Inn8.net interview

Owain K from the Innate webzine was nice enough to sit down with us recently and have a chat about how the Hard Hob got started, the article is available with nicer layout and some pictures from the development process  here  or you can read it below:

‘The Quest for a Real Hard Hob’ is an original animated film accompanied by a live soundtrack – the brainchild of Andy Millington and Dave Senan

 

The story is set in Berlin at the last moment of humankind. Before her death, one scientist leaves a new power source in the hands of two androids: Deco4 and Edu3. To restore organic life and create a future, they must find other survivors before all is lost to a terrifying all-consuming entity.

 

The musical performance consists of Andy Millington (Director) playing drums and cello while  Dave Senan (Music Producer) plays various electronic instruments. Both performers sing as a hypnotic unit throughout the show. According to Andy; “Making the visuals and music hand in hand has resulted in an incredibly dynamic show that climaxes in many different emotions throughout.”

 

The project was conceived and developed by a group of Irish musicians and artists based in Berlin. All are driven by a desire to push the boundaries of live cinema and are united by a love for music, animation and storytelling.

Their intention; to seek thoughtful reaction from the audience to both the themes within the story, and the format of live music cinema itself, as well as inspiring more artists and musicians to get involved.

Critically acclaimed shows of 2018 included the Berlin Film Festival, Krake festivals in Geneva and Berlin and most recently the Interfilm festival in Berlin’s famous Volksbuehne Theatre. The Quest for a Real Hard Hob is now preparing to go on tour at independent cinemas across Europe in addition to performances at various film and multimedia festivals.

 

We sat down with Dave and Andy on a recent visit to Berlin after a sneak preview of the show, to find out more about the dynamic duo and how they work:

How did you and Andy first meet?

D: “So… myself and Andy first met when I moved to Berlin back in 2010. I had an apartment in the same building as him as a good friend of mine was his flatmate. Andy had been here for about 9 months longer and had settled in a bit better. It turns out we have the same escalating sense of humour so we quickly hit it off! I was working a lot on my own music and used to take my laptop up to their flat to mess about on tracks as the guys had more furniture and also bigger speakers than me. At that time Andy was working on his first short novel.

A: “The banter was always mighty in that apartment. Dave would often sit there with headphones on producing on his rickity clickity laptop while we were playing games, cards or going about our day. We would sometimes treat Dave to play some techno for maybe 10 minutes before shutting him down just to watch his frustration. We had an ongoing conflict in music where I would constantly degrade techno music as ‘soul-less’ and Dave would defend it. I guess in the end… Dave won.

What brought about the story/idea?

D: “When I moved over, Andy was writing a story called The Cavern. My first summer here was spent seeing bits of his manuscript come together.  He was almost finished it and I was really happy for him when all of a sudden, he announced that he had had a dream and wanted to write a whole new story. He was leaving the first novel he had been working on so hard for this new ‘dream’. It was this dream that became “The Quest for a Real Hard Hob”.

A: It was back in 2010 when I had the dream. In the dream I heard an old man’s voice from a 1920’s style radio:

“This weeks Book of the week is called “The Quest for a Real Hard Hob”, said the voice.

“This is the story of a robot who has his heart stolen and must journey to the Robot’s Graveyard to discover his destiny.”

 

Feeling sure that I had heard the title somewhere before, I searched online. The strange title was nowhere to be found. Having always wanted to create a live show combining animation and music, it felt like some kind of ‘calling’. I decided that day, that I would follow the story to its conclusion and see where it led me.

Did Andy have any particular style or influences in mind when creating the piece?

D: I can only really speak in terms of the music, but in two words – ‘Live show’… Initially there was just a vision of performing live music with animation and a story. That had a big influence on how we worked on the concepts after the first draft of the story was finished.

