3D Shoot

The 3D was one of my favorite shoots of this class.  I had a good time making the props, set and costumes.  Trying to incorporate cardboard into the creation of the costumes and set pieces was fun and challenging at times.   The actual shoot was a lot of fun too, I thought my group worked pretty well together and we were able to finish the shoot fairly quickly.  Our genres were gangster film, samurai film, and spaghetti western.  These genres are pretty similar so it was fairly easy to incorporate all of them into our base image.  The sound design will hopefully bring out two completely different films.  During the shoot we just kept the number of shots to the recommended number of 4.  Hopefully this will help streamline our post production process since we won't have as many shots to convert to 3D.  I'm really looking forward to working with this more in post.

Rough Theater

For years it seems people have been trying to eliminate the "roughness" of art, whether by creating paint programs on the computer or eliminating the actual instruments used to create great symphonies we have been trying to move away from the true nature of that art form.  I personally think that it can work really well, as I am a big fan of both electronic music and animation, however it doesn't replace the more classical elements of those forms.  I think another one of the big transitions we have seen over the last decade or so is the shift from film to video to HD video.  This shift has taken away the graininess and textures associated with film and given us super sharp images which, in some cases, makes it look fake.  It doesn't seem to be a true film when its so hyper-real in the HD format.  We are trying to really move away from the roughness of art and in my opinion it lesses the realness and value of the art.

Long Take

Aight, so I had a lot of fun working on this film.  I really like the constraints of working with one take in one minute because it really forces the story to move along.  I have to say that I am really looking forward to working on postproduction and adding sound.  I feel that the audio will be able to add another layer of depth to the story that isn't present in just the image.  Processing the film by hand was also really interesting.  Our image turned out really well with rich blacks and nice contrast.  I was really surprised and pleased with how well it turned.  I really liked working with the other group as well.  It was fun to be an actor and to see their ideas in action.  I'm actually really surprised it only took 4 hours to do everything we did, considering the amount of thought that had to go into the stories and the blocking before the shoot.  I also thought it would be harder to time film to be under a minute.  I think that condensing the story into under a minute and with one take it really produces a lot of unique and interesting ideas.  Overall I had a really good time and a great day of shooting.  I think that film will really come together once we add the audio layers. I'm looking forward to finishing it up.

Film Manipulation

I really enjoyed working on this project.  I thought it was a lot of fun; however, it did get a little tedious after a little while (though that isn't to belittle the style at all).  I have such a respect for people who animate and do film manipulation because it takes such a long time to achieve the style and design of what you want to do.  I do wish we had more time to work on this project, I feel that with more time we could have had a much better project and have more creative work (time limitations of summer school noted).  I think my favorite part of this project was the magazine transfer.  The designs of the ink always turned out so beautiful and intricate, most of the time in ways much different than what I had anticipated.  This was also the first time I got actually got to deal with the film itself.  Overall this was a great experience and I had a lot of fun doing this.  I hope to have the opportunity to do it again!

Sound Familiar?

The ability to hear is probably one of the greatest things that we as humans are able to do (aside from seeing, that is).  There are infinite combinations of sounds and things to hear that sound itself can create the landscape that we are in.  The article entitled "Acoustic Ecology" was one I found very interesting.  I feel that a main point of the article was that we should be more in tune with natural sound.  Going off of this point I would say that, while natural sounds are beautiful and help us deal with and define reality, I find more enjoyment in listening to manufactured sounds.  One prime example is electronic music.  I really like that we can create sounds and make music out of them and despite how alien they feel to us.  These sounds themselves are truly innovative.  I think that they allow us to be jarred from our daily lives and experience something new in the realm of sound an hearing.

Animation experimental vs. cel

I love animation.  I love the old hand draw Disney movies and am a big fan of most of the newer stuff.  I also really enjoy experimental animation.  I felt that this article did a good job distinguishing between the two; however, i feel that it was a little biased.  To me it seemed that this article was saying that experimental animation was better and I don’t necessary agree with that.  I think that both forms of animation have their merit and a lot of hard work goes into the animation.  I think that for narrative cel animation is better while more emotional driven story experimental animation is more effective.  That being said I can easily see the drawbacks of cel animation.  One show that comes to my mind is the old Scooby Doo.  I remember laughing about the fact that they always ran past the same background and it never changed until the end of the chase.  I don't know whether to classify that as laziness as the article suggests or whether this was simply just the standard style, perhaps it was a combination of both.  Animation has also been evolving over the last years.  Thanks to the introduction of Pixar, animation has taking a different route.  Pixar’s style of animation allowed for greater camera movement with the animation.  Backgrounds and characters are allowed to have much more detail than in previous cel animation.  I feel that the emotional level of this type of animation is able to be on par with that of real film and we can see that in films like Toy Story and How to Train Your Dragon.  Experimental animation crossing over into narrative animation is also a very creative and interesting.  A fantastic example of this was Fantasia, which was a great film.  

Synesthesia and Cymatics

This is about the fifth time I have read this article on synesthesia.  I find the topic to be fascinating.  I think one of the main reasons I keep reading about this phenomenon is that I’m secretly hoping that I will wake up and have spontaneously manifested this trait.  My first interest in this topic came from the neurological standpoint.  I am intrigued by the way the human mind works, reasons, and processes information.  I love reading about human cognition and everything that falls under; synesthesia does just that.  I like to consider this type of ability from a philosophical viewpoint as well due to the fact that the senses determine our reality.  Because synesthetes have these connections between sound and color, sound and taste, and graphemes and color it is quite easy to make the assumption that they perceive reality in a different way than the rest of us.  Therefore, the people who experience synesthesia experience reality in a completely unique way that I can only hope to image.  Which brings me to the next point:  synesthesia in art.  In my experience, art in simply a medium in which people express their unique views on reality and the way they experience life.  Synesthesia in art allows non-synesthetes to experience what synesthetes experience on a daily basis.  The film we watched in class served as a form of synesthetic art that translates music into a visual medium.  Each sound corresponded to a different color or shape creating for a beautiful visual embodiment of the musical piece.  I thought that the scientific field of cymatics goes hand in hand with synesthesia.  This is mostly due to my belief that through cymatics a new art form can be born.  In the video, we see that sound is used to create shapes; I think that this can be developed and musicians can begin to make visual art.

Initial film response:  I really liked this film.  Visual music is beautiful to watch.  I fell like this film really captured the music in an unique visual way that reflected the music itself.  The music was vibrant and “jazzy” and I really felt that in the visual aspects of the film as well.  I saw that in the designs and shapes especially.  I also liked how the designs, shapes, and lines came together at certain points as the music built and then exploded into more color and designs as the music crescendoed.