Warbles

Hattie

2011-12-09T18:57:00.000-08:00

New Website

2011-10-12T20:48:00.001-07:00

www.iansamuels.net

Photos from my short, Caterwaul

2011-06-09T11:35:00.000-07:00

Photos from previous work

2011-03-12T07:25:00.000-08:00

Caterwaul Creature!

2011-03-03T14:05:00.000-08:00

I'm posting a few images of the creature we're building for Caterwaul. The first couple of images are concept illustrations composed by Ashley Stoddard and the last is a photograph of the puppet-in-progress being built by David Monzingo. She's just a skelly here. ... But she's grooowing!

puppet builder: DAVID MONZINGO http://www.sheepsclothingproductions.com

creature design: ASHLEY STODDARD http://stodspace.typepad.com/blog/

Caterwaul Promo

2011-02-24T18:18:00.000-08:00

Here we go... Please check out this link for more information, spread the word, and if you find a place in your heart and a penny in your pocket help make this!

FOR MORE INFORMATION, AND TO MAKE A DONATION, VISIT:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1832560538/caterwaul

Nancy and the Dapper Toad Screening

2010-07-18T06:40:00.000-07:00

Nancy and the Dapper Toad will be screening next week (in HD!) as part of the LA ShortsFest!!

It's slotted for Wednesday, July 28th at 7:45pm at the Laemmle Sunset 5 (8000 Sunset Blvd. West Hollywood).

www.lashortsfest.com

Myrna the Monster Goes to the Movies

2010-05-22T12:55:00.000-07:00

Will she make it??

Myrna the Monster Goes to the Movies from Ian Samuels on Vimeo.

This was made for the 2010 CalArts showcase screenings. There is a slightly different version for each screening: film/video, program in film directing and experimental animation.

Ian loves felt now

2010-01-19T21:39:00.000-08:00

I made a bunch of wayward felt hand puppets for a comedy group in LA. They still need clothes but they are on their way.

German TV Making of The Neverending Story 1984

2009-08-02T21:56:00.000-07:00

Just thought some of this practical work was fascinating. Particularly part 4.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 5:

Imagined Spaces/Imagined Lives Performance this weekend

2009-06-02T12:19:00.000-07:00

This weekend I'll be performing in a wacky puppet production. Here's the info:

Imagined Spaces/ Imagined Lives is a series of collaborations between architects and puppet theater artists. Ephemeral citizens inhabit impossible and impractical inventions. Building codes and zoning laws are dispensed with. Spacial hallucinations are investigated and architectural archeology is unearthed. These collaborations take the form of topographical maps, walking tours, puppet shows, installations and animated architectural models.

PART I
Friday, June 5 - Sunday, June 7th at 8PM

Each night will begin at The Manual Archives and conclude a short distance away at Materials and Applications:
3320 W Sunset Boulevard LA, CA 90026-------->1619 Silver Lake Blvd. LA, CA 90026

+*+*+++_****PERFORMANCES***+++*+*+

EXHIBIT A
by Tom Pejic, Monica Oller, Katie Shook and Susan Simpson with Marc Nimoy

8 pm, at Manual Archives

NAME/HERE: a guided walking tour
by DanRae Wilson and Julia Hiser

8:30 pm, starting at Manual Archives and ending at Materials and Applications

AN EXCITED PLASMA EVENT, ONE DAY ON TILAPIA ISLAND; THE END
by Yelena Zhelezov, Oliver Hess
performed by Ian Samuels, Zoe Aja Moore and Kyle Leeser

9 pm, at Materials and Applications

For Tickets and More Information go to www.manualarchives.org

Liquid

2009-05-21T14:15:00.000-07:00

Nancy and the Dapper Toad Stills

2009-05-06T17:31:00.000-07:00

Some stills from the short I'm working on.

Memories

2009-03-30T22:12:00.000-07:00

Taken a year ago at Jay M. Berman's Family Dentistry after the new lettering was put up in the windows.

Nodes

2009-03-28T10:31:00.000-07:00

Weird pulsing clay orbs. I'm into the environment. This either takes place inside my indecisive mind. Or its the feeling inside the airport. Or both.

The Kitchen Sink

2009-02-27T20:18:00.000-08:00

A little thing - too bad about the camera move...

Meats

2009-02-23T14:12:00.000-08:00

Or... The Morning After.