A: “Being passionate about the natural environment, my feelings and views on today’s issues had a huge influence on the story. We aimed to create a dark atmosphere that would envelop the audience in the dystopian world. The black and white format seemed to achieve this. (It also made decisions easier for my red/green color blindness!!) I had no experience in animation or film so I brought the idea to my friend Shane Sutton.(shout out to Shane for recently winning a European Space Agency art competition with his space-men paintings. His work won a prize that will give him the opportunity to experience zero gravity, well deserved!). He is a fantastic artist and has previously won awards for his film work. He is also a big fan of Sci fi so liked the concept. About a week later I received an animation from him set to one of our sample songs. The video began with this futuristic dropship flying in the sky. A compartment opened and robots began falling through the clouds and landing in the city. The robots were constructed from drawn parts. It was the handmade style that I loved most.

And of course, Berlin was a massive inspiration for both of us. I wanted to use real monuments from around the city which has such a dramatic history of destruction and renewal still evident everywhere. I spent months photographing derelict sites, buildings, and streets, getting up at 5am to minimise the amount of people around and save ourselves as much photo editing as possible. For a film about a future where humankind has been wiped out, Berlin as a backdrop was still a very usable location. The city now is changing so fast that it would be almost impossible to get some of the shots we used in the visuals if we were starting out today.

What was the process involved in creating the music and animation for such a complex project?  

 

D: Once andy was finished writing his first draft, he converted it into a screenplay and divided it into scenes. It was these scenes that I first started working with when composing and editing the music. Andy wanted a full band to play the music so I knew I was writing for live instruments from the beginning. I would write a first draft of new material or rework some music that Andy had previously from another project. Though we were initially working on an “individual song” based structure, I felt strongly that the scenes should be linked musically in a “this is what our universe sounds like” kinda way. When we had enough material, the band would jam things out in our rehearsal room.

A big problem for the band was that a song may only be perhaps 90 seconds long, being tied to what was on screen, immediately followed by an abrupt change into a different scene and involving a lot of efx pedal switching to keep up with. We stuck with this idea of a full band for the first 4 years but technically it was a nightmare. The visuals were playing out of Ableton which also sent a click track to Andy on the drums. The band then played off Andy’s drumming in order to stay in sync. You HAD to hit every mark precisely to constantly changing tempos for the music and picture to work together. If Andy’s headphone cable failed – and it did, that feeling onstage was… unique….

A: On the animation side of things, the first job as Dave mentioned was converting the story into a screenplay which lays out the scenes in a more visual way. Once that was done Shane drew up storyboards for each shot, like a comic. I then flew him over from Ireland and after some further experimentation we began production. The focus then became the style of the visuals, characters and animations. After 4 months, we had about 18 mins of visuals done.

Originally the story had been divided into 4 Acts. Act 1 at the time only had 2 characters to animate. Progress slowed down considerably when we started Act 2 which introduced a lot more character models. Every new character had to be designed with detail to determine how its movement would be animated. Design ideas came from everywhere; from a hardware store where we photographed industrial power tools, junk from scrap yards and just plain video experimentation. Shane was a great teacher, especially just to watch how he put together ideas from random objects. He would cut out mechanical parts digitally and arrange them as body parts to build each idea. I wanted everything to have a real feeling rather than computer generated, which is why I liked the drawn parts for the characters.

 

Another example is the dust which blows in the desolate cityscapes. I experimented with a small fish tank (with no fish) and fanned different types of dirt around with a lollipop stick until I found what I liked. The background was then ‘keyed out’ and the dust could be added as a layer floating in each shot. Shane taught me how to create the robot characters, to animate them and how to add them to the backdrops.

 

After two years of production Shane had to return to Ireland. We had reached about half way. At this point most of the content such as drawings, characters and backgrounds were completed so I set about making the rest of the film with what I had learned.

And how long has it taken to get all the animation together?

