Cucalorus

Its easy for me to describe my view on cucalorus because for shannon's class she assigned a paper, so I really had the time to sit down and reflect on what cucalorus is to me. What it is is a lifesaver. I moved here a little over a year ago for the film industry i had heard about. when i got here i only knew one person, it was the first time i had moved to another city and state so alone. but i managed to jump right into what i could pertaining to film and one of the first things was cucalorus. i had the opportunity to meet some of the most amazing people and they are still my close friends, i saw some of the coolest films and as a whole i had an awesome time. I was so thankful. This year things were a little different, last year i was a volunteer and this year because of my dedication to the events that were held throughout the year as fundraisers for cucalorus i was able to be part of the staff which means i had a lot more obligations and things to keep track of so i was unable to see as much as i wanted to but i got to party! the parties have been one of my favorite parts of the whole event. you get the opportunity to meet some of the filmmakers and hang out with your friends and reflect on everything you've seen together, it's an awesome environment where you are surrounded by people who share the same passion as you do. I've heard the events like the parties described in so many ways but always an incredible environment. this year i got a chance to see a group of shorts, the stinking bishop shorts, which shannon even had a film in. They were hilarious. i think they were considered the 'dirty' ones but nevertheless they were all hilarious. Even thought provoking.
The two features that I saw were the Messenger and the Square. Both were excellent. I went to the Messenger really because it was one I had time to see and I had heard so many good things, and I was persuaded that it would be a good film to see, and it was. The ironic thing is that I usually tend to steer clear from any films that include war or soldiers in it. I think because I feel like there are so many and usually have a similar story or theme and because i'm not the most pro-war person either so it really has no interest to me. but the Messenger was awesome. It was about a guy who is assigned a new position on informing families that their loved one has been killed. It shows the struggles he goes through in taking on this new task, and it's really interesting and fantastic.
The Square was sooooooooo intense, actually it was the epitome of intense. I sent you on a crazy thrill ride and I was thinking about it for days after.
If I could sum up Cucalorus in one word it would be, AWESOME.

mystery workshop,.. 3D?

im guessing by mystery workshop, we're talking about our 3D fun... I don't ever remember it being specified as a mystery but i probably missed that memo. but it was a lot of fun... and actually a lot easier to make than i thought it would be. i told a few people that thats what i did in class that day and a lot of them thought that it was really neat that we got the opportunity to do that..and it really is.

So filming it was interesting it because i knew that they were like layers of the image on top of one another but it never dawned on me that you would actually place two cameras side by side. but it makes sense, ive been meaning to research if you could actually just take one image and manipulate it by copying it and then placing it next to the other one?? but we had a good time filming it.. i sat in the middle of the hallway with my hair in front of my face like the girl from the ring because we were trying to do something "scary" which i thought would end up looking creepy but end up being boring when it comes to 3d but when i got to watch a little bit of it later on.. it was actually really freaky because it was like my figure was sticking out of the screen while all these plains of action were going on behind me.. but it was fun to move the cameras across the building because the writers bitched at us.. we also got to do things a little unlikely in the hallways.. like gymnastics...ninja karate..and just running around like weirdos.. so that's always a fun time..

logging and capturing part was fun but we didn't get to see the final product because we ran out of time.. i got to do a lot of the afterfx work because i wasnt as experienced with it so i got the opportunity to learn some new things..i got the hang of it pretty quickly and that too was easier than i thought it would be. it was interesting aligning all the plains and then setting them those red and blue colors, which im sure is a more intricate explanation than 'those red and blue colors' which i could probably look up what those colors do and why they do them. and are they certain shades? and how do they correspond with with the red and blue in the glasses? il look it up.

the glasses were also a lot fun to make, it was like arts and crafts everyone made their glasses into really sick things.. everyones kicked mine's ass i think but i still have two cute little fish for 3d goggles.. hah.. im definitely trying to get a picture of everyone wearing them tonight... where do you get those little screens anyway??

