48-Hour Video Race

I thought that the video race was a really cool idea. I was a little nervous about it at first because I knew it would be tough to make a film in such a limited time with a mystery prop, but I think that it turned out ok. The 3 children's blocks were quite a surprise. I had no idea what to do with them so I started to try and spell words. The best word I could figure out was FIB. So I thought it could be my title and I would make a simple story about someone telling a lie. Since I knew I would be pressed for time, not only because we had two days but also because of other classes and projects, I didn't want to mess with dialogue. At most I was going to put audio with it, but I had issues with the computer and ran out of time. I used my friend's digital camera and was horrified by the resolution. The footage looked so bad, but oh well. I had to transfer it a few different times so I'm sure that didn't help. My roommate volunteered to be in it, so I was glad to have the help.

It was really cool to see everyone else's projects. I was so afraid that everyone's would be so much better than mine, but I could tell some of them had trouble thinking of ideas. It was really cool to see the different ideas people came up with. I think that was my favorite screening all semester...of course the hot apple cider probably helped that. One of my favorite ideas was the skateboarding one. Another hilarious one was the PB&J and "It's a Boyeeee!" The end of semester gathering was really fun. I was really nervous about showing my film in front of 3 other classes, as well as ours, but everyone was nice and applauded and laughed. So that made me feel better.

It's been an awesome semester and I have really loved this class. It has definitely been one of my favorite college classes that I have taken. I learned a lot and had a ton of fun doing it. I would recommend this class to all filmmakers and all of my friends. It's a great way to get your hands on film without the pressure of messing anything up. It's been a great semester in 6x1! Thanks Andre!

Rhythmic Editing Evaluation

I think that this was one of the toughest assignments to do. I think that mine turned out really well, but it was very tedious editing. I think that if I had planned it our better, then it would have turned out better, but I was ok with it. I didn't think I would like watching the projects in class, but I must be getting used to seeing thoes types of films because I watched all of them without getting a headache. It was really cool to see all of the different ideas that people came up with and how well they worked with the rhythmic editing. After doing the project and seeing how other people's films turned out, I feel a little differently about rhythmic editing. I actually like the effect that it has and I think that it would be cool to use in the future for some kind of action sequence where everything is real intense. Overall, it was a fun experience, just a little tougher than some of the other ones that had been assigned, I think.

Rhythmic Editing

Before Thanksgiving break, Jason and I filmed my idea for the rhythmic editing assignment. This is the first project out of all of the ones assigned that I have not been looking forward to. Mainly this was because when we were introduced to the assignment and watched the samples in class, I had a hard time watching them without getting a headache. It could be because it was like nothing I had ever seen and I just wasn't used to that. I'm not sure, but I was a little bummed I couldn't watch the samples. It was hard for me to come up with an idea. The only thing I could think of was to film Jason cooking something, that way I would have a process and a beginning and ending. So I filmed him cooking chicken and mashed potatoes! The best part was I got a meal at the end! I tried to get different shots and angles, but with some things, I could only get one shot so we couldn't do it over. I think that the footage turned out nicely and I am going to the editing lab after classes on Tuesday to finish editing it. We had filmed Jason's idea earlier before the break. He had a detailed idea of shots that he wanted. His idea was to shoot my morning routine. He also attempted to get different shots and angles. I saw a little bit of what he edited and I thought that it looked really good. I was excited that I could actually watch what I saw without getting a headache. He also chose a song to back it up that I think went really well with it. I'm excited to see what everyone came up with in class on Thursday. I just hope I can watch them without a headache.

Cucalorus!!

Cucalorus was awesome! Although I didn't get to see everything I wanted to see, I thoroughly enjoyed myself and the films I was able to see. The first screening I have to talk about it is the UNCW Vision screening. I missed this last year so I was really excited to be a part of it this year. A film I made with a group in my Intro to Documentary class last year was selected and screened in this year's Vision screening so the experience was even more special to me. I was so glad to see Jengo's Playhouse completely packed with people. I came in a few minutes late and ended up having to sit on the floor because there was nowhere else to stand or sit. It was awesome to see that amount of support for the student films. I also enjoyed the student films that were shown this year. Obviously, I have a bias and enjoyed mine, but there were also a few that really stood out to me. Lexi's film about her father's death and the impact it has had on her was amazing to me. It was such a personal piece and I think that it says a lot about her and what film means to her. It seems like it is her outlet, almost like her diary and I think that is really awesome. The film Scarz by Todd and Amir was also really good. I had seen it evolve in Intro to Documentary last year and being able to see it fresh again was cool. I enjoyed it even more. I also really liked the film with the mario, nintendo storyline. I thought that was a very creative idea and whether or not you are a fan of President Bush, you could laugh at it and enjoy the film. One of the feature films that I saw was Hannah Takes the Stairs. The storyline wasn't the most interesting and complex, but I was still interested in the characters and the film. One of the most impressive things about the film was the acting. Over and over I found myself thinking, "wow, these characters seem so natural!" I constantly felt like I was in the scene with them, at work or at home. That was very impressive to me and made the film even better. It was basically a comical story about Hannah who finds herself "chronically dissatisfied" especially with men. It follows her struggle to find happiness. It was very entertaining and although odd at times, I did enjoy it. I absolutely loved Cucalorus last year and this year it seemed even better. I can't wait to see what it's like next year!

