Final Project Ideas

For my final project I will use my camera to create a series of still pictures (each repeated 3 times a segment) to mimick the "video camera." I will print off each picture and make adjustments to it physically by drawing on it, or cutting things out and then running it back through a scanner. Hopefully when everything sinks up, it will give the appearance of movement. I've printed off a few things, and the whole process will be quite expensive. I'm looking at it like I'm almost "rotoscoping" imagery physically.
A scanner and a printer will be essential for this (and possibly a copying machine depending on how deep of contrast I'm going to try and achieve). The process will take a while so hopefully I can create a fairly lengthy project using this technique. I'm drawing on hand painting and "pixelation" to create the sense of movement.



This idea grew out of an extension of photocopying my face over and over and mimicking still video frames to create the sense of movement, but I believe that my way will ultimately be much more fast, certain, and cost effective.
I would probably use my cellphone but...I have no clue how to work it.

6x1 ideas for next year possibly?

I've really enjoyed all the things we've done in class. However, with the exception of the light describing a cone piece, I would have liked to have made video installations around the school. I think that would be an excellent Self-Directed-Study (if that's what it's called).
I am a big fan of gallery art, particularly with installations. I think that should be focused on, using film techniques to create something that isn't exactly a movie. As a companion piece to this, I would also like to see some discussion of VJing. My brother plays electronic music and from time to time I have tried to create visuals to fit the music, and when everything comes together it looks fantastic and it's quite a lot of fun.
Students could VJ their projects in class (as the gear can be quite expensive) or for an audience or collaboration with a musical group. We did something similiar in Dr. Kreul's class last year with the film "Christmas on Earth" where the students could change the color that the film was projecting through to create really psychadelic FXs. I think video installations and VJing should be seriously looked at because I think it's going to be one of the dominant art forms in the future.

Line Describing a Cone

I thought that this piece was really interesting. I'm not sure how you would classify it. Is it sculpture? Is it cinema?
The best part about it is the build up, and smelling that horrible fake fog build up in the room. The entire process of it really sort of shook me as to what experimental cinema could be, and I've been thinking a lot about projections and installations. I am a big fan of video art and VJing but this just seemed a bit beyond because you could actually interact with the art, not only as a finished project but also as it was forming. I think that is the future of video art and video performance. I have seen kids turn their nintendos into midi controllers and use them to score music or control visual affects.
The whole thing took on a new dimension when the cone was about halfway complete. You could see the spiral of it and look at how milky and ghostlike the fog looked. There was a great sense of motion about it, like the light was a physical presence or structure that the fog moved and rolled down.
When the spiral was finally done, it was amazing to stick your head right up in the center and look at the perfect circle of light, and be able to move through it. I particurarly enjoyed when people would stick their hands through. They just seemed to burst into the scene, and their shadows would ride back through the light as completely black.
I would be very much interested in pursuing things like professionally. It really was a lot of fun to experience.

Molotov Man

The article on the Molotov Man was interesting. I had never thought about the dangers of pulling things from it's context, and reappropriating them somewhere else. But, likewise, even the person photographing is taking someone else's life moment and putting it out into the world for them. The photographer was concerned about the value of the photograph and it's cultural meaning being lost, but she took it and put it out there. The artist did nothing wrong. Sure, she might have been right to say that the meaning of the Molotov Man was lost in our culture (as a Pepsi Product, an art show, a cool Icon or desktop graphic), but she isn't seeing the big picture. By recontextualizing these images, artists are able to reveal things that might otherwise never have been seen. They create new messages from the images they use. The photographer was worried about the loss of the struggle, of the Molotov Man's struggle, but at the same time, by looking at how the image is brought into our culture, it says just as much about who WE are and who the MOLOTOV MAN was at the same time. It's important to know where the image originated from to understand it, but you also need to realize why and how we are using it as a society to understand it's true significance.

Chion: Sound bites...

I agree with Chion on the importance of sound in film. It has dangers and advantages to what it can add to cinema. The moment people could capture still photographs, they wanted them to be able to move, so why not be able to hear what is going on in them? Soundtracks, FXs, Dialogue etc. are required to be in our mainstream films. We need the roar of a monster. Gunshots that lead to explosions, and so on. But sound, while it adds a great deal to what the filmmakers intended a scene to be like, can also dominate the image. Just like Sergei Eisenstein's experiments with picture editing, one could take the same clip of a dog playing and sitting in the yard. The change in sounds (FXs, music) can make things seem sad and nostalgic, tense and frightening, or humorous and playful.
Of course, an image carefully constructed and played silently can have the intended emotional impact that sound can lend to it. So sound has the danger of also becoming over used, and a way to (in Chion's reference to Bergman) cover sloppy filmmaking.
One will notice the absence of sound. But you will also notice bad sound editing/design. Chion points that sound is perceived far quicker than vision, which is why sound (if used) needs to be quality at all times because it will affect the sense of cinema before the eye ever takes it in.

