Rate All Assignments

I’m going to rate all projects from this semester on a scale from 1-6 and why.

#1 Cameraless Filmmaking: 2. this was the first time I touched actual film and I really enjoyed that. I learned so much about filmmaking with the “printing” thing we did in the black box. The only thing I did not like about this project was that it was a little confusing how much of our raw footage needed to go into the project. I had to go back and convert frames to feet to figure out how long the film would be.

#2 Rhythmic editing: 5. This was by far the most frustrating assignment of all of them but that was mainly do to the shitty editing computer in the editing lab. I had to start from scratch three times on this project. I enjoyed trying my hand at rhythmic editing but I must not have had a complete understanding of the concept because it felt like I was going in blind on it.

#3 Multi-plane Animation: 3. This was my first time doing stop-motion animation and I had fun with it. I was not really involved with its editing so I don’t have a complete picture of this assignment.

#4 The Bolex Long Take: 1. This was by far the best assignment of the semester. I greatly enjoyed getting out of the classroom and shot this. I also enjoyed the sound editing I did on this project, it was my first time with sound editing and I really enjoyed it.

#5 48 hr. Video Race: 3. I got this assignment done much quicker than I originally thought. However, I found this assignment to be boring to shoot and I had to devote a whole day to it. It was interesting to see the final results once it was done.

#6 Recycled Footage: 2. This assignment was very much an eye opener. I had no idea what I was going to do with it and after just twenty min of wondering around Youtub I found all the clips I wanted to use. It was fun making new sentences from the commercials to help get my point across.

To Andre- I would like to apologies for the comment I made in my last blog. I only meant it as an absurd remark; in hope that you would just see the humor behind it and not think it to be a serious criticism on your class. I understand that the point of this class is to try other forms of cameraless filmmaking, for which I greatly enjoyed the opportunity. Thank you for teaching this class.

How I would design 6X1

If I could design 6X1 I would first and foremost make the blog entries three hundred words instead of four hundred. In all of except one time I can remember I finished talking about whatever the blog that week was about and I would be around three hundred words, almost every time. It would take a good while, more time then it should to add on some more words. So why make me add a hundred words of adjectives and adverbs when I’ve said all that I was going to say? The second thing I would change would be some of the reading; it seems like some I had to stretch to apply some of the reading to the assignment of the week. For instance the rough theater assignment was all about ‘theater’ not film and the Synesthesia reading had nothing to do with the arts altogether, so I would find better more relatable articles. The third thing I would change would be the Saturday shoot, I’m sure for some this is no problem but I only work on the weekend so I was a hassle to get it off and threw me off for the fallowing week, I kept thinking I was one day ahead then what it actually was. This caused me a few days later to barge in on a class because I was late and confused on where the class was meeting. I would either change it shoot to a Friday because all film students do not have class on Friday I mean, let’s face it; we don’t do much on Friday unless there is an exam or major test that Monday. I would keep the assignment the way they are, it’s clear that all the assignment together make up the spectrum of experimental filmmaking. An example of the blog requirement is too long would be this one, because at this point this blog entry is at three hundred words and I can not think of more ways I would change or improve on the 6X1 class. So what am I to do? I guess absurdity would be appropriate right now. I would change the name of the class to The One Min Film; Do Whatever You Want! And the tag line of the class would be “This class is so easy students walking by in the hallway get contact credit”. Well that about does it for this entry.

