The Molotov Man

This was the most interesting article that we have had to read so far this year.  I did not expect to get a little history with the article but I did and it flew by.  I am not saying it made me want to join a cause or anything but seeing someone so passionate about something is absolutely incredible.  Look in the Mototov man's eyes and you see his fury.  Look at his chops and you see his outdatedness.  I was a little confused with the two authors and both of those authors being primary sources but I reread the article and I got it.  How the article was split was really confusing.  I would read a sentence and the next one would not make sense because it really continues on the top of the page on the other side, not the big paragraph right beside it.  The painter, Joy Garnett, took photos off the internet and put them in a folder because she is cool like that.  She went back and began to filter through the ones she wanted to recreate via canvas.  I never thought of doing that but it is very clever.  The original Molotov Man was almost 6 feet talk which is too small if you ask me.  I kind of see myself as a tall strong beautiful political figure.  Oh yes oh yes.  Joy Garnett painted plenty of pictures and got a gallery to have a showcase and so she went to get permission to use the photos.  She went to some money hungry bitch that had her lawyer write a lot of threatening letters about suing and that she wanted 2000 dollars for licensing and additional fees.  Garnett's art became tainted.  Someone online found the photo and out it on his webpage and it opened the flood gates.  The bottle that the Molotov Man threw happened to be a fucking Pepsi.  Can you believe it?  I thought Coke was huge down there but no it was Pepsi.  So Pepsi goes ahead and sues the fuck out of Joy Garnett.  She is taking it from all angles.  All she wanted to do was painted a picture depicting human emotions and find a way to make it a critique of society, which would have made it ok like our found footage projects.  Which by the way I did a found footage project for Shannon in intro to editing and I was thinking about cutting it down to a minute.  What do you think?  Being a pain in the ass, the original photographer decided to write an article to defend herself and her photo.  She did not want the image to be changed in any way because she believed it took away from the art of capturing a moment in time when humans are pushed to the extreme.  So "Joywar" began.  I had no idea that the image was taken so long ago and all the problems began in 2003 if I remember correctly.  The original photographer, Susan Meiselas ended up not suing and taking any money from the artist but put up a good defense for her herself which I've kind of already explained.  They went back and found the Molotov man would owns his own truck, so apparently he is rich.  The image was been used as symbols for many political uprising in Nicaragua.  The man's real name is Pablo Arauz.  What really bothered me was that Arauz had his image sold.  The article did not touch on the fact that Arauz never gave permission for the picture to be taken or used.  It reminded me of Apocalypse Now where Dennis Hopper keeps going around Marlon brando and Brando wants to crush him like a bug.  It makes me wonder if someone took a photo of me on the toilet and then printed it and then I became the face of a joke political party called the dumbshits.  Maybe I did not want to be the image of such an organization and I would not want my face on billboards or t-shirts.  Everything seems to be on a case by case basis and in this one I think everything turned out alright.

48 hour ideas

This is probably going to be the most difficult blog topic yet because writing 600 words is difficult in the first place, I mean we are only in college Andre.  The 48 hour race to produce a respectable 1 minute film seems like a great idea right now but I am sure that when it is a race and I am scrambling to find ideas and props and people to be in the film...I will be completely fine because that is how I do all my projects.  That was a joke I am always prepared you can tell by the quality of my work.  That might also be joke.  I saw a bunch of cool ideas from last years class and really enjoyed the stop-motion films.  I was pretty impressed with the creativity of people like nate rudolf and Dustin Klein.  I think Dustin used the camera on his apple laptop, which I might steal from him depending on the prop.  I usually like what Dustin does but his technical competence is far and away better than my own.  My computer does a similar camera but it is not a laptop and I would be limited to film in areas that have outlets.  I am really tired of seeing films shot in the seahawk village apartments.  I live in one of the fine quality pill boxes.  I just shot a film last year with Tyler and Taylor and the apartment looks like every single one you will fine in every other student film.  Time is actually something that seperates the quality of the projects and I worry my sound will suffer for it.  Nate Rudolf used a digital camera, I think he shot it in black and white, which I am almost always a fan of.  Nate had taken around 200 pictures and the movement was smooth and beautiful.  I think a digital camera would take a while to do but is probably the direction I would like to go in.  I would like to make my life like a Billy Joel song.  What?  I would like to make a piece about the lack of Air Wick air freshers in my roommates rooms.  I have two and it is not because I am a ladies man and they would not come in my room if it smelled bad alright because they would come in no matter what it smelled like and some of the smells we make are not always pleasant.  They are five dollars at any local conglomerate supermarket.  They plug right into the wall and you can buy refills so it is not a big deal to change them or a wear on your wallet.  I could do a remake of Forest Gump where everyone else is slow and Forest finally understands how difficult he is to deal with day in and day out.  I could also do a reenactment of the many civil war battles with my camera phone and have a truce between the south and the north and an Indian comes out of the wood work to offer the mystery prop as incentive to let them keep some of their land.  Then both sides come together to hate the Indian.  When you think about it, Dances with Wolves really did not tell the Indians story well enough where people stop taking advantage of them.  I mean they got here first and we just took it.  They were nice to us and then we took it.  They helped us survive and then we took it, we took it all.  So yeah I think that is it.  I will use a digital camera or camera phone and shoot a one minute film where the north and south finally agree on something...the brutual useless awful killings of an innocent people.

