03.24.08
it was in Dr. Laudadio's 'writing about film' class a year and some ago when i was first exposed to the idea of un-originality in everything. he was expressing the concept that, in theory, nothing is truly original, because it innately draws from every single thing around it, past and present. this idea is, of course, un-original in and of itself, and in my opinion, both correct and incorrect. it is also the underlying topic of one of last weeks readings, entitled "the ecstasy of influence," by Jonathan Letham.
it's a solid idea, seeing as how it's undeniably true that most thought processes and understandings and revelations are drawn from experience. but still, can pure originality (i.e. true creativity) exist?
it's hard to say no, because on an individual level, you want to know and believe that all of the wonderful revelations and ideas you have are 100% unique and new. but it's also hard to say yes, because you have to recognize the fact that it's only in your brain because you have been exposed to it previously. in millions of forms and fashions, a collective experiential past takes shape to create even the smallest of thoughts.
anyhow, enough philosophy for now...
"the ecstasy of influence" was about just that idea, though, but on a totally different scale where originality is not the point, but the point instead is to purposefully draw from all those sources to create something brand new. (philosophical argument begin: but again, is that truly "new" ? or is it recycled, thus used, thus old, while being a type of new? is a new "used" car new? it's new to you...) i certainly don't know the answer to that question, but what i do know is that something new, and often times wonderful, is created. it can ascribe a totally different meaning to the original piece, or piece before that, or piece before that. like i learned in "the yes men" something can be recycled 10 times, and will still contain approximately 10% of it's original intent....
that said, this idea is very relevant to our current 'found footage' projects, as that is exactly what it is. i am doing two found footage projects concurrently (the other in intro to edit) and much prefer the one in this class, as it gives me free reign to pick my footage. therefore, you can truly shape the idea of what you are trying to say.
my favorite part of the Letham article occurred on page 63, when he writes, "Today, when we can eat Tex-Mex with chopsticks while listening to reggae and watching a YouTube re-broadcast of the Berlin Wall's fall -- i.e., when damn near everything presents itself as familiar - it's not a surprise that some of today's most ambitious art is going about trying to make the familiar strange. In so doing, in reimagining what human life might truly be like over there across the chasms of illusion, meditation, demographics, marketing, imago, and appearance, artists are paradoxically trying to restore what's taken for "real" to three whole dimensions, to reconstruct a univocally round world out of disparate streams of flat sights."
To me, thats the point.
I concur.
----
on another note, i thoroughly enjoyed the ron english, subversion of art film that was shown, and have since spread that word. but as my friend pointed out (and something that i had really not thought about yet): what's the point of him going to eat mcdonalds with his kids at the end of the movie? isn't that a bit paradoxical?
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Saturday, March 22, 2008
everything
there's too much happening in class right now to try and cover one thing, so with this blog i take on... everything... first off, i thought the readings from last week, "molotov man" and "the ecstacy of influence" were both very interesting and appropriate. molotov man made me thing about recontextualization and/or decontextualization in the most basic of senses, for instance the first part of the essay that fully decontextualized the molotov man (who is a father), and the second part of the essay that recontextualizes him. it was nice for his personal life to be somewhat revealed nearer the end of the article. that particular article did raise a few questions in my mind about the authors and their relationships, mainly whether they worked collaboratively or separately on this piece. taking into account their former relationship, it was probably the latter... it has since been decided that alex and i are to be in charge of editing/sound mixing for the one shot. luckily, our basic idea had already incorporated most of our sound into it, including the ambient noise and the dialogue/music. sound effects should come fairly easy, so we'll see how that goes... the rhythmic editing exercise is still escaping me, as i still have no idea in what direction to take it. (i'm only on campus two days a week, and have yet to be able to watch the dvd with examples from past years). once i watch the dvd, i feel like i'll have a better idea of how they'll turn out, and therefore a better idea of what i'd like to shoot for it. until then, it's kind of taking a back seat to my... found footage project! i have literally thought about this every single day since it was assigned, and spend more time thinking on this than any other project thus far (in any class) this semester. i can't wait to make it. right now (and since the beginning) my focus is on a terence mckenna/vs./george bush ideology audio, mixed with images of war. peace/war/where is our country? again, we can only wait and see... as one last note, i loved "the yes men," and am planning on watching the part i missed (due to becoming a fog master) before monday's class, and am very excited about watching the rest of the movie.
cheerio~ |
the line and the cone
| 03.17.08 #1 coming into this, i had no idea what to expect (except that i was going to create some serious fog). in my head, i had imagined it asmore of a laser type of thing, that would somehow (magically) project into the middle of the room, and be more or less a line morphing itself, separating, into a conical shape. i was wrong. even when it began, i didn't understand exactly what it was i was [supposed to be] seeing. (do i look at the wall? the projection light beam?) eventualyl, once the beam began to take it's curvature shape, i was understanding "the line" and "the cone" that it was to become. it also helped when Kreul mentioned, "think of it as a physical presence in the room," (which it truly had become, the most prevalent of) and was asking students to interact with it. my favorite part was actually my job, as the fog-master, because i got to control and 'create' those amazing patterns that appeared in the light beam (that was slowly creating itself ito a cone-formation). on the whole, a very interesting and simplistic artistic form, unique in design. |
Monday, March 17, 2008
one shot
03.10.08
since i was not able to make it to class this day due to unforseen circumstances surrounding my trip back from spring break, i decided to do my blog for this past week about week 8.5: the one shot.
set for saturday the 15th, and only ill-timed due to the tarheels playing in the semi-finals at 1:30pm, i thought the one shot was a very fun project to be subjected to outside of class time. i went into the project regretting that i wasn't able to make class on monday, seeing as how i knew little to nothing about the bolex camera (and still really don't) but luckily for me, i have an ace group (alex, amanda, and patrick) who are always there to help.