3-D workshop

Today we had our 3-D filmmaking workshop. I really enjoyed it not only because it showed me how production works in shooting in 3-D but also this class incorporated a good deal of the aspects we have used through out the semester. For example, we had to make 3-D glass, and it should come to no surprise that the film department is under funded; hence, there is only one pair of scissors between seven students trying to cut out to make paper glasses. What is one to do? Go back to the first assignment, in which we scratch film strips with a straight edge razor. So, that how most of use made our 3-D glasses today, by cutting them out with a straight razor. The evidence of our toils can be clearly seen all over the class tables, even after the paper scrapes were clean up. I guess I got a heave hand with sharp pointy objects or the school should not be so cheep in their tables, either one it is funny. I was neat to see that with two regular cameras you could made the 3-D effect. I had seen a double lens made by Cannon that fits on to one camera I coming into class today I was thinking that that’s what we were going to be working with. I guess that is a hot new item that is outside the price range of this institution. That Cannon lens I’m guessing is for polarized 3-D filmmaking and doesn’t require color correction to pull off. As my group experimented with 3-D depth of field during our shoot we would bring a persons and a person’s face close to the cameras. We could bring depth in the back ground of our shot. In post this would ruin the 3-D effect by separating into clearly left and right solid color sides. So what needs to happen to make this image appear to come out of the screen? I could imagine that maybe a reversal of the red and blue color at the point that an object is to project outwards. Beyond that I don not have any idea how an object would appear to come out of the screen. I wish I would have thought about during class so I could have asked about it or that it would be brought up that we are only working on 3-D deep depth of field and not extreme shallow depth of field.

The Rough Theatre

To me this article really hit home how a theater should be thought of, that it can be more then a large fancy building that wealthy socialites get a dressed up to go to so that they could be seen as well as see. That a theater can be anywhere and anything, which is so true because I’ve read about actors performing “theater” in a men’s restroom once, that only had two stalls and an audience max capacity of five. It would have been interesting to see such a play, how they would block it and what story could take place just in a restroom. This is kinda why I disagree with the articles remakes about the architecture, I think there is a place for fancy upscale theater building and for other types of building being used as a theater but to start from scratch and design a building that’s not the ridged strict up scale building and that is inspired by the non-traditional use of theater is just a plan waste of resources and effort. There is no perfect hybrid of these two types of theater because their have different end goals. Upscale theater is all about see and be seen as well as making a special of the show. Rag-tag Theater is about being and showing off the artist’s boundless creativity, a no-holds-bar to the contrary. To be different is to be sophisticated, it’s the business of creating a new language, as task not for the slow and the ordinary. Breaking rules takes knowledge, because you have to know the rules in order to break them.
One of the first ways I associated this article to this class was in its description of the rough theater. It reminded me of what I when through with the first assignment, scratch away at the film strip with any object, find any piece of found footage and attach it, and find any old object and lay it on the unexposed film strip. There is no order as long as it looks good in the end or at least has a reason behind it other then “that’s just what happened”. This whole article not only begs the question, is there beauty in chaos, but answers affirmatively in its own little way. That’s what we do with our projects; we bring order to chaos by showing beauty in everyday ordinary objects.

The Yes Man

I greatly enjoyed the film The Yes Man. It was about two anti-corporate activists who used the internet at first to be critical about policies involving corporations. They do their job a little too good and make a site that is identical to the WTO (world Trade Origination) and people, unaware of their mistake sent them e-mails and invite to attend conferences to give speeches about what the real WTO is doing. The activists see the real WTO as hypocrites, the WTO mission is to govern and encourage trade between first and third word countries but instead have help the cause of corporations by helping them come into foreign nations and exploit their cheep labor and lack of labor laws. Now that other originations think they represent the WTO they use this opportunity to remove the hypocrisy and give speeches that reflex the WTO actions. This results in over-the-top, offensive, racist and sometimes crude speeches about the future plans and stances of the WTO. What is most impressive about these activists work is the extent, detail and amount of prep work they go through to make fools of themselves and the WTO. For example, they spent nine months working on a computer simulation, with the help of a computer programmer, and a presentation alone for a single convention. Then they find out that it was canceled. At another point in the film, they hire a Hollywood costume designer to make them a “manager leisure suite”, which entails a breakaway business suite, a full body suite that is covered in gold paint and a huge inflatable penis-like “TV screen” coming from his crotch. To their dismay, their presentation did not cause a stir.
I guess the only thing I can take away from this film and apply to my experience in the 6-by-1 class would be their prep work. The prep work and imagination these activists had is amazing. To be so straight faced with these outrageous presentations, and to spend nine months on prep work shows me that planning ahead is not only a good idea but that the difference between great and just ok work. I’m still not sure how to plan for the 48 hour video race. I know that im going to use my consumer digital camera, and that I have 720 frames to work with and, of course, I have two day to shoot it and edit it. The last step is working with the mystery object.

