Sounds Like Shmacoustics.

I think Chion’s classification of sound with images is really interesting. I definitely agree with what he says, sound really can completely change the meaning of images in film. My friends and I made an experimental film for Flicker Film Society last year, in which everything made a sound other than that which it usually makes. For example, eyes blinking were various animal sounds. We also added sound when there was no sound there, such as inserting the noises of a baseball game, the bat hitting the ball, to the image of a guy miming hitting a baseball. It also reminds me of an exercise I just did in Alex Markowski’s Sound Design class. We were asked to insert a song into a movie scene, when a woman turns on a C-D and takes a drink of wine. I first used Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get it On”, and then used Avenged Sevenfold’s “Trashed and Scattered”. The cliche’ sexy song obviously made it seem like she was trying to seduce the plumber that soon knocks on her door. When I used the hard rock song, it had almost an air of revenge, and you think she’s planning some sort of attack on the plumber. It also reminds me of the Kuleshov effect a little bit, because you’re still juxtaposing two separate elements to create a certain mood.

I also love how he describes anempathetic sound. It reminds me of the scene in Godfather Part II when the Corleone hitman kills Hyman Roth’s hitman. He comes out of the curtains and garrotes him, and the music does not change at all from what it was. It definitely feels indifferent like Chion says, and it also feels almost anticlimactic, and as if his death really doesn’t make that much of a difference to anything in the long run (which might just make it even more depressing).

The Cummings article made me really sad in the beginning, those poor finches! It’s really sad that human noise is so loud that they can’t learn their own species’ mating calls. He also reminds me of my Sound Design class, because our textbook instructs us to hone the art of “active listening”, which is basically just listening really carefully to all of the layers and levels of sound around us at all times, to help you create realistic soundscapes and spot any problem sounds when in a sound recording session such as equipment buzzing, etc. I also like the idea of classifying environments as having hi fi and low fi sounds. I’m all for city parks (Central Park is one of my favorite places ever!), and I think it’s really cool that it is taken into consideration when planning a city.

Wells, this is my response.

I thought Wells’ article(/book?), “Notes on a Theory of Animation” was really great. Last year, I took Dr. Kreul’s Film Styles and Genres: Animation class, and this article reiterated a lot of the things we learned in that class. Many of the films it cites, we watched in the class. It made it really exciting to read this article, because I would think of an example of the idea it was talking about, such as the morphing of 2-D and live-action world. I thought “wow, just like the lightning artists and Alice Goes to Wonderland” and then the article brought them up. It’s exciting to have background knowledge :)

I think it’s interesting to see how modern cartoons that are geared towards kids tend to pick up experimental traits. Since my childhood, I’ve always loved cartoons of all kinds. Some are super generic: The Rugrats, Hey Arnold!, KaBlam, Spongebob Squarepants, and Powerpuff Girls are just a few. Many of these are semi-experimental. KaBlam did not have one particular style, it was a mixture of traditional cel animation and stop motion, with various highly-stylized segments. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DJHE1wovio) Spongebob Squarepants has a totally self-aware episode, meant to be a Krusty Krab Employment Training Video.

Reading this article makes me realize homages to older works in newer animations. For example, there’s an episode of Spongebob (sorry to harp on this. I really love Spongebob) with a “magic pencil” that a live-action man drops into the ocean in the beginning. When Spongebob and Patrick discover the pencil and draw things, they come to life, creating an evil “Frankendoodle” which must be destroyed. They then send the pencil back to the real world. Reading this article makes me realize how similar that is to the oldschool animation meets live action films such as Koko the Clown Out of the Inkwell.

After reading both this article and the article on synesthesia, I had an idea. Wells describes experimental films as having a musical quality. Would it be safe to say that all (or most) experimental animations set to music could be considered synesthetic works? Because they are the combination of 2 different senses into one piece of art. Norman McLaren’s Boogie Doodle is one such work (which, now that I’ve done some cameraless filmmaking, is ten times more impressive!). It just makes you engage with the piece of art, on multiple levels. That is basically the definition of synesthesia.

Film - Camera

So far, my experience with cameraless filmmaking has been a really interesting one. First and foremost, it’s a bit overwhelming. Thirty six feet is nothing when you’re filming (with a camera), but when you’re manipulating each frame individually, that’s a lot of frames (1,440 to be exact). However, I like the challenge. It’s also a comfort to know that if I mess up one frame, it will flash by at 1/24 frames per second. Of course, that also means that if I’m really proud of one individual frame, that will also flash by at 1/24 frames per second, so it’s a double-edged sword. It’s really fun, though, to be able to work with film. Being a projectionist and a budding film photographer, I’ve discovered in the past couple of years that I’m a film purist. I’m very pro-film in the film versus digital debate (the recent boom of 3-D films has only made this even more true) in all aspects, from filming to exhibition, and it’s really an incredible experience to work with film. I love seeing your image slowly appear when you dunk it into developer, it’s just such an exciting medium. You couldn’t take an SD card and dunk it into bleach, like you can film (well you could, but why would you do that?). The other thing that I think is really cool about this particular assignment we are doing is that with each play, the film is different. Colors will fade and chip away with each run through the projector. This almost makes it like an installation, in the way that it isn’t permanent by any means.

My experience with cameraless filmmaking has also given me an enormous appreciation for the film Passage that we watched on the first day of class. To consistently keep the shapes in the same part of the frame, and to have the colors constantly moving in rhythm and in continuous directions, the filmmaker must have been so patient. I can’t even imagine how much time that must have taken. Also, I’m curious to know if he had the soundtrack in mind when he created the piece, or if he made the piece and then found a song that fit really well with it. I know that in cartoons and things of that nature, they generally get the dialog first and then animate the characters to match it, so I’m curious to know what the general approach to sound married with animation is.

Week 2: Synesthesia/Cymatics Reactions

Synesthesia is so interesting. I think it’s incredible that brains can associate certain stimuli with color so explicitly. Carol Steen’s painting Vision is so vibrant, it seems as though it would become almost distracting at times (but we know it doesn’t, due to the fact that it helps a great deal with having a photographic memory, etc etc). Though, I think I’d probably have some difficulties falling asleep if I closed my eyes and saw a violent red like Carol Steen sees when she closes her eyes.

I love that an organ exists that has colors for each note, and it has existed for a long time. I love bright colors, and I love music, so I think it’s really cool that they’ve had a specific instrument designed just for that since the 1800’s. I went to a Phoenix concert recently, and the first image that always flashes in my head whenever I think about it is rainbow lights, which flashed all over the stage when they played the song “Girlfriend”. I just remember thinking “wow, this is awesome.” They just add such a huge impact to music, I think. I also thought it was interesting that Fantasia is considered a synesthetic work of art. It makes me wonder if the random video effects that play on Windows Media Player would be considered synesthetic art? Because technically it is color that corresponds to music... I don’t know.

I think it’s fascinating that synesthesia travels on the chromosome that carries genes that typically lead to autism. It must be a very difficult characteristic to test for, despite the tests they described with reaction time. Also, I think it’s interesting that the majority of known synesthetes are generally artists of some kind, mainly musicians and artists. But I guess if you’re bombarded with color frequently, you have a lot of inspiration to paint. And if you see colors for each note, you’ll know which colors and notes go well together intuitively, and therefore you are a damn good composer.

Cymatics are really cool, too. I think it’s incredible that sounds create such ornate and specific designs. Also, I’m curious to know how it was discovered. Did someone accidentally leave a plate of sand on top of their speaker, by accident? How does that happen? It’s cool that nature creates such intricate designs everywhere, snowflakes being a prime example(besides cymatics). It’s really kind of amazing.