Week Six: The Thad Povey Experience

After viewing the second Thad Povey and the Scratch Film Junkies piece, “St. Louise,” I was not all that surprised to find that my initial reaction and viewing experiences were incredibly different from my reaction and viewing experience with the first piece, “To the Beat.” In “To the Beat,” the music almost took me out of the experience of seeing the film, and I had an overall feeling of just being bombarded with color and images that really did not make any sense whatsoever. It just felt like a bunch of images had been put together to music and put on a reel to be viewed. However, with “St. Louise,” which I looked up online and watched for a second time, it was a completely new experience.

Overall, I appreciated this film a lot more. The experience of going through the various processes we had done in class and experimented with on our own, such as bleaching, scratching, painting, and magazine transfers, really added a new layer of appreciation. The narrative structure of the film was no longer the most important to me. I could recognize the various techniques, such as the very controlled scratching used to create not only animations but actual figures such as arrows, faces, and other objects. The flow of the film seemed much more evident to me, as well.

The way Thad Povey and the Scratch Film Junkies incorporate all of the different mediums and techniques of experimental filmmaking was fascinating to me. I mean, with the film that I made with my partner, we combined certain techniques that we thought would work together, and it turned out okay in the end, but the movement of colors, the animations incorporated within the film, and the shift from one segment of the film to the other was really smooth. Everything looked as though it had been methodically put into place with every part having its own intent and purpose.

One part of the film that really stood out to me was the inking, painting, and scratching over the already developed footage. That has quickly become one of my favorite techniques to view in a film such as this. I just enjoy the aesthetic of the different layers and the effect that the scratching can portray over the image to cause various emotions to be experienced.

Another element of the film that I, personally, really appreciated and was almost in awe of was how much control they seem to have over the medium, not just with pacing and all of that, but with the actual aesthetics of the film. The inks did not become all muddy and blend together in the parts where two inks were present on the film. In one section, there is black ink, purple ink, and blue ink in vertical strips side by side, and the boundaries between the colors were very sharp and not muddled at all. I am not sure if they just used different kind of inks that would not mix together or what, but I would think that even allowing the different areas to dry before applying the next color would have some overlap. I’m not sure how much taping areas off would help, since some of the lines looked very organic and as if the inks were just kind of co-existing, but it was just really something that stuck out to me and that I would like to look into further.

The only complaint that I had with this film was the final frames, with the figure with the mask buried up to his knees in sand at the beach. I just felt like it was more of a distraction than part of the film itself. Even the credits and the opening sequence in the beginning flowed with the rest of the film, but this one instance of just standard black and white filming with the figure just moving to the music really did not add anything to the film for me. If anything, it took me out of the film and kind of left me confused. I just wasn’t sure if it really served a purpose story wise or aesthetically. I feel as though it was rather unnecessary.

However, I am looking forward to looking into more of the Scratch Film Junkies videos after looking at some of the clips on their website.

Week Five: Stop... in the Name of Animation

Coming into class last Monday, I really was not sure what to expect. My group members and I had talked through e-mails about what objects we were going to bring, so that was not a surprise, but it was the whole idea of stop motion animation using a Super 8 camera that was pretty new to me. However, I had done stop motion animation before. Well, I had done it years ago when I had done a summer session at the School of the Arts in Winston Salem, North Carolina, so it was still pretty unfamiliar territory. The moving of the objects around in the different planes of vision seemed easy enough. After all, it was pretty self-explanatory. You moved one object or all of the objects a fraction of the complete movement, clicked off a few frames, and then repeated the process until the action was complete. Then, it was all repeated for every motion within the scene. That sounds easy enough, right?

Well, that was easy enough. The difficult part was trying to make the objects tell a story like we had seen in previous weeks in the stop motion animation films by Pes. Though there was not always a narrative structure to the films, there was still a clear action taking place, and the movement of the objects, no matter how random they were, made sense. So, with an M&M figurine, two Pez dispensers, a box of candy hearts, a Pokemon figurine, a Donald Duck figurine, a handful of change, an old key, and some dental floss, my group members and I proceded to make a film that made sense. This was easier said than done, but we made it work.