3d workshop = fun times.

the yes men.

i watched this movie on my own this week because i couldn't make it to class the day we were screening it, and i must say im a little surprised by what i saw, maybe because it's a little different then the films we usually watch, or maybe just because of the content in the film itself. i went into it keeping american movie in my mind, which i think is one of the funniest documentaries i have ever seen... anyway, i am utterly amazed at the con mike bonanno and andy bichlbaum create and keep going throughout the film. There are a few things that make the content so shocking.. one being how easy it is for them to be able to fool all these people...another being how stupid the film makes general people seem.. and how people passively accept speeches these dudes give out.

technically and artisitically i wasn't THAT impressed,,but the pranking keeps me entertained enough. impersonating wto team leaders has got to be an exhilarating joke. im still in awe it worked and that these bros were actually invited to speak at different places... and even exposing certain male appendages to audiences while representing men of power. which was hilarious, and that scene itself is worth seeing the movie.. other than that scene, what i also liked the most was that the college students are the ones that get it... first they get the bullshit that these pranksters are saying is BULLSHIT and respond confidently... pissed,confused, or just comically.. and then they get it that it's bullshit as in its all a joke.

its funny that the only ones to actually understand the HUGE prank that swarmed leaders around the world are our upcoming YOUTH. college kids.. fuck yeah.

the film was good though.. i wish i could have watched it in class with everyone else, but got the opportunity to watch it with my roommate and some friends.. so ultimately got to spread the film because it seems underrated, i hadn't heard of it before this class, whereas american movie was pretty popular.

the molotov man

Well...I think this was an interesting article in the fact that it kind of plays devils advocate, and showing both sides in the situation involving the famous photograph of the molotov man. i think the whole issue is a sticky concept because the use of others people work affect different people different ways. The side from Joy's perspective how she was using the image solely for the aesthetic properties in her painting, with no regards to the background. Whereas the opposing sign, Susan, felt as if recontextualizing the photo she had taken was disrespectful to the subject and what the actual picture was about. I think theres a couple of ways you could approach this scenario. For one, Susan could be totally flattered that her photo had such an impact on artists (aesthetically) to where they wanted to use it. But for two, how people may praise the work not knowing it was originally Susan's, not giving her any credit at all.. id be pissed if i were here probably too, especially because it was SUCH a big hit.

I think that this issue works because we have touched on this a bit in class. Copyright is a serious issue. Getting credit for you work i think is a wonderful part of being an artist. I also think that the idea of sharing for the sake of art is a good idea too, so im kind of in the middle. I think that its appropriate to use other artist's stuff as long as you give credit to the original artist. I personally may be selfish but if i made something really awesome, id feel like shit if someone was getting all the credit. you should always be associated with the outcome of great effort. compensation is a part of life and business.

Back to the molotov man situation..a quote that sticks out to me where some blogger asks "who owns the rights to this man's struggle' which is a powerful question. its almost like this event is there in the world its this man throwing that cocktail bomb.. i think her argument of the story behind what is going on is amazing, and should be put together like if she were to write about this specific incident and publish it with this picture, as for the actual image i think it is what it is.. i mean maybe she should receive some kind of recognition for like being in the line of fire taking the pic.. its almost like the art itself is the beauty of this mans struggle, not the actual photograph

but i dont know im not really trying to pick sides im just trying to relate to both in some degree. all in all i think copyright is a big tangled web that will probably just get more and more tangled as more and more art is created and reused. and i know if i made something epic i would want the credit and recognition.

saturday shoot.

longtake shoot.

