Inmate

I enjoyed the works we saw from Kuchar today, especially the first film The Inmate. It was so quirky, funny, and colorful that I found myself wishing I could meet Kuchar - he has to be an interesting guy. Anyone who gives the name The Inmate to a film revolving around a theme of bodily functions surely is. I liked the way in which he narrated the film the most. It's as if he's narrating a home video with a bad case of ADD. His narration constantly drifts off on some tanget which I found hilarious. I also enjoyed his word choice and random terminology such as refering to a trek into the mountain range as entering the purple mountain majesty (And, appropriately, the mountain was exactly that color!) The film was also visually stimulating and Kuchar's use of color worked to create a sort of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the new one) effect on the wilderness scenery. I was glad that he left some parts of the frame in their normal colors, because it created an interesting contrast and gave the impression that he was travelling through some sort of wonderland. In fact, it seemed as though all of the films worked to take ordinary experiences and turn them into comic book-like caricatures of themselves that were hard not to laugh at.

On Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol was a central figure in the pop art movement who made art out of easily recognizable icons from American popular culture. He was also a filmmaker, an author, and a notweworthy public figure. His art included themes of consumerism, mass public appeal, and reproduction. Andy Warhol's ideas on the nature of art are, as he writes in his The Philosophy of Andy Warhol,"Making money is art, and working is art and good business is the best art." Because of statement like this, Warhol could have had motives for his work as an artist that would benefit his lifestyle and status. He was known to comment on this aspect of American society though his art; of embracing celebrity and affluence. I would say Warhol's works us a mode of a media saturated universe and prompt evolution through theft.

Love's Refrain and Sunlight

Based on Frampton's formula for what a film is about, I decided that Love's Refrain was about sunlight. Origionally I was going to say that it was about shadow, but I realized that sunlight is more accurate because all of the shots (except maybe a few) were outdoors, and sunlight is what is creating shadows. I don't think the fact that sunlight was the most prevalant object in the film helps me me much to understand what the film was about. It may be a part of what the film was about in that it establishes a happy, warm feeling for most of the film or gives a sense of contrast between the light and shadow. Maybe this contrast represents the title of the film by suggesting that love's refrain is a constant cycle through times of light and happiness and darker, gloomier trials. However, I think the meaning of a film such as this can't be realized through such purely quantitative method as Frampton's. You could make an arguement that a film must be about whatever appears the most based on your definition of what "about" means. I think that the meaning of a film, though, can be found in a key second or two of a film. For example, if a film is about an idea or has a moral, these can't be physically shown on screen. The characters can be shown learning the moral or experiencing the idea, but according to Frampton, the film would then be about the character, not the idea/moral of the story. Frampton's definition keeps films from being about broad universal truths, because the limitations of what the camera can capture on film focuses the truth onto one or a few characters and their actions as they experience the truth. Rather than being what the film is ultimately about, these characters are simply the mode through which the idea is communicated. The whir of the projecter could be considered the most prominant aspect of Frampton's lecture, but that doesn't mean that every film shown via projector is about the projector. Just as every film is not about film, every sculpture is not about clay, every painting is not about paint, and every poem is not about ink and paper.

Concert in Music 180

After getting out of class on Thursday, I began walking to Klotche as I always do to go to work. It was a little after 11am, and as I passed the Music building I heard some unusually loud music coming from the recital room where we have class for 201 on Mondays. I decided to postpone going to work for a bit to check out what was going on. I poked my head in through the door and was surprised to see that the place was pretty packed. On stage was a three-piece band cranking out some loud progressive rock sounding music. The band consisted of a drummer, a guitarist on electric, and a keyboardist who was also taking care of the vocals. I looked closer at the keyboardist and realized I knew him. I had hung out with him at a Dave Matthews Band concert a couple summers ago (he was friend's brother's friend I believe). I remembered him playing through a bunch of Dave Matthews songs and singing while we tailgated and it was impressive enough to warrant a few beers from delighted people wandering by so I stayed, somewhat intrigued. The band turned out to be pretty good and I ended up being quite a bit late to work! While the sound was a little too loud for the venue (the vocals probably suffered the worst), the band played pretty tight and the songs were interesting. Plus it was fun to see someone I knew doing his thing. I didn't catch the name of the band, which was too bad because I'd like to check them out again in a different setting more suited to a rock band.

