Video Race Experience

I really like video races, so of course I liked this!

I decided to do a kind of social experiment with my 1min using the pack of film gels. I took out my camera (not allowed...right) and got footage of a night in my apartment.

As usual, I dragged my boyfriend into this adventure and we both taped a film gel to our forehead. We were just wondering if we could get everyone else to do the same thing, and wanted to see what the reactions would be. At first people were bewildered and excited about the whole thing and jumped to put one on their forehead. Then they thought about it and were FREAKING OUT about why I was doing this, and a lot of them ripped it off. One of my favorite parts was when we asked this guy if he wanted one and he said no a couple times. But once this girl he had been talking to said yes, he jumped for the chance to get one himself.

After shooting all of this, I went to my computer and edited it down to 1min. I got the audio cut together, and then started to plan out my animation sequence. We shot it with an iPhone and had it up on a sling type device that my boyfriend fashioned, hanging from the kitchen ceiling.

Making the animation sequence took a long time! We tried to do 5fps, and had to continually go back to the audio, to make sure each "person" was speaking at the right time. After this, I edited it together and.... finished!

3d shoot

I had a lot of fun doing the 3d shoot. Not just shooting it, but putting the work into creating the set was pretty awesome.

I think the best part about designing the set was probably having to think about what would look best in 3d. We tried to play with the depth of our set (which consisted of mostly buildings) and made a path for our sea monster to walk through (to terrorize this city).

A lot of the work was a little tedious, mostly because I spent my time coloring in windows for all of these buildings. But I think the final effect will hopefully be worth it. Also, creating the sea monster costume was pretty interesting, since we had to fit some sort of cardboard "outfit" over Chris and have him able to be semi-functionable inside of it (one of the biggest problems we had was him being able to see).

As for the actual shoot, we planned everything out pretty well prior to that night. We were the last group to go (which unfortunately left us with cleaning up after the other groups), but going late at night gave it a nice relaxed atmosphere. We set everything up and it all went pretty smoothly from there.

"What is your rough theater?"

The thing I liked best about this article, is that it brings to light the point that sometimes "perfection" isn't what you might think it is.

So in a "rough theater" type of place, you might have a MUCH better time than going to some sort of fancy commercial theater with so-called perfection of the giant screen and comfy chairs, etc. *Ahem, my opinion.

Well, I definitely agree with this. In order to relate this to film, you might say that a blockbuster commercial hit may be able to appeal to everyone with its special effects and all those bells and whistles. And maybe you'd see this movie in a theater in front of the big screen with thousands of strangers. But my favorite way to see a movie is to be at home with my roommates and make my own popcorn *a little bit less expensive too!* and be able to comment whenever we would like. I think the appeal of this, for me, is being able to focus on the "entertainment" of the piece rather than making sure to be polite and all of that.

I think a "rough theater" just gives off that feeling of being more free-spirited, more local and intimate, and a better experience. On the opposite end, the big commercial movies and theaters are run by the big-businesses and it is usually pretty clear that they are in it for the money (there is no arguing against this - how many sequels have been made this year?! ugh.). So anyway, the "rough theater" has that local and personal appeal, where you don't feel cheated by a system. Pretty cool.

My Experience: The Saturday Shoot

The Saturday shoot was one of my favorite activities so far this semester (falling short to the pinhole camera). I loved being able to work with new people and get to know everyone a little better.

At first, I might have been a little nervous to have all of the responsibility on the class rather than the professor, but I think this was for the best, since in the "real world" you don't always have somebody to tell you step-by-step what to do.

I think that everyone (myself included) was a little anxious at the beginning, and maybe not very excited to be working for a class project on a Saturday afternoon. But after a little bit of chaos, everyone finally got organized and out the door. Once we started working together, everything kind of fell into place. For me, the Saturday shoot quickly turned into a great weekend rather than a group project.

The shoot definitely created some sort of confidence among everyone. Without any guidance, you had to become Shooting with film and using all kinds of equipment that already is a little daunting was fun to learn in a group setting. Like I've said, once everyone started to work with one another, it became much easier.