I think it helped more than anything that our group really planned out what we wanted to do. On the thursday that we had half the class to plan for our idea, we really came up with the interesting idea of the 'magic ten' the concept ended up being easy to put together, and quick and funny. We planned it out so that we all brought various costumes and props that put together out little film perfectly.


on the day of the shoot it was hot and humid but it didn't really slow us down at all.. it took us a little longer than expected to get our tent up and ready but we got it together with just enough time left to rehearse a couple times. We knew that our idea was quick and would probably be around a minutes, but the first time we ran it it was only a tiny bit longer than needed, which was nice because then all we needed to do was speed up some of the actions and it was exactly the length we needed and we portrayed all that we wanted to. Great appreciation goes out to our actors too!! They were wearing big heavy costumes in a thick material AND running around in the heat... but it all worked out, they didn't complain and it looked so awesome. We finished just in time and cleaned up and went off to process..

processing was nerveracking especially because i was the one putting our film in the developer and all that.. i was nervous i would do something that would fuck it up but it all turned out well... when we pulled it out of the fix andre looked at it and said it looked perfect and that was a sigh of relief... that just made the whole day seem so fun that we could get all that accomplish and it turned out well.. we were the first ones finished so we were also the first ones to transfer it to video.. and it looked hilarious, i can't wait to see the inverse and watch it again... i'm just bummed we really didn't get to see other people's but i'm sure we will.. i had to run at 4pm to go to work so i'm guessing other people got to stay and watch some.

I couldn't help but think about that guy andre told us about who went to some retreat to do stuff with his film and ended up processing it in a dark barn where a dog tried to eat his film and played tug of war with it.. i can only imagine what that guy was thinking... i'd be freaking out, i was nervous enough just doign ours in OUR condition.. can't imagine dirt and hay everything and a jerk of a dog... and i was surprised to see how much film we had for just one minute, and im guessing that that dude was processing a lot more...

for the most part, i think we all worked together really well and had good help. we knew what we were doing, did it, and got to watch the finished product which was rewarding. at the beginning of the semester i started dreading coming to do classwork on a saturday all day.. but it ended up being a lot of fun and it was probably one of my favorite excersizes we've done. i liked working with the bolex camera too.

48 hour video race

48 hour video races is something im familiar with but in a narrative sense. when i was going to school in richmond, there was a 48 hour race that was offered to VCU students, and me and 5 or 6 other people did it.. all i can say about that weekend was it was more hectic than i could ever imagine.. what we thought would be a lot of fun and a chance for us to make something great screened at a large audience.. ended up being a crazy weekend of no sleep and time crunching... we ended up losing 2 members due to frustration and arguments! NOT WHAT WE EXPECTED.. at the end of the weekend we turned in a sort of blue print for what we wanted to come up with.. the terms for our race was we were given a line of dialogue we had to use and a genre of what we could make the night of the first 48 hours... we ended up getting a holiday genre and i dont even remember what the line of dialogue was but we weaseled it in their.. we ended up getting honorable mention out of like 20 some films which was good enough for me even though it ma have been one the most hectic weekends of my entire life..

for THIS race things are EVEN more complicated... im thinking other people are looking at this like fun. im INTIMIDATED as hell... let alone getting a surprise prop.. but not being able to use a camera is freaking me out.. im toying with the thought of doing something with my webcam.. what we did last time was brainstormed all night of good narrative ideas for a film..and then when we got our prop and line of dialogue we just kinda molded them in there.. im not sure if that was a good or bad idea but i guess ill still attempt that to a certain degree..i want to form some kind of piece using webcam or maybe just a lot of screen capturing with multiple different facebook video posts.. because my friends have caught on to this trend where it's funny to post meaningless small video's on each other's facebook walls.. this has been going on for a while.. im interested to know how i could save all of the videos i can find that we've done to each other and messed with the audio and chopped it all up and rearranged it to fit the designated prop and line of dialogue... actually i think that would be REALLY sick.. and i think i just decided what im gong to do all together while writing this blog.. im not exactly sure if it will work though because i feel like i have tried to save a video wall post before and didn't work or i couldn't extract it from an actual page.. but maybe there's some kind of loophole around it.. like if i recorded all the conversation pieces on a seperate track from like a tape recorder or something and then had all the audio and then proceeded to take stills of all the actual videos? but im not sure how i would edit all of that.. especially if some how i could extract actual facebook pages along with the video, i doubt that it's possible.. but now im going to research that and try and plan.. my video will kill it. (=

