Semester wrap-up!!!!

I really enjoyed the video race and the end of semester party. Everyone had some awesome projects. I had no idea what I was going to do for the video race, although I had been wanting to do this star crunch video with featuring that hit 80's song "Waiting for a star to fall". I always thought that song was super cheesy......although it would be perfect for a star crunch video. I decided to use the camera on my mac along with a couple of still shots using my digital still camera. I think I went a little overboard with the star crunches, painting with them, playing guitar...etc. But it worked. It took me about a day to complete the video, although I was rather upset when I found out that my sound did not print to tape. I guess it worked as a silent piece as well though...not quite as effective. I enjoyed everyone's projects. This class was the by far the craziest class I have taken at UNCW. Kudos!!

Final projects

I just finished up the Rythmic editing, and I am happy with how it turned out. I just got final cut pro on my computer at home, and it was the first time that I had really been able to play with it on my own. I liked this assignment a lot, because even though it is structured editing, it makes for a really cool piece overall. Even though I didn't have sound, the sounds that the legos made seemed to have their own rhythm when I edited it together. i actually like it better without sound added to it. It is almost like this lego nintendo game. I want to go back in and maybe do a little bit of color correction, because when I played it on my TV, the colors were not as vibrant. I don' want to give too much away until we see the projects today. I am pumped for the Video race!!

Cucalorus 13 Response

I have to say that I had an awesome time at Cucalorus this year. It felt good to get out and see some independent films from all over the world. It was really neat. I felt that all of the films that I saw, whether they were from another country or the US, seemed to echo their own unique message. Even though many of them were very different, they all shared a bond of independence from the studio systems. The programmers did a great job of choosing the wide range of films from all over the world. I attended three of the shorts at Jengo’s Playhouse. I only got to see one of the films from the Chateaubriand shorts, and I was really disappointed about that because I wanted to see all of them. And Lo, Guilharmenia possessed this dreamlike quality to it, and seemed like it was carefully thought out. I kept wondering how they created all the intricate movements that the characters used, and I thought maybe they sped the film up or used time lapse? I thought that the colors they used were very rich and vibrant which added so much more flavor to the film. This particular film inspired me to make enchanting fairytale films. The other three shorts I attended were the Tofurkey, Veal and Braunshweiger, all of which were rather inspiring in their own ways that I shall tell you about.
My boyfriend and I attended the Veal Shorts on Thursday, and it turned out to be one of my favorite screenings at Cucalorus. 29 Places I Once Called Home was the most intriguing to watch. I had no idea that you traveled and moved around that much in your life. I felt rather inspired after watching your film to travel and make experimental/documentary films. Since I was a little girl, all I have wanted to do is travel. I can’t even imagine traveling back in time and revisiting all of these places that you once lived and rediscovering your past, although I felt that it was a very noble thing for you to do as a filmmaker. This was a very honest film and brought back memories of my old houses as a child. Much like your film, I remembered fragments of crawling around on this old retro carpet that was in the first house we lived in. Friday’s at the Farm was another inspiring film that made me want to eat pure foods for the rest of my life. It also made me want to lead a simple life on a farm someday with animals and babies.
Friday I attended Dr. Kreul’s Braunshweiger shorts. My favortite of these were Miranda July’s Haysha Royko and George Kuchar’s Temple of Torrent. I have seen work from both of these filmmakers before and these two films were my favorite. Miranda July did a really good job of portraying the awkwardness of sitting close beside someone that you don’t know at all. It was a very simple film and very well done with the aura blobs. This was a film that everyone can relate to. Temple of Torrent was another film that everyone could relate to in one way or another. It was a very humorous yet down-to-earth film about a man who takes care of his old mother and is afraid of living in sin. I thought it was hilarious when he talked to the nun on the TV screen about his sins.
The Tofurkey shorts were probably my favorite with some of the best animation I have seen. Startle Pattern, I would have to say was my favorite. It was just really weird and nicely done. Not to mention that it was very clever and funny as well. It reminded me a lot of The Brother’s Quay, because it had a dark and twisted tone to it, and the motion of the clay figure was both scary and funny at the same time. I wasn’t quite sure what to think after watching this film. It was really ironic that everything that happened to him was a nightmare, especially the glass shattering behind the red curtain. That was some bad twisted luck if I’ve ever seen any. I liked how Eric Patrick used color contrasts and depth in his box of animation. I noticed that The Brother’s Quay used a lot of depth in their films as well. Overall, the film lightened up towards the end, when the little clay figure man jumped out of his box of animation and finds his bed and remnants of his life shattered before his eyes. Therefore, he decides to make his way out into nature to get away from all of it. I feel that life happens in startle patterns, because when one bad thing happens it seems like it creates a domino effect. A little bit of bad luck leads way to a week of bad luck, for me anyway. Another of the Tofurkey shorts that really stood out for me was Matiere, the Canadian short by Boran Richard. This was some of the most beautiful black and white animation I have ever seen, very intricate and precise.
I attended three feature length films including Nomadak TX, Control and Mountain Top Removal, which were all very good. Nomadak TX was a Spanish experimental/documentary film about these men who travel all over the world to make a percussion instrument called a txalaparta that is over 6,000 years old, using only the resources of the land. They even traveled to the Arctic Circle and made this instrument out of ice blocks, and played and recorded it in an igloo. This was a very inspiring film that made me want to travel all over the world making music and films like this. I learned much about music and cultures that I had no idea existed. People actually live and function in the Arctic Circle, and it is truly amazing. This was a beautifully shot documentary with rich and vibrant colors.

