Alexa's 6x1 Blog

Mystery Workshop Response

2009-11-05T08:11:00.000-08:00

The mystery workshop had it's positives and negatives. The idea was really fun but I don't think that we had enough time to get all of this project done in just one class period. I felt a little jipped while making ours because as we were the second group to go, we didn't have enough time to work out our shot before we had to shoot it. We also didn't have time to make the second shot of ours (which was better than the first) into a 3d image unless someone stayed and did it after class. The idea was really cool though. And I like my 3d asian tiger cat mask. I wore it until seeing everything in red and blue gave me a headache. I'm excited to see our projects projected tonight.

The Yes Men bloblolboblol

2009-11-04T23:02:00.000-08:00

The Yes Men was my favorite thing that we have screened this semester in 6x1. I thought the content was very entertaining and the way it was put together (mixed media) was aesthetically pleasing and had a function for including the outside material of the news interviews, animations, footage from their conferences, etc. I thought the guys in the yes men were really funny and their ideas about the reburger and the phallic costume were hilarious.. I can't believe that costume didnt get any reaction at the conference... I guess that just says that no one really pays attention at those things anyway. I really couldn't believe they were getting away with what they were doing. It was pretty shocking.. those guys really have some guts to get up there and present ideas that are that farfetched and ludicrous to groups of the most intellectual and influential people in these huge corporations. it was a lot of fun to watch. I was also shocked that people who extended invitations to the yes men to be SPEAKERS at these conferences didn't follow up and take the time to actually investigate the person they were focusing their conference around. It's nuts. I really enjoyed this film and I hope that we can finish it in class.. i think we still had twenty minutes or so left of the film.
This film relates to our assignments because like ours, it includes footage from multiple sources. this relates mostly to project #6, the found footage project. I'm looking forward to this project because I like editing and making videos that have some sort of meaning behind them which is typically more effective in the form of mixed media editing. I've started working on another video that is pro-animal rights, pro-vegetarianism.. kind of like my edit for your editing class, but it is also very different.. live action and news clips and things.. not just a random rant from youtube haha. Looking forward to it!

Experience with the Saturday Shoot blolboblobbllolobolb

2009-10-15T08:43:00.000-07:00

The Saturday shoot was a lot of fun!! I really liked working with the Bolexes. They are such simplistic film cameras.. it was definitely a lot easier than working with the Arri-S's or the CP16s, especially when it comes to loading the film and not having to worry about battery power.
My group did the one take where there was a body transformation between each pillar on the library ledge. We had extra actors from Genna's group, so we had six people to use as transformers. Instead of having everyone just walking from one pillar to the other, we decided to have a prop (skateboard) to show that it is supposed to be the same person throughout the whole thing.
Watching the footage back at the end of class was very satisfying to get to watch our footage right after we shot it. I was really happy with what we came out with, except that we didn't get to film the ending shot we wanted because our wind ran out on the Bolex. I like what it looked like when it was projected at 24 fps and had that aged Charlie Chaplin type look to it. I don't want to change the speed of it but I don't know if we really have a choice unless we just play it backwards. I'm not editing this one so it's not up to me!

Ideas for 48 hr Video Race

2009-10-15T08:36:00.001-07:00

For the 48 hr video race, I am thinking about doing a stop motion animation with my Nikon D60. I plan on setting up a scene and having my camera on a tripod and then using my remote device to take photos while I move the objects in the frame. I realized after shooting the multi-plane animation that I really enjoy working with stop motion. It makes things possible that otherwise would not be possible. I have a few ideas of where to shoot the animation, but it depends on what the mystery object is to see how it fits in.
Another possibility is to use my webcam or scanner. I'm leaning way more towards the stop motion route though. I think that will be a fun project. I am excited to see what the mystery object is and to get started on this.

