Sunday, February 26, 2012

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.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

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

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

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!!!

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

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)