Rating the videos

I have recently completed all my video assignments so that I am able to rate all of them on the grading scale Andre wanted. As I mentioned in a previous blog I was a little hesitant about the timing of the videos and was very nervous that I would get them done but that is beside the point. I would rate my most favorite as the cameraless filmmaking project. It was very interesting to me to make a film that did not require any kind of camera. It was a different kind of experience that I really enjoyed. Next on the list would be Bolex Long takr. I liked the fact that we only got to do it with one take so it required more rehearsing than the other videos because we only got one crack at it. I kind of like working under that pressure. I also really liked the different quality the video came out in. Third I would have to say would be the multi-plane animation. WHile not a great artist when it comes to drawing I enjoyed the use of stop motion to create animation. It was always something I was interested in but never thought I would get the chance to do it. I actually want to buy a camera that we used to experiment with. My fourth favorite would be the found footage assignment we had for our last video. I really liked the fact that we got to have a lot of freedom with this video and could be extremely artistic with it. While mine did not turn out as good as I wanted to I was able to get a message across I feel strongly about. Number 5 on my list would be the 48 hour video race. I stressed out about this project a lot but once I did it I really liked how it came out and how it forced me to think outside the normal realms of film. It was really cool in the end and i was frustrated that I really stressed out about it and didn't enjoy it as I should have. The last was definitley the rhythmic editing piece. I didn't hate anything about the piece really but I did not love anything about it either. It was neat to do and easy and I liked choosing music for it but it just felt more like a chore than an artistic project for me at times. All in all I loved the class though and wish there was a second part that I could take.

If I could design 6 X1 part 2

If I could design 6 X 1 part 2 there would not be too many things I would have changed. I really enjoyed the amount of projects the class had. TO be honest at first when I got the syllabus I was a little worried. If anything in part 2 I would like to do another cameraless film and maybe a a little more time on some other types. I would like to have worked on another stop motion project but maybe be able to take the cameras home and work on them for like a week or so. I would have liked to explore that a little bit more. I would not like to do another film that required us to use no film camera that we did for the 48 hour video race. I loved the idea of a video race especially with a prop but I was so worried about what I was going to do it was really stressing me. I love film and that took away from it. In the end it turned out okay i guess but I just really did not enjoy it. All in all I loved the class and if there was a part 2 I would probably take it. I'm just not sure what I would add to it besides just maybe a project less and more time on some of the ones we did just with some variations. Different themes or tools would be great.

Mystery Workshop Star Wars

Star Wars Star Wars Star Wars. I do not for the life of me get the fascination with this film. I enjoy it and it is fun to watch but what are people so obsessed with it for? I really have a hard time wrapping my head around people obsessing over anything. That being said I did think the Star Wars idea was kind of cool to do. I see that people love the movie and there are legions of fans for it so to have people do something like this was a great idea. My group did Luke SkyWalker (no clue if I spelled that right) getting sucked into the pit of garbage. We shot it and it came out pretty decent but I'm not sure if we submitted it or not. It was not save on my hard drive and am not sure if the other persons did send it. I also love the idea that it is only done in 15 second increments. When the final product is put together and actually shown it will be really neat to see the fun that fans had doing it and how many there were. If it was done in 1 minute increments or even 30 seconds I think it would just be a little too much. 15 seconds to me shows just enough and alows people to have fun with it. SOme will probably put a little effort and some may even be pretty well done but the contrasting is what will make the film. I liked the assignment and wish I could do it for Blade Runner or A Clockwork Orange or something like that. Any kind of cult movie would be fun. Thats why, even though I really do not get the Star Wars LOVE i get the cult fun of re-doing the film this way. Good assignment, or workshop.

Rough Theater

Rough Theater. At first I was unsure what this meant but now I do and not sure what to say. I had a friend growing up that had a projector and we would use this big blank wall he had down in his basement to screen these huge movies and watch them with our friends. It seemed really fun because it was almost like being in a theater because it seemed so big to us. It was a great time because we could watch any movie we had on it. We watched older films we never saw in the theater on it to try to get the big experience. It wasn't quite the same as a movie theater but it still created a great effect.