2nd Response to Scratch Film Junkies

2009-09-24T19:38:00.000-07:00

Going into this screening of St. Louise by the Scratch Film Junkies, I had entirely different expectations of what I was going to see. Having now experienced what these guys do for their films, I thought maybe I could relate a bit more to their techniques of filmmaking and style. I did like this screening much, much better than the first screening.
The first major difference I noticed between the Scratch Film Junkies and the films we made in class was the presence of a soundtrack. Kind of reiterating from last week's blog, I think the presence of a soundtrack adds so much value to the projected image and I think that this holds true to our screening tonight of the SFJ's. That jumped out at me immediately. I wonder what our film would sound like if we put music to it. What kind of music would we use and what would the tempo be like? I haven't seen the films made by the rest of the class so there really isn't any way to say just yet. In any event, I loved the song on this film by the Scratch Film Junkies. It was much much better than the first film by them that we watched. I remember that soundtrack being particularly ear-piercing and annoying.
One thing I noted that I thought was really cool in their film was the presence of words.. Like the title sequence. I was wondering how they did that. They only way I could really think of was a desktop transfer where they just printed the same logo over and over again onto many, many frames. Whenever words popped up anywhere, is that how they did it? The ones that were obviously not handwritten (or hand"scratched", I suppose). I thought it looked really cool. I liked it.
Something that they did that reminded me of our film is when they had the arrow and it spun around a few times. It reminded me of our 100 frame animations because that was the example of how to use the paper to divide up the number of frames and/or do the printer transfer. I'm pretty sure the example was a spinning arrow. (Also- I do not have a copy of this animation sheet for our film because I did a narrative type animation of the tree and bird and sun, so I didn't want to limit myself to 100 frames if I felt I needed more.. I think I did around 115). Their arrow was obviously much more stylized but none the less, it was the same idea.
I think I appreciated the Scratch Film Junkies' film a lot more this week, having had some experience in the techniques and practices that they use. Theirs was obviously much cooler than ours, but at least now I have a better understanding of what they did in order to achieve these films. If I were to make another "scratch film junkies" style film, I would definitely take some notes from those guys and maybe try a few more desktop printer transfers for title sequences and also inside the film.

Chion Reading

2009-09-24T19:09:00.000-07:00

Sound. As far as "added value" goes, I definitely agree that sound has the ability to enrich an image. There are a lot of films in my opinion that are more memorable for their soundtrack than acting performances or story line. Sound that engages the viewer on an emotional level, or empathetic sound, is, in my opinion, the most desirable type of sound. When sound has the ability to tug at your emotions, that is when you know the sound is great. One my favorite soundtracks is by Danny Elfman, the opening track of Sleepy Hollow when the opening credits are rolling. This track is so intense and definitely sets the mood and tone of the film and gets me so pumped for the movie I'm about to see. In fact, I think that most tracks by Danny Elfman are empathetic tracks.. they almost always tie into the emotion of the scene, and are not just randomly placed into a scene that doesn't really fit into the notes.
When I read the part of the article about the ear perceiving sound faster than the eye can process image, it confused me at first. I always thought it was other other way around. I think this is because when I think of sound vs sight, I think of a thunder storm and how you see a flash of lightning, and then seconds later you hear the sound. Then I remembered that that is about the speed in which sound and light travel, not how our body processes sight vs sound, so it began to make sense.
As far as sound and temporalization go, I find it interesting to think of sound being the temporal animation of the image. It makes sense completely, because rhythm creates beats which are entirely temporal. I think a movie that lacked a soundtrack would move very slowly because a lot of movies are pushed along by their soundtracks. I think an example of this is No Country For Old Men. Personally, I didn't like the choice to exclude soundtrack almost entirely from this movie. I know they did it to increase suspense because the sound wasn't dragging you along and hinting at what was going to happen and blah blah blah, but I thought that this made the film move much slower. Not a fan of this sort of thing. It definitely intensified the every day sounds of walking and doors closing and things like that, but the pacing of the movie was just too slow for me.

Reading Response

2009-09-18T12:07:00.000-07:00

I think that narrative, linear animation is much more popular than experimental animation because that is what people know. Kids grow up on narrative animated features and televisions shows. Disney has made it's empire on mass producing narrative animations, but when you look at experimental animations, there isn't an animator that comes close to reaching that kind of popularity in mainstream society. I believe that this is because narrative stories tend to hold your attention better with curiosity of finding out what will happen next, compared to a completely non-linear film which are, to me, confusing and hard to follow. As for the artists, I think that the artists behind experimental animation have more creative freedom because they are not limited to the bounds of sticking within the narrative story. You can just do whatever pops into your head, and it is just written off as being "experimental". In a narrative film, it is much harder to get away with something like that. Experimental animation isn't really my thing when it is put up against linear animation. Who can resist a good narrative?

