Dancing Pigeons – Ritalin

Posted by Fabio 26 July 2010

“Duels fascinate me. It used to be a popular thing, but in modern days it has died out. So I thought that probably somewhere in the States, some hillbillies are still doing it, their way.”
Director Tomas Mankovsky’s new video “Ritalin” for Dancing Pigeons has it all, ugly teeth, pickup trucks and a flamethrower.

Mankovsky has created an aggressive, yet beautiful piece relying on the preconceptions and fears that surround the culture of the stereotypical American rednecks.
Shot almost entirely on the phantom camera at a 1000fps, threw up its own difficulties.
“The next tricky thing was getting the exposure right where Adam Frisch, the DP, did a great job. Since we shot at high frame rates we needed a lot of light, but I wanted to shoot it at night, which made it difficult. And on top of that, the main element in frame was a huge fireball that was really bright.”
Shooting in camera was a conscious decision to create a more real and visually striking film.

”It was difficult to know how this shootout would look like in superslowmo. We did some tests with a gas-flamethrower but the flame was only 2-3 meters and it looked quite bad in slowmo, so the special effects guys had to build a new flamethrower from scratch. They made one with liquid fuel, and that one was much better, firing out 10-15 meter flames. But the first time we saw how the flamethrower and fire extinguisher looked and behaved in slowmo was on the day of the shoot.”
Tomas’s reaction to ‘Ritalin’ and his reinvention of the classic duel, has resulted in a stunning piece of film making, that both provokes and transfixes the viewer.

www.tom.as
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