Photographer and filmmaker Christian Stangl labored in tandem with musician Max Cooper to supply a stunning music video that focuses on the fantastic thing about mild and kind mirrored by way of opals.
Stangl, a Vienna-based artist, has been researching and creating opening titles, music movies, and movement design on a number of initiatives for the final 20 years. In his most up-to-date venture, he partnered with musician Max Cooper to supply Spectrum, a brand new single from an album venture titled “Unstated Phrases.”
The Great thing about Opals
For the “Spectrum” music video, Cooper says he wished to discover the visible analogy of the colour spectrum and current it in partial, altering kind, in relation to human imagery.
“I chatted to the artist and movie creator Christian Stangl in regards to the venture, and he got here up with the concept of utilizing rocks with partial crystal constructions, water, and lighting results to discover the pure creation of coloration spectra from cut up white mild,” Cooper says. “The system yielded some constructions paying homage to the human kind, and Christian created human apparitions amongst them to be found with every viewing.”
Stangl says that to him, opals are extra than simply gem stones.
“They’re distinctive minerals that are created by nature in a particular manner,” he says. “Opals are shaped by accumulations of siliceous fluid in varied rocks. They’re shaped both in sedimentary rocks or hydrothermally in volcanic rocks, similar to in tuff, however they’ll additionally kind from natural materials over thousands and thousands of years. After they’re totally shaped they nonetheless have as much as 20% water.”
Stangl says that his father — Ernst Stangl — collects tough crystal opals and refines them into polished gem stones. To Stangl, the play of coloration on the stones is likely one of the most mesmerizing results he has ever seen and equates trying into the depth of an opal to trying into one other universe.
He was already beginning to work on a macro venture involving opals when Cooper reached out to make a music video for Spectrum.
“It didn’t take lengthy till I noticed that opals and Max Cooper’s monitor Spectrum might be an excellent match,” he says.
The way it Was Shot
“I used a small video-beamer with a particular lens attachment to venture tiny shifting footage onto the minerals to deliver them to life in a particular manner. Both these movies have been synchronized to the music or they present traces of people,” Stangl explains.
“The variation of sunshine and coloration makes the opal an ideal object simply ready to be moved. I used a micro-rotation-stage to get these motifs shifting and to alter the angle of incidence of the sunshine.”
Stangl says it was essential to set the opals in movement throughout capturing as a result of solely by altering the relative place of the sunshine and stone are the colours most seen.
“That’s why I used a micro rotation stage which is pace controllable and thus permits very gradual actions of the motif,” he explains. “The principle digital camera was a Fujifilm XH-1 with varied macro lenses. Essentially the most used lens was an previous Nikkor 55mm f/2.8 hooked up to a bellows machine to extend the magnification.”
Stangl says that in contrast to his many different movies, this one didn’t use any cease movement sequences, however as an alternative makes use of solely UHD video footage. He selected this methodology as a result of he wished to venture pre-synchronized video clips onto the opals that linked with the music. To keep up this sort of sync, he wanted to make use of conventional video seize.
“The beamer was modified with a particular lens to scale down the projection to a really small measurement which was about two to 3 centimeters in size,” he explains.
“Since I wished to point out quite a lot of opals, I shot many hours of footage. Within the closing consequence, solely 5 minutes [were selected].”
Stangl encourages those that watch the video to look carefully on the footage the place they might uncover weird landscapes, interstellar nebulae, and likewise human shapes.
Extra from Christian Stangl will be discovered on his Behance, whereas extra from Max Cooper will be discovered on his web site.
Picture credit: Images by Christian and Ernst Stangl.