Cucu-lorus

Here is a video we did for the 2006 one-take film festival! Hope you like it!

Film Extravaganza

I had so much fun with the group film race on thursday. It was kind of funny because I thought for sure that the other group was going to win. They had such great confidence and the most efficient ways of looping the film around the room. Even though our group didn't really have our shit together, we still came together in the end and made it happen with only three people. Now we just have to come up with an idea for what they are going to stand in front of the class and do. I really like the idea of the rough theatre. I feel that this is what we have created in our Leutze Hall classroom. It has more or less become our canvas of endless possibilities. Just as the article states, we put our salt, sweat, noise and smell into the assignments that we do. There is definetely a sense of roughness to everything that we do in 6X1. From hand manipualting film to wrapping as much film as possible around the room. We basically do what we want and do what we feel. We have created not just an ordinary theatre, but a playground of ideas and madness.

Chion Reading

After reading this article, I feel as though I have a better understanding of our soundscapes on the animation project. In this article, he states that the ear analyzes, processes, and synthesizes faster than the eye. I felt that this was true in the fact that the sounds that we added to our animation project is what caught my attention first. This theory was also prevalent to the other projects that I watched on Thursday as well. For example the project Army Vs. Bear, we hear the loud screaming music, and once our brains have established those sounds, we then move into understanding the moving images. If they had added a different soundtrack to their project, it probably would have created a completely different overall mood. Another section of the article that caught my attention was how sound is sustained. He states that a smooth and continuous sound is less "animating" than an uneven or fluttering one. This is true once again in the above example in the fact that the sounds that they used caused a more tense and immediate focusing of attention on the image.

The Real life Story

Here is a film I made last year around this time. It took us about 30 minutes to do. We wanted to make a film a day, and well that didn't really work out, but here is Episode 1. Enjoy!!

16mm Film Processing

I was super excited to hand process my own film. It took me back to my days of being in the darkroom which I really enjoyed. I still never understood how UNCW has such a good film program, although they got rid of their dark room because some administrator needed the office space. I wonder how much sense that makes. I really like the demonstration with the caffenol. I like the organic way of doing things. My boyfriend works at Tidal Creek, and he was super excited when I told him that we developed 16mm film with coffee beans, washing soda, and absorbic acid. I wonder how long this method has been out, and who discovered it? Anyways I was really surprised that it actually developed the film. I look forward to seeing how the film looks when we put them all together.

Super 8 Animation

Our super 8 shoot came out super cool. I brought in a lot of different props to use for the shoot. I had various foam fruits along with star trek figures, a troll, a cool indian blanket with rainbow colors and a giant glob ball that is very pleasing to all the senses. The shoot went rather well. I got to use the Super 8 camera like I wanted. I got a feel for it, and now I want to shoot my film in super 8 either at the end of this semester or in the spring. Would it be possible to gain access to these cameras through the school? I can't wait to get them back from the lab. Here is a video by Harry Smith that is pretty cool. I like his animation. check it!