The Molotov Man and Crytomnesia

After reading the article “On The Rights Of The Molotov Man” in which a painter, Joy Garnett, uses a part of a documentary photographer, Susan Meiselas, photo. A copy right debate is raised between who has the right to use this photo of a man in mid throw of a Molotov. After reading both viewpoints my quick and very right response is that Susan is looking too deeply into her own art and tacking on too much responsibility. I biased this on the fact that there is big difference between a filmmaker and a photographer, which is a filmmaker “makes” an image while a photographer “takes” an image. All Susan did was be in the right place and the right time to push the button on her camera and “take” the photo. That it, that’s all she did. This photo she took is not “her” art, it’s her artistic eye to see when, where and what makes a good photo but as soon as one of the elements in the photo is changed from the original print then its beyond her artistic eye and into the next artist’s view. The artistic ability to “take” a photo is way different then what a filmmaker has to do to “make” that same image. If Susan was a filmmaker and she did “make” that image then she is entitled to licensing fees and control of the use of her art. In the end the question still stands, “who owns the right to this man’s struggle?” My answer, nether one of them, but Susan is the one complaining and demanding money from Joy. Hence, she is in the wrong, not Joy?

I never knew that Crytomnesia meant the phenomenon when two different people came up with the same concept without ever meeting or being exposed to each others work. I bring this up because as my group were brain storming for a concept to shoot for our long take I came up with this idea of lost tourist who stops at a bust to for directions and watches as a native jumps on the back of another person and rides off. One of our group members, who is from Australia, weren’t there when I originally thought of this idea but later after I described it to her she said that she had seen the exact same thing back home in Australia. So it stuck out to me that that there really is a word that means this exact phenomenon.

Saturday In-class Shoot

So Saturday’s shoot was some what chaotic but still manageable and fun considering that my group started off with not having picked a concept to shoot. We did throw a few ideas around before hand that we picked from and refined. Of course, location always provides it own set of problems, like I would have to shoot from standing in the middle of the road. Once we got to where we were going to shoot it I quickly found that that I would play the part of the director, I don’t really like directing, it’s too hard to manage and there are too many options for me to handle. Today gave me a different approach to it, directing didn’t seem that hard and all it required was controlling a several run through and holding the camera steady. The hold the camera steady part, not as easy as it sounds, there is really no hand grips on the thing and after holding it one way for the run through I found out that I had to completely change I was to hold it for the actual shoot. This explains why the camera was tilted during the take. I was very happy with the end result, beside the minor tilt of course.
Working with the super 8mm camera became very mechanical, unlike digital cameras where everything is seamless and integrated. The super 8mm camera was very much like tinkering with an old clock with you having to take an active role in doing everything to get the camera to function properly. So you have to know how the camera works to get it to work, with digital plug it in, turn it one and that’s it, its good to go.
I had a lot of fun working on the other group’s shoot. But then who wouldn’t have fun doing an office chair race down the halls and through the Kean hall building?! Considering how dirty of a racer I was and how hard I was pushing it Im lucky I didn’t wipe out, then again that would have only added to the thrill of the shoot. My only regret was only able to do the race twice, I really think they should have done a few more run through. Anyways, overall Saturday’s shoot was very fun and that it felt less of hassle to go to class on a Saturday then I thought it would.