With the Sharpie marker we had, we drew faces on the blank sides of the candy hearts, allowing two different colors to be back up armies for the respective Pez dispensers that would be battling over a key that would lead them to where Donald Duck was being held captive, and we began filming our epic battle scene. Everything went rather smoothly, but the most difficult part was trying to make the Pez that were flying out of the dispensers mouths as ammunition look like they were actually airborne. So, we used thread from another group and held them in midair while they slowly moved across the plane of action, and we just decided to hope that the string would not be noticeable.

The ending of our film was sort of made up as we went along, since we were not sure which side would actually win the battle or if the actual escape of Donald Duck from his barnyard fence prison would actually take place. However, with some quick thinking, we were able to come up with an ending that both made sense and was particularly entertaining, at least to us, so I hope that it turns out okay when we get our film back from the developer.

Overall, the stop motion animation was a lot of fun, and I think my group’s will turn out pretty well. Getting in the editing lab and being able to look at the footage should be interesting, but I am really looking forward to seeing how everybody’s turned out. Not only that, but I am looking forward to seeing how everyone’s elements projects turned out, as well. The final product for my group looked pretty cool. There were parts that I liked and parts that I loved, but overall, I feel that the project itself was a success. I cannot wait to see everybody else’s’. Monday should be pretty interesting.

Week Four: Blackout, Pt. 2

Getting a second chance to work with the rayogram techniques again was really quite nice. Though we were given the options of working on the painting aspects of our films, both me and my partner, Will, decided to stay in the black box so that we could experiment more with the rayograms. This time, instead of just using random items that had been provided for us in class, we actually had some sort of a game plan. We wanted to use different items that could work for various elements of our project, not just focusing on one of the four elements in particular. So, Will got a Ziploc bag full of water to see how the light would reflect off of the water and hopefully produce a wavy effect that would be easily seen when projected onto a screen. We also used the short grain rice again, since we really liked how the light worked with the various overlapping pieces of rice. As we had planned, we also used more tape, tried a different piece of already developed film, and used more hay for an earthy appearance on film, all of which showed up after we developed the film, but some to a lesser extent than others.

Though Andre set up the Caffenol to be experimented with, the image on the film stock did not have as much time to develop, since it took much longer to develop than with the regular Kodak developer. A lot of the groups seemed to be more willing to really experiment with the rayogram process this time around. One group even exposed their film with a flame from a regular lighter instead of using a quick flicker from the overhead lights. Though some of the film strips turned out to be overdeveloped, I think the one my group did turned out pretty well, even if we ended up liking the rayogram from last week even more. We'll probably splice different portions of the two together.

During the lecture portion of class, we learned how to put our film on the reel, and Andre's toilet paper example will probably be stuck in my head for a while. It's hard to forget something like that, but it should definitely be put onto t-shirts, as he suggested. It doesn't sound like it is going to be too difficult to really do, once the process gets started, but it is starting the process that might be a little tricky, since each piece of film needs to be double spliced together before even being put on the reel. Hopefully, it won't turn out to be too arduous a task.

Lastly, the stop motion animation films that we watched from eatpes.com were really quite entertaining and mind blowing in a way. The intricate details and all of the different items that the filmmaker used to represent various pop culture references and whatnot were really well thought out and really creative. The Pac-Man one with the pizza as the game's namesake was probably my favorite, even though the one with the bomb dropping and destroying the city was a really creative and interesting use of popcorn, gift bows, matches, and old toy airplanes. There were just so many items incorporated into the films that I would not have thought to use. They made me really look forward to our super 8 animations that we will be doing next week as my group continues to discuss what items we will be bringing to create our scene.

Week Three: Blackout

I really enjoyed this weeks in-class demonstration of how to create rayograms. The process itself was simple enough, turn off the lights to prevent exposing the film before you are ready to do so, place objects onto film while trying not to kill yourself by tripping over objects in complete darkness, flip lights on and off at lightning speed, and then start the tedious process of developing the film. Wash, rinse, and repeat. No, wait… that’s a different process entirely. Trying to develop the film for just the right amount of time was really tricky, since it was dark and the red light from the safety light did not really show much of what was going on, but for our first try, I think my group’s turned out pretty well.

