How Can I Push Some Buttons

i remember when i was little i read Choose Your Own Adventures all the time... that was about the extent of my desire to have interactivity with storys or movies that i read, besides the occasional video game...

i liked the opinion test or whatever, pertaining to art... it was really funny to be told that as an artist there are certain things you are pretentious about or selfish about and it calls you on it...

i also LOVED the artist statement film... very cool in my opinion, aesthetically... Big type for big words...

My Pen Pal

I finally got around to listening to My Pen Pal on the This American Life website, and the formula for the plays tended to begin with an example of a written work, possibly some passages read to the listeners, followed by a discussion of the times and happenings during the time it was written, maybe with interviews of the person who wrote it or people who knew that person. It was a pretty interesting show, although it was kind of hard to get myself to listen to it (procrastination and short attention span), but I did my best...

The Super Of 8

Coming from an independent standpoint, I really like the fact that super 8 film is really cheap and still looks better than some personal digital film devices, in my opinion. By better, I mean that it has that great film look and the same depth and color to make it so that things you shoot on it still look like a genuine film more than miniDv... Maybe I should spread out my computer editing software and my tripod and my older miniDv camera to three of my friends and then track them down someday and get everything back to film a dream I had... haha. It probably wouldn't look as good as the one in class though... oh well.

Intentional Vulnerability

I find that my own experience with intentional vulnerability stems from my forays into musicianship and trying to write songs that I feel really express something more than just words that rhyme together. Putting more of yourself into the things that you do tends to make your creative accomplishments more fulfilling, in my opinion, because you have an emotional investment involved. If your investment is successful and worthwhile, then you can feel like you’ve given a part of your self that has been accepted and you can accept yourself. This is the same in music, photography, and video-graphy, and some of the best artists put themselves into their work.

Collectively Viewing Fiction (And Then A Click Rang Out In The Room)

I haven’t had a viewfinder like the ones in class since I was a kid, and, even then, I don’t think I had nearly as much fun as I did then. It was a lot more interesting to have a narrative play along with the images that we were looking at. A few times, I put the viewfinder down and watched everybody else, intent with their stories and constantly searching for new light sources to make the 3d images even more distinct then they were.

A Camera, Obscured

All of the stories of the mechanics of a camera obscura sound like something out of a magic trick, at least to me. The believability of an image shining through a pinhole opening, through a lens or not, and creating some kind of image on the opposite wall sounds impossible. I guess I was looking forward to seeing it for the first time and judge whether or not it stands up to its legend. Needless to say, I went to the exhibit and was satisfied with the odd mechanics of the machine and the outcome it brought. The whole city street on the other side of the wall was upside down and reversed. I wanted to go outside and do a handstand and fall off the face of the planet. Odd, maybe, but a film student’s gotta dream.

Double Vision and Film Strip Revelations

While watching Third Eye Butterfly, I noticed that instead of focusing on both of the videos at once, my eyes would mainly focus on the screen to the right. I don't know why I was drawn to it more, but looking over the left screen completely and not focusing at it was more pleasing and soothing on my eyes. When I realized what I was doing, my attempts to correct this and get the full effect of the video left me kind of drowning... my attention was torn, even though the videos were similar. A part of me feels that this kind of installation could be used as some sort of mental experiment, almost as a way to test the mind and how it thinks, or the eyes. I wondered if looking at the right screen instead of the left ment something about the paths of my mind.

Anyways, watching the split screens reminded me of another music video that I enjoyed that splits up shots of the band members by using two frames right next to each other.



Available Light, I thought, was all about de-mystifying a movie experience. When you sit in a theater and watch a movie, you should feel like you are drawn into another world, and not think that you are watching tiny frames of pictures speeding in front of a light projector.

In this clip from the movie Fight Club, the director David Fincher throws in a little creative touch to a Brad Pitt monolouge... the film seems to come off of the reel momentarily, almost as a way of jarring you back to reality or just to freak out the projectionists...

An Unrelated Post To Related Events

so i missed class on monday and missed the presentation...
this is because of the amazingly crazy snow storm that snowed us in and the fact that i got extremely sick on friday and have continued to be sick until this very night, although i am now back... so i'm basically useless when it comes to discussion this week, but posting this is better than nothing i guess...

Hey, Check Out That Weirdo With The Camera

D'est, I believe thats the title of the movie we watched on monday, seemed to me at times extremely dull and quiet, and at others interestingly dull and quiet. When I watched it, I realized that maybe the idea that the filmmaker was going for was to make the viewer feel like the person watching the world that he was filming. The eyes of onlookers at times seem to pierce through the screen and look directly at you, either curiously or accousingly or with no expression what so ever.

Extremely long to be making only that point, though, there's probably something I'm missing, but at that time of the morning I tend to miss alot.

On a side note, today is the day that esteemed gonzo journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson passed away, so, you should watch Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas or something cool like that...

Some Dreams Are Terrible Things To See (Sinister Visuals)

So, I've been kind of neglectful for my posts on this blog... a product of my worst bad habit, procrastination, which tends to hold me back in alot of my school work.
In response to this, I'll try to make this post as epic as possible.

So, the main film I'd like to discuss was one that we watched during last part of class. It was a close up of an eye, with a white spot that danced and moved around in frenetic, jarring ways. The soundtrack that accompanied it was equally unsettling. I believe the short was called "Everyday Nightmare" and I was definetly seeing why.

I kept cringing in my seat, wait for something terrible to happen that would completely disturb me and ruin my day. Although the end was almost anti-climactic, I still thouroughly enjoyed it its use of tone and sound to make it all the more chilling.

The director, that I thought about afterwards, was Chris Cunningham, and I related alot of what I felt during the first film to a music video that he directed for the techno band Aphex Twin, called Come To Daddy. It's use of soundtrack and imagery matches the aesthetic and premise of "Everyday Nightmare" in an almost literal sense.