48 hr Video Race

So last week before spring I was told in class that in a few weeks I will have to do a 48 hour video race and that I couldn’t use regular film or video cameras. This leaves regular consumer picture cameras, flat bed scanners and cell phone cameras etc. The examples showed in class were a lot of examples of stop motion animation, either with toys and household items or with paints and other art supplies. So Im thinking I should do a stop motion film because I have a 10 megapixel consumer camera and my own umbrella light kit. If I do a stop motion film ill shoot on two’s, which means that if there is 24 frames in a second and 60 seconds in a min then that’s 24 times 60 which is 1440 frames, divide by two is 720. So my film needs to be 720 frames long. That sounds like a lot and if im thinking that now then one of two things is going to happen when I shoot it. Either im going to get half way through my 720 frames and only a fourth of the way through my story outline or Im going to finish shooting my story and have a hundred plus frames to go. I would like to make this film a narrative, im not big on experimental plots and I think it would make it better plan out if I was telling a story verse just making an interesting moving picture. Keeping this in mind I remember seeing a film I saw a few years back where this kid made a stop motion film to this song that I can’t remember the name of it but the choirs goes like this “I will walk five-hundred miles and will walk five hundred more…”. In his video it was a side view drawing of a guy walking down a road, and then doing whatever the song was singing about. I really liked this video so for starters I should listen to my music library and see if anything sparks my imagination. Once I have my basic plot and story down I will storyboard it, which I never enjoy doing but im immensely appreciatively to have it once its done. It would be nice to know by storyboarding just a rough estimate of frames each shoot will take, I guess I don’t have the experience to do that just yet.

St. Louis

Now that I have some hands on experience and a better understanding of what it takes to make a camera less film, I can now appreciate more a film like St. Louis by the Scratch Film Junkies. For starters, I’ve figured out that animating horizontal rather than vertical is so much harder and time consuming, this is mostly because its quicker to turn the film horizontal and just color lines across the film strip rather then make each individual lines horizontally. So I was really impressed with the opening credits of St. Louis, how they came horizontal across the screen. I know that must have taken a really long time. It would be hard for me to have done something like that. That being said, I found it kind of funny that later on in the film they had vertical lines moving back and forth across the screen, which of course this took no time at all. I greatly enjoyed the little bit of live action from the found footage, it worked well to break up the animation and also because I wasn’t excepting it. I should assume that the plain from the found footage was the St. Louis plain and that’s where the name of the film comes from. St. Louis did stay true to form with its Mickey Mouseing with hand drawn arrows. But I can’t bash the arrows too much, it did show me that there are other ways to animate the film beside turn one object into another. That is to make then fatter and skinner, smaller and bigger. I still have one question, who was that guy in the film? It seemed to have highlighted his face and considering that the plain was important, which the film being named after it. I guess that guy must have been too, but I didn’t get reference. Over all, I enjoyed this Scratch Film Junkies film over there last one, it seemed to be more about having and showing interesting images rather then animation that is just Mickey Moused to the disorganized street band music.
So far my experience with camera less film making has been a mixed bag. I greatly enjoyed the muiti-plane animation project and I can’t wait to put it all together. However, Im really really hating the rhythmic editing project, to start off with I do not enjoy editing, second the computer I’m working on the final cut pro like to literally freeze ever ten min and then when im trying to fix final cut pro the computer itself would freeze. I cant not put into words how much this irritates me.

Projections of Sound On Image

This article must have been written by a sound editor, because it seems like he downplays the role and importance of image in some spots. I’ve always been told “don’t tells the audience, show the audience”, which means that in film you use images, first and for most to communicate. Its really easy to say to the audience “she is grief stricken with the sudden death of her husband and wants to commit suicide” but it completely different thing to show her laying lifeless on the bed day after day, watching a par of scissors on her end table. Sound is just a complement, and that a sign of a good film maker is someone who can communicate a complex plot without using sound. This being said, I can see how sound and image can mutual influences each other, that the sound of a watermelon being smashed is nothing without the context of a child being run over by a tank. Ive seen the use of sound to bridge an edit and up until this reading this article was one of only two exclusive uses for sound, the other being the first example with the watermelon.
I never realized the paradox of hearing, it makes since once I think about it but it would have never dawned on me otherwise. Also the face that we hear better than we see, and like the paradox, it never would have dawned on. Hence, I want to rent and watch Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. I want to see if I can freeze the frame to see in face that the door doesn’t not open and its just a closed door cut to an open one. If that’s so, I’m going to kick myself because normally I’m really good at caching stuff like that. If sound can pull a trick like that then I guess I might maybe be wrong about image being everything.
I never thought about highlighting parts of the frame with sound. Like if im outside shooting in a market, which sounds do you use as background, the chatter of people or the blowing whistle of the wind? I guess it would depend on what you were using the shot for. If you wanted to make the protagonist be/look isolated in a crowd you would use the wind, if you wanted to the protagonist to be part of the group then the wind would be lessened. I guess it all a matter of context.