Another type of 'rough theater' that I have experienced again was when I was younger. Every summer was spent at the country club my family belonged to in Buffalo. And at the end of every summer the life guards would put a big projector outside after the end of the summer dance and show pictures of the kids that were taken throughout the summer. It was fun seeing the pictures of us diving and swimming and playing tennis. The lifeguards and kids would all get up and say something about the photos and who was in it and funny stories pertaining to it. It was one of the best parts about the summer. I'm not sure if that qualifies as a 'rough theater' but it was one of the first things I thought of when I heard what the assignment actually was. I miss the summers at the country club a lot because I met most of my really good friends there and those pictures were always of my friends and me.

Re-do Yes Men post

Okay, so I guess I responded to the wrong post for Yes Men and now it seems to make a lot more sense. In the movie (from what I remember, it was a couple weeks ago since I watched it), actually to be completely honest I do not really remember it. I do remember watching it and thinking these guys are retarded. But that is just my opinion. I could not for the life of me fathom why these guys were doing it. I understood the point of making people look like idiots right in front of them or even to just prove a point on what people were willing to go along with sometimes. They went to a lot of trouble for it though and , if not for the movie, they were really the only ones laughing. All this time and money spent on a joke nobody got was kinda odd but to each their own I guess. Still trying to figure out how it applies to the found footage project we are going to be doing though. MAybe it was shown in regards to the fact that these guys are able to put different clips and statistics they find in front of people to make a point. Actually I still really do not get it. The movie was beyond me and not really sure how it applies. The guys in the movie found nothing really. They made stuff up and showed it to people and then giggled to each other. Sorry but still at a loss even applying it to the right project. I hope I do not get deducted for that.

Mystery Men

To be perfectly honest i did not really enjoy Mystery Men. I thought it was entertaining and funny some times but kind of annoying a lot of the time. THese guys spend all this time and money for what? to make some college kids mad and make a point to themselves. I got it, the general public is kinda dumb. I've know common sense is not that common for awhile. anyway, how it relates to the 48 hour video race i am not sure. i'm guessing it is a race against the clock and having to come up with different ideas to make something come across that makes sense. thats about all i could think because i know sometimes they came into problems and had to think on the fly and were up late doin their project. they had to improvise and come up with weird ideas which we will in turn have to do when given our mystery prop and little time to make a movie without a film camera. they also made points without a camera. maybe that had something to do with it but probably not the more i type this. i'll stick with the fact that they had to improvise and were on tight time schedules as we will be.

Molotov man and Ecstacy

molotov man was an extremely interesting article. I agree with both sides, if there are even two sides to what people ar saying about Molotov Man. I can see Joys side of here being able to reproduce an image in such a way, especially from a documentary picture, and turn it into her own art. It is tough to draw a line in the sane with this issue because Susan does bring up good points with saying that while artists do and can have that power it may not always be right because if someone is fighting for a cause and an artist somehow takes away froma depiction of that cause,I do not believe Joy did that, then why do it. for arts sake? what about the greater good and who is the judge of it? it is a tough debate and a very interesting article. i also loved joy's paintings.

The Ecstasy of Influence was a great(long) article. I always think about if people are influenced by others are they plagiarising because we as students need to cite everything. I understand why but when did people stop being original because for me it seems that ideas are always recycled in every form of art. there does not seem to be real originality. people tend to get influenced by things in the past, what they see or hear or taste, etc. and make it their own. artists have been doing this since the beginning of artists. Michaelangelo's David is not an original piece of art. it is a man. Men is nothing new but the way he did it was the art. Great article because I think about that all the time especially when people say "oh Avatar was not original" so what. it's how it was done and shown that mad it fun and special and unique.