Update

I really enjoyed last week's class. The competition to make the longest film roll was really fun. i was skeptical at first and really didn't think it would last as long as it did. After watching the other group get creative and organized with their system of hanging things from the ceiling, I was a little worried about our group making it. However, after looking at the rolls, I am kind of thinking that my group had the longest stretch, but we will see after we measure them in class on Thursday. I also think it's cool that our Teacherman took footage of us working on it, just like he has done with other projects. It's good for the memories. We have finished working on Assignment 3. We have finished all of the editing, and I think that it turned out really well. Because our ambience and dialogue is so dominant and strong, we don't have many sound effects in our rayograms film. But there are a few in there, but they are very suttle. We also slowed down some parts of the footage and I think that it gave the film a very cool effect. I think that it turned out nicely and I am excited to see what the rest of the class thinks. We started working on assignment 4. This one has been a little more difficult to find sounds that we want to go with it. I think that our dialogue is going to be the dominant track, so we are working on getting the timing right with that. We have found some ambience for it, but we are still looking for more sound effects. The tone of this one is going to be more light and funny than the rayograms, so we have a little more sound researching to do. But I am looking forward to hearing suggestions from the class on Thursday.

Rayograms

I think that in Brooks article about the idea of rough theater, it relates to what we are doing in class with our experimental films. Especially with the last project, we will be using cell phone videos or digital camera videos to portay motion picture instead of a regular film camera. This image will not be the greatest quality, but it will allow us to get more creative with our filmmaking. As for this week's class, I am excited to see what everyone's works in progress for the rayograms project looks like. Jason and I have composited a segment of the rayograms footage and we have researched some different sounds. We put in some archive dialogue from what we think is a very old horror film, but I think it goes with the tone of the film. We also added some ambient scary sounds; it's almost got a musical tone with a little choir voice in the background, but it mostly just sounds like ambient scary noise. We are still looking for some added sound effects. We have found a couple that might work ok, but we are still looking. We also have tried to play with the audio levels and get those sounding right, but it still needs a little more work. It has been really fun looking up noises and adding them to the footage. Just like every other project in the class, the creativity is endless and completely open, so I can't wait to see what everyone's prject looks like.

You Only Get One Shot

Even though it was class on Saturday, I enjoyed the one shot shoo that we did. I was a little nervous about it because it's hard to come up with a good, fun story to do in one shot, much less for 60 seconds. We came up with the idea to have Jason be a macho athlete, and have me offscreen throwing balls at him. With each throw, the ball gets bigger and I try and throw it harder. When he thinks he's done, he turns to the camera, showing off his macho muscles, and I hurl a big exercise ball at him and smack him in the face so he falls to the ground. It was a very simple story, but it was hard to time it just right. You couldn't do it too slow or too fast. I thought I had messed up the ending shot because when I threw the ball, it only grazed the top of his head and I really wanted it to smack him in the face. So we were worried that it wouldn't look convincing or funny. However, when we watched our film, it looked much better than we thought and I think that it does look believable. I enjoyed doing the film processing again as well. It was a little weird doing it in the boys bathroom, but probably for the best so we didn't have to worry about light leaks. Our film came out with really crisp composition, which was really cool too. I'm excited to put some sound with it. I am also excited to start putting sound with our other projects like the rayogram project.

Assignment 6 Reaction

Assignment 6, the 48-hour film race, initially terrified me. I had never heard of a film race before and had no idea they existed. To find out that we only have 48 hours to create a short film with a mystery object with something other than a video camera and then don't even get to see the outcome before it is shown before not only our class, but other classes as well, is absolutely terrifying. Once I let the assignment sink in for a little while, I think that it will be fun and exciting, still scary. I feel like this is a true test of creativity. I feel a little bit better about it now that I have had time to let it sink in but it is still scary to me. It will be very intersting and probably hilarious to see what everyone comes up with. I do think it would be cool if there were a prize, but then that would just add to the pressure so maybe not. Needless to say, I hope that my film will turn out awesome, but if it doesn't it will still have been a once in a lifetime experience for me!