Wells Artical

Im having some trouble understanding the quote by William Moritz, it seems like a good quote in which he is showing his deep understanding of the subject. I’m confused with when he says that “this” represents freedom and “that” represents the police and then when he says “Donald Duck drives a car and mows his lawn just like an average American; he must represent the average irascible American” and say that that’s revelation is interesting as the first one. Is he being sarcastic or is he saying that symbol has deeper meaning than that? Couldn’t Donald Duck represent the average American? This quote wasn’t the only thing that stuck out to me in the article.
It was intriguing to read that the Disney and Warner Brothers have completely different approaches to dialogue in there cartoons. That Disney soundtrack, which Im guessing includes dialogue moves towards the symphonic while Warner Brothers’ soundtrack is cacophonic. I didn’t think you could categorize speech, much less, that Mickey’s high pitch voice had a poetic or operatic quality. I wish this article would have given examples of Disney’s so-called symphonic qualities, because other than Fantasia what proof is there that Disney strives for this?
I find it funny that this article states that experimental animation has a strong relationship to music, while it was Disney and the narrative form that coined the term “Mickey Mouseing” which is when all the characters on the screen move to the rhythm of the music.
This article is peaty clear that experimental and narrative forms are separate, but it doesn’t recognize the opportunities where one can become the other. I am reminded of a found footage film I saw last year called Light Is Calling. It was intentional footage to a 1930 nickelodeon picture. In which a young soldier along with a covered wagon is returning home as his young wife waits for him to return. The film cuts between his movement down the road and his wife impatiently looking for him, at the end they embrace and continue down the road into the sunset. The footage was warped and discolored due to its old degrading condition. A musical score was placed over it of a violin, clearly was not the original score which was most likely a piano and it was projected at a slower speed. These affect: warped discolored condition of the film, the replacement of its original score with a violin and being projected at a slow methodical speed required the view to look deeper at its content, what the artist is saying about life and the past. Its original intent was to serves as part of a narrative, just a sequence of events to move the story forward, but with it current condition and changes to the score and projection rate the same footage becomes an experimental film on life and the past. I guess the biggest difference that allows this footage to be both at different times would be perspective. It is perceivable that the footage in its old warped condition could still work in the narrative but then it would be an ugly warped narrative that I would not like to see.

My experince with cameraless film making

This week blog assignment is to write about our experience with cameraless film making so far. So far? So far I haven’t done much, or much enough to give me any real footing to disuses it or to even have a memory to reflect on this that isn’t contained within a single day during a time span of a few hours. This being said, I will give my thought on today’s in-class work of film possessing. Considering that in this class is the first time Ive touch much less work with actual film I found today to be quite an eye opener. I never would of thought that unexposed film is white, I mean, it makes since once you think about it, that exposed film is black so the opposite of that would be white but to see it is so out of the ordinary. It kind of reminded me of a white snake, the way it drops to the floor and curls up, like a snake. Its kind of funny to think of unexposed film it as a white snake and not exposed black film, also more snakes are black then white.
I could not find any object to place on the unexposed film strip at my apartment, I could think of object I wish I had ay my apartment so I could bring them to put on the film strip but I didn’t have them. So I went out back to the plan beds around my apartment complex and collected sand, wood chips, leafs and grass. All of which left a similar print on the film which was not the ideal outcome. However, the rice was by far the greatest disappointment and it didn’t quite make sense. The rice left hardly any trace on the film print while the oatmeal left a perfect outline on the film. I would have liked to have the rice imprint on the film for my assignment, oh well. I guess the most important thing I learned about film printing is that metal objects leave the best imprints. My beer bottle opener and keys left the best imprints, also I used a few dimes that would make a nice round edge and I think I would like to make a whole strip of altering round edges on the film strip. Regardless, I enjoyed this exercise.