Experience on the Saturday shoot

Saturday shoot was actually a lot of fun and i enjoyed it very much. I was so glad we got great weather because, while i would have rather been at the beach, i was also doing something i love outdoors in the sun. i had missed the meeting on monday with the group due to my flight not getting in because of bad weather so really i found out about the project that day. it was fun have to really prep for one take because i'm sure down the road we may not be able to waste film and really need to over prepare shots so that we get the take on the first or second take. it may be due to financial reasons or it may be due to time but giving us only one take was a an interesting way of shooting especially in todays age of digital filmmaking when you can just erase and do it again or just have more drive or disk space to film on. it kind of puts you back when they could only shoot on expensive film and every shot counted and you had to keep rolling no matter what. all in all i loved the saturday shoot. i know some people were not happy about coming in on a saturday but i am ready to be working on films in the near future out of school and they will require many hours no matter what day of the week it is. all the matters is that it gets done. hopefully under or on budget and within the time frame

Ideas for 48 hour video race

This is the project i am most worried about. Well maybe 'worried is not the right word. I am nervous about this project because I do not know how to use a lot of the equipment yet. I have not done the prerequisite for a lot of the film classes, film tools and techniques, or intro to editing so while i am a film major and have made some films, i am still a newbie. It will be interesting to see what i can come up with on the fly but i was thinking about using my point and shoot camera and take still photos, upload them into the computer and have a kind of stop motion type film. other than that i have not really been thinking about too much. i really am kind of set on doing something like that. it will give me a pretty close representation to a film without using a film camera. i still have some thinking to do and hope many ideas will come to me on the day.

Scratch Film Junkies second response.

It was very different watching a movie by the Scratch Film Junkies the second time after working on a cameraless film and realizing how much time and effort it takes to do the littlest animation as well as the tinniest bit of coloring or dying. I was able to enjoy the film much more this go around because I related to the effort a lot. I was alos able to recongnize parts of the film and the techniques used which helped with the viewing and game me a sense of relateability(not sure if that is a real word) During the film if I saw some bleaching or toning or scratching I related to the techniques recalling my own frustration and elation using the different techniques. During the first time I saw the Scratch Film Junkies I enjoyed parts of it but soemtimes I kind of tuned out because I had no clue as to what I was watching. In this film there was a great use of colors and neat animation. THe animation for me was the most frustrating part of the project so when I saw animation in this film i watched it quite different than the first time. Basically when it comes down to the second film and watchign it I can appreciate everything a lot more because I had to do most of the stuff I had seen in the film. THis made the second film much more enjoyable. I give THe Scratch Film Junkies a lot of credit in addition to any filmmaker or filmmakers that make these ind of films because although I enjoyed the experience of making mine it would probably take a lot for me to make another one. It is just not my kind of film but now I can have much more respect for them and not look at the films as pure chaos.

I would like to say first and foremost that was the most annoying reading I have had to do because I do not print it out. Instead I had to flip my laptop sideways and reap the entire article like that. Kinda funny actually. However reading the article was pretty interesting. Especially talking about sound registering faster than sight. I never really thought about that but thinking about it it very true. Eyes have a lot more to do that ears. Eyes have to look at distance of an object, size, movement , what it is, etc. etc. and process it all. Ears and sound just have to focus on that. I guess that is why I would much rather lose my hearing than lose my sight. I know I could deal with that much better. It would such not to be able to hear music, but not seeing would put me at a much much greater disadvantage. Another thing about the article that made me think was the use of sound in cinema and if you took away the sound what would you have. It is kinda different watching a video without any sound at all. It loses so much. When watching Stan Brackhge films it is different because there is no sound to it at all. No dialogue, no music, nothing. I personally do not like it. I enjoy music during films, especially short experimental ones. It gives something extra to the film. Sometimes sound helps to just get through it. When I do not have sound on a film I can easily drift off out of the world the film should bring me into. Music and sound give emotion and propell thought and feelings. How often it happens to me that I hear a song that reminds me of a time that something good or bad happened to me. Or someone says a line from a film and I immediately laugh or am brought back to what I was doing when that film came out or who I was with. Sound is so important and I believe incredible detail and immense thought should be put into putting the sound into film even if the sound or music in obscure. Even then it may stand out in a good way.

