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Showing posts from March, 2020

Whats to Come: Progress, Hopefully

Joey and I need to get on this HUSTLE and start these rusted gears back up and running! To keep our progress on track, we created this schedule for the next week so we complete as much as we can!


Not sure what could possibly go wrong, but I'm sure something will. For when it does, I will let you know what happens! Either way, I'm excited :-)
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a WOMAN

So, as I mentioned in a previous blogpost, Joey and I have watched an experimental film called Meshes of the Afternoon in the past during a film viewing at an art museum.

One of the directors, Maya Deren, a revolutionary experimental filmmaker, wrote many essays about her work describing three essential components to experimental film making.

Joey and I watched a video on youtube that briefed us on these components, and we took notes on Deren's film philosophy! And, we watched Meshes of the Afternoon once more too for good measure (and because it was just a really cool film).


Now, what I loved about everything we learned about her film philosophy is that her three major components support us going through the struggles we are facing from the corona pandemic. 

Amateurism, with her encouragement of "freedom to experiment" without the constraints of commercial success, is something we could easily follow (however I think we are still a little held back by the fact it is a graded project). And, with the struggles I know we'd face with audio as we're filming in two separate locations, having less talk and more movement and time sounds good to me.

I would love to explore the whole "body" aspect. "Freeing" ourselves of equipment would be easy, because well, we don't have any.

Reality would also be something cool to incorporate (what a weird sentence out of context). The narrator of the video made sure to remind us as well that Deren was not advocating for realism, but rather using reality as a foundation of manipulation to create our OWN reality. They even specifically highlighted her use of action matches to create sudden changes in scenery. Super cool.


She really is masterful at her manipulation of time and space to capture a feeling or tell a story. I remember when I was studying in art history, our teacher would especially point out every time there was a female artist on our 250 artworks to study because not many of them were. It is great to be able to study such an amazing female director that contributed so much to cinema! Go women!!!


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Going Through Changes !

(Sorry to any fans of Big Mouth that had the theme song playing in their heads cause of the title)


As you can tell from my blog posts up to now, I have been quite discouraged with this project. I was so enveloped in dwelling on how the project could have been then working on how to move forward. 

 Thankfully, we had a meeting with our teacher today to discuss our project and gained a lot of clarity about where we wanted to go with it from here on out!


One of the changes we had to make was to the focus of the film. We decided to concentrate more on the sibling dynamic. We will be doing this by having the older sibling, probably to be played by Joey (not sure about his neon green hair but we will figure it out), reflecting on their relationship due to some sort of transition like the younger sibling going to college.

 Now for the question, how are we going to film this thing?

 Sophie, our wonderful friend, is a creative filmmaker herself trapped in her house. And with that, I think it is safe to assume she's bored. So, we talked to her, and she would be able to film her brother for us!

Essentially, we will be storyboarding the film and taking certain shots at different angles at Joey's house. Then, we will be sending these to Sophie and she will record her brother in these same shots. We will be using these shots by animating Sophie's brother into the film through the process of rotoscoping. Typically, rotoscoping tries to capture the person and the movement as realistically as possible, but I thought it would be even cooler to not do that. The movement will be captured yes, but possibly through something visually different like contour line or even blind contour would be cool.

Eyes Blinking GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY
a cool rotoscoping gif made by STRING!!!! HOW COOL!!!

 I have actually had experience with rougher rotoscoping in the past with a music video I had created for my best friend's 15th birthday and another music video I had created for class in the AS Level. Sadly, I have since lost my friend's birthday video but I do have the music video snippet!



 Additionally, inspired by a short film called Stomping Grounds by one of my favorite short film directors, Bertie Gilbert, I thought it would be cool to do the transitions through time using interesting graphic matches. I thought this could be specifically done through objects that the older sibling would be packing away for the younger one. 

 I think that is all the updates for now! I am excited to get this project up and running again! And, I think focusing on the sibling dynamic would be interesting for Joey and me as we self-reflect on our own relationships with our siblings which are drastically different.

 P.S. I also updated this week's song to UUU - Field Medic! It's a great song!
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You Art What You Eat

Having a lot of free time on my hands (although I've spent most of the time freaking out about the lack of progress I'm making with this project), I have been spending a lot of time consuming different media.
Yes, Joey did dye his hair neon green so his hair in my drawings will be that from now on.


And then, I came across this post on my Instagram feed.

CREDIT TO THE ARTIST: @ANDYJPIZZA

After seeing this, I immediately exited the app and decided to stop looking at the described "snackable social content".

Here are some of my favorite pieces that I have seen throughout the past week.


1. WATCHED GOOD WILL HUNTING FOR THE FIRST TIME

Image result for good will hunting


I watched Good Will Hunting for the very first time this week and wow... it has to be one of my favorite movies now. 