Cameraless Filmmaking

2009-09-07T23:04:00.001-07:00

Thus far, I have really enjoyed cameraless filmmaking. I think it is fun because it is not too technical.. you are free to let your creativity run wild and are capable of doing anything you can think of to film without penalty. Through my experiences so far, my favorite medium of film manipulation is using bleach on film. Mark and I had a very interesting time squirting all kinds of cleaners and bleach and even Goo-Gone onto our film to see the different effects. Mixing Tilex and Goo-Gone was interesting because the Goo-Gone created a protective layer over the film and then we spray bleach which had no effect at all in the time that we gave it. If we would have let it sit a bit longer, maybe it would have, but I thought it was extremely interesting that the Goo-Gone was able to keep the bleach off of the film. Using Tilex (high bleach levels) alone on our film had crazy effects that we are very excited about. We even tried to guide the bleach by scratching paths into the film in which we wanted the bleach to follow. Using bleach is really cool because you can actually see it changing before your eyes. We got some awesome colors... Purple, and green, and yellow, for instance. I was just really amazed by the effect of the bleach on film.
Magazine transfers is my other favorite method that we have used thus far. I think it yields some really cool looking images and textures. Whoever thought of putting magazine cut outs on tape, then soaking the tape in water and rubbing off the paper, and then smacking it on a strip of film is a genius because I would have never thought of a process like that. I really like the results of it though.
Flashing the film in the dark room was a really neat experience as well, and I'm pretty bummed that I am not going to be in class this week to get to do it again. It was way harder to see in there than I was expecting. I think I assumed that my eyes would adjust more to the light than they did. It was really cool though because that is another process that you get to see the result almost directly after, since we just developed the film right there.
So far, cameraless filmmaking has been great!! I can't wait to see what the semester brings. I am really, really looking forward to the animation workshop day. That looks like a blast!

Synesthesia

2009-09-03T13:57:00.000-07:00

I find synesthesia to be a very interesting idea. I can't decide if it would be awesome or annoying to be friends with a super synesthete who saw colors for EVERYTHING audible or tasted EVERYTHING you can smell. I think it would be cool to hear them explain these sensations for a little while.
I think the paintings and photographs on Wikipedia made by the synesthetes were quite interesting. The woman who took snapshots whenever a sense of synesthesia was invoked in her had figured out a wonderful mechanism for capturing her own personal synesthesia. The fact that she would not take the photo until something sparked the synesthesia in her was really cool. I found it interesting that the reflection in the water elicited the sound of a cello. I cannot wrap my head around the idea that people actually see and hear these things.
Every now and then I will smell something (food) and get the taste of it in my mouth but I think that is a fairly common thing. Some scents spark a memory of a delicious treat, maybe a food from home or something your grandmother makes. I have never experienced anything visual after hearing something, or connected colors with letters (like done in class). I think if I were to pick colors for letters, it would most likely be based on the colorful blocks with letters on them from when we were kids.
I think it would be kind of cool to see colors in music. I am currently listening to Philip Glass' "Glassworks" album and trying to picture what his music would look like. I am picturing a vast arrangement of very fast moving colors. It's already giving me a headache. I wonder if synesthetes see colors during film soundtracks and if they get in the way or block their vision from the film. That would be incredibly frustrating. I am just rambling thoughts now..

Scratch Film Junkies

2009-08-27T11:10:00.000-07:00

My first impression of the Scratch Film Junkies piece was that it was overwhelming. I didn't like the audio at first.. I thought the beats and loud noises were very distracting from the visual image. As the film went on, I got used to the sound and it started to seem more in sync with the image, and didn't mind it as much, but still found the drums and loud noises to be unappealing. Although it would completely change the effect/meaning of the film, I think I would have enjoyed it more had the audio been something soothing and calm juxtaposed with the varying flashes of bright lights.
My favorite part of this film was when they used the live action/found footage and manipulated the image by scratching or adding color, for example, when they used it to create a background, outline the man's jacket, and the train. The use of bright colors was also visually pleasing. Other than the manipulation of the found footage, I wasn't a big fan of the film. I thought overall it was very jarring and hard to watch. I often misunderstand or completely don't understand experimental films all, and perhaps this is the case here. Would I have enjoyed the film more if I could tie it to a deeper meaning or some sort of emotional feeling? Maybe so. In any case, this film wasn't for me.