Single Shot Balloon Head.

I had a blast doing the single shot take exercise. Our group idea seemed like it would be really easy and funny to do during class when we worked on it, but when we finally got around to the actual production, it began to appear somewhat harder than it was.
No one really ever thought about the logistics of not being able to see when your head is a balloon, or how quickly a three people can swap a “smiley face” balloon with a Mr. Bill-esque “OH NO!” balloon, particularly when you only have a minute to shoot the footage.
But our group worked really well together, and I think we all had a blast doing it. We rehearsed the scene quite a few times at the ATM, and we got a lot of looks from people as they came to withdraw money (I would occasionally turn the big gigantic balloon head at them and stare).
Doing the project has made me come up with some more ideas to involve the character of BALLOON HEAD, and I am working on a new short film script to involve him, and to hopefully implement some greats ideas we all had but weren’t able to actually put into the finished film (notably if Balloon Head was filled with helium and could be carried around on a string).
Hopefully using some of the things I’ve learned, and some digital Fxs that can “erase” a human’s head, I can fully bring the Balloon Head to life.
Also, as I have the original film print of the short, I am thinking about painting the piece frame by frame to hopefully give it a strange, animated look.

filmscratch junkies

So, after watching the Scratch Film Junkies after the several weeks of learning to do some of the things that they have done, and I have to say that I do respect what they do more.
It wasn’t that I ever dismissed that type of art film, but knowing all the tedious things one has to do in order to create the visuals that they came up with is impressive, and I can appreciate it more. When you watch something like that for the first time, it is easy to forget the fact that they’re working with incredibly tiny frames of film, doing even more incredibly tedious actions when the image is projected so large up on the screen.
The act of film scratching seems sort of anarchic when you first see it, and I wasn’t a fan of it really the first time I ever saw it. However, once you do it, it feels somewhat liberating to be “deconstructing” your images, and distorting them.
This might be my own interpretation of the act of film scratching that although it can be tedious, and requires an intense amount of concentration to create the image you want (being that you have to scratch 24 miniscule frames by hand to create the one second of film), but I just feel that no one really knows what they’re going to do while scratching until they actually start doing it. The scratch film junkies’ video is really interesting to watch, and it does move through many various different moods and aesthetics. But I get this feel that it might just be a collection of the “best ofs” from several different collaborators and being stuck together in an arbitrary pattern.
I am really just thinking this based on my own private experience of scratching, and the fact that the Junkies’ film was so long (the song was also quite catchy, thankfully) that it seemed they’d need as much footage as possible, good or bad, to create the bulk of their work.
There is also something kind of sad and creepy about seeing old footage being “reworked.” I felt a little uneasy at one of the images in the Junkies’ film of the little baby having all the scratches surround his head. It has a very dreamy quality to it, and it instantly gives a feeling of nostalgia because the moment the image is being projected you’re seeing things that have been lost.

Pes

Pes

Honestly, I didn’t actually like listening to Pes talk about his work as odd as that sounds. He didn’t sound the way I imagined someone who created something as wild as the things he did to sound. He sounded sedated, very introverted. His films were so loud and insane that it just really conflicted with my perception of who he would be.
But then again, the amount of patience it would take to do the films he made would require not a wild, roaming mind, but a focused one. Every single thing shown in the frame, even though they were all toys or ribbons or something, all made sense in the context of the story line of the “war” film, which I thought was very admirable. Things were happening so fast that the subtly of his work almost came by subliminally. My favorite imagers were the explosions. I loved seeing the “microchip” city turning into Christmas bobbles and ribbons as the matchstick missiles struck, and the ironic “clown head” gun bursts exploding from the key cannons. It was amazingly cinematic for something that was made entirely with objects that could fit in your hand, like it was a Michael Bay film or something.
The film commercial of the “skateboarder” was pretty hilarious. I had seen things like that before were people had just jumped up and filmed it over and over, and then cut so it appeared that they were just floating, but Pes’ work was much more complicated and smoother looking. I’m still trying to figure out how did the face of the “skateboard” with his mouth hanging open and wind filling it.
If you say you’re into “experimental” cinema, most people have this really horrible, mythic conception of what it is. Most automatically think of an Andy Warhol film they heard about one time where you have to sit for eight hours watching the Empire State Building until suddenly it’s office lights come on. “Can you make any movie doing that sort of stuff?” Is usually the next thought I imagine people who aren’t really that into the modes and styling of cinema probably think of.
Apparently you can.
Pes is good indicator of how important experimenting with film techniques is. His “avant-garde” pixilation process that he perfected making his painstakingly short films afforded him the opportunity to create a highly lucrative, and imaginative advertising campaign for a shoe company. I can’t help but to think of Michel Gondry’s music video for the Rolling Stones (the video was “like a rolling stone” I believe) where the camera technique he came up with was employed for the infamous shot in the first Matrix film where Keanu “dodges” the bullet. Most people see these things on television or in a big movie, and just assume that Hollywood is a gigantic brain coming up with these incredible things. In reality, it is the people that we don’t really hear too much about that are really providing the tools that push the film industry forward.

