Installation Thoughts

The project pitch session for our installation project was very helpful, in that the ideas proposed by Shannon and other classmates have helped give the concept a more solidified shape. After further discussion with my Co-Director, Lizzie Warfield, and considering the ideas from class time, we’ve made some more limiting and expanding decisions.

We’re mainly in need of a solid amount of mirrors, and we’ve been doing some inventory for that; otherwise we should be ready for the other aspects. We’ve decided to stick to fire and mirrors, as those alone can be taken in so many different and fascinating directions. We’ll portray fire with laptop screens and perhaps projectors as well, with tame fireplace shots and wild blazes of things burning; with explosions and stars shining into the night; with candles, with matches.

We will also have real candles there, and we’ll aim to make a real fire as well. The general plan is to set up a lot of mirrors with laptops and candles in a multitude of ways along the side alley of the building, and as people walk through our contraption to get to the backyard, they’ll find themselves amid an intensely infinite reflection of Time and Light amid the dark of night.

The audience will have the opportunity to write something down on a piece of paper; the prompt will allow for anything, with the guiding subjectors of fire and reflection. As the people prepare to leave our contraption of mirrors and flame, we will read the papers aloud at random, keeping anonymity, and burn the paper after it’s read.

We mainly just need to crack down on getting lots of mirrors. Derek will be able to play some really neat and atmospheric soundscape/ambient freestyle music, and the rest of us will guide the travelers through, reciting poetry of our own or of our own selection. It will be a vivid and otherworldly experience, as we ponder by our flames and reflections before autumn’s ending and winter’s entrance. 

Cucalorus Reflection

Cucalorus 2014 in November was the first film festival of its size I had yet attended, and Visions 2014 in April was the first film festival I had attended at all. Cucalorus as a whole was an eye-opener in a multitude of ways; primarily, it brought to my attention how exhilarating it can be to have a film you’ve made screened and to get to know great new artists with similar interests, and it also made me realize how limited the content of a regular movie theater truly is.

Ambitious, different, and unique films are released around the world and across America every year, but most still land within the straight-edged box that is commercial filmmaking. While I do prefer narrative and “commercial” films over the other forms, I also very much enjoy the experience of seeing a work of pure cinematic storytelling and experimentation (that’s more than just a 10-minute-or-less short) on a big screen. Being at Cucalorus last weekend really made me realize how seldom I do that.

The film that, to me, was the “zenith” of a downtown film festival experience was I Am a Knife with Legs. Its humor and style were like exaggerated versions of Tenacious D, Tim & Eric, Flight of the Conchords, and something new entirely. Tastes of that movie’s nature could be seen on any TV channel or regular Hollywood movie, but nothing to its full extent would be available. That film was genuinely ridiculous, and I write that about it in the best way possible. Its dry and dark and kitsch humor was so aberrant that even I was a bit alienated by it. Over the next few days my opinion of it became more and more positive, as I thought about it more. That’s a sign of a unique film experience.

Bennett “Bené” Jones’s guest appearance made it even more special. We asked a few questions as he gave a Q&A in character, and it was a special surprise feeling; here I saw this absurd and enjoyable film from a hermit’s cave in a different planet, and then I saw the main character in the room with us, playing guitar while serenading the crowd about birds’ wings. Abhole T-shirts became a reality, and I realized that Cucalorus was a special event that I’d like to show a film in. 

Cucalorus Screening Plan

My general plan for the Cucalorus film festival is to attend at least one block of each type: feature, shorts, documentary, and one of the special events.

I will go downtown to try to see most of these during the day on Saturday, and perhaps some on Friday night.

I don't have a car and I have a bunch of things to work on, making attendance more difficult, but I think I'll enjoy the experience and go when able.

Self-Portrait Ideas

I have many scattered ideas for my self-portrait; their only connectedness lies in the fact that they are all involved with me. For example, I’ve filmed long takes on a tripod of me sitting and moving in different areas, and in editing I will overlay and crop different moments of this shot to resemble me being in multiple places, doing multiple things, at once. I intend to have montage shots of me writing, reading, playing instruments, filming, my book collections, movie collections, LEGOs, fantasy, etc.

Aside from incorporating many hobbies and passions of mine into this video, I will aim to represent different traits of mine; my constant internal energy, rarely ever thinking about just one thing, etc. I will more or less show what I do and, in the process, parts of who I am.