Long shot

The long shot.  It is everything in narrative that I want to accomplish.  Orson Welles said that the long shot separates the men from the boys.  I was really really really excited to work on 16mm film for the first time.  Every single film experience has brought strange events.  I have never had film turn out quite as I wanted it 2.  It was raining, we were all ready for it.  We created a story around it.  The rain would add to the creepiness; the loneliness of the main character.  Taylor was going to be the DP and I the actor.  There was no need for a lot of direction.  My character would be drench in rain while carrying an umbrella.  To add the character he would have a high-step tip toe.  I wanted to make it look like the Cabinet of Dr. CAlligary.  Tyler thought I was being French which I don;t understand but whatever.  It was a lot of fun finding a location.  It just so happened to be right next to another group.  Our project was better haha.  Joselyn's group had a mean dance routine that had a resemblance to a good West Side Story.  They had a lot of fun playing in the rain.  We rehearsed and rehearsed until it our time was right around a minute.  We shot it at the last minute and laughed about all the time it took to do something so simple.  We ran in and developed the film and it was shit.  Useless and it was our fault.  Light is the most important aspect in cinematography and without it there is no picture.  Andre didn;t think it would come out and he was right, he always seems to be when it comes to my failures.  We had to do a reshoot after the two other groups were finished with their projects.  We had to do it off the cuff and it was shit.  I really hate DV but cant seem to do well with film.  I will do better next time by making sure I understand the F-stops and amount of light coming through the aperture.  Taylor is a good DP and Marcus is a good Dolly pusher.  I bet he could push some drugs, seriously.  I am really happy with the effort we made just not the results we had.  All the groups came out with something that was pretty good.  I can't believe that they are cutting 6 by 1 next year.  That is straight bullshit.  Everything will be digital video and a film degree is a lie.   Since using a dolly, I no longer want to do a static shot unless it is completely called for.  I am pretty sick now and I am not blaming it on the shoot but if I had to I guess I could.  I am glad that Andre gave us another chance.  If we only had more light, our first project would have been beautiful.  The crane shot was incredible but it didn't turn out.  The 360 degree arc was pretty amazing too but everyone thought we were doing a remake of The Dark Knight.  The animation turned out pretty well.  I can't decide which project I want to edit.  I guess the I will wait and see what Taylor wants to do because I trust her.  To get 600 words, I am currently listening to Ray LaMontagne and wearing only underpants and socks.  I am drinking Pepsi and recently had a bagel.  

