Cameraless Filmmaking Shizaaaam

Well honestly, I'm not quite sure if this blog is due today, but why not go ahead and write it.

I like making films without a camera. Honestly, my policy has always been - never carry something on your person that is worth more than you own. So I never carry my camera around. I don't really like it. I think its because I like spontanaeity and I feel like when you want to film soemthing and set up the tripod its all ruined. Cameras can make things feel cheap and used to me.

The night we got our film, I started painting on it! Actually, Emily better get her butt over to my house ASAP or I feel like I might be tempted to paint on the entire thing. My favorite part of this project has been bleaching the developed strip of film. I found that if I put the bleach on the film for a second then the purple tones were stripped, but the longer I held the brush with bleach on the film more colors were stripped. It was quite a spectacular display of ink stripping. I almost liked the cardboard that was laying under the film with all of its collection of multi-colored inks as much as I liked the final bleached film strip. I layed tape all over the ink in lots of patters and even animated a portion by moving the tape over a little at a time. All-in-all I have been completely engrossed in filmmaking without a camera.

Making the magazine transfers was quite honestly my favorite class that I have ever had-ever! That is not a lie. Ever since I can remember I've been drawn towards the arts. Even when my family was pushing me to be an orthodontist at the age of 10, I knew something wasn't quite right. I had this moment of euphoria during our last class. Everything just felt good and I stepped out of myself for a moment and saw everyone smiling and cutting out images - All I can say is that not everyone gets experiences like that. I'm excited to get to do some animation on this project that is due soon. I can't quite decide what I want to animate. It would not please me to animate the Earth rotating just to see 5 others with the same animation.NO! I need to have something different. Maybe I'll animate a dinosaur. I really like dinosaurs. Maybe I'll have a raptor running.

One filmmaker who doesn't use a camera that really inspires me is the guy that animates to music by the Beatles. His animations are so engaging. If I could animate like that I would feel very fufilled. But I have tried some animation and I can finally grasp how much work goes into only a few seconds of work. The lay man has no clue!

Thinking about him just sparked my worry again about the music that I will use for the rhythmic editing project. I would love to be able to create my own music, but I don't have a lot of knowledge about music producing. That should be my next project.

I've been location scouting for the rhythmic editing project! Wish me luck. I wanted to shoot emily in front of a Chevrolet oldsmobile in the dark with the headlights on and snow falling. It would be like an indie rap video. All I need is for it to snow again and to find someone with an oldsmobile and I will be in business.

Response to Stank Brakhage

Let me preface my post by saying that Stan Brakhage is the only human being allowed to say Tho' in his writing.

With that said I really enjoyed this article by Mr. Brakhage. It tires me to read papers written by "artists" that are so plain-jane and boring. Why do they do that?! If you call yourself an artist and throw paint on a canvas all day, how can you write like Ben Stein?

Immediately, I liked this essay (even though I didn't quite understand the title) because he spoke to me in first person. The whole "reader" thing wore a little thin on me after a while, but its still comforting to have Stan Brakhage talking to you. I enjoyed that he broke down the process of film making to the basic elements. No detail was too small to overlook. I though it was cute that he explained that mm stood for millimeter. I think most people know that mm is the abbreviation, but maybe somebody does not and that just helped them out. Quite near the early section of the book he explains that the book is dedicated to Michael McClure who "spoke to {him} of the need for a short book on film technique which could be read by poets;" he ends the dedication with "love, SB." I think this paper gives some good insight into the kind of man Stan Brakhage is. So not only does this small book/paper explain filmmaking techniques, it also gives insight into who Stan Brakhage was. How many textbooks can do that?!

I would like to add that I googled Michael McClure after I read this paper. To my amazement I already know of him. "How?" might you ask! Turns out, Michael McClure was the basis for one of the poets in Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums which coincidently is one of my favorite books. This only reaffirms my belief that SB and I were total soulmates.

Anyway back to my interpretation of this moving picture book that we were assigned to read. The explanation of Black leader, clear leader, white leader, gray leader, and moving pics was very helpful. I always though clear leader and white leader were the same thing. How wrong I was! Also, when I was reading the section defined by the title : Part two : On Splicing, I found the concept of flipping the image so that the base-side was up to soften the image interesting. I think it would have taken me a while to figure that out. Or maybe I'm just kidding myself and I would have never figured it out at all. We will never know now. I love the hints about how to hide a splice and how to create or minimize (depending on one's desire - I guess) the crystals that are crated by the glue of splicing tape. I think I will try this out in the immediate future with my Earth, Wind, Water, and Fire project.

I think its nice that Stan includes portions that are extremely encouraging. He is so beat when he speaks. It seems like ADD, but if you've ever read beat poetry or Jack Kerouac's writings, it all makes perfect sense. My favorite such line is "AND YET I DON'T WANT TO DISCOURAGE YOU FROM ATTEMPTING, no matter how impossible-seeming, WHICH MIGHT PERMIT YOUR MUSES TO SHOW US ALL SOMETHING NEW." I might get that framed. He does make a good point after that quote that whatever you make should have the ability to be projected. Otherwise it will just be a "wall decoration." I can see that people could get really wound up and cut their film to smithereens.

This small book was quite interesting in that is juxtaposes portions of play and pure word art with portions that are incredibly technical (like the portions about f-stops and tungsten film). I honestly prefer the parts of the piece that pertain to his artistic sense, but the purpose of this writing was to be comprehensive when speaking about film. Through and through, this felt like a Brakhage piece- beautiful, jumpy, and personal. It is obvious that he pays particular attention to the human eye which he references repeatedly. I'm glad to have read it.

Arts and Crafts

This was magazine transferring. I did a whole Chinese communism red theme. We applied the graphic images face down to clear tape, cut the tape into thin strips, put the tape in hot water and removed the pulp leaving the ink behind on the tape. After that we laid the tape on the film strips, but we haven't seen the finished product yet.

YAY FOR CLASS

I just wanted to say that I am very excited about class today.

The First Day of Class

The first day of class felt like a tidal wave of awesomeness. I would compare it to the first day that I ever ate a fruit roll up. - yeah for realz.

Entry about Scratch Film Junkies "To the Beat":

Note: When I was quickly writing this in 3 minutes, it felt much more articulate than today in the light-of-day.

6x1 Var January 8th, 2009

I liked how harmonious the images and sounds were. It felt like both sight and sound had melded into one.
I drew diagrams of the cells that I had liked. I really liked the bars that moved across the screen. It interested me that they had animated the bars. Also, I thought the color compositions were extremely visually pleasing. Especially, the strips that had blue, white, and purple circles.

Perhaps because I really just like it, or maybe because I have altered film, I really respected the composition of this film. It didn't feel like scratched films that just feel really random with no flow to the film. I thought they masterfully coordinated the transitions without being to disjointed. I look forward to seeing more of their pieces.