before saturday, alex sent me a few update e-mails on what i missed, and catching me up to speed on the idea that they had come up with: the life of a book. at first, i wasn't sold on it, only because with a shot of 56 seconds, i was wondering how we were going to show that when the book didn't have any time to be read, much less opened (the essence of it's life, right?). but then you realize, on occasion, that's not the point...
on saturday, our first task (amidst fleshing out our story as a cohesive group) was to help group #1 on their shoot, which was the demise of balloon head. i was glad they went first, because it gave me a little more to get accustomed to the idea of shooting with a bolex camera (an idea that for some reason, seems very foreign to me). but during their shoot, i picked up some solid bits and pieces about how the camera works, and thanks to looking at projects from previous semesters in class, had a good idea about the perceived effect (i.e. look and feel) of what we would be getting. while group 1 was developing their film, we had time to almost fully block ours, so by the time we got out into the field, our shoot took little to no time.
the book we used was "on the road," by jack kerouac, a symbolic gesture at the very least, and our shoot went off almost without a hitch, minus the fact that during the actual shoot, the film cut off after only 50 seconds of filming. uh-oh... now this is where i got confused (mainly on how the film operates internally) but we had to crank the film back up and shoot the last 6 seconds again (does it not rewind the film to the beginning? what happened?) it's more or less a minor detail that can easily be fixed during the editing process, but i guess the biggest problem is that without an absolutely perfect match-on-action (which is virtually impossible) between the first shot and the second shot, even the editing lab cannot make this appear as a true "one shot."
but then again, i guess thats just how things go...
since i was not able to make it to class this day due to unforseen circumstances surrounding my trip back from spring break, i decided to do my blog for this past week about week 8.5: the one shot.
set for saturday the 15th, and only ill-timed due to the tarheels playing in the semi-finals at 1:30pm, i thought the one shot was a very fun project to be subjected to outside of class time. i went into the project regretting that i wasn't able to make class on monday, seeing as how i knew little to nothing about the bolex camera (and still really don't) but luckily for me, i have an ace group (alex, amanda, and patrick) who are always there to help.
before saturday, alex sent me a few update e-mails on what i missed, and catching me up to speed on the idea that they had come up with: the life of a book. at first, i wasn't sold on it, only because with a shot of 56 seconds, i was wondering how we were going to show that when the book didn't have any time to be read, much less opened (the essence of it's life, right?). but then you realize, on occasion, that's not the point...
on saturday, our first task (amidst fleshing out our story as a cohesive group) was to help group #1 on their shoot, which was the demise of balloon head. i was glad they went first, because it gave me a little more to get accustomed to the idea of shooting with a bolex camera (an idea that for some reason, seems very foreign to me). but during their shoot, i picked up some solid bits and pieces about how the camera works, and thanks to looking at projects from previous semesters in class, had a good idea about the perceived effect (i.e. look and feel) of what we would be getting. while group 1 was developing their film, we had time to almost fully block ours, so by the time we got out into the field, our shoot took little to no time.
the book we used was "on the road," by jack kerouac, a symbolic gesture at the very least, and our shoot went off almost without a hitch, minus the fact that during the actual shoot, the film cut off after only 50 seconds of filming. uh-oh... now this is where i got confused (mainly on how the film operates internally) but we had to crank the film back up and shoot the last 6 seconds again (does it not rewind the film to the beginning? what happened?) it's more or less a minor detail that can easily be fixed during the editing process, but i guess the biggest problem is that without an absolutely perfect match-on-action (which is virtually impossible) between the first shot and the second shot, even the editing lab cannot make this appear as a true "one shot."
but then again, i guess thats just how things go...
Monday, March 3, 2008
povey
02.25.08
having now worked for half a semester on multiple ways to create cameraless films, my interpretation of thad povey and the scratch film junkies’ film “St. Louise” was much different than before. Although I was able to recognize many of the techniques, there was plenty that still mystified me. This film contained a few elemental references, including one clearly defined CO2, which is fitting, seeing as how these films feel very “organic,” (I suppose having to do with the fact that since typically the human form is absent, and therefore the film is comprised of shapes, colors, and sounds). It seemed as though the majority of the film was made with inks, and at one point, I was intrigued by the arrows that were overlayed on top of the base inks. That was one of those times when I couldn’t help but wonder how they did that. There was another section of the film where there was green, almost bacterial looking images and, again, I wasn’t able to discern how they created it. I thought the stock footage used was an interesting choice, and perhaps not necessarily what I would have chosen to use. On the whole, the film was great eye candy, I thought the song choice was superb, and it’s still nice to see professional films created under the same mediums as the ones I am currently learning.
having now worked for half a semester on multiple ways to create cameraless films, my interpretation of thad povey and the scratch film junkies’ film “St. Louise” was much different than before. Although I was able to recognize many of the techniques, there was plenty that still mystified me. This film contained a few elemental references, including one clearly defined CO2, which is fitting, seeing as how these films feel very “organic,” (I suppose having to do with the fact that since typically the human form is absent, and therefore the film is comprised of shapes, colors, and sounds). It seemed as though the majority of the film was made with inks, and at one point, I was intrigued by the arrows that were overlayed on top of the base inks. That was one of those times when I couldn’t help but wonder how they did that. There was another section of the film where there was green, almost bacterial looking images and, again, I wasn’t able to discern how they created it. I thought the stock footage used was an interesting choice, and perhaps not necessarily what I would have chosen to use. On the whole, the film was great eye candy, I thought the song choice was superb, and it’s still nice to see professional films created under the same mediums as the ones I am currently learning.
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