scratch film junkies round 2

i'll have to say that the first day of class when we wrote about our thoughts on the first viewing experience of scratch film junkies, it was introduced to us as if most of us hadn't seen many films like that, so that we'd probably have more to write about as far as viewing something some what foreign and writing about out our experience... I felt more experienced in the fact i had SEEN so many like that before in kreul's avant-garde class.. it wasnt really new to me so I mainly wrote about that.. how i appreciate what i had seen because i figured i had untrained my eyes to something so different and i could really see what was going on and the effect of its visual greatness.. this is all true, i have seen a lot of experimental films in his class, and others...

but now...

now i have a completely different take on what i see in front of me in a scratch film junkies film.. after all the exercises we've done and learned about in only a few weeks of class I see these films in a totally new light.. watching the one we watched last week in class floored me.. the amount of time and effort put into making that film is a lot more apparent to me. I appreciate it way more than ever. I found myself zoning out of admiration at some points and started trying to figure out the process of how it was made in certain parts.. it was pretty impressive. I have a lot more respect for these filmmakers.

something else i wanted to write about was the use of music.. i know some people who love experimental films that will argue that they are sometimes best left silent, or just without music and other sounds instead.. i've heard that music can be distracting or that it can turn a film into a music video. i beg to differ on this.. i for one am a true music lover, all kinds... I think that the music helps to accentuate the greatness of a film.. in St. Louise I thought the music choice went well and maybe even helped KEEP attention to what was going on in the screen.. I know that I've seen a fair share of silent experimental films that i started to get bored with that maybe the use of music would have helped prevent? I think a good beat can help you keep track almost.

in st.louise specifically i really liked all the film manipulation with scratching and painting, and then it switched to some kind of person with an otter head or something flailing around hanging out of a whole in the ground.. the absurdity is hilarious and interesting as well. I read in the info about the film that they heated and burned some of the film with magnified sunlight..and i think that's pretty fucking creative and interesting.. I looked for if i could pick out which parts of the film that was but couldn't find a good quality to look at anywhere .. i'm downloading some of their other stuff as we speak including st. louise so hopefully ill be able to check that technique out.. its pretty sick.

i dont think i could ever produce something as awesome as the scratch film junkies because i would never have the patience to do all of that.. and so perfectly to add to it. ill stick to watching them all.

sound on film.

in this article.. chion explains in detail many elements that coincide with sound and film.. it's pretty structured the way he writes it out too. i'm going to try and follow his structure with my response. one of the early topics he explains is his theory on 'vococentric' cinema. He explains the value of dialogue and the sounds of the human voice. i think that this is a useful tool in filmmaking because some of the best hollywood films that are extremely successful are highly stuffed with good dialogue sequences. I can think of a specific example that I love. In Tarantino's True Romance.. Alabama Worley, one of the two protagonists.. she narrates the beginning and the end. Tarantino has a way of really sculpting out the time, place, and culture that his films take place in... in True Romance two kids from detroit in the early 90's are pretty much goofing around the whole time while getting themselves in big trouble, they both come off as extremely naive and young. Her sweet innocent voice with a city like dialect and slang to go along, begins the film by explaining how she never thought she'd find the love that she's about to in the film.. but the most memorable, the ending is one of my favorite quotes...

