the movie. It maybe was also the wrong moment as I hurried from work to the cinema, but still I wasn't so much in awe as I thought I would be. But what I really liked was the music (my husband did, too!) and the painting like shots. The "West Side Story" and "Astaire/Rogers" styled scenes made me smile. 

I also had some issues with the film. Like the constant use of primaries+green in the beginning of the movie! When Mia and her friends head over to a party wearing a blue, a red, a green and a yellow dress I literally wanted to scream. During the opening scene the primaries + green work and they made me think about the costumes of West Side Story (or Star Trek) but after that I was like c'mon - there's more color choices! Luckily either the story swept me along after that or then the style changed a little because the issue didn't bother me that much after that scene.


I made notes during the film but nothing caught my interest so vividly that by the time I was leaving the theater I would have know what I was going to do. Like so many times, I used another source of inspiration to limit my choices and make up my mind what to do. I have noticed that even the Inspired By posts are very seldom just using a one source for me. As these projects are usually my playground, my playtime without limitations, I want to try out new things and for example make a project I wouldn't otherwise normally do. Like the little rabbit statue. Or going for felt and fabrics. In a way I want to kill to birds with one stone, as they say.

For this project the other source was something I'm doing tomorrow - demoing the new Finnabair waxes in an event here in Finland called Leimailutaivas. In my demo I'm doing small tags (link) but I also wanted to make a bigger, even more dimensional project, to be shown beside my table. So the other source was to use the waxes, to make a canvas. 

Now that I had my limits, my guide lines, laid down, it was just to start creating. I used two canvases and attached them together to mimic the two characters in the movie, Mia and Sebastian. I used the other the right side up and the other one flipped trying to illustrate that the characters have their differences. I also decorated the halves to match the characters. Even if it may not look like it all the items and details I used have their base on the film.


Above is the finished canvas. The bottom part is Sebastian with his burn to make jazz great again, to own a club. The upper part is Mia, an aspiring playwright, story teller, dreaming of Paris. 

So why is the canvas blue and black and silver, you may ask. It's because of two things. First of all, I like blue, but my liking hasn't got anything to do with the movie. Blue is present in the movie in several occasions. For example in the "Mia and her friends" scene it's Mia who has the blue dress. Some of the scenes are shot through a blue filter. But above all, the blue is connected to the song "City of stars". You can listen a part of it here (link). The whole project is one big starry sky under which the characters live.

Now it's time to head to Marsha's blog (link) and see what she has made for this post! I wonder if she's also inspired by the music or something completely different! 

Thank you for stopping by today! Have a great Friday!


Materials: Prima Marketing

2 comments:

Marsha Valk said...

:-D!!! It's funny that the primary colours irritated you. I was all: this is soooo West Side Story (and a bit of Fame), I loooove it! ;-)
It was good discussing our next themes face-to-face, wasn't it! And yes, there is always something else mixing in with the actual theme. That's how it becomes 'you' or 'me'. I think this is fab. I'm glad we choose this film!

Marsha Valk said...

Have fun tomorrow!!

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