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.