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.