Spiral Jetty

One strange part of Spiral Jetty was the inclusion of many shots of dinosaur skeletons in a museum setting. At firs the only connection I could draw between dinosaurs and the spiral jetty is that many dinosaur fossils/skeletons have been found in Utah, where the spiral jetty is located. As the film progressed, though, I began to see that Smithson was trying to give the viewer a sense that the jetty was a symbol of all the individual parts of the environment coming together to create this unique space where the earth art was created. He constantly cuts between the still water (presumably of the Great Salt Lake) and the piles of earth splashing down as the heavy-duty machinery creates the jetty. He talks a lot about the salt of the water forming crystals, which build upon each other to create twisting solids, just as the jetty is a landmass twisting into the water, unifying the two. When talking about the crystals, he momentarily shows a horned lizard or something whose skin is made up of patterns similar to the crystal formations. He seems to be using this seemingly random shot to create a jump in logic between the crystals and a lifeform found in the area; he's saying a similar design and influence is found throughout and that, on a fundamental level, everything that exists has been created from the same things. He illustrates this in the narration of the film when he goes through all the compass directions and repeats that the same things (salt crystals, water, rock) can be seen wherever he is looking. I think this is where the dinosaurs fit in. Although they have been dead for millions of years, their remains still exist and are therefore a part of the environment. They could be making up the salt, which is forming crystals which are, creating mass, which has been used to form the jetty. The spiral form of the jetty supports this as it seems to be a giant swirl that is spinning the biggest elements of the landscape into a tiny point at its center. Conversely, it can also be seen as taking the smallest particles and linking them to the large world existing at the outer spirals. The dinosaurs add an element of time to the equation by expressing that it's not only space and size which are related, but history as well.

tabletop video

For my tabletop video I wanted to do something interesting with perspective and space. The set-up of having a camera simply pointing down at a table and doing something in front of it seemed one-dimensional and not very exciting to me so I started thinking of ways I could take the video as far away from the table as possible. I realized that the camera was in a kind of bird's eye position and started experimenting with satellite images that I found on the internet in order to give the impression of flying high above the landscape. I found one that was large enough that I could print sections of the photo on sheets of paper and line them up to make an image a couple of feet long. This allowed me to slowly pull the images through the frame making it seem as though the camera was not only moving, but soaring through the sky rather than just standing still over a tabletop. I tried the idea with my own camera and it looked pretty good so I decided to go with the idea. I knew I needed something else in the video, though, both to give it an angle and because there was no way I could print a picture long enough to move through the frame for the full time of the video. Since the point of the video was getting out of the restricting space, I decided to start the video in a defined space to create contrast. I got the idea of first making a paper airplane (something you would do on a tabletop) in front of a picture of an airplane hangar, the place where an airplane is the most confined. Then I could use the satellite images to allow the paper airplane to take flight, representing the spirit of imagination that's the whole idea behind making a paper airplane.

