Saturday Shoot

definitely skipped this blog last week and did the readings by accident so ill talk about my experience from the saturday shoot for this one....wayyyy better than i thought it was going to be. since last saturday was pretty much the nicest day we've had since last summer i came to school not to pumped cause i wanted to go to the beach, but as soon as we started filming, i ended up having so much fun. my group was in the second shift so we helped out with the first groups for a bit. i dressed in a scuba outfit which i must say was hilarious and looked for treaure for one of the films. it was really interesting to see other groups ideas for their films and then watching them be played out. it was pretty hard to walk or actually run in the flippers but it all worked out and ended up being a great little film. ive used the bolex in shannon's doc class so im fairly familiar with how to use it so some others in my group shot our film. we started in the woods with a few run throughs without the camera following just to get our moves right. courtney skipped through the woods as little red riding hood while the rest of us played other fairy tale characters trying to attack her..its pretty funny and i had a lot of fun shooting it. When we got the scene blocked the way we liked it, we shot it and it ended up looking really good.
in the classroom, learning how to develop the film was really interesting...i kind of had an idea of how to do it from the first project we developed but this time i was much closer to the front so i could actually see what was going on...a great thing to know. watching it on the projector was so satisfying to know that our hard work had payed off. all the films looked great and i cant wait to see what the editors in our group do with the final product. i also enjoyed shooting with the 8mm camera. i have a super 8 that i play around with but ive never even seen a regular 8 camera so that was awesome as well

Readings...

i love everything about the first painting in the Molotov Man reading...begining with the off centered image. his face is my favorite. its so full of anger, and his eyes are so real. you can almost understand why he is throwing the molotov cocktail adn you dont even know a backstory. the way she took a photograph and painted it gave a texture and i love that the background is greyed out too...so beautiful. the embrace photo is so moving. her work is so emotional, i love it. the whole copyright issue sucks because of how beautiful her work is...i get it though, maybe she should have gotten permission to recreate the image in a painting..i mean, what an awesome photo to begin with, guess i would want my work credited too...the argument this painting started is very interesting..copyrighting with a purpose almost. when the photographer wrote back she was saying how her purpose was completly different than what the painting was saying, which in a way makes the painting different from the original completly. art sends a message...its cool how the same image in different modes of art depict different messages yet just by looking at the mans eyes it is the same. love how the image has been put on everything now though... even religious stuff cause the guy is wearing a cross.
the other reading was kind of weird.. not as interesting to me as the first one but had some really cool pictures..the one of the man made up of people was very neat...love Andre Breton's quote, totally agree. putting objects out of the context we are familiar with helps me see or i guess re see their beauty all over again. you can see aspects of things you never saw before and find new meanings

.....

so im kind of behind and cant do any of the blogs for tomorrows class. i havent seen the scratch film junkies film for week 6 blog and didnt get the assignment sheet for the 49 hour video race so before i shoot out ideas i wanted to get a better idea of what it is first...i have had some stuff going on at home but im back now so hopefully can catch up on all blogs by next week

Wells

i definitely did the wrong reading last week....my blog from last week is the chion so ill do the wells reading for this week.
i cant even imagine the work that went into animation before computers. i guess we got a little taste of it last week doing the cell animations but to actually do a feature like Snow White or some of those other Disney movies done long before computers must have taken forever. ive never really paid attention to continuity in cartoons but after reading about goofy, it totally makes sense. i always felt so bad for him! i just thought the purpose of him was to make people laugh but theres a whole motive behind his failures. the evolution of content section made me think of Fantasia. i used to watch that movie like 3 times a day, im not even kidding. my mom would have to rewind it for me and i just remember thinking how beautiful it was. well i guess i wasnt thinking beautiful cause i was like 4 haha but i jsut thought it was so neat and the pictures and colors were just amazing. i absolutly love Looney Tunes, and part of the reason is for the dialogue. i even qoute it still but i didnt realize that sound was that crucial to animation. looking back, i guess a regular rabbit walking around eating carrots isnt funny unless hes leaning up against something saying "whats up doc". thinking about animation always makes me think of one of my favorite movies ever....Mary Poppins. when they hop from the real world to a world of animation is one of the coolest things ive ever seen. especially since it was in the 60's.
the whole experimental animation process is very interesting to me. the manipultion of movements of color and objects instead of bodies i think would be very difficult in terms of comping up with ideas to keep audiences interested while not using a small man hunting with a little bit of a speach impediment. if done right, well ive only seen a few experimental animation films, but they are really cool and all the work that goes into the films really pays off.

Chion

saw Bergman's name....already hooked. this concept of audiovisual illusion is pretty interesting. i guess ive known what it was i just didnt know it had a proper name. the relationship between sound and image are what make the art of a film and this illusion that forms is between the most important aspects of the images and sound. ok wow i dotn know if what i just wrote makes any sense but i get it...its stressign the importance of sound on an image. it creates a new illusion....its like in a horror film, how important sound is to get viewers scared for whats to come in the next shot. the added value aspect is the stress on the sound to the image. a simple image of a gun is not as effective as an image of a gun with a loud gun shot being played over the image to empahsize the gun itself, or as the reading says, enriches the image.
as important as sound is, voices are more heard. i think its because as viewers, we are used to hearing other anyway, so when its in a film our natural instinct is to be drawn to words rather than noises. words are just as or even more effective as a sound library since its what viewers tend to pay attention to more which is why dialogue is often highlighted over natural sound.
music is one of my favorite parts of a film. some recent fims have ahd amazing soundtracks like Whip It, Zombieland and Adventureland....after realizing what amazing music these films had, i looked up some interviews with the filmmakers and it turns out each one of them had a huge play in the music choices in their films. they wanted each song to further the story rather than just serve as a scene transition. while watching the images in films, sometimes the lyrics of the music lend a hand at the emotion in the scene...the whole empathetic music concept. the anempathetic music i used to think was just used during scene transistions but after reading the article, its actually used to intensify emotion in some cases
most of this article reminds me of how sound, music and words effect horror films....probably because its valentines day and ive been watching horror films all day....but it really made me realize how much sound in general effects images.

oops, i didnt mean to post that yet! i just wanted to add that im doign the black box this monday and im bringing stuff like earrings and a fork and my guitar pick and umm i think a sea shell is in there and some bobby pins... im pumped to see what this will turn out looking like because i have never done anything remotely close to this way of making a film so im excited

so far, i think cameraless fimmaking is awesome. i did some of the magazine transfers on saturday and i think that is one of the coolest things ive ever done. the way the images stay on the tape and some even stay clear is really interesting to me. ive never done anything like this and i dont think ive ever seen any films with this done either. i cant wait to see it through a projector. the scratching on the film strips is really neat to. i tried to draw flames wiggleing on several frames so it would look like real fire for about 3 seconds but im not so sure how real it will look haha my drawing skills arent that great. i think it will be cool either way though. staying with the earth air water themes, i drew rain drops also. it starts with one drop and you watch it start at the top of the frame then it will fall to the ground and then the rain picks up. there are a few seconds of heavy drops then it clears up agian and goes into the other elements, i havent finished that yet os im not sure how to do the earth. i think my partner courtney is going to draw a flower as it starts as a seed then blossoms. our idea is to have these elements starting from the "root" and build to full potential then fade back out. i think it will all look really cool once we finish and run it through the projector. another part of our film is finger nail polish, we took earthy colors of brown and light pinks and blotted them along the frames then covered it with a clear coat to smooth out the images. im really enjoying making fims this way...a lot mroe than i thought i would actually. its opened my eyes to new ways other than just shooting something and editing it. its cool how i can manipulate the images myself instead of through a computer