Wells Response

I will start off first and foremost that what I just read (i literally JUST read it about thirty seconds ago) went over my head. I understood what Wells was saying most of the time about the animation but maybe it did not sink in enough. So i will blog about what I did take in and what I know about animation. I know it did not start with Disney and Warner Bros., which was all i watched growing up as most probably did, but with others like KOKO the Clown which I watched in another class. I like those films I had seen although some of them were incredibly racist and I could not believe my eyes at what I saw with them. Some of the ways they portrayed black people was pretty bad in those cartoons. Anyway, getting off base here, I thought the early animation with the artists hand in the picture was really cool and I remember seeing 'Duck Amuck' when I was young. I also remember seeing really early animation with a dinosaur and a guy 'interacting' with an animated dinosaur. Those videos were really cool. I was in awe, and it came back to me reading Wells article, at the painstaking time and effort it took for early animation to produce single films. It really is mind blowing especially in todays age of speedy everything. I do wonder how much animation will be changing because it already is with computers. Does anyone even make cell animation besides purists who do it for the art? How long will they even do it? When will that fall by the waist side, or will it ever? I do not think it will totally go away but animators now are computer techs. They still need to know how to draw which I do not at all but I believe that having to draw will not be such a necessity in the future with how technology and thinkgs like pixar and 3-D are progressing. It's interesting to learn the history like in Wells article if only to see how far ahead we have come.

Cameraless filmmaking so far

my experience so far with cameraless filmmaking has been interesting. This is the first time I have really done this before and I really am enjoying the experience. I am not sure if it is something i would like to pursue full time after school but I am enjoying the different use of film for the time being. It seems to force me to be creative in a way that is unusual. I had heard of cameraless film briefly during FST200 but never really gave it too much thought. It was not until Cucalorous when Andre did a 6X1 workshop. I was not able to attend but I was working at screen gems when it was going on and my interest was peaked. I talked to some people about it and they said they had taken the course and it was very very cool. So, naturally, when I saw that I could take it this semester I signed right up. it has been great. Some of the animation is going to trouble me a little because I cannot draw at all but the end product should be pretty interesting. I have no idea what I will be doing for this Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water project but I hope to engage part of my brain that may normally lay dormant to finish it. Last week in the 'dark room' was very cool and I felt like a kid again using objects to create images on film using only the flash of a light. I loved it and it is things like that which make the class different and fun so I am glad that I am taking it. It is definitely my favorite class this semester by far. i just hope to not screw it up by over thinking things when it comes to art which i have a tendency to sometimes do. I guess only time will tell.

synesthesia

So what I gather is that people have conditions where they see colors as numbers and vice versa to name an example. At least that tends to be the case with the plain, scientific, cognitive diagnosis. That is the gist of what I gathered. When it comes to art and synesthesia it seems to be along the same plain of thought. As artists, to me, it is the definition of what we do in any art form. We try to put emotion into a touchable, medium. Whether it be film, music, painting, singing, etc., we put emotion into a medium. It's that simple. This definition, that I have never heard before, really just reinforces these things I already new. It is still interesting to know that it is a neurological disorder that can happen. I just hope that the people that do have that channel what could be viewed as a handicap into an art form. I now it mentioned a color organ and musical painting. I would love to see more of that. I hope people, including myself, would experiment with combined arts invoking emotions and senses. In the end that is what art is and combining them can take them to another level. I believe that we as a society have started to do that much more than before with music videos, films, and stunt artists. These are mediums that combine senses, and invoke emotions. No longer is it just singing, or just sculpting, or just a play. THere are many combined and I thing that the more artists combine and play the more fun and expansive the art world will become.

Transcribe 1st response

The film had a great use of colors. I liked it because it gave me something to watch that I would not normally see in a film. I could only watch about ten minutes of a film like that. It just got tiresome after awhile because I kept looking for patterns or reasons and there were some sometimes but at other times it just got annoying for a bit. Sound definitely made it more tolerable. Had there not been any music or sound it would have made the film extremely annoying and I probably would have only been able to watch it for a couple minute before it would have lost me. I did really like the use of scratches and amazing color in the film. Those aspects of it were extremely interesting to me, most likely because it goes back to the fact that I do not see that often. I watch a lot of movies but none of the movies I watch are at all like the one I watched in 6X1 class.