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.

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.

Reaction to Passage

I thought the film Passage was really interesting. I loved the use of color and light, and the flickering between light and a black screen. As a film projectionist, I identify flicker with being in a theater, watching film, hearing the hum of a projector, and it becomes a really comforting environment. I also really enjoyed the soundtrack- a huge array of sounds and soundscapes came into play, which made it a challenge to identify what they were. I also really enjoyed the repetition of the finger tapping sound, it gave the piece a poignant rhythm. After we viewed it and discussed synesthesia, it really makes me think that a synesthete would experience something very similar to this when viewing colors. Maybe Passage can be the everyman’s glimpse into synesthesia.

I think the repetition of the shapes was interesting, and also gave the piece a great deal of rhythm. About halfway through the film, I remember thinking "what if this film has repeated the same colors and shapes in the same order, just with different sounds?" If they had done that, I'm not sure whether I would have noticed or not. Not that I actually suspect them of pulling a fast one on me, but the point is that it didn't really matter whether they had been repeated or not, I just really enjoyed allowing the pictures to flash by. This tends to be the way I enjoy watching a lot of film. Not that I don’t like searching for meaning as much as the next film student, but there is certainly something to be said for those moments in a film where you can take a break from analyzing, and just allow the pictures and sound to wash over you and not try to govern or predict where they go or how they make you feel.

All in all, I liked it a lot on an aesthetic level. The rhythm was really compelling. Also, I tend to like a lot of colors in every aspect of life, and this film was just so vibrant that it’s hard to be unaffected by it. If you asked me to tell you what it meant, I'd be completely clueless, however I don't feel like the meaning is the point in this piece, so maybe it's okay that I didn't pick up on one. Not every film is meant to say something, and I think that this one is like that: it doesn’t say anything, it just wants you to feel something.