I felt that the performance of the video went alright, but could have gone better if I had practiced with the actual camera and set-up rather than at my house with my camera. When I practiced I had my camera close to the surface so that I watch the camera's screen and see what I was doing and make sure the image was always filling the screen to keep the illusion of flying believable. Having the camera close also made it easy to know where to hold the airplane so that it looked like it was flying above the landscape. Not being able to adjust the position of the camera and instead controlling the distance with just the zoom made this more difficult. The other problem I ran into was having to pull the images through the the tripod legs which was awkward and made it tough to move the image smoothly; an important element creating a realistic feeling of motion. During the performance, I also pulled the image through a bit faster than I had practiced, so the timing was off and I ended up lingering on the "The End" photo longer than I would have liked. One other thing that threw off the performance was that the music I intended to have playing during the flight part of the video was not turned up enough to hear (I don't know why because I checked it before I began) so I was trying to reach under the tripod to turn it up and pull the images smoothly at the same time! Because I was so busy during the performance, I couldn't really watch the screen to see how it was going, but besides the these few difficulties I think it turned out alright. It was a fairly complicated performance- as far as getting the timing of everything right and keeping everything where I wanted it in the frame- and I knew it would be tough, but I wanted to try because I thought the idea had potential to make a cool video.

Time Lapse

My impression of Untitled Fall is that it was like a time lapse video of the girl's college experience. Every semester there is a new entry where she talks about what is on her mind, new things happening in her life, her thoughts for the future, and where her journey has taken her. In each video segment, the girl looks different (she has a different haircut/hair color, is wearing different styles of jewelry or clothes, has a piercing, etc.) reflecting the fact that the change that is going on around her is affecting her. However, her character stays pretty constant throughout, and while she might change her attitude or opinion of things, she has a consistent personality. Through these monologues we see everything from her perspective and get only her side of every story. We are on a ride with her through this chapter of her life and that is why I chose this video to compare to Untitled Fall. I saw the scenes that didn't involve the college girl as being linked to the things that she was talking about and experiencing. The scene with HelloKitty and Ronald McDonald could be a representation of a party like the ones she talked about going to. The boring lecturer showing videos could parallel her dislike of some of her professors. She could probably identify with the bored clothing store workers since she had summer jobs she wasn't happy with. All these videos seemed like an accessory to the main content of the girl telling her story. They appear, are played through, fade out and we don't hear from them again (although some of the characters did show up again in different situations). These supplementary videos make up the scenery of the girl's journey. Although she has the freedom to process this scenery and its information and form her own opinions of what it means, it is important in the sense that it affects her and makes her story interesting. The time lapsed drive from coast to coast would be boring to watch if it simply showed the inside of the car and the guys taking the trip. Instead, they take the top off of the car for most of the video so that the changing surroundings that affect them and make their journey exciting can be easily seen. The video is also fitting since the two guys are driving to New York, but we don't know where they are going in New York or why. This is like the girl who says she wants to get out of New York for awhile, but plans to return, although she doesn't have a clear vision of what she'll be doing.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=3A-unBigvoY

note: I couldn't get the video to work uploading it the way the D2L link said to so I hope it's alright that I just put the link here instead.

The Internet and Althea Thauberger

In her article Experimentalism is Dead. Long Live the Internet, Emily Vey Duke compares Althea Thauberger's video works to the internet. I think this is a worthy comparison since a lot of the characteristics of Thauberger's videos that we watched in class can also be found in the many forms of work existing on the internet. The four videos of the female musicians followed a format very similar to a countless number of YouTube videos. All anyone needs to make a video like this is a camera and a soundtrack. Most of the videos consist of a YouTube member and his/her instrument either doing an origional work, or a cover of some known song. Some people do a choreographed dance, or a just sing. In any case, the person is getting their work out there for others to see. For the YouTubers, their medium is the internet, for the four female musicians it was Thauberger. Just as the YouTube participants have free reign over the creative aspects of their video such as the setting and how they will present their performance, Thauberger allowed her subjects to be very much a part of the decision making process. In class, she mentioned that she consulted them on the location of the shoot, and Duke wrote in the article that the musicians were free to move around the frame as they pleased and were left to make their own decisions concering appearance- hair, make-up, dress, etc. The subjects of Thauberger's videos also resembled YouTube posters in that they seemed like ordinary people. They each had talent, but were not extroardinary musicians or incredibly beautiful people either. Without the internet and Thauberger, these qualities would have kept these people from recieveing the exposure they enjoy. In both cases, in both cases, the subject simply had to be filmed, and then their work was on its way to be viewed by audiences.

