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.