48 Hours

So yeah, the 48 hour video race.  This will be something interesting and unique that I have never done before.  We will definitely see what happens because my improv is not outstanding.  I have been thinking about the types of devices to capture images that we can use and so far, all I have got for an idea is using my phone to capture video.  I am really glad I decided to switch back to my old phone so I can capture video since it seems to be my only source right now.  In the meantime I will continue to figure out if I can find out any other pieces of equipment that I can use to film the project.  I figured I can tell a narrative story with a suggestive take on experimental editing style.  I am not entirely sure on that yet.  I am short on ideas right now and am not exactly sure on what I would like to do yet.  It will be twice as interesting to see what happens when I have my mystery prop picked out that has to be put into the film.  Maybe I can do a film of someone who is trying to send a last minute message to someone and has no other way of communication.  Maybe they have to send a video because a voicemail will not do since the person who they are trying to contact never checks their voicemail that often.  Maybe the reason for that can be that only wrong numbers usually leave voicemails so that person does not try and listen to voicemails any longer.  Or the person trying to send the video message wanted to say something special and the best way they thought they could do so was by video message.  I know that happens sometimes.  Maybe it’s someone trying to send a threatening message to someone else and they wanted to seem more intimidating by a message with image.  Eh, sounds pretty basic so far, but hopefully I can think of something more exciting and interesting to come up with soon.  For now I will continue to think of something a little more creative and hopefully something will come to mind.  Hopefully, I can try and use another type of device besides a phone, but we will see.  I am very interested to see what everyone will come up with for this project.

Colors, Animation, and Fun

So this first assignment that we had was way cool.  I love how we were pretty much unlimited to what each of us could do with our film strips.  It was exciting to see what was presented on the film once it was projected.  Once again, I really like the type of exposure I am getting to cameraless filmmaking.  Even though it is a bit time consuming the finished product is very rewarding and the time making the film was really fun.  I was very pleased with the way our film came out.  I wish that I can get better at doing more animation work.  I find animation to be very fascinating and fun so any type of exposure I can get to that is totally awesome.  I was quite proud of the tree I made given that I have never done this type of animation before. I thought this assignment was a perfect amount of exposure to a new type of animation that I had not experimented with yet.  I spent an entire semester with Maya and had a fair share of 3D animation but actually getting to draw on real film and making your own animation with your own hands is very neat.  I loved the way all of the colors turned out.  They were really fun to draw on film and the markers we were able to use were awesome.  As we discussed in 495, I am definitely not opposed to doing this type of procedure again for our senior seminar film.  After this assignment I would really like to try and experiment with more magazine transfers, animation, and color drawing just for fun even.  I would love to experiment more with 16mm film.  I would love to actually make a film and capture images.  Then before it’s developed would like to draw on the film strip and make abstract shapes.  Pretty much like Andre’s films we watched in class or kind of like Naomi Umen’s film with the nail polish, Removed.  I do confess, I would like to go more narrative for a lifelong career in film, but I still would love to be able to make more abstract pieces for my own personal enjoyment.   Again, with this project I loved that we got to mess more with the splicer.  It took me forever to actually believe that how they made films long ago was just by cutting and taping the film together.   Messing with real film is a nice break from the technology and the digital world.

Chion and Cummings

Sound is something that should most definitely be appreciated.  Even though I do not feel that sound has just as much importance than an image, I do feel that both are just as equally important.  Sound is what provides an image to be so much more.  It allows the image to have a greater significance and give more of an emotional feel to whatever is being projected on screen.  I remember reading a similar article in Shannon’s 302 Experimental class about sound and the assignments that she gave us to let us have our own new appreciation towards sound.  We found out that sound could be interpreted in so many different ways.  Many sounds sound completely similar to other subjects that are entirely different.  Learning about the way we hear things was rather fascinating.  It was also interesting to associate certain sounds that normally would not be put with certain images.  If you just take a moment or two to just sit and listen to the sounds that are going on around you, it is incredible realizing all of the sounds you would not normally hear.  I remember that Experimental gave me a whole new appreciation for sounds and I paid closer attention to noises ever since then. 

Cumming is right in his article about acoustic ecology and how everyone should have a better appreciation for sound.  It may allow you to have a better appreciation for the environment that you live in.  It could even teach you a thing or two about your own environment.  The more you learn to listen, the more fun sound becomes.  I absolutely love listening to music.  It is one of my obsessions.  I personally think it is fun to listen to a song and make a new discovery of a hidden sound that you did not hear in the song the last few times you listened to it.  Discovering a new beat or a new word said in the background of a song is kind of a fun game for me.  Every once and a while my friends and I make these types of discoveries and when we sing the songs out loud we put a greater emphasis on the words or sounds that other listeners may not hear or pay as close attention to. 