A Memory Lasts Forever also embodies some of the characteristics of the internet. The story is told from different points of view as each girl sings her own prayer. In this way, even the concept of what a prayer is changes from character to character. The internet behaves in the same way as it allows for anyone to voice their opinion on anything; to sing it out into the night and have it be heard. Surfers can take their pick from blogging, profiling, or participating in chat rooms in order to tell their story and find a voice.

Simply Effective Motion Picture Tricks

In the article by Maya Deren that we read, she stresses that filmmakers should avoid limiting themselves by attempting to adhere to the conventions of still photography. She has two reasons for this advice. First, she claims it is a misconception that film and still photography are similar art forms. Besides each involving a lens and exposible film, she says, they are completely different mediums. Because they posses different properties, they should not be created using the same techniques. Second, a large part of how film is experienced has to do with the perception of time that all film creates. Deren encourages filmmakers to imploy their creativity in order to manipulate this aspect of film. She gives several examples of such cinematic trickery in films that she has been a part of . In class we had a chance to see some of these very examples in her film At Land, and in other films as well. Much of the fun of the film Great Pumpkin Race is based on these manipulations. The first trick of the film was met with surprised laughter as the run-away pumpkins reached the bottom of the hill and jumped, one by one, over the fence at the end of the street. Film tricks such as this are funny for a couple of reasons. It is a bit like seeing a magic show, watching realistic looking objects (well, the pumpkins looked a bit like tires in this case) in realistic setting behaving in unexpected ways. Some of the fun comes from trying to figure out how the director accomplished the illusion, also not unlike a magic show. It's enjoyable to discover the cleverness at work that makes the trick a success. In some cases, the simpler the trick, the more enjoyable its effect is. Frampton and Weiland pretend to be literally shooting each other in A and B in Ontario by matching up footage of them wielding their cameras like firearms with loud audio of the film stock. The effect is a mock machine gun battle. It's encouraging to know that in an age of expensive, complicated computer-generated special effects, the medium of the motion picture allows for dramatic effects to be achieved simply through camera movement and simple editing.

Ben-Ner Makes Jokes

By blatently filming his version of Moby Dick in the cheapest way possible, Ben-Ner manages to make a hilarious reproduction of the original, epic story. Since "Moby Dick" is filmed in his kitchen, Ben-Ner makes sure that his audience is not emotionally invested in the actual story and its drama. Instead, they focus on the amusing ways in which Ben-Ner works with what little he has to present the story. As Henri Bergsun says in his essay, distance from feeling/emotion is one of the necessary conditions for comedy to occur. Therefore, the stop-motion sharks are funny rather than threatening because of the "danger" they pose for the characters. Nobody shrieked in horror when the captain was cut in half at the end of the film, but people laughed as his legs ran around in circles. "Moby Dick" also satisfies another or Bergsun's prerequisites for comedy by appealing to the intelligence of the audience. It's funny that the film opens with his daughter pretending to tend the bar while she is actually only sitting in the kitchen sink. It's also funny to see how Ben-Ner cleverly produces the motion effects involved with a ship. Tilting the camera side to side and sliding a bowl between him and his daughter produces the effect of a ship on high seas, while sliding a person and a palm tree across the kitchen launches the ship on its journey. Buster Keaton uses some of these same tactics for a similarly hilarious effect in "The Boat". A final way in which "Moby Dick" creates humor is by making it obvious that Ben-Ner and his daughter are taking the production about as seriously as the audience is. It's easy to imagine them laughing between takes at the absurdity of what they're doing. Knowing that the whole production is supposed to be taken lightly makes it easy for the audience to laugh along with them as opposed to feeling pity for a serious film that is actually that bad. This concurs with Bergsun's claim that laughter is a group-based phenomenon and that comedy is best enjoyed when it can be shared with others.