""Amid the chaos of that day, when all I could hear was the thunder of gunshots and all I could smell was the violence in the air, I look back and I'm amazed that my thoughts were so clear and true. That three words went through my mind endlessly, repeating themselves like a broken record: "You're so cool. You're so cool. You're so cool."

all in her sweet young voice that just contradicts her hectic lifestyle and shows her innocence and naivety in her tone, and I think this is a tool Tarantino used to convey the story he as trying to get across. He does a good job, and it's definitely one of my favorite movies.

another area chion touches on is his section on value added by music.. i think its safe to say that music brings a lot to the table in film, rhythm and beat is an instant sound luxury and appeals to most humans as far as im concerned.. juxtaposing music and film has got to be one of the most brilliant cinematic decisions ever made. especially where he goes on to explain empathy derived from music. the empathetic music that allows you to really feel the feeling that the film is expressing is an extremely powerful tool.. i can think real quick off the top of my head a number of films that dragged me into it's depths just by it's score. even in the same family as films, film trailers, which are my specialty, i feel are highly successful just by the music chosen. almost like if the music is super suspenseful in the trailer, then you knowyoure going to get a suspenseful film.. same goes along with comedic, romantic, and dramatic tracks that fall with the trailer...

on the other side of things, which i think goes along with chions description of a fixed sound (if i understood correctly) to me this is the idea of diegetic sounds on the screen.. i never really cared much of even thought much of sounds happening in the story world until i saw the movie the strangers... this concept takes over the entire soundtrack. the movie is about a couple in a house in the woods, and intruders come and torture them. the film has very little score to it, in fact the only score heard is music played on the record player, which adds an eery effect when at a point in the film the record is tampered with and begins to skip and play the same eerie not and say the same weird phrase over and over.. it adds anxiety, in fact most of the sounds in the film are nothing but pure loud noises that cause much anxiety. the most famous in the film is the constant banging on the front door that happens repeatedly because there is noone there each time one of the protagonists go to answer it, each time seems to get louder and louder. its ax extremely heavy banging and scared me off the bat. another one of my favorites in the film is when there's obviously something going, even though the couple doesn't know what, and the woman is alone in the living room, there is a fire in the fireplace and it's extremely quiet in the house. all of a sudden the fire alarm goes off and when i was in the theater it sent the theater jumping. i think this is an awesome tool used to scare because its something scary in the fact that it's an every day noise, an average annoyance and in this film these average loud annoying noises are along side a series of horrifying events. i became fascinated with the idea of 'every day noises' that make you jump. he should have talked about sounds like that in his horror section.. the example he used from eyes without a face did freak me out just reading about it.. can't imagine hearing/seeing it.


the only parts of the article i wasn't really into is when it got down to the nitty gritty dynamics of hearing and sound.. i found it boring and hard to keep focus on...it was more interesting to me to read about the effect of different sounds on an audience and the different ways sound is portrayed in film rather than temporalization shit.. but its whatever.. i learned more than i thought i would reading it i guess..

Radiohead |MTV Music

response to wells animation theorys

animation, as Wells explains pretty thoroughly, has many forms that provoke different emotions and meanings. i like the fact that Wells was simply distinguishing the difference between experimental animation and "orthodox animation" because it seems that most articles about experimental vs. popular film entertainment takes a hard opinion on one or the other. Wells just layed out the makeup and products of both.

Although, he does go to say that abstract animation requires more effort and creativity... and that you need the highest mental and spirtual faculties. thats whatever.. i can agree to him to some extent, but i think that creating a long narrative animation would be pretty tidious in its own ways, maybe not spiritually, but physically more difficult.. but i dont really know because ive never done any animation before.. thats just what i would think..

i really liked the section on musical relationships...and how there is some kind of psychological and emotional relationship between sound and color, i think this idea has been widely touched on when you look at animated music videos.. animation gives the viewer a chance to really explore different depths that may coincide with the music..and gives the artist a chance to really create more vs. other types of film. one of my favorites is radiohead's paranoid android... i think the animation is awesome and lets you see things that go along well with the music that you wouldn't normally see..i think thats something the experimental film does most of the time anyway, gives you a view of another concept you wouldn't normally see in your everyday narrative.

the presence of the artist i think is another important issue that wells touches on... it's something i've briefly touched on in other classes, but i think is crucial to appreciate when viewing experimental vs. orthox animation... because we are so trained to view animation with a different eye, like narrative vs. avant-garde films.. we have a similar training with animation, we watch the story unfold and just follow along to the narrative structure and don't pay enough attention to the details.. and that's somethign that should be noticed the most in animation because there is so much room for creativity... there are much less boundaries.