Each shot was taken once in sequence - which was a good thing in the end because the tripe was starting to smell horrible under the lights.

Snow on Porter Drive

2009-02-06T21:59:00.000-08:00

Footage I took during a storm in December when everyone retreated.

The Winter Witches

2009-01-19T22:18:00.001-08:00

Down in the woods lived the winter witches,
Brewing tasty stews to satisfy their itches,
But time and time again,
They had the same problem,
The main ingredient required one or two children

Up in the village lived the little Riches,
Benny and Junebea dressing in their britches,
They had the same dream,
They did-
The witches brew a scheme,
To rid -
Their little bodies down below the iron lid

So they prepared their very own stew,
With a cauldron, fire, and what have you

And there they waited by the window sill,
To tackle any blotches,
A delicious thrill

Below stormy clouds flew Heigl and Ramlitches,
Scoping out the village with its blackened niches,
“Slimper down,” said Heigle, “Ho!”
Ramlitches left an undertoe,
“Look beyond the pumpkins covered in blue snow!”

The witches eyed the home from two vertical pitches,
Dark besides a bedroom dancing with the fire’s whispses,
Ramlitches cackled, “lets go!”
She licked wet lips and so,
They swooped their brooms towards the twisting village below

The suspense, it mounts
Both prepare to pounce
It’s a terrible scene by all accounts

But Benny and Junebea moved the pot which now is,
Waiting by the window with its bubbling flitches,
And two ladies flew still,
Down through that windowsill,
And found themselves victims of kids with far superior skill

They thrashed and yelped,
“My nose, it melt!”
“I think a sausage leg I smelt!”

Plans can unravel with similar glitches,
Nothing is failsafe from nasty hitches,
And who is to blame?
For this brief fair game?
The children and the witches should be equally ashamed

But fear not, the story,
still it twitches,
The cousins of the dead lived in nearby thickets,
Truth be told, what goes around,
Calls for naughty children to be browned,
They were sadly unprepared for the flock that soon flew down

Should this go on we’d find that still it switches,
Victor or victim, between children and witches,
But who will win the war?
Listen on, to be sure
The children found a way out of the gruesome gore

“Wait!” called Benny, “Halt!”
“But my cousin’s garnished with salt!”
“Yes, but don’t you see that we’re both at fault?”

A murmuring cast amongst the several witches
“We need simmering kids for our brewing delitches”
“Tried a carrot?” asked Junebea
“Or a delightful little pea?”
The witches shrugged, not one had tried, they all could agree.

“Vegetable soup for a healthy witch is
Better for flying, which takes muscle pitches”
Benny brought out a can
Steamed it on the fire and
To their delight the taste was even better than childran

So that’s about the end of the story’s hitches
The children share veggie soup with the winter witches
And so far so good
Feasting ladies haven’t understood
Plants are green because they grow from witches dead as wood

But should they find out…
Beware, those winter witches.

Mr. Rogers defends PBS to the US Senate

2009-01-10T10:48:00.000-08:00

Its worth watching this entire clip

Cape Cod

2008-12-03T13:57:00.000-08:00

I made this little piece inspired by the Edward Gorey drawing from The Glorious Nosebleed.

Edward Gorey's caption reads: "The creature regarded them balefully"

This is some haggard green screen work composited with a model of a Cape Cod beach that I built in my apartment and some footage of the ocean that I shot here in LA.

Somehow, over the past few months, I ended up making a trilogy of projects centered on a similar moment. Part one was The Nest, part two is Cape Cod, and... soon to come... part three is Meats.

Time Piece

2008-11-29T11:53:00.000-08:00

Jim Henson...

Two of a Kind

2008-11-16T11:19:00.000-08:00

A sitcom.

Also, who knew that this was also a sitcom with the Olsen Twins?? Anyway, this was dug up from the mid 80's, before they were even born.

Corn Flakes

2008-10-31T16:11:00.001-07:00

mmm

The Nest

2008-10-24T12:08:00.001-07:00

Here is a single static shot that I put together. I added a little bit of ambient sound for the posting but it was created as a silent short.

Benny

2008-10-11T12:13:00.000-07:00

This morning's doodle:

Ezra's Epitaph

2008-10-08T22:32:00.001-07:00

Here's a clip from a project I wrote, directed and animated a few years ago.

The Nest

2008-10-05T20:14:00.000-07:00

Here's a still from my new project.