Film Scratch Junkies

When we watched the Film Scratch Junkies film at the beginning of the semester, I really wasn't a fan of it. After all of the projects and assginments we have done since then, I have a lot more appreciation for experimental filmmakers and the Film Scratch Junkies film that we watched last class. I was a lot more impressed with the outcome of their film and found myself thinking, "wow, how did they do that?" I also have a lot more appreciation for the amount of time and creativity put into a film like theirs. I also tried to pick out different techniques that I thought they had used and I thought that it was really cool how they synched a soundtrack with the film. Even though I have never been a huge fan of experimental film, I definetly have a better understanding of why people make experimental films and how much hard work is put into them.

Film Developing Project

I thought that the film developing project was really fun on Thursday. Our group brought in different objects such as jewelry, paper clips, rice, salt, and marbles. It was very hard to see what exactly was going on the film strip and how it was going to look once it was developed, but I love having the freedom to just experiment and be creative. It's a relief to know you can just experiment and not worry to much about it coming out to look a certain way. I think that most of our film came out pretty well, but it was a little hard to tell. I thought that the contact printing was also cool. I was surprised at how well some of them came out. The only bad part about the film developing was the flickering of the lights on and off. The room goes from really bright to really dark and it's tough on the eyes. I really enjoyed it though, and I would be interested in experimenting with it in the future.

Sound Reading

Sound has always interested me, but the more I learn aboutit, the more overwhelming it is to me. The Chion article discussed the ways in which sound can impact images. I think that it's amazing how much sound can impact an image and make it a stronger experience for the audience. It is also very interesting to me how one sound can convey so many different things. And it's cool to see how many creative ways sound can be created to go along with a particular action or scene. This is something that I am interested in learning more about.

Film Developing

I was very excited about Thursday's class because we were developing film and that is something that I have always wanted to learn how to do. Of course we had to shut out as much light as possible, which is pretty hard to do. We blacked out all the windows and doors and then had one red light and a small flashlight with a red light. It was very hard to see at first and it took a while for my eyes to adjust. We just put small objects like pebbles and rice onto the film and then flashed on the overhead light for less than 1/2 a second. Then it was put it into the developer, the wash, the fix, and then the wash again. It was crazy to see how fast the film developed once it was in the developer! I couldn't believe it! The finished film looked really cool with the imprints of the objects. The process was really interesting. I'm excited about the next assignment, when each group gets a chance to develop a piece of film. It'll be interesting to see how it works and how everyone's film comes out!

Finished Project

We finally finished our film manipulation project! Jason and I put the final touches on our film this week. We experimented a little more with the bleaching. Actually, this time it went a lot better than the first time. The first time we put too much bleach on the film and pretty much turned it clear. This time we poured a little bleach into a bottle cap and used the end of a paintbrush to draw with the bleach onto the film. It looked really cool on the film and hopefully it will look even cooler once it is run through the projector. Some of our magazine transfers have started to come off of the film. Hopefully, they will not get messed up when they are run throught the projector. Splicing the film and putting it together went really well. Once we began to roll the film around the spool, it took longer than I thought it would. I am really excited to finally see this film shown. We have worked really hard on this for a few weeks now and I can't wait to see how it looks. I really enjoyed working on this project. It is something that I never really thought I would like. I just loved being creative and experimenting. It was a really cool project!

Animation Project

On Thursday we worked on our animation project. I was a little worried at first because I wasn't real sure how the process worked and I didn't know if we had the right kind of props and if they would work ok for what we were doing. We had gotten together to come up with a story and an idea for props, but it was kind of hard. There was a lot of cool stuff that we wanted to do, but we wanted to keep it simple because we knew that it was very time consuming and it was our first time doing anything like this. However, once we started setting up everything and putting our props together, I started getting excited about it. We kept coming up with more and more ideas as we went along. It was definitely a learning experience! I knew that it would be a slow-moving process and there is a lot to think about. It's a very detailed process and it was easy to forget about other props. We would focus on our play-doh man and toy cars, and completely miss the fact that our paper tree was falling over in the background! I am hoping that we got a little better as we went, but I'm just not sure. I was glad that we each got to switch roles so everyone could participate in each role. I also enjoyed using the types of cameras that we did and using real film to do this. At first I was dreading staying in class an extra 2 hours, but the time flew by! We had a lot of fun with this project and surprisingly enough we ended up leaving a little early. Even if we would've stayed the whole time, I wouldn't have minded. Although this project made me nervous at first, I am really glad that we got to do something like this. It was so much fun! Just like other things we have done in this class, we were free to be as creative as we could. I can't wait to see how the film comes out and edit this project. I might not ever get a chance to do something like this again, so I'm really glad that I had this opportunity.