Synesthesia

So Synesthesia is when the brain mixes up visual, sound and taste, as in someone watches colors when listening to music? Well, who needs acid with a condition like that?! I think that so cool and if I had it I would save so much money, just kidding. But I can see how this ability would give painter and other visual artisans an edge considering that they would be surrounded by their art form of choice (color from music, color in grapheme, etc) and it would provide an unless supple of inspiration.
People with grapheme to color synesthesia, I can imagine how much color their lives contain in a day to day basis. Imagine opening a text book or newspaper and finds a rich display of color, which would give a whole new meaning to the idea of picture book. I guess they would be the only people who could see any real artistic relevance in Stephenie Meyer's writings. As for people with music to color synesthesia, every song is a fireworks show, a plethora of colors and movements in perfect rhythm with every song on their ipod play list, I don’t think there is an app for that. The only down side to this would be having to sit through an amateurish attempt to match dull spotted color ejaculations with cliché music from the 80s and 90s every Fourth of July.
The medium to most accurately show how a person with Synesthesia experiences music would be film. Over painting, which is a singular frame representing a single note is belittled in comparison to the shifting composed quality of a film’s voice. So I guess that’s what my goal should be in this class, to match music to color to inspire a since of wonder and astonishment to the audience. I found it especially innovated that Marcia Smilack uses her Synesthesia to capture memorable photographs. That she relies on her Synesthesia over her own ability to perceive beauty to express herself through her art. I wonder if this same notion could be applied to cinematography with narrative films? Her motto, beauty is lurking, is quite the quintessential goal of photographers, who “takes” a photo. This is in contras to cinematography, where the idea is to “make” a photo. So a motto as deep and catchy as, beauty is lurking, should be taken with a grain of salt.

"To The Beat" Reflection

Today I sat down in my one and only class of the day, 6-by-1: Variations on the one-minute film. A class I was looking forward to as a fun easy production class that would require little to none mind-crunching studying. This assumption about avoiding mind crunching work was only half right. The first film we watched “To The Beat” by the Scratch Film Junkies was a major mental crunch. At first it was weird and confusing, an uneven collide of a non-repeating randomized music notes, which seem to come from a rag tag street band and an assortment of lights and darks colors. I instantly enjoyed the deep saturation of the colors but its over all effect left me asking “why”, as in why did the film maker make this queer film? Questions like why should we watch this slowly became clear about half way through the film. I got into the bet of the music, its smooth catchy melody. This in turn got me interested in the picture. The almost Mickey mouseing between the different musical interments and it parallel symbolic scratches became intriguing and amusing. Its musical order through chaos of nondescript colors and lines gave me inspiration for my first project assigned in the class. Its one im looking forward to however, I can already tell that the hardest part of this class will be these Blogs, I come to this conclusion by the mere face that they are to be around four hundred words in lengths and I have already said everything I could say about the first film and im only at 270 words. Thinking back to previous film of this nature, I recall watching one called Black Ice. This film played with different saturations of blues and blacks colors giving it a dark dream-like feel, while watching it I felt like I was watching the inner workings of water mix with gravel and other road oils being frozen simultaneously at different stages. It had a chilling effect. This brings me back to “to the beat” film, in some ways the street band jam session mix with images and colors work on a shallow level but if the music wasn’t driving this piece of art then the mind would. With the mind odds are the viewer could find a deeper meaning of the own from the film. Look I reached 400 words, maybe I was wrong about it being the hardest part of this class.