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Gosling on the run - Drive or Ides of March?

This year we had an honour of seeing Ryan Gosling in two spectacular productions: Drive, directed by Nicolas Winding Refn and Ides of March, from the good old George Clooney.
As I checked just today, both the productions received an Academy Award nomination - Drive got one for the sound editing while Ides of March is chasing up the hill of adapted screenplay.

I have seen both and I heard mixed opinions of both as well.
Drive struck like a thunder in the late September leaving the audience speechless - this movie is just different - was among the feedback I heard. It is true by all means. The film is heavily stylised for the 80s' cinema in therms of image and sound and evolves around the story of the nameless driver for hire who happens to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Gosling's character by all means is different to your everyday blockbuster's; he vaguely speaks, his face hardly leaves a trace of emotion. He just drives. The driver resembles the samurai-like characters who follow a strict set of rules bound by honour. Once given a word, he would not turn back.
As the plot develops, he would soon cross paths with the two antagonists, Ron Pearlman and Albert Brooks who are way less enigmatic: they are pure evil, and also would not stop for anything to achieve what they are after.

Refn's production strikes an amazing balance between the main characters subtlety and the visual effects close to 80's gore B-movies (ironically, Brooks' characters is a producer of these).

Ides of March is way more mainstream, as expected of Clooney's.
Here Gosling plays Stephen Meyers, a successful rookie left among the big guns of dirty politics. Meyers, as opposed to the rest of the cast is idealistic and hasn't been polluted with the cynicism and amorality (yet). This time Gosling is a completely different character - he is a charismatic pressman who is able to 'talk out' whoever he meets. Also he adapts more than one face expression throughout the film.
As the plot thickens, Gosling character is faced with moral dilemmas: his pride and curiosity lead him to a dead-end - as he experiences the true nature of heavy-weight politics behind the scenes, he goes all-in against the odds and his superiors.

Both Drive and Ides of March have been in some way remarkable productions and overall had a very good reception amongst the critics. Drive's lone rider scheme seems to resemble No Country for Old Men, with limited characters, long sequences and a feature-long pursuit. The production's trademark was the mesmerizing soundtrack. Ides of March's main strength was the cast of supporting roles - much like in Noolan's Inception despite the action centered around the main character, it is the secondary characters who 'make the production complete'.
The Drive is more popular according to imdb's results and has yet scored more awards, yet left it is Ides of March which left me more speechless. Despite the amazing visual and musical craft, the movie left me following the quality of image rather than image as such - despite the remarkable character development it lacked plot-twists and as such was pretty predictable from the moment of explosion onwards. All I could guess was how 'explicit' the next death would be. Ides of March on the other hand also was crafted finely but at the same time made me delve into the plot myself and wonder what happens in the sequence to follow.
Just personal thoughts. I am not saying one is better than the other, and both are definitely worth the while.

One question though : despite the earlier concerns which of the two productions Gosling should go with for the Academy Awards - how come he never actually got a nomination? I think I've been missing something.

Streetsport titles

That was the biggest one yet I think.
I did get a lot of feedback and adjusted to them in the matter of hours for almost a consecutive week. All in all I ended up producing 5 different version of the same sequence, correcting the main logo, fixing the colours on the go, altering the sound effects and so and so and so...
Long story short - some experience out of it on various software with a happy ending.
Anyway it started 'randomly' with this:



Then the second version, a simple fade-in:



Thirdly (is this even a word?) a not-so-simple fade-in with corrected colours:



SFX corrected (due to ambiguous meaning behind the spray-can sounds:



And the final, which got split into two sequences to represent the intro and the outro.

Character reveal in after effects

I was revising some After Effects features over the Christmas break. This is not ideal yet but I believe will come in handy for the bigger feature (the documentary of Streetsport).

This was inspired with title sequences and ending credits from Guy Ritchie's movies. Starting from Snatch, then Rocknrolla and finally Sherlock Holmes.
 As I have just recently seen the Game of Shadows (which I thoroughly recommend, at least for the visual part) I decided to aim for an effect similar to the one seen at the end of the movie (either the first or the sequel, they are pretty much the same) which is a character reveal through the ink bleeds.
So I did find several tutorials on-line except the atmosphere of Sherlock Holmes (industrial, dirty London) did not quite match the one I am trying to associate the Streetsport with. Hence I replaced the old paper texture with the asphalt road and here it is.
I used the footage from the freestyle movie with Zahed which may be found here