THE FINAL BLOG!!

At long last, I have come to my 15th and final blog. For this last blog I was going to write my overall reaction to this course as a whole. At the beginning of the semester, we had to write a similar one but, we hadn't yet experienced everything yet. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this course, the other students were fun to work with and this course was a great way to invoked my creative side which I always love using. One thing that I feel could have been changed about this course was the scheduling, it seemed for the first 2 months of the course we were only really working on Assignment 1. Then all of a sudden every week I was trying to complete another project, it made it a lot more difficult, especially trying to get up with group members when a lot of people are on tight schedules. It was only a minor hassle but, I think a lot of my projects would have turned out differently if I had more time to plan and shoot them. The only other stipulation I had was DV tapes, they are expensive and it is very troublesome to buy a new tape for a one minute project, each week when a DVD is cheaper and easier to burn to. Most people don't like them because of quality issues but, it doesn't matter when most of our projects are supposed to look dirty anyway. Other than this the course was very enjoyable, my favorite parts were the one shot, 3 plane animation and the 48 hour video race.  Our last class was a lot of fun too, I almost think it would be interesting to that twice in a semester once at the beginning then at the end because, it really got us working together and got us to be more creative. This would be a good ice breaker on the first day and a fun last day. Again I thoroughly enjoyed this course and I am glad you were able to override me into it. Thanks for a great semester!!!

Assignment 6 Evaluation

The last project of the year is by far my favorite. I think I had more fun coming up with a weird concept off the top of my head in a day than I did spending half a month on the others. I decided not to plan a story until I saw the object. The only thing I had decided on was that the camera types I would use I didn't want them to act like a camera. I wanted them to be apart of the story so they are just watching the action as it happens. The camera styles I wanted to use was a Mac webcam, and a cellphone. So this is the only concepts I had going in. After finding out that the mystery object was an egg, my mind started to race with ideas. My first thought was I wanted you to be able to see the egg in every shot for different reasons, I wanted it to be several different things in a world that doesn't seem to notice. The first scene its a ring, the second scene the egg was a mouse for a computer, in the next scene it becomes a gag ball, then a knife for the remainder of the film. At first I wanted to tell a story of a girl getting kidnapped and her boyfriend saving her, but I realized it would be too difficult to make a story that made enough sense in a one minute project. Devin DiMattia's idea was that I could turn it into a trailer, so that's what I did. I immediately wrote out a script of shots and what actions need to take place, then wrote in the dialogue of a trailer speaker. The whole project took about 3 hours to actually shoot and edit, but the fun part was creating the kidnapper's costume. I wanted her to look really creepy on camera, so we gave her a ton of black makeup for her eyes and then she wore red lipstick to make her skin look pale. We gave her a one piece white dress, with a leash, a chain, handcuffs, and a studded belt. The result was hilariously horrific. Editing this was also a lot of fun, I always love making trailers and when I added music and the voice over it was amazing. I look forward to seeing every ones reactions to epicness that is "The Egg Hunt".

One Minute Film Concepts Blog

Throughout the semester we have made many one minute films using many different techniques. Every where from marking on film to actually shooting on film we have covered almost every aspect of making a one minute film. Now if I have to come up some other one minute film ideas for future classes what might those be? For anyone of the current projects you could make them more detailed, for example give a topic for found footage, draw them out of a hat or something, so then everyone is search for one specific thing, it might make the films a little bit more detailed. For other projects such as the one minute film you could create a one page script that everyone has to follow and see what variations on that script are created. As far as new projects go, you could do a project that is entirely made up of still photographs that tell a story, similar to what 201 used to be, but since it isn’t anymore this would be different for new generation of students. Another idea might be just a normal one minute video with sound and all maybe like in-camera editing only. Just as a very normal project to add to the very abnormal ness of the course. Another option could be that the exercise we are doing to get ready for the 48 hr video race could be an assignment because it sounds like it would be fun to do maybe outside of class and maybe make it longer like we go around the groups three times instead of once. Overall we cover a lot of different variations on one minute films. It’s hard to potentially come up with more.