Scratch Junkies Dos

This project from the scratch junkies was hands down, incredible, baby baby.  I really enjoyed the rooms atmosphere to tell you the truth.  It was at the end of class, they are not short you know, and everyone wanted to leave and Andre started it up.  The music came on and the room immediately perked up.  Rob's lips were closed tighter than an old lady's purse.  I guess you could say that he was lost in the moment, like a wrinkle in time kind of deal but not as moving because it is Rob were talking about.The beat started and it got funky.  The coloring was amazing from what I can remember.  I can't seem to figure out how to get into the system for 6 x 1.  I hope you are getting these posts or I am fucked for the class.  The editing was quite funny when it lined up with the music.  The song was called St. Louise and the beat is totally tits, I dig it like a garden.  For some reason I thought that this project was much more fluid.  It just moved and was completely rhythmic.  I guess that is why you showed it to us before we had to do our rhythmic editing project, which I enjoyed doing last night.  The entire 6 x 1 class was in there and I think everyone had problems printing to video.  I looked up the scratch junkies on youtube.com and couldn't find much material.  Is there a third installment of the scratch junkies?  I found a lot of sound that had a nails on a chalkboard type of feel, but nothing worth watching.  I want in the scratch junkies gang.  I wonder if I screwed up would they scratch my throat, not killing me but severely annoying me.  Annoying me enough to the point of quitting, not before destroying all of their projects.  Although, I think they are great, I do find pleasure in destroying the progress of others.  It is funny to watch their faces change and go through the cycle of emotions.  The first project really didn't get me into scratching.  I knew it must have take a lot of time to do frame by frame.  Then I did one for myself and then I respected it even a little more.  Once I saw how little I had done in such a long period of time, I thought the scratch junkies were a little better than before.  Once I saw my work on a big screen, in front of my peers haha, well then I thought to myself, you have to be a special person to be a scratcher full-time.  I see myself doing more scratching in the future, in between projects and school work.  Film is so expensive that you better have a good idea of what you want out of it before you start scraping the emulsion from the strip.  This St. Louise project seemed to create a narrative with the rhythm.  It didn't say anything or tell a story, but I felt like it progressed and I was there with it.  Those are the experiences that are really worth having.  If I had to give a professional grade to the project I would give it a 90/100.  It lagged in certain sections, which is fine, slow stuff can be fun, Shannon taught me that, but I think it could have been cut down a little.  That's what the classes have taught me is that everything could be cut down.  Words are just words, they don't create the atmosphere, which creates the feeling, which is what you remember when the viewing is over.  The scratch junkies are alright in my book.  Writing about them isn't exactly easy because your opinion gets old after a while.  

Sound Recording

The article by CHion is about how sound adds value to your project.  Ingmar Bergman, or whatever his name is, used sound to manipulate the emotions of the viewer.  This is called added value by Bergman.  I just bought a movie of his called Autumn Sonata.  After reading this article, I am a little worried that it will not be as enjoyable as Persona was the first time watching it.  Now I can't watch Persona without thinking of how sound adds the suspense and emotion to the image and isn't all that great to begin with.  This article, like most of the articles Shannon made me read really destroyed the films I thought were great before film school.  It is like reading a book when your a teenager and swearing it is the best book you will ever read.  This happens a lot with pop music as well.  You go back and read or listen to the piece of art ten years later and it is complete shit.  I want to bring up an instant this year where Shannon ruined by viewing pleasure.  I was in a theater watching Slumdog Millionaire.  The movie was pretty fantastic.  It draws a lot of it's visual style from Latin American film.  I was shocked to hear a bunch of people in the theater talking about how Indian it was and how they had never seen a picture like it before. It was completely fucking Hollywood in style except for the end where they dance.  The thing that bothered me the most though were the chase scenes.  Every chase scene there were drums and other instruments manipulating the emotions of the viewers.  I felt like a fucking puppet and had to find a way to get over it.  I have no idea who should win best director this year.  They are all good but none of them great.  I'm sure a lot of my other teachers really were blown away by the classical style of the films this year but after the tutelage of the Silvas I am becoming a little bit of a cynic.  I believe the movies were pretty good but none changed my life.  Give the credit where the credit is due.  A lot of hard work and innovated ideas went into the top films, but the constant layering of music underneath the image totally upsets me now.  Thanks Shannon.