Will had brought some of these notebook paper hole repair stickers as one of his items for the project, and they produced a really nice effect on the film, especially when some of them were complete circles and others went more at an angle off of the side of the film strip. The strips of film that had already been processed also made a really nice effect when they were placed over the undeveloped film. Our strip of already developed film had bands where the light had been able to get through to our film underneath, and it just looked really neat.

Two things that provided the best look in the experiment were hay, which Will had also brought with him, and the short grained rice that had been provided as an item for the entire class to use. The hay ended up producing a smoky, wispy effect on the film. It was just a really cool texture, overall. It could not really be seen by just looking at the film strip with a little bit of backing light, but when held up to the light, the detail was really noticeable and was really fine. I think the short grained rice had to have been my favorite item overall, though. Depending on how the individual grains fell, little bits of light would fall between the grains, and it ended up producing a really nice texture and overlapping effect on the film.

The glass beads provided for use, both the solid ones and the slightly cracked ones, produced an okay effect with nice curves and crescent moon shapes, but I was kind of expecting more fragmentation of light, which was produced more by the shards of beads than the actual beads themselves. Perhaps that is something that I will play around with more when we are able to do a second film strip.

With what Will and I were able to do with the items last week, I think we have a lot of elements that will incorporate into our film really well, and we both have ideas for other items that could enhance the textural aspect of the film even more, such as more masking tape and other things with faint textures that might be picked up on the film when the light develops it.

Overall, I would have to say that this process has been my favorite one so far. Even though I really enjoyed the magazine transfers, since those could really be manipulated to produce so many different desired effects, I think the actual development process of the rayograms was much more satisfying, and it was much more varied in the kinds of effects that could be produced, whereas with magazine transfers, everything was kind of dependent on whatever kind of magazines happened to be available.

Week Two: Stan Brakhage

I found the story about Pathé and Mèliés to be very entertaining. Just thinking back on the history of the motion picture and imagining two of the big names in film history sitting around and experiencing as innovative as moving pictures for the first time is really entertaining to me, and endearing in a way. To think that those “masters,” as they are sometimes referred to now, were just as new to the medium as film students who might be taking this course and other courses is also really encouraging. Though a lot of the techniques and a lot of the terminology might not make complete sense to us as of right now, we still have to experience all of this in order to have the chance to one day be referred to as a master of film.

In the early portion of the article we had to read on Stan Brakhage and his techniques, it felt a little terminology heavy. There were definitions given left and right, and though some of them were necessary, at times, it felt as though most of them were self-explanatory. However, it was interesting to have Brakhage’s take on things as simple as loading a projector and splicing film, both things that we had done in class prior to reading the article. Many of the techniques he discussed for “roughing up” film or creating certain effects were things that I would like to try at one point.

For instance, he discussed the fact that glue or splicing tape would create unique and sometimes bizarre crystallization patterns when heated with an iron. I had never really thought about the idea of heating things up to get a crystallization effect, but I also hadn’t thought of using Nu-Skin, either. That had always been strictly for medical use in my mind. It was nice to see encouragement to do, or at least try, anything once to see how it works with film. If it fails, then it might look terrible, but if you don’t try it at all, then you could be missing out on something that could create an awesome effect when projected onto a screen.

One line in particular that really stuck out to me and made me laugh was, “If I make a collage film which can’t be printed or projected at all, then it is, after all, more of a necklace or wall decoration than a film.” Sure, the humor itself is funny, but at the same time, it is incredibly true. If you can’t project a film, then nobody will be able to see it, so really, it isn’t a film at all, other than the fact that it is on film stock of some sort. It really just made me keep in mind the idea that “gunking up” the sprocket holes or something like that with the films we’re working on now could prevent them from ever being shown at all, inevitably making them nothing more than “a necklace or wall decoration.”

Overall, I found the article to be very insightful, especially with the project that we're currently working on for class. The techniques Brakhage discusses will also come in handy with future projects as well, if a need for experimental techniques ever arises. He seemed to be very generous with his knowledge in the area, which was extensive, and he had good ideas for cheap ways of experimenting (such as buying an old 8mm camera and using any film you could find that would fit the camera to play around with different lighting techniques).

Though the magazine transfers that we did in class last Monday seemed simple enough and were fairly fun to do, by combining the process with other techniques that Brakhage discussed and other techniques that we will learn in class, I think a lot of interesting things could be done with the films we create in class.