Animation

Now the concept of abstract and experimental animation is very interesting to me, but I will have to disagree with the author of the article. The author believes that experimental animation veers towards the abstract. That it has no narrative to it. It is all about rhythm and color, just like a painting. There is a feeling that even though the author admires and is amused by things like Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse, that he thinks of less of it when compared to something like Fischinger. There is something more "artistic" about the abstract modes of animation when compared to Daffy Duck "cussing" or having everything but his beak blown to smithereens. He sees "experimental" animation as liberating, as opposed to the narrative confines of a Loony Toons cartoon. But this very definition of what "experimental" is compared to the rest ultimately confines it as an art form. Why can't a cartoon be just as every bit as artistic as an experimental animation? Certainly Road Runners landscape looks more like a Dali than Disney. Great works of art until the rise of modernism, and postmodernism have always been able to convey a story inside of it's frame. An animator should be able to use all things, narratives and abstractions, to convey a feeling, an emotion, or a story. An artist shouldn't have to chose which "camp" they belong to. The moment that happens, it limits expression.

Brakhage

Probably the best thing about this article for me was the fact that Brakhage attempted to narrate a lot of these technical processes using an informal, and also poetic language. You could see what he was talking about much easier, because his writing showed an enthusiasm for the subject (as opposed to many books about film that are cut and dry, and overly technical). It's the difference between having a manual on how to correctly paint a picture, and actually having the artist of the painting you wish to emulate actually there telling you what to do. Every now and then, though, this poetic sense would sort of not mix quite so well with the technical sense of things, and understanding was muddied (although there was clearly excitement). My favorite thing didn't really have that much to do with Brakhage at all, however. I really enjoyed the parts that discussed Kenneth Anger, and especially the Polish Cinema with the different screens. It was a good story, and the concept of it when played out (I have seen several travelogue type films presented this way) is very interesting to watch, so to read how it was constructed was pretty cool.

Magazine Transfer

The magazine transfer process was very interesting to me. The process behind it was a bit strange having to deal with the limits of the film strip, as opposed to what can be filmed. You instantly are working in a very constrained environment, and if you want to try and create something (abstract or not), you have to really plan it out. Half the time I felt like I was a psychopathic criminal as I cut out the letters and pictures from magazines, and then methodically placed them in the desired order. It didn't matter how well I thought I measured out my strips, after comparing them to the film stock I would have to go back and trim the sides down again and again, until very little of what I wanted was left. Still, I haven't seen the images projected so they might end up being more intense. The painting on film was also interesting, but since I painted the film strip horizontally, I have no idea of what it will look like once it is run vertically through a projector, and this was something I wasn't even taking into consideration at the time, and how it might affect the way I want the image to be seen.
I've become interested in the ideas of installation art, and VJing, and I think that the magazine transfer process could be incredibly useful in these sorts of projects. There is something about it that reminds me of being in lower school, and doing these sorts of crude cut outs and making collages, which is what it really seems to be, one big collage.

My Initial Reaction

The mixing of the live action film, and scratching seemed the most interesting thing to me. It was a cool and strange clash to see the "real world" and animated world interact in that way. Some things didn't really seem to havea purpose. I know I could view the movements and imagery in an abstract sense, but there was a sense of structure to the piece (with it's music, and transitions, and moods) that suggested otherwise. Certain frames just stood out more than others as if there were a bigger design behind the project.
Don't get me wrong, it was very interesting, and the sense of energy the film portrayed was very vivid, and quite clear. The whole thing (might be the music doing this) made me feel a sense of anxiety, and the filmmakers seemed to divide the film into 3 (?) different moods, and sections. But it really felt like the only way they were able to make the transitions known where with the music, not the image.
The found footage was sort of creepy, but interesting, in it's own way.