I will try to challenge myself by focusing, thematically, more on the personality and lifestyle aspect of the video. Montages of hobbies will be made with the intention of coloring parts of who I am, but I want the underlying structure of the video to resemble my core, and that will be harder than it may seem to grasp. One internal theme would be of the multiple “versions of myself;” this is not to say that I act differently around different people and environments, however.

In truth, I live a very eclectic lifestyle. I prefer to have solid understanding and power over many different things, rather than master over just a few. There are times when I feel like “butter spread over too much bread,” as Bilbo Baggins might put it. I want to see more films and shows, I want to listen to more albums, I want to learn more songs on the instruments I know, I want to read more novels, I want to learn more about astronomy, I want to re-sharpen my German lingual abilities, I want to learn new instruments, to spend more time with the friends around me, to write more, to do so very many things.

Overall, the theme of my self-portrait might just be eclecticness, with unity at its core. That will be a difficult but worthy concept to aim for, and I’m excited to really get started.

Producing the Music Video

Being assigned the role of Producer for our Experimental music video group assignment was unexpected to me, but I’ve had a solid experience with it. While I would have preferred more creative input in the music video project, and while Producer was one of the roles I least wanted, I’ve found that collaborating with every group member and keeping everyone on the same wavelength has been relatively satisfying. I’ve been helped by all the other group members; they’ve helped to modify the schedules I’ve made and have posted communicatively in the Facebook group page I started.

An important factor in this group has been the dedication we all feel toward the project; we all foresee the music video as being the magnum opus of the F302 class this semester, and we’ve all agreed to put aside other classwork and work to make the time for filming this. We’ve decided from the very beginning that we want to stay on top of the pre-production planning, to ensure enhanced production. While the required use of a film camera for our videos will prove a large hindrance to the creative potential of each group, we will still make the best of our regrettably outdated circumstances and pitch together our talents and efforts to make a great music video for our songs.

As Producer, I’ve kept the meetings and planning structured and succinct, and I intend to direct the actors and set-up of shots in assistance with our Director. We’re ready to put all our planning to work and make something that we can show to people outside of this class and in the years to come. Along the way, we’ve developed creative bonds and will probably work together outside of this class again. In the meantime, I’ll help make decisions about creative details and guide the filming forward.

From Art House to Microcinema response

Rebecca Alvin’s article addresses some important points for the art house/microcinema scene; the references to the transformations of the purposes of art house cinemas is familiar to me. In Charlotte, where I live outside of school, our art house theaters show only limited release studio productions and/or Oscar nod films with, as it was put, “limited box-office appeal.” I’m not old enough to remember days in which these theaters would have played more local and/or abstract (“sourceless”) cinema, but by now the theater is like a sub-cinema of big-budget studio releases.

On the other hand, the technology-influenced transformations of the art house scene seem mixed to me; while innovations such as the VHS probably did have a noted impact on the attendance and style of the old art house cinemas, the Internet further down the road can be seen as having changed the scene again in a different way; aberrant filmmaking can nest on YouTube/Vimeo channels and reach a wider, albeit mostly anonymous, audience.

But the fact remains that these art house theaters that were, are, and will be are changed indefinitely by the tides of society. The adventurous spirit and sense of community are no longer the way they were in many small-screen box offices, and that’s an important change to note, at the least. Such flashbacks can renew ideas for the current implementation of independent films and teach us about what such a gathering has to offer.

Collective Filmmaking

So far this semester, I’ve learned some important things about collective filmmaking and reinforced some things I learned in FST 201. As filmmaking is arguably the most collaborative artistic process, it can be stressful, discouraging, or even intimidating to count on that many people to deliver a film, as well as to try to get through to them. But in some ways, this emphasized collaboration can be a great blessing as well.

There are times when a vision of mine for a given assignment or film can go relatively unchecked, like if I’m the one with the most ideas and/or know-how required. But as the semesters pass on (and I think this will become increasingly true as I get further into the Film Major), I notice more fellow students with the passion and experience and desire to learn that I have. This can stimulate something of a competitive urge in me, but by the end of the day I find it exciting in the most positive way possible; I realize that me and my classmates are capable of far more than before, and that I want to not only impress my professor and myself, but the other students as well.

I’ve also found that I’m far more likely to impress myself if I have the help of some of my gifted classmates along the way to make simple but crucial suggestions, apply their expertise to things I’m less familiar with, provide a fresh perspective, etc.

Needless to say, there is quite a good deal of talent in our F302 class this semester, and I’m simply just excited to work with them more. I don’t want this class to end anytime soon, and I only want to keep working on larger projects with them like we’re doing now in our Music Video crews.

