Saturday Shoot

My experience during the Bolex Camera shoot on Saturday was not only an extremely important learning experience for myself, but the entire class period was an incredible amount of fun. The fact that we had such beautiful weather for the shoot was terrific for filming and made our environment both extremely beautiful and comfortable. Watching other groups work on their project was not only extremely enjoyable, but allowed us to have a better sense for when we eventually got the Bolex camera. Something that I thoroughly enjoyed seeing was the major collaboration and volunteering from the class as a whole for my group’s long take. Not only did this make our final project better, but it allowed for new thoughts and ideas to enter our discussion about the concept. Several days after that Saturday shoot, I realized that the energy and enthusiasm from that day stemmed from the fact that everyone was having so much fun. It’s rare to be involved in a project for a class and everyone is genuinely happy to be there. That was definitely a big highlight of the day and for the semester in general. I also really enjoyed tackling different conflicts or creative decisions due to the broad spectrum of ideas that were being presented. Making these on the spot decisions really added to the excitement because we were watching our concept slowly morph throughout the creation process. Finally, after all the fake blood and dead body placement had finished, we filmed our Bolex one shot project and I couldn’t have been happier about the results.

Rough Theater

The intricacies of the theater set is always something that has always fascinated me. The architectural details are always thought of as being very minute and small, but in actuality, have huge subconscious meaning into the viewer. The entire idea of a stage setup is created in order to serve the audience and to help bring the story to the receiver. For three years, I was a theater constructionist for my high school and have first hand knowledge about this phenomena. The amount of detail and work that goes into painting the picture that will end up seen at the premiere, is massive and may even take months. It was through this experience that I could clearly see how the human experience is dependent on so many more factors than say, the actors, dialogue, or story. This is not only a truth for physical plays and musicals, but also for many other mediums that have the same kind of function. In film, the frame and all aspects within the frame have a huge impact on how the receiver takes in the information. As a visual species, we depend on the elements within our vision, including peripherals, to fully intake the complete portrait of what is being given to us. On a stage, a huge responsibility is to make sure the action can be viewed by every member of the audience and in order to do so, careful blocking and dressing becomes an imperative to make sure that every seat in the house is capable of experiencing what’s on stage.

16 mm film reflection

            Working and experimenting with the 16mm film has been such a fascinating experience for me. For me, this project gave me a real hands-on idea of the limitless possibilities to manipulate film into something of my own creation. The actual physical manipulation of the strip was both a learning experience and an opportunity that created so many possibilities for creative experimentation. The chance to use oils, ink, and other materials was one of my favorite parts of this assignment and was also a massive source of creative possibilities. Feeding the film into the projector and watching how the different techniques and tools affected how the images were shown really gave me a satisfaction for the work that I put in. I can only imagine the massive amounts of artistic decisions that I can make in the future after becoming further experienced with this kind of assignment. I thoroughly enjoyed working with bleach and discovering how it can affect the images. But the most interesting aspect to me were the different patterns that you can make within the film. When watching the film being projected, I was able to see that in the future, I could strategically use these patterns in a rhythmic method and create something that has visual continuity. What I look forward to the most is how relevant I can make the vast amount of patterns to the narrative in the film. This kind of experimentation is really what has me excited for future assignments in this class.

R3

I’ve always found crowd funding and crowdsourcing to be a fascinating and interactive way to fund and gain awareness about a project. I see crowd funding as an example of how the industry of film and innovations in other fields can gain momentum and progress to new stages in a way that could never be accomplished before this new age of connectivity. The first time I heard of crowdsourcing was the Star Wars project that Disney spearheaded a few years ago. The fact that something so expansive could have contribution from regular people who don’t work in the industry was something that I absolutely loved. This brings about questions about what kind art will be created in the future as crowdsourcing becomes more popular. The Internet has lead to so many innovations and the idea of both crowdsourcing and crowd funding will have major effects on how many industries function and independent ideas get traction. Wikipedia owner Jimmy Wales gave an extremely eye opening speech about his company and the uses of an encyclopedia that users can edit. The mission of bringing an incredibly accessible encyclopedia to so many people is a game changing idea and it has done just that. My favorite parts of Jimmy Wales’ speech was when he was talking about the reality of many criticisms toward Wikipedia and the challenges that accompanies many actual criticisms. I loved Tiffany Shlain’s manifesto on the cloud because of all the incredible advantages that it will offer. This insight into the future of cloud filmmaking only makes me want to think about the many different advancements that will allow result within the decades to come. The amount of undiscovered filmmakers that will be found and recognized for their achievements are massive. Not to mention, the content that will be accessible to viewers of all languages will help to increase audiences for all kinds of films.

R2

I found David New’s observations on sound and the recording of sound to be not only insightful but incredibly fascinating. The way he describes sound is unlike anything I have ever heard before. He views sound almost as a living being and is a constantly moving force. He made an observation about time before sound recording that explains how sound was “committing suicide” because all that humans had was memory instead of an actual copy of the sound. Yet, he explains that even recording sound can never fully capture how it really sounded in the real world. Jim Cummings’ article, “Opening Our Ears to Acoustic Ecology” continues to talk about the living fabric of soundscapes that constantly exist around us. I had never heard of acoustic ecology before but its study is unbelievably interesting as it unveils the dependence that every creature has on the universal, everlasting soundscape of the world. This article has inspired me to do some soundwalking of my own and truly take in the natural collection sounds that inhabit the world around me. I’m very pleased to have been introduced to soundscape art and have been researching this on multiple websites. Justin Boyd’s Sound and Time was my favorite of the assigned reading due to Boyd’s unique relationship with sound and his own personal perspective. His passion for recording sound, adjusting frequencies, and playing with different environments is very cool to watch. He shows an art that I was unaware existed on this level and the depth of what he is doing is very inspiring. R. Murray Schafer’s complaint that we have become too unobservant of the natural sounds around us is a dead on observation. I know I am guilty of this as I ignore these sounds on a regular basis. The comparison of sound complaints from the past to today is also very intelligent and very singular to the modern world. The idea of cities being sonic sewers is definitely a big part of the problem and has definitely desensitized us to an overpopulation of sounds. The designing of a healthy soundscape was one of my favorite parts of all the readings because of the amount of intelligence that goes into designing something so beautiful. After reading all of the assigned readings, I have definitely been given a more insightful view on the auditory world around me and will devote much more time to experience it.

R1

I found the Wikipedia entry on Synesthesia to be absolutely fascinating. I had always heard about people associating songs or pictures with certain things like colors. I had never understood this phenomenon but the examination of it in the Wikipedia article helped to see a different perspective. I have been able to experience Associative Synesthesia in certain songs. If I listened to a song during a specific action such as eating cookies or drinking soda, then I will tend to associate the song with that food or drink. The Ted Talk video about Cymatics was a learning experience for me that unveiled so much about a subject that I knew very little about. The Chladmi experiment was mind blowing for me to see because of its graphic depiction and visualization of Cymatics. To watch sound take a physical form and move via a force that we otherwise cannot see was a very cool experience. I have always found the idea of individual perception and its effects to be an incredibly interesting topic. How Daniel Tammet describes his worldview being dominated through word/number associations with color, emotion, and personality is partly relatable and partly foreign to me. The way he views the world is clearly exclusive to himself and how he shows to the audience is easily palatable. The example of showing the numbers, one through twelve, really showed just how different and bizarre his worldview really is. His explanation of how the word Hnugginn is seen as a sad word further cemented to me on a deeper level how different and strange his perception are from mine.