002 stop motion write-up

Overall, I felt that the project was successful (as an experiment) despite some technical difficulties. Conceptually, I was working with the idea of limiting myself to a few materials (some old national geographics, tinfoil, cellophane, glue, tape and scissors), and to convert my ongoing obsession of covering real things/people/scenes to inanimate collages. In this case, tinfoil served as the covering. I also wanted to experiment on a small scale to see what it felt like to be completely in control, since these were inanimate objects being covered. This gave me some serious tedious time to try to work out why exactly I am so fascinated with covering things. I've came around to the conclusion that it must have something to do with the way society is constantly encouraging us to change, to improve. These old (early 1960s-early 1970's) National Geographics I was using are less than politically correct, and filled with especially questionable advertisements. I think they are the perfect example for what society expects a well-rounded American to enjoy, and the advertisements contained inside of it are an example of what Americans are supposed to be. The men are most often represented as explorers and conquerors (especially within the articles of the magazine), and the women are represented as housewifes, supporters, and items to be adorned, flaunted. I focused mostly on the expectations for women to be housewives, and the many, many kitchen advertisements that support this idea. The tinfoil comes from the kitchen, and I repeatedly make it explode from the inside of things, maybe a metaphor for the thing that we are told to be as something that is internalized and something that eventually becomes destructive. Those are the conceptual ideas I discovered as I was working on the project. I'd like to work to develop this concept some more through my next films.
As far as technical challenges go, I had some major difficulties with the istopmotion. It kept rearranging my images, and that got old, so I switched to just taking stills with the D40 and importing them into quick time movies, and doing all of the editing in quick time. I tried to edit in final cut pro, but I lost so much image quality, I may have been importing things the wrong way.

3 ideas

more visual inspiration from Cristina Couceiro:







idea #1-use a stop motion technique with magnetic letters. The letters will move around on the fridge and spell out words. maybe something like "should we?" and then "we should" then the letters will travel off of the fridge and crawl up and eventually completely cover a person. (more letters would have to join the ones that came off of the fridge, so I was thinking that I could have some cheesy horror movie sounds and letters could come out of the air vents and under the cracks in the door, the window, whatnot.

idea #2-Using images extracted from National Geographic magazines, I will create a stop motion collage. I have some issues that are about space, so that might be the scene I start in. The scenes would morph and change into completely opposite scenes. For example, the film may start out in space, but that scene might end up being in a TV which would allow the scene to morph into to that of a living room, etc.

idea #3-I'd like to use pixelization to cover people in tinfoil, cellophane, and yarn. I'd like to film people in ordinary situations, i.e. watching TV, walking down the street (the material would have to "catch up" to them, and I think this would be neat) or laying in the yard. I imagine the structure of this film to be like this: character one is watching television, and he (along with the space he is in) gets covered in tinfoil without him so much as moving. Character two is sitting and playing an instrument, and she gets covered in cellophane. Finally character three is doing something very active, like running, and she tries to run away from the yarn, but it chases her by the two characters covered in cellophane and tinfoil, and she eventually gets covered in yarn. I'm really not sure how I could pull this off, but I could see it looking really cool if I did. Maybe I could simplify it a bit.

I'm really leaning toward idea #2, I think it gives me the most leeway to explore different spaces and techniques. I feel like ideas one and three could be neat, but I have no idea how I would go about actually filming them.

geez louise these ideas are neat

such an amazing idea, geeez.

red/yellow/blue

response: project 001

Conceptually, I don't think I had any ideas other than making some meaningless but visually appealing stuff. Technically, I wanted to experiment with the scanner, and see how I could incorporate scanned images into the whole photoshop/quick time mix, and I think those parts were pretty successful. I also wanted to think a ton about set design, color schemes, and lighting so that the visuals could be the most effective. My shots are a bit boring, I didn't get too wild with moving the laptop around to create more moving shots. That's something I'd like to focus on for my next assignment, less stationary, eye-level shots and more moving, unique-angled shots. As far as achieving rhythm and pushing the boundaries of the programs goes, I think I did an okay job. I was thinking about adding some animation to the scuba shots, but I ended up wanting to try to create rhythm through the contrasting colors and content, instead of adding something on top of them. One thing I'm still a bit confused/frustrated about is the fps/document length adjustments. I don't understand the relationship between the two. I'm sure it makes tons of logical sense, I just can't remember how it works. That was the main frustration for me.

response: Retour a la Raison

The fragmented nature of this film really kept my attention, it felt like a puzzle of a story, I kept making probably unnecessary associations between images. It seems to almost have a narrative, we are introduced to two characters, a man and a woman, and the camera mostly follows them. Inter-cut with the activities of these two are absolutely absurd images and text that seem to somewhat push the narrative of the man and woman along, but their real function seems to be more to fragment the idea of narration. I think that this is an exciting concept, as memories exist only as fragments, and this film had a memory-haze feel to it.

Walter Benjamin

write about what Benjamin says about the aura:

what is its value? is its withering away good or bad? neither or both?

The value of the aura reflects the degree of uninterrupted originality the people perceive the work to have in relation to the ritualistic view surrounding the work. The idea of an aura of a work is dependent on the how the work existed in history and the condition the work is in as a result of it. Mechanical reproduction interrupts the aura, it allows multiples to exist at the same time, and this causes the aura to wither away. This withering away of the aura provides opportunity for film to be experienced at the same time by a collective of people in different places. This brings new opportunity for critique, and new ways for more audiences to experience the work. I would consider the withering of the aura to be a “good” thing. It questions not only the perceived ideas of value and originality of art, but it also questions the ways in which space and the degree of reproducibility affects the perception of art.

how can today’s films (focus on one) be understood in terms of Benjamin’s ideas about the aura and mechanical reproduction?

Man Ray’s Emak Bakia unconsciously seems to portray the meaningless extravagance that Dada filmmakers embraced in reaction to the film medium. Film cannot be separated from mechanical reproduction, and this film formed associations between nature and the mechanical world. It could be that the “natural” shots (the eye, the flowers, etc) represent the idea of the aura and the withering of it in favor of the mechanically reproducible world (the cars). It seems to be a metaphor for the world that is created (mechanically) inside of a film.

what role does their “readymade” status play in this?

The readymade status of film plays with the way in which the audience participates. The film can exist and be shown in multiple places at once. This status, this freedom of reproducibility allows more and more people to participate in the world created by the film.