The collective filmmaking and film community with increasingly passionate and skilled, and even agreeable classmates, is a blessing that most other majors probably seldom/never experience. I try to take full advantage of this, and once I finish my Computer Science minor, I’ll look forward to committing far more time and energy into my collaborations with fellow students and teachers!

Light Reflection #3

Windows and doorways in monochrome are particularly striking to me; the light playing through them casts shadows that are not its own. When filming our pictures of the window in the Watson building, and our shot of the set of windows in the parking garage, I found the emphasis laid in three parts: in the side closest to the viewer, in the wall or window itself, and in the outside as well. The outside, when shot with the right lighting settings, is almost in color if more clarified than some other contents of the photograph. In this way, we were successful with our shooting of photographs for this assignment.  

Light Reflection #2

I’ve also found the differences between color and monochrome lighting to be very interesting ad important. Much is lost when choosing to film in monochrome that might otherwise exist in color; and, of course, wine-sipping, turtleneck-wearing, pretentious “art” aficionados may actively endorse monochrome above color filming. But through the unsavory, pretentious mud and murk of such film approaches lies the truth that emphasis and meaning is gained in monochrome that is not otherwise there in color filming. A picture or video may seemed suspended in time, floating through a realm of inactivity and silence, whereas a color counterpart might not strike the same meaning. 

Light Reflection #1

Light and dark are a contrast so universal that we can forget to notice them entirely; this is one of the ways in which still photography, as well as video, mesmerizes us in such a relatable way. The ways in which light and shadow play across the surfaces of objects is something we are adapted to perceive for purposes of spatial reasoning and distance, but, due to the immense variety of objects on this planet, we find beauty and wonder in such phenomena as shadows stretching across multiple objects, objects far removed from one another and otherwise seen as entirely separate….

Film Photography Reflections

            While shooting with my experimental film group this past weekend, I became better acquainted with the Pentax camera as a whole. I had already used it for an almost identical project in Andre’s class, but this time I was more fluid with its settings; they were no longer morasses of numbers, but tools with which to film in a different and unique way.

            The fact that we were not restricted to one location like in Andre’s class proved one of the most valuable aspects of the project. The restraints on the types of shots (requiring 2 each of extreme close-ups, close-ups, medium shots and long shots) was a mistake in the guidelines of the project, but we were still able to produce some very interesting subjects.

            While many natural subjects might include plants and machinery, we tried to veer toward other things, such as objects and building interiors and blends between them.

            I’ve always found that lighting is given a different emphasis in monochrome filming, to a particularly dramatic and naturally eye-catching way. We decided building interiors would be interesting in this light (pun intended) due to the nature of windows and reflections involved. We therefore decided to take pictures of windows in the parking garage here on campus and Watson education building, with emphasis that might not be present in full color.

            While shooting on film cameras proved a large artistic hindrance, we were able to walk around enough to really take notice of interesting areas and subjects of interest and capture parts of them. I’ve always found that substance is far more important than empty style, and even that substance allows for the best style to flower from it. In much the same way, we decided to take our time in deciding on what picture to take, and then take it. 

Making the Soundscape

Working on the soundscape project with Kevin Smith was a good experience; it reinforced the process of creative editing for me. I had already made a soundscape in Andre’s 201 class in the Spring 2014 semester, so I was able to get off to an even better start this time around due to my prior knowledge of what was preferable to do and what wasn’t. The structure of the project was also better this time around; in Andre’s class, we recorded our sounds as a group of four, like in F302. But in Andre’s class we found out that we were supposed to make two different soundscapes, each created by one of the group’s halves, at the last minute.

             This time, we were manually assigned a partner outside of our sound recording group. Therefore, the fact that I was only working with one other person allowed for a very beneficial focus to our creative process.

            One of the most important things I was reminded of, and even improved on, was the shared creative editing process. I have years of experience as an editor with video editing software, and I’ve always found it to largely (and preferably) be a one-person job.  It’s tricky to be properly communicative about an idea you have when you’re not in front of the computer and keyboard, manually demonstrating your idea yourself. If not, you have to take the reins of the mouse and keyboard from your partner, thus risking the appearance of being a control freak, not liking what the other person is doing, etc. Such socially/artistically clashing barriers are hindrances.  