Avant Garde Night Blog

On Thursday April 17, I attended Avant Garde night at Lumina Theatre. It was a night of interesting films and an interesting atmosphere. The show started out with Dr. Kreul speaking while his class made lots of noise with kazoos and other noise makers. Then when it was time to start the show, they threw the programs, which were in the shape of paper airplanes around the audience. After being hit in the eye with one it was time to start the show. The first film was about pandas discussing how to make a joke about a marriage broker, it didn’t make sense but, it was amusing to see people in panda costumes talking to each other. The next film was an animation called, there’s a pervert in our pool. This was interesting but, it was hard to understand the dialogue because it sounded like someone was just screaming into a microphone. The third film of the night was an episode of Full House edited to create what looked like a tripy rave video; it was very flashy and bright. The fourth film was about a woman missing her father, and the only sound was the last messages she had of him before he died. It was slow and rather depressing; I had trouble getting into it. The next film was probably the worst seventeen minutes of my life; it was a film that was created by throwing film in a lake and having it become scratched and then playing it in a projector. It was probably the worst concept of a film I have every seen or heard of. Maybe if he used the sound with another image but the fact that we watched scratches from seventeen minutes was pointless. The next film was the one by Andy Warhol. I do think it was cool that we watched a 16mm print of this film but, like most Warhol films I just don’t get it. It was four women staring at the screen for several minutes in silence. The only thing that happened was I found myself starring back but, other than that I was bored. The next film was one of the more creative films of the night, it encompassed one man singing and dancing to a song four times so he looked like he was every member of a boy band. It was really funny and well done. The next film was a 35mm cinemascope print of a reworking of the good the bad and the ugly it was really crazy and flashy and rather interesting. The final short film of the night was my favorite; it was an old black and white Spanish film that was subtitled to create a story about discussion on experimental film. It was really funny, I was laughing the entire time. It was diffidently the most creative thing I saw the whole night. The last part of the evening was the live cinema explosion which encompassed four 16mm projectors a laptop, keyboard, music and lots more. There were flashing images everywhere. It was rather crazy. The thing I enjoyed most about the night was that I got to run the films myself. I work as the manger of Lumina theatre and I was in charge of running the 16mm projectors. Throughout the night was threading one projector while screening with another. During the live cinema explosion, I was running back and fourth between two projectors trying to keep them playing the same film loop. Overall the night was fun and crazy, it was a lot to set up and it took awhile to break it all down. I was greatly pleased with the turnout and enjoyed the evening greatly.

Camera-less Filmmaking

The idea of camera less filmmaking is almost an oxymoron. Because, technically filmmaking requires cameras. But, I guess if I had to think of different types of "filmmaking" without using "cameras" I can at least try. The first one that comes to mind is digital picture camera because they usually have a function that can shoot video. Although the quality is pretty low it would look very interesting. Another device could be cell phones because current cell phones have more power than some computers. Although the video quality is so bad it would look like you were shooting a snuff film. Like a killer sends a video of him torturing a man's wife to the husband. A third media would probably be web cams just because technology of web cams has come a long way from the jittering low quality mess they used to be. Some laptops even come with web cams attached. I guess with this you could make a sequel to you’ve got mail with a twist. As a fourth method you could use a scanner and scan a series of images to make them animate and tell a story. A fifth method could be combining clips from different movies a splicing them all together to make a story. It would be kind of like found footage except maybe more of a narrative than collage. Another method might be to draw everything and use a computer to animate it, and record audio for dialogue and sound effects. There are many methods in making movies without actually using a camera. So we have a number of options to choose from.

Rough Theatre Blog

I do think that what we do in this class is very similar to the idea of the rough theatre. The rough theatre is still theatre just done in a whole different way, and in class we do film in a whole different way. We create film in more of a spur of the moment way. Most of the things we do are not planned out far in advance. We aren’t making films in a big studio, just like the rough theatre is not performing in a huge amphitheatre. What we do it more for fun than anything else. Most of the things we do would not go over well in any other class or setting. This is because it’s not the normal film techniques, and the things we make in this class could never be shown at a movie theater. People would wonder what they were watching and it gets angry and leaves. We could maybe show our work to other film students who understand that we are doing this for fun and its just kind of random and spontaneous, not to be taken too seriously. That is what is fun about this class, because in four hours we got to create a one minute 16mm film and develop it ourselves. This class reminds me of when I was little running around with my parents video camera, setting it up and having me and my friends improvise a whole scene, for sheer enjoyment. If I showed this to anyone else outside of my friends they would hate it. The reason we enjoy it because we experienced making it, we experienced the spontaneous joy of filmmaking. Not too many people can understand that. It’s called rough because its not straight forward it’s different, we don’t do things the way normal filmmakers do, we are rough filmmakers.