Bicycle Messengers Written and Directed by Joshua Frankel Project Treatment: Bicycle Messengers is a short film about New York City bicycle messengers in which all of the messengers are animated and all of the backgrounds and environments are live action footage shot in midtown Manhattan. By juxtaposing the animated messenger on top of the live action, the film highlights the peculiar relationship between bicycle messengers and the modern city in which they operate. In Bicycle Messengers I experiment with both media and narrative methods. The background images and narration of Bicycle Messengers are presented with the tone of a documentary. However by using animation, I introduce artistic interpretation to the subject matter. The result is more of an overt mythologization than the traditional documentary. At their cores, both documentaries and myths are explanations and interpretations of the real world. Though documentaries are traditionally associated with fact, and myths are traditionally associated with fiction, filmmakers from Gillo Pontecorvo to Ken Burns and Michael Moore have been actively blending the documentary and the myth for years. Bicycle Messengers explores the uncomfortable yet crucial area in which these formats bleed together. Point of View: The characters of Bicycle Messengers are designed to suggest that they are heroes of the contemporary world, in the tradition of the Classical Greek hero, the samurai/cowboy, and the comic book superhero. Like these literary figures, the messenger has rare abilities, tragic weaknesses and the will to make sacrifices that benefit the rest of society. The narration is provided by an anonymous observer whose point of view is analogous to that of a nature photographer waiting for a spider to emerge from his hole. In nature photography, the audience gets to see the spider when he chooses to show himself, but does not get to see the interior of his hole, and is never privy to his most private thoughts. This point of view parallels that of most non-messengers in the City and in the audience. By maintaining this distance, the film shares its interpretation with the audience of what they might observe for themselves, and leaves room for the audience’s imagination to fill in the missing parts of the story, allowing the myth to develop. Narrative Structure: Our camera follows three anonymous messengers as they weave through Midtown Manhattan. We segue fluidly from one messenger to another as they pass each other on the street and in office buildings. In order to create the sense of a circuit, Bicycle Messengers opens and closes with the same messenger; in each case this messenger is riding from or to some other unknown destination. We never see any clean beginnings or endings: the film is only a window on a daily routine.
Media: I have created the messengers, and several of the camera moves, using 3D animation, a type of computer animation. This is the same process used to create the character Gollum in the recent Lord Of The Rings films, as well to create the recent fully animated movies Toy Story, Shrek, and The Incredibles. In Bicycle Messengers I have mingled this tool of blockbuster Hollywood studios with a tool of independent filmmakers: digital video. This marriage has given me, as a guerrilla filmmaker, unprecedented abilities. I have been able to place my characters in complex dangerous situations and I have been able to fabricate camera moves that I could not otherwise afford. Guerilla filmmaking has been defined in part by its limitations; this film is an experiment in breaking through some of those limits. Bicycle Messengers is, among other things, a story of the juxtapositions between the natural and the fantastic, the static and the kinetic, the objective and the subjective and old and new technologies. The choice of the project’s tools reflects these themes. It is also a declaration to all independent filmmakers and their audiences about what is now possible. Style of Animation: The messengers are rendered using customized computer programs that I have written specifically for this project to allow them to look like traditional ink drawings moving through three dimensional space. They have dynamic outlines with constantly shifting weights surrounding washes that react to changes in the light as the camera and characters move across a shot. The use of ink as an aesthetic reference links the characters to illustration – the visual format traditionally used to represent heroes. The end result of this fusion is a style that is unique and reflective of the subject matter. Score: An original score has been composed by Judd Greenstein, David Frankel and Frank Liao. The music uses Hip-Hop as a starting point as that is the music of the streets of Midtown Manhattan, even if it may not be the music of the offices above. There is one theme for each of the three messengers, each reflecting its associated messenger’s character. There is also a theme representing the office spaces that presents a significant shift in mood from the themes of the messengers. Relationship to recent work: I have spent the past five years creating visual effects, primarily for television ads, most recently as a VFX Supervisor/Technical Director at rhinofx in New York City. In Bicycle Messengers I use the same narrative, aesthetic and technical tools that I have used in advertising, however I am now using them to create a different type of work. Advertising is about creating a perfect world where everything is defined by a brand. Bicycle Messengers is about the tension that exists in the real world between people who are different from one and other. Ads are concerned with the beauty of harmony, and this project is concerned with the beauty of dissonance. Conclusion: Bicycle Messengers is a unique film that utilizes, examines and subverts the documentary format. Its choices of storytelling tools, media and visual style serve the expression of its ideas and its combinations of media announce new possibilities for independent film. The theme of juxtaposition is echoed throughout its methods in order to present an image of a group of people who are utterly different from the world in which they live.