Well Reading

I’ll start off by saying that I absolutely LOVE animation.  I really wish that my ability to do animation was better because it is a field that I would have loved to get into.  Being a senior, I wish I would have gotten the opportunity to do more animation work.  I took 220, but didn’t really feel like I was able to learn too much. It was a bit disappointing.  I am really excited that we get to play with a little animation in this class. I’m really looking forward to it.  Any type of animation that I can become familiar with would be really nice.  Animation is definitely a field in film that should not be taken lightly.  It is an extremely difficult area of film if one does not know what they are doing.  I feel like this area of film requires a great deal of skill. 

Animation has provided cartoons which are some of the most entertaining and amusing pieces in the world.  I am 21 years old and I still love all kinds of the Disney movies.  My favorite Disney movie is The Lion King.  I have always been curious to how the animators of this film were able to pull off what they did.  Not only was this movie great but the animation was beautiful, especially for the way they were able to capture the emotions of the characters.  I would have loved to have known in more detail how they were able to get such images onto film, and know the way they were able to make such beautiful drawings come to life.  Not only does this go for The Lion King, but for any animated Disney movie that was animated by first being hand drawn.  It takes a lot to make a great film, but one must know a whole lot in order to make a great film that is animated.  It is admirable knowing that people have the motivation and devotion to make such great films that take over a couple of years to make.

Camera-less Filmmaking

Wow. So cameraless filmmaking is very cool.  I am really glad that I am getting the opportunity to mess around with real film and not just the digital stuff.  I absolutely love digital filmmaking but I am really happy that I get to learn about real film too.  I feel like it will make me a better well rounded filmmaker, especially since I am highly interested in cinematography and editing.  I really like the different gadgets and methods that we have gotten to mess with in class so far. I was really happy to learn how to cut and splice film in particular.  That’s a far stretch from using Final Cut Pro.  Oh and I have never gotten to use a film projector before, let alone know how to use one.  It is not as difficult as I thought it might be even though I think that was one of the easier projectors to work with.  I have loved learning all of the different options you can do on film without a camera.  I mean you can create scratched figures, shapes, and more by just razors, hole punchers and thumb tacks.  I always used to think that if you scratched film in any way shape or form you would ruin it and it would be no good. Ha! I was wrong. That is not the case if it is your original intention.  I liked watching the films that had been messed with in one way or another.  It gave the piece a cooler and edgier look which you do not get to see a lot. I have also had a lot of fun writing on the film with markers and just mixing a whole bunch of different colors together.  I think what has fascinated me the most so far has been learning how to put magazine pictures onto a clear strip of film.  I was fascinated by the pictures from the magazines staying on a piece of tape.  It is nice and refreshing to have a class that is completely hands on.  I like how we get to do what we want and explore film in any way that we feel comfortable with since there is no right or wrong.   This week I will get to learn how to process film, and that is something I have wanted to try now for quite a while so I am really excited about that. 

Synesthesia and Cymatics

The first thing I think of when I hear the word synesthesia is Harry Smith, the abstract experimental filmmaker.  The use of Synesthesia was a known technique for him to use.   He visually represented any music notes that he heard being played and painted them.  I think it is really cool how concepts such as hearing a certain sound makes one think of a certain color. From personal experience, I know that when I listen to a song, a whole variety of colors fly through my head.  It’s really fun to watch as a kind of kaleidoscope moves through my head.  And since I have an obsession with colors, this is not surprising.  It is interesting how one will associate different colors with different sounds weather those sounds be voices, music, or any type of other sound that is a part of the world today.  I used to love it when I listened to music on an older computer.  When any song would play, a stream of colors would develop and form to the rhythm of any song that was played.  I can’t remember what you had to play the song in, but I want to say it was some type of version of Windows Media Player.  The colors would stream slower if the song’s tempo was slower and would be faster when the rhythm of the song was quicker. 

It is really fascinating about how sound can even be visible by just colors let alone having some type of formed shape.   Knowing that a sound can make a unique shape depending on how loud the sound is is mind blowing.  The shape of a ringing sound expands whenever the frequencies of the sound are higher.  If it is lower the shape of the sound becomes less complex and reduces the size of its shape. It is interesting to know that this type of art is helpful to studying science.   It is amazing to know that this concept of Cymatics is helping scientists study the sound frequencies that dolphins make.  Having this information will better allow them to study a dolphin’s language.  This has been something unique to many human beings for quite a long time.  The ways in which one can study sound is pretty cool.  People are coming up with many ways to associate concepts you would not think could be brought together in real life such as a sound being visible to the human eye.