A: Long enough…

D: A large part of the reason why we spent so long making this was the amount we, and in particular Andy, had to learn. He had never used animation or compositing software before. There are over 1,000 drawings and 10,000 photos that make up the entire piece. We had a year break in 2014 and have worked on it solidly since. It’s taken 4 years for the animation to come together. I think with what we have learnt we could do it again, start to finish in about 18 months. We do still like to tweak things which is a wonderful advantage of our format, as in; we can constantly improve it as we please. This means we’ve never played two shows with the exact same visuals and I kind of like it that way.

What kept you going?

D: For me it hasn’t been one big project. It has been a series of individual tasks, challenges and achievements. I love the whole production process personally. This project has a thousand moving parts to it and I like the complexity of making everything work together. I suppose that aspect never gets tiring for me.

A: We believe we are conveying a powerful message within the story. This drives me. There is a movement for sustainability and environmental awareness out there that we want to contribute to. Also myself and Dave are both men of our word… we do what we say… and we said we were gonna do this.

What’s been the best/worst thing about making this project happen?

D: “The best part has always been the reaction from people after they see the show. We are not the best marketers (but getting better!!), so we tend to undersell what the experience will be. Afterwards, there are always people gasping and saying “OK, when you said live cinema I never thought it would be like that!”. It takes a lot of effort to get everything right in order for the audience to experience the fantasy in the moment and ‘suspend their disbelief’. So, when everything works, the 70 minutes on stage goes very very fast for us indeed!

The worst thing? Hmmmm, takedown after a show! We always want to talk to people afterwards but when we’re under pressure to pack up the large amount of gear, we don’t always get to stand around and chat.

That and general promotion. I respect the necessity of marketing and I get that it’s never been easier to get your voice heard these days but I’m always looking to find the right balance between needless posts and sincerely communicating “here’s who I am, here’s what I do, and here’s why i do it”.

A: Before the Hard Hob, I really hated working on technical things, particularly on computers… but here I am, as deep as you can get revelling in the technical aspects of music and animation production.

The Hard Hob demanded me to be the most disciplined and passionate version of myself to complete the work and share this vision. I like that. Seeing the dream come true is amazing and I am eager to see the next part of this journey unfold.

 

The worst part… Re-doing, re-editing, re-rendering… because days and weeks disappear.

But in the end… it has all been worth it.

Tell us a bit about how you adapt to different performance spaces?

We have a reasonably flexible stage setup that can grow or reduce depending on the performance. Venues are improving a lot with live visuals integration but it’s always a challenge to get right. That said, the Hard Hob has performed in a cinema, a fortress, an art gallery, a church, an aircraft hanger, a brewery, an auto-paint shop, a theatre, a hall made out of shipping crates and a 2 storey tent. You can imagine how much fun soundcheck has been each time…

Andy: We’ve come to realise that different spaces also attract different types of crowds who have different expectations. For example; whether we are performing at a music festival or a film festival. We are currently designing different renditions of the show to tailor for different types of  events. When we performed at a techno festival in the fortress, the crowd were…let’s say….a bit more other wordly than the audience who were seated before us in Berlin’s Volksbuehne Theater. For the more active crowds we designed the show so that we can do a version with more of an flow for dancing.

 

Do you see the show evolving further?

D: “We absolutely have ambitious plans for how we will evolve the show and performance. For now we’re focussed on what we have in front of us so I’m going to have to pull the whole “watch this space” cliche here… sorry!”

What have you got planned next?

“2019 is going to be busy year for us. We intend to take the show on it’s first (and maybe ‘a first’) independent cinema tour in Europe. There are also some large festivals in the pipeline which we’re very excited about. We will announce more when we get the fully green light. As we say in Ireland: “Keep her lit!”

www.hardhob.com

 

Interfilm 2018

Our next performance will be on Nov 22nd at the Volksbuehne Berlin as part of the 2018 Berlin Interfilm festival.

We had a fantastic summer with performances at Somewhere in the distance followed by Krake festival Berlin and after a brief break to work on other projects we are back at it!