Bicycle Messengers Written and Directed by Joshua Frankel Project Treatment: Bicycle Messengers is a short film about New York City bicycle messengers in which all of the messengers are animated and all of the backgrounds and environments are live action footage shot in midtown Manhattan. By juxtaposing the animated messenger on top of the live action, the film highlights the peculiar relationship between bicycle messengers and the modern city in which they operate. In Bicycle Messengers I experiment with both media and narrative methods. The background images and narration of Bicycle Messengers are presented with the tone of a documentary. However by using animation, I introduce artistic interpretation to the subject matter. The result is more of an overt mythologization than the traditional documentary. At their cores, both documentaries and myths are explanations and interpretations of the real world. Though documentaries are traditionally associated with fact, and myths are traditionally associated with fiction, filmmakers from Gillo Pontecorvo to Ken Burns and Michael Moore have been actively blending the documentary and the myth for years. Bicycle Messengers explores the uncomfortable yet crucial area in which these formats bleed together. Point of View: The characters of Bicycle Messengers are designed to suggest that they are heroes of the contemporary world, in the tradition of the Classical Greek hero, the samurai/cowboy, and the comic book superhero. Like these literary figures, the messenger has rare abilities, tragic weaknesses and the will to make sacrifices that benefit the rest of society. The narration is provided by an anonymous observer whose point of view is analogous to that of a nature photographer waiting for a spider to emerge from his hole. In nature photography, the audience gets to see the spider when he chooses to show himself, but does not get to see the interior of his hole, and is never privy to his most private thoughts. This point of view parallels that of most non-messengers in the City and in the audience. By maintaining this distance, the film shares its interpretation with the audience of what they might observe for themselves, and leaves room for the audience’s imagination to fill in the missing parts of the story, allowing the myth to develop. Narrative Structure: Our camera follows three anonymous messengers as they weave through Midtown Manhattan. We segue fluidly from one messenger to another as they pass each other on the street and in office buildings. In order to create the sense of a circuit, Bicycle Messengers opens and closes with the same messenger; in each case this messenger is riding from or to some other unknown destination. We never see any clean beginnings or endings: the film is only a window on a daily routine.
Media: I have created the messengers, and several of the camera moves, using 3D animation, a type of computer animation. This is the same process used to create the character Gollum in the recent Lord Of The Rings films, as well to create the recent fully animated movies Toy Story, Shrek, and The Incredibles. In Bicycle Messengers I have mingled this tool of blockbuster Hollywood studios with a tool of independent filmmakers: digital video. This marriage has given me, as a guerrilla filmmaker, unprecedented abilities. I have been able to place my characters in complex dangerous situations and I have been able to fabricate camera moves that I could not otherwise afford. Guerilla filmmaking has been defined in part by its limitations; this film is an experiment in breaking through some of those limits. Bicycle Messengers is, among other things, a story of the juxtapositions between the natural and the fantastic, the static and the kinetic, the objective and the subjective and old and new technologies. The choice of the project’s tools reflects these themes. It is also a declaration to all independent filmmakers and their audiences about what is now possible. Style of Animation: The messengers are rendered using customized computer programs that I have written specifically for this project to allow them to look like traditional ink drawings moving through three dimensional space. They have dynamic outlines with constantly shifting weights surrounding washes that react to changes in the light as the camera and characters move across a shot. The use of ink as an aesthetic reference links the characters to illustration – the visual format traditionally used to represent heroes. The end result of this fusion is a style that is unique and reflective of the subject matter. Score: An original score has been composed by Judd Greenstein, David Frankel and Frank Liao. The music uses Hip-Hop as a starting point as that is the music of the streets of Midtown Manhattan, even if it may not be the music of the offices above. There is one theme for each of the three messengers, each reflecting its associated messenger’s character. There is also a theme representing the office spaces that presents a significant shift in mood from the themes of the messengers. Relationship to recent work: I have spent the past five years creating visual effects, primarily for television ads, most recently as a VFX Supervisor/Technical Director at rhinofx in New York City. In Bicycle Messengers I use the same narrative, aesthetic and technical tools that I have used in advertising, however I am now using them to create a different type of work. Advertising is about creating a perfect world where everything is defined by a brand. Bicycle Messengers is about the tension that exists in the real world between people who are different from one and other. Ads are concerned with the beauty of harmony, and this project is concerned with the beauty of dissonance. Conclusion: Bicycle Messengers is a unique film that utilizes, examines and subverts the documentary format. Its choices of storytelling tools, media and visual style serve the expression of its ideas and its combinations of media announce new possibilities for independent film. The theme of juxtaposition is echoed throughout its methods in order to present an image of a group of people who are utterly different from the world in which they live.
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frankel, joshua, josh, bicycle, messenger, animation, animated, bike, courier, film, short, video, 3D, CGI, CG, hip hop, documentary, Judd Greenstein, Dylan Maxwell, John Moros, integration, New York, NYC, DV, independant, guerilla, manhattan, doored, office, computer, Joshua Frankel, Josh Frankel, Bicycle Messengers, movie, hip-hop
