Features


YOAV SEGAL - LIFE IS A MERITOCRACY

Yoav Segal is a film-maker and artist based in London. All images in this article are by Yoav (copyright 2007, all rights reserved). Here, he tells Weaponizer about his latest projects, and his outlook on the creative industries.

W/ These pieces represent the static visual side of your work but you also make films - tell us about your last project and how you got involved in Film and TV.

YS/ I studied Illustration at UWE in Bristol and found myself with edit software and a camera and started to shoot things. Anything. I made films in my fridge. I'm a firm beliver that all creative sequential imagery has a common theme, and once you appreciate what you like you can just get working. I love all things creative: writing, shooting film, music, animation, working with actors and painting. They come together in film. Film is an amazing medium, you can do just about anything.

One of my latest projects is The Battle of Cable Street, a follow up dramatic short (using live action, rotoscoping and frame by frame painted animation) to a doc I made about my grandfather. The latest film tells the story of how Mosley and his black-shirt fascists were stopped from marching through the East End of London in 1936. This film has had a great run in film festivals, especially in America and it won best HD film at DC shorts in Washington.

I'm currently working on a follow up film, interviewing volunteers who went to fight Franco in Spain in the Spanish Civil War. Their stories are mind blowing, the sacrifice and heart-ache of losing is gutting. It does not have a happy ending. Fascism is not stopped in Spain, in no small part due to a non-intervention policy from the British and French Governments even though Italy and Germany were sending troops and arms. World War 2 ominously rolls forward and Franco stays in power for 40 years.

I also am completing a film for a family therapy [organisation] that helps delinquent children who are repeatedly suspended. It's a docu-drama that will help the clinic educate [people] on how it works.

There other projects I'm developing, writing, dreaming about or simply sitting on till the world is ready.




You work in a variety of different mediums, from pencil drawings to stencils and spray paint, from animation to live action. Do you find that all of these different skills are useful for each project you undertake? If not, how do you choose which method to use for each project? Are the germs of your ideas always visual?

YS/ I don't think you can hit every project with all you have to offer. The technique would swallow the narrative, and the more I work the more I find this is where you have to excel: in the best films you don't feel the camera work, in the best books you lose the sense that you are reading and when you listen to incredible music you simply experience rather than focus on how it is achieved.

I'm generally trying to use less self conscious visual techniques. How do I choose the method? An idea will come with a taste, that taste will give you all the clues you need. In my live action / animated short I had to go inside a boy's sketchbook with my actors - I had to animate, they had to be crayony to exist within it - I had to rotoscope them. Decisions force themselves upon you like everywhere in life.




W/ There are strong elements of psychedelia and fantasy in these images - what influences your work in terms of its subject matter and style?

YS/ I grew up reading 2000AD and I think that has left a serious impression. I adored fantasy books as a child and had a wildly over-active imagination - if I grew up nowadays they'd have put me on Ritalin.

W/ Us too. We love 2000AD here at Weaponizer.

YS/ I have also always loved psychedelic music (more King Crimson than Trance) and the culture that goes with it. I look for influences everywhere, but usually fall back on gut reaction. You can't help but pastiche whatever you create, but I find that if I keep pushing for my fifteenth idea eventually a freshness comes out and I can start recognizing my personality and experiences in the work. It's hard though, for me the real battle is finding the space.



W/ You've painted murals in clubs, illustrated covers for magazines and pamphlets, made films - are there still more areas in which you would like to use your skills?

YS/ Damn straight. I've always played a lot of music and feel there is a whole world there to tap that I have been skirting all my life. Last year I wrote and recorded some music for a TV show with Jonny Berliner and it felt great. Watch this space. Whatever will come it'll be raw, exciting and possibly have dubstep sub bass. I also feel that there's more to do with spray. The medium is brilliant.

W/ They say a picture is worth a thousand words - what do you think makes a piece of visual art effective, in terms of communicating a specific message?

YS/ It has to ring true. You can always tell if something has come from a real place. I'm also a firm believer that universality comes from extreme detail, and think that anything too general will always feel generic.

W/ Nowadays artists can give away their work for free with ease - via sites like YouTube and MySpace for instance. Do you think that this make it easier or tougher to transition from amateur to pro?

YS/ Both. You can get seen, have your work appreciated, spread a message and find an audience. I think though that it makes it harder to pay your rent. For example music videos have had a gigantic drop in budgets cause it is all online. Very few people can survive. It will even out though. To be cold and economic, industries need suppliers, and suppliers need to live. There can only be a certain amount of people who are good enough, so over time a normal economy within the creative industries will re-assert itself. Life's a meritocracy and those who are talented, are willing to slog and get some breaks will always survive.

Links:

Podcast interview with Yoav, recorded at Rhodes Island Film Festival USA<

The Battle of Cable Street went on to win best HD film at DC shorts and showed at Chicago, LA, Palm Springs, Sienna, Encounters in Bristol... etc.



SOS Children's Villages Doc An event Yoav is spray painting at and showing his latest short: http://www.muju.org.uk/

A film Yoav made about the MUJU group (a theatre troop of Jews and Muslims)

An online article about Yoav's most recent film.

Yoav recently arranged an event on the Darfur crisis and am currently developing plans to embarrass China:

http://actfordarfur.org.uk/

A music vid Yoav recently made for Laura Marling: a ridiculously talented 18 year singer songwriter.

The Battle Of Cable Street



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