What I took away from the movie was that a good story can come from anywhere! My teacher had told me this before, but I definitely saw her statement in full effect in this film. If I distanced myself from how amazing the movie was by the end of it, the story in itself started off from something minuscule (him solving a physics problem on a chalkboard at his work where he was a janitor). I don't have to make something really deep or dramatic to make a nice story.


2. HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE (lots of hunt this week)

Image result for hunt for the wilderpeople

I adore Taika Waititi !!! He is one of my favorite directors, and I love the way he incorporates dry humor to stories and creates such genuine and sincere films. There is such a subtle awkwardness that is so humorous that he often creates and I love. The characters he writes are also always full of such personality. Ugh, I love his films!


3. VEWN


Vewn is a channel on youtube owned by one creator that creates short animated videos. I love their style and how dynamic it is! They are not afraid to exaggerate camera angles to create interesting compositions. 


My personal favorite of theirs is Cat City. I notice some experimental aspects of their films with the sporadic narrative structures and sometimes, a lack thereof.

4. CORPSE BRIDE

Image result for corpse bride

Rewatched one of the classics!! Corpse Bride is my favorite Tim Burton production. What I love about the Corpse Bride is, like Hunt of the Wilderpeople, its use of humor. However, they utilize clever humor in a different way than Taika's film. They use humor to lighten up what is otherwise a quite dark story.

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I would say the past week has been a good week of media consumption!

Tomorrow I will be figuring out exactly how we are going to continue production in this upcoming week. I will keep you posted and I hope we figure things out once and for all.
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GRAPHIC DESIGN IS MY PASSION

Coronavirus updates have been brought upon us! We will be going back to school on April 15th supposedly; can't say I'm too excited but I'm glad to have any plan to do anything at this point. School will continue online after our spring break, starting the 30th. I have to say though, I do miss being with my classmates and talking to them in person about our projects. Our online meeting was still almost just as fun though!

Now, into the project relevant content.

Image result for graphic design is my passion

I love design. Figuring out the shape, the color, the font, the everything of an image of any media really brings me so much joy.

For the website we are going to have to eventually create, we will be using Wix to build our website because it's a platform I am well versed in! I had actually created a website with Wix when I was about 10 years old about how much I loved Adventure Time, but the URL has since been lost (as in it is too embarrassing for me to put out there like that).

 To build a website with less stress, we need a template with what I call good bones. You could say a template with a good foundation, but it is just not as fun. Therefore, I have been looking into some website templates that have those strong bones that we could use when building our website.

 Here are my three favorites at the moment!

 FILM COMING SOON


sidebar

This one is ironically called "Film Coming Soon".  I like how it has social media links, a place for the key art right when someone lands on the page, and a direct way to watch the trailer. However, I wish there was more for me to customize on the page other than just those two. 

 MOVIE SITE

Sorry, please excise the inconsistencies in the screenshots. What I liked about this was that it shows the film festival features as well as the reviews for the film, which are important selling points when marketing a film. This one also has space for a synopsis right below the trailer!

 SCIENCE DOCUMENTARY


This one is my favorite one out of my top three! This had what the first and second templates had, and even more! 

 This page had added in movements with the graphics they used on the page, which allowed for it to be more engaging to the user. The social media was constant on the side of the screen at all times, making it more accessible. Additionally, they used the people who worked on it as additional selling points and provided more background information on the film. The only thing to add the site would be an email newsletter and it would be perfect!

 Although my top three templates, for now, are all made for film marketing, I would love to find a template with good bones that simply has a nice design and is engaging for the user.
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Adapting (ft. My fear of change)

Hello! Where have I been? Why haven't I posted the storyboard for our current story that doesn't even have a title yet (which should probably have a title soon)? I will tell you why! It is because I am mentally dying from uncertainty and stress.
Being an optimist has seemed like an impossible task recently with the number of problems we faced with our original plans. As I mentioned in my last post, we've been considering our other options. I love the story we've come up with so far, and I know I get attached to a story when it starts playing in my head over and over. But, perhaps it's not the time for this story to come to life. My mind is even screaming at itself saying "MAKE SOME COMPROMISES YOU IDIOT!!!!" and goodness do I want to make compromises! It seems as though I am too attached to the story's potential to make necessary changes...
On that topic, the word of the week is
Which isn't great for me because I fear being in situations I can't control forcing me to change things (literally the exact situation I am finding myself in right now). 
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 Here is a little more in-depth research I've made about possible routes to go on.







I feel pretty good about possibly going through with creating an experimental film. Seeing that experimental films have a minimal crew (me and Joey), are low budget, and are typically self-financed or are created with small grants (my monthly allowance I suppose), I think it could really fit well with our current situation.

 Joey and I have watched Meshes of the Afternoon (Directed by Maya Deren and Alexandr Hackenschmeid) before when we had gone to an exclusive screening of When I Come Home (Directed by Solange Knowles) at the Perez Art Museum in Miami.

