Saturday Shoot

When I realized that this weekend was the Saturday long take shoot, I was a little sad that I had class on a Saturday. My friends said, “what?! you have to go to school on a saturday?!?!”. But I gathered all of the materials that I needed to bring for our shot, and went to Saturday class. And honestly, it was awesome. Stick and I set up the projector and the JVC camera, with some help from the guys in his group because it turns out that the projector table legs are incredibly stubborn about going in the direction you want them to go in. Also, the 16mm projector is heavy (and I’m not exactly..strong). But, we managed to get it. My projector knowledge came in handy a bit when we were figuring out how to focus the projector, and it’s always gratifying to have a skill set come in handy.

My group’s first task was to assist Gabby’s group with their project. We were featured as soccer players and picnic-goers in their film. It was really great watching their group come together and plan out their shot, as it had a lot of movement happening, and therefore had to be orchestrated just right. With a one-minute take that you only have one shot at, it’s interesting how much has to be meticulous, and how much you leave up to chance. For instance, while we were playing soccer Barrett (on camera) would follow the ball. At 50 seconds, whoever had the ball, he would pan up and get a reaction shot of their face. So we all had to be ready, and whoever he happened to be on, had to react accordingly.

And then it was my group’s turn to film. We set up a picnic on the bridge back by Friday Hall. An astounding number of people went to cross the bridge, despite the fact that it was Saturday, and they all looked at us funny (we were completely monopolizing the bridge). We rehearsed a few times until Gabby, Andy, and Cassandra headed over with their Bolex after processing their film to assist us. Andy served as our timer, and one time between rehearsals, he was holding Emma’s phone (which had a stop watch on it) and accidentally dropped it into the swamp! We tried calling it to see if it would vibrate so she could go in and get it, but turns out it wasn’t a waterproof phone.

The film processing went fine. As I do some dark room developing, I was pretty familiar with all of the procedures and it went smoothly, except when I opened the Bolex, I became disoriented and couldn’t remember which was the take up spool, and which had undeveloped film on it. To be safe, we developed both (sorry, what a waste of film =[ ) and it turned out to be the one that I didn’t expect it to be. The drying of the film was also really hilarious, the 4 of us just ran around the halls, feeling ridiculous.

It was extremely gratifying to then also watch our footage the same day that we shot and developed it. It made me never want to send any film in to any labs ever again, because it’s so gratifying when you’ve done everything, start to finish. All in all, I think it was a really great day. Definitely team-building, not just in the individual groups, but I feel like the whole class is closer, because we all managed to come together and get everything done in time. It was definitely one of my favorite assignments ever.

48 Hour Brainstorm

I’ve gotta admit, I’m a little stumped with this one. Trying to think of ways to digitze images without cameras is pretty challenging. I’m having trouble thinking of ones other than what you’ve suggested. When I make mine, I would definitely like to implement a scanner. I really like the idea of pressing someone’s face against the scanner like you did in Scannophelia. I would also like to make a hand-drawn flip book of sorts, which I would naturally have to scan into the computer. This would give it a whimsical, fluid feeling. Maybe I could make an anime-esque cartoon and use a flipbook as quick little transitions. They’d also be good for an old-time, Charlie Chaplin-esque film bit.

I also think it’d be interesting to implement a cell phone camera. That might be really good for a futuristic scenario, with an official sending video messages (holograms) with important messages to the hero. I would really like to do something that looks sci-fi or futuristic. So maybe cell phones would be a good way to go. I could also implement this with 3-D animation in Maya, or just cool and well-drawn spaceships in AfterEffects.

I think that After Effects and other computer animation software would be indispensable in this project. They are cameraless, and it’d be a good way to integrate the various images that I could capture/create with a scanner or a cell phone. It would be a good way to tie them all together into a cohesive story, while being able to add virtually anything. However, I would have to be careful to avoid using anything that is photographed, as that’s the whole point of this assignment.

I would be committing a travesty if I did not mention direct film manipulation in this blog, considering that we just recently wrapped up our project on cameraless filmmaking. I could absolutely ink and bleach some film and scan it, to use in this project. These could make for great backgrounds, or explosions, or whatever the situation warrants, really. Rayograms would also be a good option.

I feel like using the iCam on my macbook is cheating, as it has the word camera in it. It would be cool if you could use the kinect for xbox, I’m not sure whether that has recording capabilities, as I don’t have one. But that would be an interesting medium for this project. I’m stumped for more, but I’ll keep thinking.

Cameraless Filmmaking, Reaction 2

Cameraless filmmaking. If you asked me about it a year ago, I’d say “I’ve watched some Norman McLaren. It’s really cool, but it’s not for me.” Now, I’d say “I’ve made one of those! It took a really long time, and I had no idea what it would look like the entire time. But it was really awesome”. I think that it’s an incredibly rewarding experience. When you manipulate film frame by frame, for 36 feet, you become very close to the film. You might work on one frame for fifteen minutes, with the full knowledge that when it plays in the film, you’ll only see it for 1/24 of a second. It’s kind of a crazy type of project to take on for just that reason, but it also makes it really exciting. It’s art for art’s sake, for sure, and I think that if given the opportunity and materials, I’d definitely do another one.

Now, I can’t answer the question “How was watching your project through the projector” this week, because I was in the group that did not splice our project correctly and we could not watch it last week =[ It’s a shame because Megan and I waited for the splicer for about a half hour in the editing lab, and when we finally got it I had to leave for class, leaving Megan to splice it (we had already put it in order the night before so we just had to trim the ends and replace our masking tape with splicing tape). I’m a projectionist, I splice film on a weekly basis, and it’s a shame that I couldn’t stay to help because I think we would have been able to watch it last week. But that’s okay, now I’ll just be even more excited to see it when we do our long take later =]

I watched the excerpt of St. Louise on the website you sent us. I think it looked really great. Even after doing one, I’m still quite a bit mystified. How did they get the white lines and figures of the man’s face? It looked like it had edges so round that they couldn’t have been scratched with a razor blade or any of the tools that we used. I also think that the rhythm was really great. When we did “Dragon Sneeze” (the name of Megan and my project), we didn’t really consider frame counts in relation to rhythm. Maybe if I make another one, I’ll keep rhythm in mind while putting it together.