Project Rating

 Assignment # 1: Rate 1

This was one of my favorites because it gave me a nostalgic feeling. As I was working with the film-medium’s plasticity I can actually feel, see and relate on how it must have been for early filmmakers to experiment and directly manipulate the medium. The process of exposing film was not has hard as I thought. Depending on your goal, it isn’t really as easy as it seems. If your goal is just to have fun then and enjoy the process then by all means it provides that experience, but if your goal is to express a concept or idea with the process of film manipulation then it becomes very tedious and hard. Planning for each frame, the frames per second, rhythm and pace must be properly organized. 

Assignment # 2: Rate 3

The overall project turned out fabulous, the interaction and mix of ideas; the visual impressions and expressions of the stills was very varied, an intrinsic characteristic of crowdsourcing. I rated it a 3 because since I’m more of hands on person, my involvement was very limited. On the flipside it is meant to free up your time and at the same time get the crowd involved, so it accomplished its task. 

Assignment # 3: Rate 4

The multiplane animation was also very fun and very hands on. It is also not as easy as it seems. Trying to manually imitate movement with manual still images is harder than it seems, it has to be well planned out. The editing was simple; I originally thought it was going to be harder. Using angry-birds figures, I’m doing small multiplane animation projects with my grandkid, which he immensely enjoys. 

Assignment # 4: Rate 3

            The project really exemplifies how important the convention of editing is to filmmaking, the way it creates images formed by unique visual techniques and editing rhythms that both capture and express a concept and emotions. Editing is structurally a connective process to create a whole; it is dependent on rhythm, pace and juxtaposing images, this process shapes the meaning of the film; broadly it is also a conceptual perspective process intrinsic to the artist.

Assignment # 5: Rate 1

This one is tied with assignment #1. For me, this is where it came all together for me, a collage of the work my classmates and I have done. The hardest part was trying to create some sort of narrative out of all our work. I believe I accomplished that, but mainly because there were similarities and cohesiveness, in concept and theme, with the previous assignments. 

Assignment # 6: Rate 5

I rate this the lowest just because I didn’t get a chance to personally use the bolex, I was regulated to gaffer, oh-well. It was still very challenging and exciting.  

Saturday' Shoot

3D Olde School

I was oblivious on the process of 3D, I never looked into it nor do I watch 3D movies. That being said, the experience was new and unusual for me. 

           The process didn't seem complicated at all; essentially it was a lot easier than I thought. Just symmetrically attaching two cameras to a tripod, fundamentally you’re trying to mimic two human eyes, and go. The most difficult part seems to be in post-production phase, which is layering the images, one on top of other in such a way that the effect of depth and dimensionality is achieved.

In retrospect, to enjoy the experience more, or to get more dimensionality we should have also thought about layering our set, i.e. our mise-en-scene as to pronounce the effect of depth; foreground middle-ground and background. Incorporating action that crossed theses plains probably could have been performed a lot better to also enhance the experience of the 3D effect.

Overall I enjoyed the finished product and was amazed how non-complex it could actually be.

What is your Rough Theater?

   My rough theater would be a style that incorporates a collage of abstract concepts. When these abstract concepts are molded together, they will carry a unifying idea and message that hopefully can be appreciated; individual subjectivity and authorial vision that will allow a fresh new meaning to old ideas. 

   My tool chest would incorporate avant-garde and new-wave conventions, like those used in the 1960’s by filmmakers such as John Cassevette’s improvisation technique and loose framework in his movie Shadows 1959, and Maya Deren’s psychoanalytical and surrealist approach to experimental film-making. Conventions such as extended long shots, handheld-camera footage, naturalistic performances, on-location shooting, natural lighting, whip-pans, disjointed narratives via editing, like temporal and jump-cuts. A very idiosyncratic and a highly eccentric style that is fluid but loose.

   Essentially my rough theater will be free-flowing, a fluid approach that both captures and capitalizes the conditions of the surrounding environment and the emotions of the moment, and definitely with a modernist stylistic outlook.

16mm Film Manipulation Second Response

   I definitely had tons of fun with direct 16mm film manipulation, and in the process learned a lot. I didn’t realize there was a multitude of methods by which one can manipulate 16mm film without a camera, i.e. camera-less. Some of the methods were tedious but nonetheless the anticipation and excitement of how it would the finish product look, how it would look when projected, was like waiting to open a Christmas present.  

   The process of developing film was easier than I thought.  The only disadvantage was working nearly in complete darkness, but other than that the process was fascinating.

   If I had to do it all over again, the only part I would have changed would have been how I edited the finished product together. I believe I could have done a much better job. It also makes me reflect on how difficult it must have been for editors to piece together a movie pre-video, the thousands and thousands of feet that need to be spliced together. 

   Overall it was an excellent exercise that opened the door and stimulated the creative process. It makes us look at the possibilities of the film-medium from a multitude of different perspectives, to stretch its parameters, and to learn of the film’s creative plasticity. This some process, stretching the mediums creative boundaries, means we should take this same creative exercise to help us explore and expand the creative side of video format by whatever means possible. Don’t limit yourself nor the mediums capabilities.

R3 Reading 

Crowdsourcing

   Crowdsourcing is a concept that encompasses many practices and can be done in a multitude of fields. Its major fundamental principal is outsourcing the material to a collaborative movement, with an objective towards a creative and radical goal. The activity and the final product becomes a co-creation of the innovation of the collective. 

   It will lead to a totally new reconstruction of the initial filmic piece of art, i.e. a re-conceptualization of the narrative by way of image manipulation. It is true that certain features, characteristics and elements will likely remain static. Those that can be tampered or can be directly manipulated by the participants of crowdsourcing, should be using and taking into account such devices as the mise-en-scene, as well as the tone, as in color, rhythm and how it is finally edited to create a distinctively whole new piece of art; one that can represent both the individual participant as well as the collective.

   It will seem that some rules and principles would need to be established. The standards set should still keep the parameters wide enough open as not to hamper neither innovation nor hinder creativity; their only purpose is to essentially help establish some type or fashion of cohesion. The idea is to re-contextualize the images from the larger ideas of the collective while still creating some type of collective uniformity that can be understood and appreciated by both the viewers and by its contributors.

   The exercise should be a fascinating. It should also be a great learning experience, for example it should be a great individual lesson on breaking away from individual dogmatism, it can also help towards treating writer's or creator’s block and on the other hand it’s a lesson about working together.