Hillman Curtis produces excellent, dramatic, cinematic shots with his slow motion pulls and the use of incorporating still photography into the motion of his short essays. A good example of this technique is the camera work he employs in the Lawrence Weiner piece. Not only is the piece that he did on Weiner cinematically well done, but the content and thoughts that he captured of the artist inter-played well with the subtle music that played with the motion of the pans and pulls of the camera. Weiner is an artist after my own heart. A distaste for Helvetica and the authoritative function of the font.
Hillman Curtis follows up and establishes his cinematic style consistently in this artist series piece on Stefan Sagmeister, but with a little more choppy and fast cut aways. What I would like to discuss more in this part is the artist. Sagmeister’s use of objects, cut out to form words, is truly fascinating and unique. Especially when he use himself as one of his art pieces. Some would call this a psychological problem, others would call it art, I call it a little of both. Another good piece that I thought was very well executed is when he showed the before and after photos of him sitting on the couch and the bottom photo read ‘Sagmeister’s On A Binge’. Before photo with food all around and second photo taken after he ate all the food. He said he gained 23 pounds…yikes! I want to wrap up Sagmeister by saying his visual use of words incorporated into the environment is stunning, unique and very well thought out. I enjoyed this short essay on Sagmeister by Hillman.
The last short essay in the Hillman series I would like to discuss is ‘Four Illustrators’. This is one that I did not like. The way it was filmed stays true to Hillman’s style, but the content I found rather boring. Four Illustrators sitting around talking about Steve Heller is intimate and non-intrusive and at the same time I find myself losing interested. It is great to know about what a kind, hardworking person Heller was, but my conclusion is one of reminiscence by these four illustrators because Heller has passed. Once again cinematically driven with great audio and photographs, but content is just being insightful and lacking substance.