chion

Sound is definitely a really powerful tool in filmmaking. The way Chion talks about viewing Persona without sound and how it completely changes everything reminded me of taking an intro level class with Berliner and he showed us a clip from Psycho. Then he showed it to us again without the sound. It was absolutely ridiculous and boring. Someone slowly walking around has no meaning or no intensity AT ALL without sound. Even the famous shower scene was dull without the high pitched sound that most people associate with the stabbing motion (although the sound does not actually occur in sync with the stabbing).

I personally first learned the how critical the sound is during Intermediate Editing. I spent a lot of time gathering all my clips and stuff for my experimental film and then went to add a song and print to video and i all of a sudden slammed into a wall. I looked for hours and hours and hours for the type of song that i wanted for my film. I really had no idea how hard it was going to be to find a song that would give my editing project the right feel. I decided that next time i would start with the soundtrack and work backwards... building the experimental film off of the sound/speech/etc.

There is a huge difference between the films we watch in class with sound and without. I find the ones with sound way more interesting. I think its because through our entire lives we have watched films with some sort of sound. Even silent films have songs. So to watch a film with no sound at all is really uncomfortable for me. The cuts are so much more noticeable without the sound bridges and it feels incomplete.

wells

I can definitly see why the orthodox animation style is much more popular with mainstream society. I'd say that the majority of people who watch animation (cartoons for children/adult swim type of cartoons for adults) just want something that is easy to follow and dont take a lot of thinking on their part. They just want to be entertained. The audiences for experimental animation are much smaller. The complexities and unclear story/meaning are probably too much for average mass audiences.

The absence of the artist in orthodox animation is something that ive never noticed but is totally true. If you walked up to a random person on the street, they probably couldn't name one animator. This is because most mainstream cartoons and movies are all formed following a mold that people are used to seeing. Different animators have to comform to what everyone wants. However, when doing experimental animation, anything goes. An artist can create their own style and claim it in all their films.

cameraless filmmaking blobobobobbb

I've never done cameraless filmmaking before and i think its really really interesting. I really liked doing the magazine transfers. They turned out really cool. I actually expected something a little different when it was projected. i could barely tell what anything was but then there was a big bold red letters that really stood out. I definitly want to experiment with combining magazine transfers with paint and markers. If you scratch the magazine transfers with a razor would it take the whole thing off or can you scratch it like regular film?

I thought it was really cool that you can actually punch holes in the film. I didnt know you could do that. All of this is really new to me. Scratching the film with the razor blades had a cool effect too. At one point i scratched all the film off so it was clear and then colored it with a sharpy. You could only see that for a brief second when it was played back but i dont think it would have been as cool if it was for any longer. I didnt have a lot of time to play with the paint and oil because my magazine transfer was taking a long time (i think the water got cold). I want to do more of that today.

I wasnt very successful at flashing the film. I didnt have the film strip covered enough so it was mostly black when we developed it. I had thin layers of like grits and stuff but it didnt show up. either that or i missed entirely when i was laying it out in the dark. I couldnt see anything. Joe’s bracelet was the only part of it that I liked. It made a pretty unique looking pattern. I want to see how these will look when they are projected. i hope ill get a chance to try flashing the film again so I can do it better.

There are so many things i want to try. I would like to see the effects of nail polish remover, different cleaning products, wax, etc. Would hairspray be too sticky? It leaves a cool looking (but inconvenient) texture on my mirror but I don’t know if that would show up on film. It would be interesting to get a cool texture and color over it. That would probably mess up the projector though… I dunno. I wonder if I put something on my rats feet and lets them walk on a strip of film if that would look cool. I need to find pet friendly paint….

I saw my sister putting bleach on the film strips and i want to try that. She bleached the stairs that lead up to my apartment. I should probably report her...

synesthesia

Synesthesia is a crazy concept. I first heard of it several years ago (sometime in middle school). I did a project/experiment where i tested a bunch of people to see if their brains acknowledged colors or written words better. Its not really synesthesia but this project came to mind after reading the article on wikipedia. I wrote RED BLUE YELLOW etc but i wrote it in the wrong color. For example, red was written in a blue font. Then i had people read the list as fast as possible saying the actual word that was written. Then I repeated it but this time they were supposed to say the actual color of the font. I think that people read the words better. This would be the hardest project ever for someone who had synesthesia.

Anyways, the film we watched with and without the sound was really interesting. From the images i was expecting to hear some sort of circus type music for some reason. I liked music that actually went with it much better than what i had in my mind. My brain obviously doesnt do good with synesthesia. The rhythm editing project seems like it would create some sort of synesthetic music if it didnt already have a soundtrack. I feel like the beat/rhythm would be very obvious.