Animation Article

I have never thought much about the process of making experimental cartoons. I have only seen one or two experimental cartoons, and I didn't like them very much. However, I would like to see more because I know there are many different types of experimental cartoons. The article compared the process of creating conventional Disney-style cartoons to experimental cartoons. Experimental cartoons lack the typical narrative form of storytelling and really reflect the presence of the artist. In Disney cartoons, the stories follow the traditional narrative pattern with a powerful musical score and lack a personal reflection of the artist. It was an interesting article and I would really like to see a few more experimental cartoons and see the comparisons between their process and the Disney process.

Work on Elements Project

I am excited about the elements project, but I am a little nervous because I am still learning with each of the activities we are doing. We also have a lot of film to work with so I know that it is going to be very time consuming. Jason and I started working on the project and decided which elements to do on each type of film and how to represent each element. We tried the bleaching technique and made a little bit of a mess out of it. We ended up bleaching a little more than we wanted to. So, I think that we need a little more work on that. I am not very good at drawing, so I am keeping the animations very simple. I think that I am most excited about the magazine transfer. I love the way that it looks onscreen and I love the creative process of it. We are coming up with creative ways to use the magazine transfers to represent the elements. We also tried painting with ink and oil but we definitely need some more practice with that. We didn't realize how long it would take the paint and oil to dry, so that set us back a little with our work. Overall, our project is coming along very well. We are learning as we go, but also becoming more creative as we go. I am really excited to see how it looks once it is run through the projector. I think that it will look really cool!

Workshop Day

I really enjoyed our second class. I was nervous about the magazine transfer activity. However, it turned out to be fun! I have never done anything like that, and I didn't realize how creative you can get with it. Unfortunately, some of the strips didn't get dry enough to run through the projector and started falling off, but what was shown of our class project was really cool! I am glad we were able to practice though, because I really wasn't sure how thin to cut the strips and how long to soak them in the water. I also wasn't sure if I got all of the residue off the tape before putting it on the film strip. I love the way it looks once it is on the screen. I didn't have a lot of time to work with the oil and paint on the film. To be honest, I couldn't tell a big difference when I put the oil on first, then ink, and putting the ink on first, then the oil. It was harder to paint with ink on the film than I thought it would be. It's hard to make specific shapes and designs with the paintbrush, but I also think that it gives the film a neat look. Again, I am glad that we got to practice with that first, because I wasn't sure how it would turn out in the end. I thought that it was a really good workshop day and good practice for working on our projects.

Stan Brackage Article

The Stan Brackage article, A Moving Picture Giving and Taking Book, was a little overwhelming to read. It was a very informative article, but at times I felt that it was a little hard to understand. He gave a lot of technical information about the different kinds of film, the way projectors operate, and f-stops. When he outlined how to use a motion picture machine and how they work, it was a little hard to understand just by reading it because I am a visual learner. However, in class we were able to load and use a projector so I felt a little more comfortable with it. When he discussed lighting, I got a little bit confused. I liked how he described the "dark room" for readers to try, but I feel like I had a hard time understand exactly what he meant. After reading his article I do have more respect for him as a filmmaker. I have a hard time understanding experimental films like his, but after reading this article I think I have a better understanding of his techniques as a filmmaker and how knowledgeable he is in his craft.

First Day of Class

I wasn't really sure what I was getting myself into when I signed up for 6x1. I knew that it would be an opportunity to learn how to work with film and each of the projects would be something new and different. I've never been a big fan of experimental filmmaking so I wasn't sure if I would enjoy the class. However, on the first day of class when Andre explained each of the projects that we would be doing throughout the semester, I was excited. These projects are unlike any of the other projects I have done in other production classes so I know that it is a chance to do something that I have never done before and may not ever get to do again. I also think that it will help me have a more open mind about experimental film.

I don't really have a lot of experience working with film and so I am really excited about our first project. Although I was a little unsure of what to do, I enjoyed the film scratching exercise that we did in class on Thursday. It was cool to see the effects of scratching on film and the use of color on film. This project is a chance to be creative and original. I'm really glad we got a practice strip of film first. I also liked that everyone got a chance to load the film into the projector.