Developing Film

This week we worked with exposing film to light. This was really fun. We put salt, marbles, and all sorts of little things on film in order to create a negative. We then developed the film by ourselves in two methods. The first was traditional developer. I felt like I was really an experimental filmmaker. I was making something and seeing it through from creation to developement. The second was just plain cool. We used coffee and vitamin C to develope film. It worked alright but for sheer creativety, i think it was the cooler way to develpe the film. I have to say that this class is really pushing me creatively. Even though this isn't narrative I am finding ways to create the image I want. I can't go anywhere now without looking at things and thinking "what would it be like if I put this on film?" or "what could I do with this?". This week I've brought alot of stuff I think will created interesting effects on film. I tried my hardest to find something translucent that would create something interesting, I couldn't find much. I was shopping and found stencils, which I think will be really cool because actual shapes will appear on the film. I bought some fake plume feathers which I also think will be intersting because the spaces between the strands of feather will make an image appear very clear (I may be wrong but this class is all about finding what works and what doesn't). Hopefully my group has brought some other things that will make this a truly unique project.

Assignment 3

I'm really excited about our next project. I've never developed film before so this is going to be completely new for me. I've already begun trying to think of weird and interesting things to put on the film. I'm still a little confused about contact printing but I'm sure that will be explained this week. I can actually see this type of experimental film making its way into narrative (which is what I want to do). In the movie The Fountain they used things like this for backgrounds in the space scenes and it was beautiful. I can't wait to get started.

Stop Motion Fun

This week was a long class, five plus hours, but it was really fun. I brought a ton of stuff to play around with and I was lucky enough to have an extremely creative and talented group. We utilized clay, little plastic soldiers, a rubber crocidle, a model bear, feathers, pipe cleaners, and construction paper. It was time consuming, only being able to move things a fraction of an inch. I was inspired by the pez videos and came up with an idea to make the bear breath fire. I had three differnt colored feathers in its mouth and moved the colors every 2 frames so it would appear to change colors and hopefully invoke the look of fire. I'm so excited to see all the crazy stuff we shot, I really hope it came out well.

Project 1 Update

Gigi and I completed project 1 this week. It was a real learning experiance. Scratching 9 feet of film is time consuming, and when you are trying to convey an element with it its even harder. We decided to color the film ontop of the scratching so that the elements were more obvious. We also found that vegetable oil never dries. It took forever, but I think it'll look really cool when its projected. Our biggest issue was with the air element. How do you convey something that is invisible? Gigi had this silver powder that barely showed up on the film but was still there, it worked perfect and should look great when projected. We got a little crazy and combined our found footage and magazine transfer (which will hopefully not come back to haunt us). I had a great time working on the project and I hope the class enjoys it.

Long live Pes

I loved the pes videos. I actually went around to my friends suggesting them. I watched them again on the computer and really liked it. I thought Kaboom was brilliant. I watched it four times. These are the kind of expiermental films I really enjoy. It is an interesting look at ourselves, like the comment about the ribbon. It also makes you wonder how interrelated sound and image are, because you hear a cannon, a clown becomes muzzle smoke. I would love to work on a film like this. Every since, I've been looking around at everything wondering what I could make out of it. I'm really glad we watched this film.

The Brother's Quay

The Brother's Quay is a stop motion film that looks like what a Tim Burton film if he was actually depressed. I was thoroughly freaked out. I liked it but it was very out there. I was trying to figure out how on earth they did some of the amazing things, particularly with the reflections. I didn't understand the allusion to communism but I don't think that would have changed my impression. I hate dolls, they freak me out and there was something even more freaksome about a doll being disemboweled by other dolls and being turned into a monster. I'd like to see a behind the scenes to see how they accomplished this strange work of art.

Getting the job done

Gigi and I have been working on our project and I'm getting pretty excited. We met and discussed the format (if experimental film has one). We broke it down and have decided to do a candy cane like format. Switching between each element every 100 frames (enough time to actually notice something). There is alot of work to be done, but now that we have a plan I think it will be really interesting and an awesome learning experiance.

Response to Toward a Theory of Animation

I have never reallly thought about the production of a disney film. I'm not gonna lie, I know the words to "A whole new world". I like a good disney classic. This article made me feel like it was a cold industrial process. I felt like they were making animated films like a factory would make a car. To an extent that's very true. Because there are so many people working on the animation there is no animator, no artist. Though some of these films are very well made, they were well made by so many hands thus elimanating the personal touch of a single artist. I've mentioned it before but I've never truly enjoyed experimental cartoons (maybe I just haven't seen any really good ones). I have a new respect for the experimental animators. As a lone artist they are creating something uniques, without the constructs that a orthodox animated film does. These films don't have a narrative form. I think the more I see the more I'll enjoy them, this article has encouraged me to do just that.

Last Class Review

I'm really excited about this class. The magazine printing excercise was really interesting. Seeing everyones put together (though the jammed projector sucked, I pray I'm not the one who made my strips too wide) was awesome. Utitilizing this newly acquired skill will definitly make this next project something exciting. I noticed how I tried to use little symbols in my strips and realized when projected that they were on screen for a frame, sometimes less. I used the superman symbol twice but never saw it as it was projected. I wonder how many other people in the class did the same thing. You don't seem to recognize individual images, rather just patterns. I'm going to try really hard to incorporate this realization in my project. Most fun I've had in a three hour class in a long time.