Welles

Today, in my screenwriting 1 class with Chip Hackler, we watched the 1998 animation feature The Iron Giant.  It is one of the first movies by Brad Bird.  Brad Bird has done a few other Disney animation features and made bank, most likely.  Like most of the kids in our class, I grew up on Disney animation.  I remember them being excellent in quality and story.  I believe that the stories are a little weaker, now that I have gone back and watched the majority of them over again.  Shannon always used to talk about how they were complete propaganda.  I'm starting to see that as being true.  This is story, The Iron Giant, looked like Cold War propaganda to me.  The quality of high-budget animation has come a long way in a short period of time.  The other day I watched the classic The Rescuers.  The picture quality was so bad I almost turned it off.  Bob Newheart was very funny, like always.  Anyways, the more I look into Disney animation the weaker they appear, just like Shannon said they would.  So there goes my childhood but I guess that is okay.  Chip and I talked about your new animation short and he couldn't stop praising.  He said you just won some award at the Black Maria Film Festival or something, so congratulations.  I know some of my facts are wrong on that but anyways.  The article discusses the different forms of animation and it's history in American movies.  The first animation appeared in movies as a intense relationship between animation and live action.  Welles writes, "The early development of the cartoon form was characterized by an overtly signified tension between animation and its relationship to live-action.  This resulted on many occasions in films combining animation and live-action, of depicting the creation of animated character by the artist who drew it, and the activities of the animated character within the working environment of the artist."  Animation has split into two ways.  There are major pictures of full animation movies that have become large teamed projects (orthodox) usually complying with the realist range of movement and time.  Not much imagination if you ask me.  Richard Linklater made a movie based off a Phillip K. Dick story that was Rotoscoped.  That was pretty cool, but Kenau Reeves was in it, so it was ruined.  Welles discusses the distinct styles of animation and the theories behind it.  He is for experimental animation.  Instead of speaking the language of movies it speaks the language of art.  It is understood through rhythms, colors, sounds, and in-fluctuations.  Most orthodox animation follows a narrative structure where experimental animation is more on an interpreted path.  Continuity is less of a problem for abstract animation.  It doesn't matter if you play by  the rules because you are creating your own world.  The process of animation is explain a little in the beginning.  Today, pencil and paper is used much less than computers, amazing right.  For orthodox animation configurations is very important.  Welles writes, "Most cartoon figures 'figures,' i.e. identifiable people or animals who corresponded to what audiences would understand as an orthodox human being or creature) despite whatever colourful or eccentric design concept related to it, i.e. Donald was recognizable as a duck whether he wore a sailor's suit or khaki togs and a pith helmet!."  It was very important to keep things understandable and boring to sell.  My guess is that Welles is Canadian because he spells his words strangely.  The orthodox animation must have specific continuity, a narrative form, evolution of context, unity of style (boring), absence of the artist, and dynamics of dialogue.  If you want to create art but make it like a factory processes cheese, then animate in the orthodox style.  But if you want to create great art and put your stamp on everything you create then experimental animation is the way to go.  I just saw the movie Igor.  It is an animated movie about the hunchbacks of the world.  I thought the story and animation was quite bad.  It had John Cusack in it so I expected big things but got little.  I was very upset and still have a little fire inside me from the experience.  I will make animated better than that tonight.

Sundance

Camera-less Filmmaking

I have had a decent experience making cameraless films up to this point.  The truth is, other than the majority of the projects I have done for Shannon, I have no never made a cameraless film.  The ones I made for Shannon were never very good.  I am not very technical at thing, especially filmmaking.  Now if we mean cameraless filmmaking in the way of not using any type of camera, digital, film, or HDV, well then I haven't made anything really except the little experiment we did on the first day of the class.  I would like to try that again because I didn't take it seriously enough to get an outcome I was pleased with.  I really want to try and make a film using nothing but wax but I don' think that would work.  The wax would probably ruin the projector and the wax would not be translucent enough to see through on film.  Last week was a ball.  I took a Xanax before class and was all over the place.  I was barely moving but I became focused on making a soup.  I had a medicine bottle for of discount migraine pills, listerine breathe mint strips, a leaf, and a pen full of ink.  The process became so fascinating and it must have been rude to be making during class, I am sorry but I felt like a little kid that found shit in the sandbox.  For some stupid reason, I played with that sandy turd and loved it.  In the beginning I took a pen and drew all over the pills.  I painted them royal blue with the ink from my pen.  I then took the side of a beer bottle cap and filed the pills down into a fine powder.  The powder was a beautiful blue.  I then would spit in the cap and lay a strip of listerine mint into the mix.  I stirred it would the end of a pen and it was fantastic.  I made the turd into a beautiful gem.  It smelled, but it was mine.  I'm pretty sure Rob wanted it.  He kept trying to take my stuff.  I think it was you Andre that told me to kick his ass, good advice.  Over the weekend I felt bad for what I had done and visited him in the hospital.  He acted up again so I spit on him. No harm, no foul.  We are friends again.  I went back and tried to make the substance sticker.  I know for a boy, you wouldn't think this would be hard and you know what, your exactly right.  I broke the pen and poured the remaining ink in the cap and mixed it.  I had to add about four pills to get the consistency right.  The mixture became hard and I wouldn't have to worry about dropping it.  I hadn't made a mess like that in days.  The table was covered in white powder, not what you think, and ink, exactly what you think.  I went to bathroom and got some paper towels and cleaned it up.  Although I left a little stain on the soap dispenser, which I hoped you would not see.  Don't worry, I went back today and someone had cleaned it off.  If it were you that cleaned it off, I'm sorry, I owe you big time.  I understand that if you let yourself go crazy with the chemical stuff you will died, see Stan Brakhage.  I was really impressed by the experiment we did in the black box.  I had no idea how easily light could effect film.  I knew you weren't supposed to expose it long but you just flipped the light on and off and it created something incredible.  That honestly is about it when it comes to my cameraless filmmaking.  Taylor and I are moving slowly but are extremely excited to see what we can created this weekend on our projects.