(s)Tumbled Onto My Hitchcock Posters

Rear Window Animated Movie Poster

Yesterday I was scrolling through my Tumblr feed and suddenly saw my animated Rear Window movie poster as part of a collection of animated GIF movie posters posted by The Creators Project. Well how did that happen? Apparently ten days ago an imgur user with an impossibly long username had collected a number of animated movie posters into two galleries (part 1 and part 2), posted to Reddit and hits the front page, and discovered many of the culture bloggers jumped and reposted:

WIRED (Underwire) – Movie Posters Are Infinitely Better as Mesmerizing GIFs

io9.com – Enhanced Movie Posters Bring New Meaning To The Term “Action Film”

Fast Company (Co.Create) – 8 Mesmerizing GIF Movie Posters Bring Life To Iconic Images

The Creators Project – See Iconic Movie Posters Recreated As GIFs

Gizmodo (Sploid) – Every movie poster needs to be turned into a GIF like these

In all, four of the five animated Hitchcock posters I created were featured in these and other posts I discovered. And I really enjoyed how Mark Strauss, Senior Editor at io9.com commented on the Rear Window poster:

The poster for Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window is motionless, until Grace Kelley suddenly tilts her head to gaze at James Stewart, who lowers his camera, as if he knows he’s been spotted. It’s a tense scene before even seeing the film. Such is the magic of animated movie posters.

I reached out to Mark and a number of others via Twitter thank them/let them know who’d created the all those Alfred Hitchcock animated posters. A few favorited, replied, and/or retweeted which is really cool.

It is nice to see your work out there and appreciated by a lot of people!

Jim Groom recently posted about his Jason and the Argonauts animated movie poster being rediscovered by the Nerd Approved Blog. And I respect how the ‘Nerds’ attributed all the GIFs they posted to the original authors. The same cannot be said for the culture bloggers’ posts which assigned authorship to the curator. It’s the way of the author-less-web where work is anonymized into galleries such as the two created by Rindfleischetikettierungsuberwachungsaufgabenubertragungsgesetz (yes that’s the imgur username – based off the formerly longest German word since retired). And as an artist that remixes, curates, and comments on all sorts of pieces of culture it’s an understandable practice. Though I do feel a twinge of disappointment to not be recognized.

It was over two years ago that I created my first animated An American Werewolf in London poster, which inspired a number of others in the ds106 digital storytelling community to do the same. I truly enjoyed the work that was spawned out of that time (Tim’s The Cooler poster in particular). And I imagine I’ve had a little bit to do with inspiring the current animated movie poster makers out there – each sharing their love of poster art and  showcasing their animation skills with their original re-interpretations.


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6 responses to “(s)Tumbled Onto My Hitchcock Posters”

  1. Jim Groom Avatar

    MBS,

    I hear you on this, the idea of credit and attribution is so tricky in the meme/remix/riff movement of so much of this work, that said, getting recognized is awesome and right. I also think recognition is also knowing the work that you did is informing an aesthetic, it’s the idea f being part of something. The idea that scares me of the internet artist is somehow that’s outside the all too often anonymous doing. It’s that blurring of your work as an artist that I think is really compelling, and pushing harder there might be really interesting. the GIF and authorship just seem so antithetical, and that tension is important, what does it mean?

    1. mbransons Avatar

      I feel like there’s an interesting threshold shift possible in the understanding of the artist’s purpose here. Traditionally the artist’s work was upheld by a select group as ‘important’ and ‘transformative.’ And it rightly was. But that it was upheld as the example of transformation is starting to ring hollow to me as an artist’s means of a achieving transformation or transforming the conversation about a particular focus.

      I’ve become good friends with Ryan Seslow over the past year and a half and I am utterly enthralled with the output of his work, his teaching, his good nature, and probably most important ability to build collaborations, foster communities of creative practice, and collectively celebrate them. GIFFight and soon an collaborative remix of the Transit Museum Archives is due in large part to his willingness to seek partners first.

      It reminds me of Nancy White, Zach Davis, and Giulia Forsythe’s talk about the Social Artist that you all hosted via DLTV Today some time back. I have to listen/watch that again, as it rings true to me the idea that the best art(ist) in the future will be those that are the great hosts to large and interesting conversations.

  2. Stefanie Avatar
    Stefanie

    A simple way of making sure your work will be recognized as yours is using a kind of signature.

    Rindfleischetikettierungsuberwachungsaufgabenubertragungsgesetz – > beef label surveillance duty delegation law

    1. mbransons Avatar

      Yes quite the ‘beefed-up signature’ 63 characters worth, but a Twitter slim-shake will be necessary.

  3. […] mediascape. This is readily apparent in his remarkable number of glitch GIFs or his animated Hitchcock movie posters, but more on those in a […]

  4. […] time with making GIFs, in particular animated movie posters, has been on suspension now for about three years. Sad in some ways, but I’ve been busy. The […]