This is what I captured when I was running between the first two groups :)

Film Race Ideas

Unconventional camera ideas:
computer
scanner
phone
pinhole

Assn 1 experiences

I think during the "assignment 1" I learned a lot about cameraless filmmaking. I think it really comes down to thinking that cameraless filmmaking has no rules. You just get to try out different things and find out what effect it might have on the film.

It was actually the first time I've ever developed any film, which was fun. So I think I liked the rayogram part best. Just because it was something I would never have thought about outside of this class.

I also liked doing the magazine transfers, as I had never heard of that before either. I thought that looked really cool when it was projected - especially if there is some sort of pattern within the images.

When we finished assignment one and projected it in class, it was interesting to see how it turned out. I was always surprised by how short it took to get through all the film. When you see all of the film in front of you, it is hard to think of how fast the images will go by. I did like doing the animation part of the assignment. Like I said, it went by really fast, but I was happy that I saw at least one of my animations of this spinning kind of wheel turn out pretty well.

Sound Response

I liked reading about the concept of audiovisual illusion. When you have only the audio or only the visual of a film (or anything else), it can project a whole different tone or idea. But with sound and image coming together, you can create something powerful and "real." Without audio, many movies would not seem complete (to me).

As mentioned in the article "Projections of sound on image," Alfred Hitchcock in Psycho used this "anempathetic" sound to wind down from the murder scene.

Psycho - Shower Scene

What you say about an image brings meaning to it. So much of our attention is directed to something merely because of what someone might say. Words can express the meaning of a piece, whereas music can express feelings. It's interesting just how important sound is to our lives and how much information can be transferred because of it.

As a side note - here is my favorite use of sound in Bob Fosse's All That Jazz

Cameraless filmmaking

Okay, so I really like this whole cameraless filmmaking thing.

I think most of the time I feel like I'm doing arts and crafts back in elementary school again. When I first got into this class, I thought that 3 hours in one class would be WAY too long for me to ever be able to focus, let alone have fun. I found out that I really like being able to experiment & try things I have never done before in this class.

Today, when everything is digital and can easily be edited on a computer, I think it's sometimes much more enjoyable to do everything by hand. When I'm editing a project in Final Cut, it's just clicking a bunch of buttons and finding out what works. There's not too much of a thought process behind it. But when you are dealing with real film in your hands, everything comes much more organically. You also have a lot of room to experiment and try new things. People always say "film is dead," and this may be so, but a lot of people don't realize the benefits behind working with real film (even if it is only for the selfish filmmaker I guess). These days, working with film is almost like learning a part of movie history, which is pretty cool too. Although film is seen as a lot of work for the same payoff, after this experience I might say that working with film is not as limited as working with digital files.

filmmaking = POWER!!!

Synesthesia

"When discussing synesthesia in art, a distinction needs to be made between two possible meanings:

1. Art by synesthetes, in which they draw on their personal synesthetic perceptions to create works of art.
2. Art that is meant to evoke synesthetic associations in a general (mainly non-synesthetic) audience."

-Wikipedia, Synesthesia in art

I think that everyone must be able to experience a form of synesthesia to varying degrees. This is almost like another dimension of the universe. Sure, everyone in film seems to be jumping on the 3d bandwagon, but I feel that synesthesia is much more interesting. I always knew that certain colors can evoke certain emotions, and yes, even certain music will make me think of different colors as well. However, I did not know that there was actually a science behind all of this.

It's hard for me to wrap my mind around this concept of synesthesia as a science because I could never be so sure to say for instance that the number 5 is always red. I find it incredibly interesting that songs and paintings can be analyzed using this. When learning about cymatics, it just makes me wonder whether this sort of thing subconsciously makes people like one song more than another - and they don't even know it. It seems as if synethetics is a little like an instinct that an artist can to rely on.

Pink Floyd - Welcome to the Machine (CymaScope)

"Passage" response

aliens / otherworldly

unexpected

visual sound

The film felt like you were existing on some unexplored planet. I just listneed to everything going on around me and it was kind of overwhelming. Shapes zoomed in and out popped and turned. It was like a visual rollercoaster. It seemed as if the visual aspect was only a minor role compared to the sound - instead of most films when the sound is not as important. I felt like I was running through outer space at the speed of light and just taking everything in without analyzing what was really happening. It definitely seemed like a sensory experience rather than there being some sort of logical story.