            However, Kevin was great to work with; he was agreeable and creative, and most importantly, he cared about the project about as much as I did. He had adequate editing experience, and we worked well together. In addition, he and I both agreed to take the project home and work on our own parts of the soundscape by ourselves; this proved to be a very beneficial tactic, and we simply put our sections together when we met up and modified them to be more cohesive.

"The Absolute Film" response

 I loved how “The Absolute Film” immersed the connections between several iconic filmmakers of the experimental/avante-garde/absolute field by flowing their stories together briefly and succinctly. It was very interesting that Fischinger’s body of work was not replicated upon his moving to America, and yet that his California presence inspired John and James Whitney to set out on films of their own with more updated technological and artistic standards. These two seem like interesting historical figures, and that Harry Smith was in turn involved with them and Fischinger also shows how crucial connections are for artists: not just for success in the industry because of the networking included, but because of the collective artistic influence and shared adventure of creation! What would these filmmakers be if they’d not met one another and worked together? Who would Ken Kesey and Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac be without one another? What would The Beatles and The Beach Boys have recorded without inspiring one another? This film article touches on that exciting and crucial connection between artists working within and changing their field in their own ways.  

On 9/10/2014's presentations

            The presentations in class last week yielded some very interesting information to me; I was particularly interested in what I learned about Jonas Mekas. The fact that he was able to write even in the labor camps seemed an odd piece of history, as well as testament to his creative urges. I had never before heard of the Filmmaker’s Cinematheque, nor the Anthology Film Archives that developed from it. I visited New York City in December 2013, and had I known about the Film Archives, I would have certainly tried to visit.

            That the Anthology Film Archives were and are a haven for the viewing of experimental films was important to me; as Shannon pointed out, decades ago a person might see an enthralling experimental film in one of the rare venues showing it and never have the chance to see it again. Hans Richter’s work also caught my interest, because of his aberrant anti-war filmmaking. “Zurich Dada” is a term I had heard before, but I hadn’t seen any of it yet. The shape-changing animations included in the presentations were impressive not just for the difficulty of their assembly back then, but also because of their unity and themes. After these presentations today, a classmate such as myself could begin to realize that the experimental film world is larger than we first conceived it to be. 

Brief Reflection on Synesthesia and Cymatics

The concepts of synesthesia and cymatics are interesting to me because of their connection with the world around us. That such patterns as we see in video demonstrations can arise simply through a fixed note is really something curious. To me the studies of synesthesia and cymatics are testament to the seamless intertwining of science and art, and the ways in which they can affect one another; there is an exact frequency to a literal note, and yet different instruments playing an identical note will generate different sounds due to their varying physical makeup, and will therefore create different sensations.

              Patterns exist in the world all around us, and their silent consistency is really a source of wonder. As technology changes art, so too does art affect our understanding of science and our interpretation and value of it. Science and art are, to me, two sides of the same coin; a coin that comprises the abstractness of the human experience, a sensation coming from our own thoughts and from our own observances of things existing independently of us. Synesthesia is a great example of the way in which "artistic" concepts such as color can work their way into the fixed order of things such as numbers. Cymatics is a great example of the way in which there is a method to the chaos of our perception; that what we experience, as far as we know, has its own existence in the fabric of the cosmos. As we learn more about these things and about ourselves, our perception and sensation will only continue to expand.  

The Sound Recording Experience

The sound recording experience was different the second time around, but perhaps not different enough; like last semester, we met in the Cultural Arts Building and recorded various piano and vocal pieces, but I noticed that some of the things we were doing were very similar to what my group did last semester for our soundscape. I am certainly satisfied enough with the sounds my group produced, and Cam and Helen both brought great contributions and ideas. I just feel like I became more aware of the “typical” immediate approaches to sound recording for experimental reasons upon a second time. I think the requirement of uploading all our sound into 10-minute audio clips and providing a sound log was a beneficial decision for the most part; I knew as we were recording that most of our sounds would be listened to. I was also glad we were able to combine some sounds, as that lended itself to a slightly different way of thinking when deciding what to record.

Sound Observation 2 - Laundry Room

Sitting in a community laundry room with eyes closed, rhythm is one of the first subtle sensations. The hum of the machines here is not a typically menacing and alienating one like it might be in some dystopian story; here, it is gentle and steady to me. People coming through don’t take away from the harmony but rather add to it in their leaving; additional dryers and washing machines add to the call. The continuous nature of these sounds makes their ending all the more sudden; a washer or dryer finishing its load of clothes drops off and causes a void. The opening and closing of doors, footsteps, clothing plopping into a basket, all of them sync in rhythm.