Cave Monster

2008-09-27T12:28:00.000-07:00

I've been working on a cave monster puppet for a short project I'll be shooting next week so I thought I'd post my progress. This charming guy is still in the works but he's almost ready for his close-up.

First, I sculpted him in a slow air drying modeling clay. I'm keeping it up in my apartment because it reminds me of one of Catherine O'Hara's sculptures in Beetlejuice.

Then I cast him in latex, painted him, and added some teeth and eye accessories. You can see part of the cave texture I've been working on behind the latex puppet. It's a giant nest of chicken wire, paper maché, plaster and dribbling, watery paint riddles.

I'll be working on some details next and then I hope to get some thick oozy cave monster goo on him for my shoot. More to come...

Death Becomes Her Mansion

2008-09-07T09:29:00.000-07:00

Speaking of mansions... here are some images of a model that was used for one of the Death Becomes Her mansions from an old Cinefex.

The Art of the Haunted Mansion

2008-09-05T13:42:00.000-07:00

I just ordered a copy of the Art of the Haunted Mansion, which has some great concept art, wardrobe, makeup and visual effects images from the bomber movie. (Which, in its defense, had some great visuals... and the ride had so much potential...)

Only a handfull of these books were ever printed and distributed, I think, to those affiliated with the project. So I thought I'd post some of my favorite images from the book. My scanner is pretty primitive and small and a lot of these images are quite big (the book is large) so don't make any composition judgments... Overall, I love the tone of these pictures. I just wish they carried through the entire movie. There are plenty more images that I'd like to post some day, including the great changing portraits that were redesigned just for the movie. In Jason Surrell's text, he notes that Rob Minkoff keyed "haunted elegance" to describe the look of the film: "a prase that perfectly captured the unique blend of Gothic horror, romance, fantasy and refinement that he was seeking... The result [of the reimagined house] was an architectural marvel and a masterpiece of interior design, the central character in Rob Minkoff's 'haunted fairy tale.'"

I love the ghostly detail of the body in the lake in the bottom of the black and white illustration.

This image is much larger, but I was mostly interested in the twisting Underwold that warps from a horizontal plane in the foreground to a vertical plane in the background.

Just a couple great '80's fantasy movie-ish' practical makeup corpse faces

Notice the hidden ghost faces in the shadows

Princess Aurora is Autistic

2008-08-30T15:41:00.000-07:00

I had the pleasure of seeing Sleeping Beauty last night at a screening at the El Capitan theater - which was gorgeous. But I do have one note regarding the story. Princess Aurora has a stilted personality and ambles through most of the movie completely emotionally detached. So, here is the theory: the third fairy was supposed to bestow the gift of personality after her life partners offered beauty and song. But, when the evil Maleficent cast her own gift, Meriwether was forced to forgo her spell in order to quell the curse of death. Subsequently, Princess Aurora lives a life of beauty and song but is tragically left autistic.

The Graveyard Shift Librarian

2008-08-26T12:02:00.001-07:00

The librarian down the street from me is evil. "I just tell it like it is," I heard her say once. When I went up to her to check out a book she yelled at a grown man, "WALK!" and then began muttering to me under her breath: "I hope what happened to that little girl the other day happens to him." I looked down. "It's a terrible thing to say," she continued. "She didn't listen to me and then she fell and her head starting bleeding and she cried. She learned her lesson."
This librarian makes me feel like I'm 5 years old again, in trouble, panicky. My heart is always pounding when I approach her. She works the graveyard afternoon shift at the library. And then she goes to the cemetery to bury all the kids she's collected throughout the day. She's a witch.

Birthtaint Trailer

2008-05-28T20:12:00.000-07:00

It's a joke. This is the movie trailer for a play that's coming up in Williamsburg at the Brick Theater Festival in June.

GERMS!

2008-05-01T19:16:00.000-07:00

A little movie I made called Germs.

2008-04-20T19:51:00.000-07:00

My favorite thing of the week and 15 years ago.

Cloud Tank

2008-04-20T15:52:00.000-07:00

I've been wanting to shoot a cloud tank for some time and I finally got around to it this weekend and got some nice shots. I look forward to trying it again and working with liquids at different densities... and then making something out of it.

Model Cliff

2008-04-20T12:36:00.000-07:00

I built and animated this model cliff for a play that went up in New York last month. There's already a revival show scheduled in a couple months so there will be more work to come on this...