tell me whats your favourite...project

my favorite project had to be the multiplane animation! Going into it, i honestly saw it as a project that was going to be extremely demanding with results that wouldn't be that exciting. I was greatly surprised. The setup and animation day was probably one of my favorite days as the entire project demanded teamwork and a brainstorming of ideas, culminating into a true collaboration between my group members and I. It was extremely rewarding to witness how well our animation actually turned out! Though it was a short little animation, the work we put into creating it was well worth it. I think once it was edited and given a title (A Trip Inside the Candy Box), our story and initial intentions came to the surface appropriately. Besides this project, my other favorite project was the pinhole project. I had such a good time crafting together my pinhole camera that I was almost afraid to take pictures with it. Most of our pictures were hit or miss, but hey, I guess it's practice makes perfect when it comes to cameras made out of household supplies. All in all, however, great class!! In terms of the other projects, here is my outline...

#1- Multiplane animation

#2- Pinhole

#3- Video Race- gave us a chance to create on our own and see what the result is. I enjoyed my result, but collaboration is helpful.

#4- Long Take- loved working with the bolex cameras and creating a story with one shot

#5- Cameraless Filmmaking- I didnt find myself as immersed in this project compared to my enjoyment with the other ones. still, this was extremely fun and beneficial

#6- 3D- after effects stuff was helpful, but because I was out of town (only on the day of the shoot) I was sorta out of the loop with this project. Needn't worry though, I made up for it in post production

Give me a D, another D, and one more D. What's that spell?

That's right. 3D.

While this was not my favorite of projects thus far, it was a great learning experience, especially what we learned on after effects in terms of compositing and adding red filters. Unfortunately I was out of town during the day of our initial shoot, but when i returned i discovered we needed to do some reshoots, so i was excited to get at least some 3d action. I thought the idea to give each group a genre and each subgroup a sub genre was brilliant. It gave us restrictions which provided us creativity. Our group was slapstick and my subgroup (Nate and I) were foreign, meaning we were foreign slapstick. I think we achieved both of these concepts very well in our final film.

a long take to rival Haneke

having worked with the bolex cameras previously in shannons doc class, i was extremely excited to get my hands on one once again. the whirring of the film and the sheer mechanical beauty of such an old device always seems to restore my passion for capturing the moving image. I remember being very confused by our initial idea for our long take. I was curious as to how it turned out. Luckily, it turned out wonderfully (due in part to some nice editing by palmer and cory) and I was proud of what we had created, that being a fun, quirky long take created via the beautiful bolex. On the day of the shoot, i acted as DP for the shot. One thing that was tough though, besides running backwards and keeping our extremely specific shot in frame, was the tightness of the lens on our bolex. Things were far more magnified once you peeked into the lens and this had to be taken into account when we were laying out our framework. All in all, the final result was something we were proud of.

to work without a camera

this served as an awesome first project as it allowed me to dive deep into the concept of experimental film; so experimental, in fact, that no cameras were involved. If someone were to simply tell me this was going to be our first assignment without any sort of explanation, I would have thought it impossible. However, this first assignment was placed appropriately, allowing us to hone our skills with solely the moving image rather than the modern technology (i.e. cameras) we use to simplify and enhance our creation of the moving image. One thing I did note when viewing what we had created was that the projected image is not only much more magnified than I had expected, but choices I had made on the film (whether it be coloring, scraping, or bleaching) had a much different look than I would have expected them to, which I found to be both good and bad. It was bad only in that it was somewhat frustrating and anticlimactic to see something different from what I had expected. However, it was extremely good in that we were experimenting and things are supposed to be unexpected. hmmm..."supposed to be unexpected", kind of an oxymoron i guess, but you know what I mean.

Experimental Film Response

I cant say I took away an actual meaning from the piece, but some recognizable objects I noticed throughout the abstract designs were a series of bug like images, shovel, nails, and paint-brush-like strokes. I enjoyed the rhythmic editing to the whole thing and the fact that it was so fast paced and disorienting, yet all in sync at the same time, felt like "ordered chaos" to me.

Synesthesia and Cymatics

Both of these topics were of extreme interest to me during this assignment, considering cymatics was a concept I had considered but hadn't known there was a name for it, while Synesthesia has recently become relevant to me in light of some of my own personal research. In the case of cymatics, it makes sense that sound has the power to emit a strong enough frequency that it would create a physical effect on a surrounding object. However, when you consider the resulting effect to be a form of visualizing sound, that is when it truly becomes eye opening and intriguing. The research that this limited group of scientists are conducting is bound to provide us with much food for thought, and I look forward to future experiments. In terms of Synesthesia, I think I may in fact have a mild form. I personally match numbers with genders. I find that some numbers are male and some are female. While this may not be synesthesia, I did find my case (of placing genders on numbers) relevant when the I read on Wikipedia that ordinal linguistic personification involves giving numbers their own personalities. Last month I actually stumbled on some research of Synesthesia when I was conducting research on ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) which is a "something" (I dont want to say condition because its quite awesome) that I have had since I was a child. In a nutshell, it is a strong, almost euphoric, tingly feeling in the head that is naturally onset by certain triggers...no drugs required. It is EXTREMELY under researched and I hadn't even found anyone else who shared the "condition/experience" until a recently discovered online forum. What is interesting is MANY cases of Synesthesia popped up amongst ASMR experiencers. Getting back onto topic, however, in terms of experimental films, I can see how synesthesia would be great to utilize in creating meaning with simple concepts such as number and letters (besides just creating words of course). I look forward to learning more about all three topics!