Each performance we do has some small changes and optimisations in it, either from the music or visuals. But for this performance we went deep into the edit and have really optimised the story so we are super excited to show it in such a beautiful venue as the Volksbuehne!!

More info and tickets available here

Somewhere in the distance….

We will be doing our next performance at the lush “Somewhere In The Distance” festival in Brandenburg on July 14th. The festival itself is held in a Fortress so we are very curious and excited about the acoustics (well I, Dave, am anyway!) for this one and also excited to check out some of the other artists on the lineup!

More lineup details and ticket links here

Neues Off Kino Berlin

We are pleased to announce our next showing of the Quest for a Real Hard Hob will be at the Neues Off Kino on Friday April 20th.

This time we will be doing a Midnight performance in the Kino on the big screen and are very excited to perform the show in such a perfect environment!

Since our first screening in October and then more recently at Berlinale we have been continuously developing all the aspects of the performance with the visuals, live music and the story itself!

So if you have not managed to catch the show before in Berlin now is your chance!! (and of course still time to go out afterwards too!)

Advance tickets available from the Yorck group website Here.

hope to see you there!!!

x

Berlinale

We would like to extend a warm thank you to the organisers of the Berlinale 2018 film festival for inviting us to perform our show. The event was held in the Audi Berlinale lounge right on the red carpet and we were delighted with the reaction!

We have more shows to announce shortly as well as some new materials to release in the meantime. You can also follow us on our facebook page and for more bits and pieces our instagram is the place to be!

Berlinale 2018 

 

 

 

 

Debut Screening

We are delighted to invite you to the first screening of our live show “The Quest for a Real Hard Hob” on Saturday October 28th. This will be the first FULL performance of the audio visual show that we have been working on for a very long time and we are quite excited about it!!

The show itself is set in a not so distant possible future and follows the journey of Robot “DECO4” and the stuggle to survive in a harsh world left behind. The combination of elaborate visuals and emotive music make this an experience to overload the audience.

The performance will be held in the fantastic CRCLR house in Neukolln who have an amazing space to fit our full produciton in! There will be of course a bar also and plenty of space to get the best experience of the music and the visuals.

We hope to see you there on the night and look forward to sharing this with you!!

 

Address: Rollbergstrasse 26, 12053 Berlin, Germany

Start time: 20:00 – 23:00

A Review of one of our earliest preview performances

It’s a dark night in dilapidated Berlin. The looming clouds part to reveal a dim, dubious and spherical light source as City Redevelopment Robot Deco4, alone and confused in the post-apocalyptic landscape, spots the crumpled, destroyed remains of a kindred droid and begins a panicked dash across the city.

THE QUEST FOR A REAL HARD HOB is an audio-visual journey following the plight of Deco4 as he navigates the dangerous dystopia in his Ozian search for an element, or hob, robust enough to be his android heart. Providing the dramatic soundtrack is a live, four-piece band of accomplished musicians whose thunderous percussion and chest-trembling bass complete the experience, which had the crowd hypnotized from start to finish.

Beneath the backdrop of Galiläakirche Friedrichshain’s soaring spires and imposing pipe organ, the Hard Hob team last night delivered Act One of Four of the animated adventure, leaving everyone present desperate for more.

Aside from the music, one of the most captivating parts of the experience is seeing the artists’ rendering of some of Berlin’s best-loved buildings and monuments as crumbling ruins. The soldier’s bright image at Checkpoint Charlie is partially destroyed and barely recognisable, and the Sony Centre’s iconic glass ceiling is smashed, splintered and on the verge of risky collapse.

It’s exciting to see the destruction of these familiar landmarks, because it reminds us of how fragile these seemingly solid structures are. And if they can fall, so too can we.

As for our hero, Deco4, let’s hope there’s not long to wait before we find out if he, at least, can defy dystopia.

 

Big thanks to Natalie at The Horseshoe Nail for covering the gig.