The Russet and Starr quote was awesome...i like the idea of associating music and experminetal film together a lot, so when he says that will excute the scores of his visions that correspond to his state of my mind, i can't help but imagine a rhythmic interpretation of some great painting.. that steps away from classical story telling and pertains more to visual pleasure.

cameraless

i took this class because i heard it was fun. It was a fun film class... why wouldn't i take it? i didn't really know exactly what i was doing or how the class would be constructed but i did see a few screenings of films made by this class at jengo's...they seemed pretty cool. the first day of class andre explained this class to be kind of like an arts and crafts but with film. sounded awesome to me.. and so far has been. after taking an entire semester of history of avantgarde with kreul and watching these films every week i didn't think that it would be as fun as it is to make them.. the manipulation to film stock leaves so much room for creativity and exploration of new mediums. i think its fun.. its exciting to spend a lot of time on exploring your creativity with film and then getting to see the final product.. i didn't think id be as excited as i was to see the final product of the magazine transfer project we did.. and the first day of class when we spent most of the time painting and hole punching and scratching film, i was interested to see what my creation turned out to be. I think that I have finally grasped that concept of experimental film vs. narratives because of the avant garde class i took but it took me most of the semester.. so this semester when i finally get to make it i feel like it's a lot more interesting to me than it would have been if i hadn't had kreul's class.. ive browsed through future assignments as well and i think there is a lot in store for me to express my creativity with film. i've actually gotten more and more into it recently, because im also taking shannon's experimental production class.

cameraless filmmaking to me is something that's taking more and more of my interest. I think i got into it the most when i was assigned to do an assignment doing shot by shot analyzing of brakhage's cat's cradle. even after watching it a billion times and dissecting every single little piece i still absolutely love that film. i think i had started to really forget the narrative side of things and the rhythm, color scheme, and images really appealed to me. i don't think that's cameraless but i know brakhage did do a lot of manipulation to his film...

i think so far my favorite effect has been using the hole puncher that are different shapes. but the magazine transfer has some awesome potential to make some cool shit. jessica and i are planning on trying the contact printing soon.. and i think that will turn out just as cool.. and just like everything im just stoked to see how it all looks in the end.

synthesia..weird

playing with senses i feel is nothing new when it comes to art. creating a piece or art according to what you feel seems like it has always been a tool when it comes to creation. all of the examples posted on wiki from artists who describe their experiences with making art according to their senses was almost boring to me... and it became pretty redundant. the neurological condition on the other hand was pretty interesting... especially the fact that there are 60 types 1 in 23 people.. you would think we would hear about this more rather than just with a creative process. A lot of the medical junk that's described I've actually been researching a lot lately.. I'm writing a script right now about a man who wakes up loses his smell (anosmia) and goes crazy. but ive been doing a lot of reading on the condition and has a lot of the similar things in it..probably just because senses are involved. the most interesting i read in the articles.. was how some of those people view the year like a map, in a 3 dimensional way... super cool. wanna make a model of the 'year' in a tangible way.. hmmmmmmmmmmmmm........

Scratch Film Junkies. it was okay.

Last semester I had the opportunity to take history of avant-garde film with Kreul. Scratch Film Junkies was very very similar to a lot of short films that I watched last semester. The overall feel of the film was definitiely rhythm, the music that goes along with it definitely helped to guide that, but the variety of shapes and color did as well. The rhythm helped to keep the film entertaining. My favorite aspects of the film were the different people's faces throughout in different positions. The different tools that coincide with avant-garde films were evident in this such as the scratches on the film stock and the chaos of the image assortment. But it was cool, I liked it. I just happened to get a little burnt out on those types of films last semester, but every now and then I'll still see one that I like a lot.