Light Observations

This assignment was a big departure from what I'm used to having never worked with film cameras before. It's amazing to see the difference and the intricacies involved in this old school photography, and how you can paint such diverse paintings with small changes to the lighting. 

Bracketing was something that I thought was going to be a pain in the ass when I first heard we'd have to be doing it. Honestly I didn't understand the purpose but after going out in the field and applying it, it began to make more and more sense why we were doing this. This shot above is a perfect example. The bottom photo was the properly exposed shot based on the light meter, and while I don't remember the exact f-stop it was set at, it tells a much different story than the other photos. It was an overcast, misty day, and the light cast on this bush shows enough of the texture of the leaves, and the drops of water can also be seen. It's fairly neutral, an accurate rendering of the day that we were shooting.

The middle shot is the brightest and the overexposed image, and in contrast to the properly exposed photo, it bathes the plant in light. It appears like a bright spring day and seems to soften the textures on this bush a great deal. A totally different mood is conveyed in this overexposed image. 

The top shot is the underexposed one and is my favorite. While the properly exposed one is fairly neutral, and the overexposed image looks bright and hopeful, this one is quite dark and gloomy. The plant hardly looks illuminated at all, its textures fade into the shadows rather than stand out. The mist is hardly visible. While the first two shots have enough light, this one doesn't and looks more dead and dreary. It's amazing how different it looks to me based solely on the amount of light we allowed through. A totally different atmosphere is conveyed and in my opinion matched the dreariness of the day most accurately. It's awesome to see what a difference a little tweak can make. 

Sound Design

Our sound design project was one that going in, I really had to idea what we would be able to accomplish. However, as this particular class is forcing me to think in more abstract ways, when me and Ally met up in the lab I knew that we would be able to create something that could be really freaking cool. The hardest part of this sound design project was divorcing myself from just trying to tell a story with sound. The challenge was to focus more conceptually rather than narratively, to have distinct parts of the project, but not form a typical three act structure. This wasn't the easiest thing to do for me honestly, it kinda hurt my brain a little. 

Ally simply asked me what our title made me think of. "The underside: padded like a wolf's foot" immediately made me think of course of wolves walking around in the woods, and for some reason whenever I envision wolves I always think of Alaska, someplace snowy and cold. It also made me think of The Grey (great movie, Liam Neeson is a badass) and the hopeless sort of environment. Cold, unforgiving, hostile. The images that we were coming up with I felt we could paint a picture with sound, and put the listener in that space, and make them experience the same kind of things we were trying to convey. I also considered how dark and spooky the woods can be, and thought also of how people and the machines that they create can also penetrate this space. So the concept quickly evolved into running through a haunted forest with machines and abrasive noises. 

We began to choose sound that we felt were appropriate and fell into the type of environment  the we were trying to create and after a few hours, it had all come together! I didn't want this project just to be a jumbled mess of abrasive noise, I wanted it to feel like something. A less is more approach to this project felt right to us, and the first time we listened to it through the headphones we were blown away. Sitting in the editing lab, in the dark at midnight listening to our project and how incredibly creepy and powerful it was turned out to be quite the experience. I take away from this that sound effects can really put you into a whole new world, and painting a picture with this sound turned out to be a really, really fun experience. 

Absolute Film

When we assembled for class on Wednesday, I have to admit I was apprehensive about giving my own presentation. I knew that I had spent a great deal of time researching, but it's always a wake up call when you get to see the amount of effort that others put it. And wow. The other presenters absolutely killed it. I had no idea they would be able to serve out the amount of information that they did. I felt like they knew almost everything about the filmmakers they were presenting on! 

Richter seemed like quite an interesting guy, and his whole concept of creating a new audio/visual language seemed like an incredibly complex undertaking. I was slightly underwhelmed by the first film if I am to be honest, the squares and rectangles moving around didn't amaze me. But on the first viewing of this, it may be too harsh of a judgement. The second film clip we saw seemed delightfully odd and entertaining, while I may not have fully appreciated the Rhythmus films of Richter's, the charming quality of seeing items coming to life and the unconventional techniques used made for a visually and thematically interesting piece of filmmaking. 

Jonas Mekas. What a guy. Just his life story alone was enough to keep me captivated throughout the entire presentation, but to hear all that he accomplished just floored me. Just like Channing said he did have his hand in so many pots. From making his own documentary films and raising money to support other filmmakers and the creation of the archives, Mekas continues to be a very busy man. Such a celebration of filmmaking and art in such a humble man, Mekas truly amazed me. 

As humble and generous as Mekas was, Harry Smith seemed stark raving mad to me. But wonderfully so. Out of all the presentations, I felt that Smith may have been the greatest and most imaginative artist of the day. While his personal life was questionable, the work he produced and the detail was just incredible. He truly worked and suffered for his art, and lived the life that he wanted to live. His entire life was art, and he cared little for anything else. 

The absolute film article, was just crammed full of information from all kinds of early filmmakers. While Moritz's writing was quite good, if he could have learned to hit the tab button every now and then it would've made it much easier to read than the gigantic run on sentence that was the second half of this article. Formatting flaws aside, the point that "absolute film" is the culmination of all the visual, auditory and sensory possibilities that film can do. Also the term absolute film may be more accurate than terms such as "experimental" (which has implications that the filmmakers doesn't fully understand what he or she is doing, and "avante-garde"which implies military scouts in enemy territory. 