Film manipulation Project

I was really pleased with the way that our projects turned out. I couldn't have asked for a better group than Oliver and James. We all pulled together and made some really cool artwork. Oliver did a great job on the animation series and the found footage juxtaposed with some of his own ink work. James did an awesome job on applying the masking tape and the ink work with the vegetable oil. I did a lot of bleaching on the black strip of film with a small paintbrush and it turned out really cool. I also incorporated some scratching and magazine transfers. When we met up to splice the entire project together last night, we wanted the project to kind of flow rather nicely together, so therefore we lined up the ends that we thought fit the best together, and it turned out great. We even decided to do an animation title at the beggining of our project. We named our film EFW^2+P=C, which stands for Earth, Fire, Wind, Water + Plasma =Crack. It was very appropriate considering we are all crackheads. Good times without a doubt!

Super 8

Looking forward to the multi-plane animation shoot today. I am planning on bringing in some crazy items from my house. I am also super excited about finally being able to use the Super 8 cameras, because I want to shoot a film on super 8 very soon. My dad just found me a 1930's 8mm projector in the trash dump, and he said it was in great condition. I just don't understand how people can get rid of anything, ecspecially an old projector. I am the kind of person that collects and collects until my apartment is a clutter box. I guess you could say I'm a bit of a pack rat. I get it from my grandmother because she always had all these awesome antiques in her house. I love antiques. I feel that I should have been born in a different time, because a lot of things that I own are super old. I found the Brother's Quay to be rather interesting and intriquing. There are so many minor details that went into that type of animation. I also noticed that there was lots of depth to the film as well. Many dimensions..I found my eyes wondering from one corner of the screen to the next...looking up and then down. It was really dark and fascitnating at the same time. It was also interesting to see he faces of other people in the class. some people looked rather disgusted while others were kind of smirking. The props that they used were so twisted and dimented.

Well I know this video of Mick Jagger is getting a little bit off subject of the magazine transfers, although I think it is pretty awesome and wanted to share it with the groups. Clip, snip, tape, punch, dip those strips in the water bucket. As I was working on my magazine transfers, I accidentaly put my magazine strips on the wrong side of the tape. I was really sad when this happened although I didn't let it break my spirit, so I put tape on both sides of the transfer. I wasn't sure how this was going to work out once I dipped them in the hot water for five minutes. When my time was up, I started to rub the tape off and to my surprise, I ended up with twice the amount of strips as anyone else. All of them look completely different. It turned out to be a really nice accident, and now I am going to use the remaining strips for my Fire, Earth, Wind, Water, Plasma and Crack project. It was really cool to see the entire classes' magazine transfers and when we ran them through the projector, the water added an extra pizazz! I think that is a word. And by the way, we didn't come here to be with dogs.

Bologna

I like the technical aspect of this class. I feel that I learn the best when I have hands-on experience. The first day was awesome. Scratching, painting, sanding and scraping on some 16mm film loops, and then screening them on the projector for the class. I was surprised at how good they all turned out. I must say once again how excited I am about both of my experimental film classes. They seem to be a nice compliment with one another. I have made a few of my own experimental short films, and I just entered one of them into the ICE Film Fest this summer. I hope to hear back from them soon! I also have another idea for some crazy carnival creatures in the suburbs shot on super 8 film.

stuffed shells

Starting off the semester with two experimental film classes isn't too bad. I have wanted to work with film since I started film school. Luckily, I made it through the dreaded first week of school, and I am excited about starting assignment #1: film manipulation. After watching experimental films, I have been curious about how to manipulate my own films. I just never knew how or never had access to film until now. Before I became a film studies major, I studied black/white photography. Something about a dark room that soothes me. It is almost like a therapy in itself. Even the feeling you get from the chemicals when you have stayed in there way too long and you finally see the light of day is pretty cool as well. During my days in the darkroom, sometimes I would take whatever I could find and scratch words or other things on the film negative. I suppose this is where I started to become curious about film manipulation. The possibilities are endless when it comes to film.