Sound and Cymatics

The sound recording experience I had, was quite the positive one. When we first showed up at Kenan hall on a Friday night, I don't think anyone in my group had a clear idea of what we really wanted to record, or any sort of creative direction that we wanted to take this project. It was James who suggested that we go out into the courtyard (complete with that weird shaped brick structure, I have no clue what it is) and try to bounce some sounds off it. James and I had a pretty good time stomping and jumping and clapping and running around like idiots making some of the first sounds of the night, and the echos produced by the courtyard were astounding. I'm still impressed with how well our sound effects turned out. From there we went inside and explored and tried to create further sound effects with just normal objects, such as tapping on glass, footsteps, making the faux leather couches squeak (quite the pleasant noise), and just experimenting with whatever we could find. Probably the most fun was going into the sound booth in the lab and doing the voice based sounds. It was completely goofy, but I was impressed with how they turned out. For a project that we honestly put very little planning into, once the three of us got together, the creativity kicked in, and we fortunately got quite a few sounds recorded. And they turned out great! 

Regarding synesthesia, I don't think I'm any less intelligent by saying this is still a topic that is difficult for me to wrap my head around. I've read about it before over the summer in Andre's class, and I didn't really give it the attention that it deserved. Perhaps synesthesia is a gift, an expansion of what the human mind is possible of. Perhaps it is a curse, I've never met anyone who has claimed this extra-sensory experience. To me depending on what senses were being blended could be quite a disturbing experience, especially if I couldn't consciously control what I'm perceiving, like being able to zone out or focus on one thing of my choosing. Tasting colors, or feeling the texture of sounds all seem pretty alien to a (seemingly) average person such as myself. This is a topic that I wish we could know more about, but I have no idea how we can go about doing such things. For now, it remains a mystery to me and many others I'm assuming. Perhaps it's a miracle. I really can't tell how I feel about it from the outside looking in. 

As abstract as synesthesia is, I feel cymatics may be something slightly easier to wrap my head around. I think this is honestly really friggin' cool. Cymatics may be a way to study the invisible around us, that in reality affects everything. The study of this science is still in it's infancy of course, but the fact that sound waves influence the natural world is no surprise. To see these waves and vibrations visually represented though is quite striking. Wild and exotic shapes created by things we cannot even see. As an artist is concerned, this stuff is pretty wild. What this study will bring us is unknown, but from what little I've seen so far, I'm quite impressed. Who knows what the study of cymatics will bring us in the future? 

Noise, noise, noise

Sound is something that's all around us. It's not even something that you have to think about. Its incredible when you realize there are constant vibrations assaulting your ears at all times and our brain has the ability to tune it out, filter sounds and discard "excess" stimulation and cut through the din and focus on important things. So when I was asked to go into two different public places and focus on this din, just to hear the things that I tune out, I was quite interested. 

I was riding the bus back from school on Thursday afternoon, and as on most days, I had my headphones in because I don't actually don't usually care to listen to other people's idiotic conversations. However about a minute into the bus ride I started to think about this very assignment and paused my music to casually observe the noise around me. As I sat there and closed my eyes, I couldn't believe some of the things that I heard. Two girls a few seeks in front of me were having a conversation about a friend of their's who was dating a guy from Honduras, and they didn't like this very much. My window was cracked and the sound of wind was rushing in. There was something loose in the back of the bus was banging against the wall, and was making an incredible racket. The whole bus seemed to the creaking and groaning. The engine had one note as it strained to come up through the gears. Countless horns were going off all around us (why does everyone in Wilmington honk their horn constantly?). The seats on the bus creaked as people shifted in their seats, faux leather is far from being a quite material. When I opened my eyes I was amazed (and slightly thankful that I usually am listening to music) at how much noise I usually tune out. It was so noisy, and chaotic, it's enough to make one feel quite uncomfortable. 

The second chance I took to observe the sound that I usually ignore was at work. My place of employment I'll choose not to name (but I do hate it). I work in a grocery store, and it maybe be one of the largest repositories of strangeness that I've ever visited. On top of that, it's a really, really weird place. I was on break, and took an opportunity to close my eyes (trying to cure the headache incurred from working with the public) and focus on the sound around me. The first thing I noticed was the constant humming and buzzing of the fluorescent lights overhead. It sounded as if ten thousand hornets were trapped inside them and they were about to burst out. Just outside the door is the stocking room, I heard the thunderous beeping of the forklift being thrown in reverse, the sound of it's rubber tires sticking to the floor, the whoosh of it's hydraulics as it moved in position to grab something from up high. This symphony of moving heavy things was broken by the shriek of a frantic voice calling for help at the front end. After that, the double doors to the storage room flew open with a thunderclap of heavy plastic and a gust of air flowing into the space. Usually when I'm on my break however, I'm on my phone. And I notice none of these things that I've just mentioned. 

After looking of Balzas' article, some good points were made about how sound impacts us in relation to the cinema. I particularly liked her observation about how powerful silence is, something I didn't quite have the opportunity to experience when I was doing my sound observations. In the space of the cinema, the sudden onset of silence has an incredibly powerful effect. An eeriness conveyed in cinema. Film is the only single medium that can make us experience silence, something literature, radio, not even the theatre can convey. This isn't something that I had perviously considered, but a well stated point. Another element of sound in film that can emphasize is to make it asynchronous. As Balzas states, the most powerful way that a director can highlight the important of a sound and make it stand out and demand to be notice, it to divorce the relationship between image and sound. Asynchronous sound sticks out like a sore thumb, it doesn't belong, it's odd. It makes us feel uncomfortable. In this crazy world, we are always trying to make sense out of something, even sounds in a series of images whipping by at twenty four frames per second.