SOURCES FOR RESEARCH:

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_film

 https://www.fullspectrumfeatures.com/production-blog/2014/5/17/whats-an-experimental-film





As I mentioned in my last blog post, we are considering going for an animated route as well. Mainly because the main issue with the project has to do with its involvement with other humans; what if, I could eliminate that involvement altogether? Although ideologically I would love to do this, the animation creation process could quite possibly exhaust me into oblivion.

Another thing I love about animation is its ability to tell a story without the confines of what is "actually possible". This is a little bit hard to explain, but I could tell a story about kindness through a "real" story like the one we already had, or I could tell it through an ant learning how to share a piece of bread they found nearby an abandoned picnic or something like that. I like how with animation I can tell a real story through a fictional universe (if that makes any sense).

This quote says it pretty well I think.

"With animation, it goes from the head to the hand or whatever tool you’re using and it’s limitless. You’re able to create whatever world you can dream of. It’s the lack of boundaries in animation that fascinates me. You can, from one frame to the next, be taken someplace completely different in a way you can’t in static art or live-action filmed art. It’s transportive in a way that other moving mediums just aren’t able to be.” 

- Alex McDonald

(https://www.huffpost.com/entry/animation-breakdown-cinefamily_n_5665c067e4b072e9d1c6ce0b)



The best way I could describe experimental animation is: oddly personal.

Although I don't think we could make an entire experimental animation film, I think it would be really cool to incorporate aspects of it into a piece.

I looked into an artist who creates experimental animations named Ira Vicari. She used a variety of mediums in the frames she created for her video, and they were very interesting to watch. I'll leave her work featured in a blog post linked in the sources.

Sources:



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Despite our dreadful situation, it was really fun to research these different mediums of storytelling through motion pictures. I sincerely wish that at the very least that this time off from production will give Joey and I personal time to be more creative.

Before this situation got much worse, Joey and I went to the Flamingo Nursery to be surrounded by the most beautiful products of nature and talk about our project. Our friend from Tallahassee had come down as well, so we were able to catch up. I find that being able to connect with friends helps me create stories, so I found this outing very enjoyable.

 On top of that, nature is cool and inspiring. I love it.










Hopefully, we are able to adapt accordingly to our current situation. But so far, not feeling too great about any of this or the world in general... I'm sure I'll feel better soon.



A NICE NOTE:

 Joey liked my clown drawing of him so much that he made it his profile picture on Instagram. We love modern ways of showing appreciation for a friend's art :-)
boo boo the fool


I also am featuring a new part of the sidebar of my blog called THIS WEEK'S SONG. I usually am obsessed with listening to a particular song every week to help motivate me to create and keep creating. So, I will be putting a different song there every week. You can click on the image to listen to the song on youtube. It's an important part of my creative process to listen to music so I thought it was a good idea to show it.

 THIS WEEK'S SONG: LAST WORDS OF A SHOOTING STAR - MITSKI
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I Wish It Was Not Corona Time.

THE CORONA VIRUS HAS ME AND JOEY LOOKING LIKE A COUPLE OF CLOWNS!!!!!

 Sophie (our main actress) has suffered from the COVID-19 paranoia as her parents are too nervous about her leaving the house. This leaves us to postpone our film or recast in the next two days which sounds impossible :-(

 Upon talking with our other classmates as well, it really seems like the coronavirus has taken something away from all of us. Some of them were planning on filming at school, which is inaccessible to us now. And many of us now can't get our necessary equipment from Becon TV (as I talked about in my last blogpost). And my other actors and actresses are participating in social distancing as well because of their parents.

 Joey and I had our own little freakout session today about the project, so much so that we have considered our other options... which... should there even be thoughts like this right now? Probably not, but the future looks like a black hole and we are trying to find some possible light in this dark situation.

 Sophie, ironically, had shown me this wonderful short film called "The Lost Breakfast" with a simple animation style, quirky sound bites, and an experimental sort of narrative. It tells of the dangers of living a mundane life and being stuck in routine. I absolutely loved it, being a lover of animation and an aspiring animator myself.
Here are some of my favorite stills from the short.

As much as I love and adore animation as a mode of storytelling through motion pictures, creating animation is a whole other story. But, I got to say, typically the work is worth it to complete a certain style for the final product. However, the workload is still extremely stressful and can be really redundant. 

 Can we create one in two weeks? Maybe, if we slowly killed ourselves with exhaustion while trying I could, but this doesn't sound like the greatest idea. 

 I don't think that this far into our planning process is the best time to be changing ideas, but maybe we have to? This whole coronavirus debacle has our heads in a twist and we have no idea what the future holds for us. I despise the thought of us having to rush something like this portfolio project that we care so much about, but I'm not sure about anything anymore.

 Perhaps tomorrow will bring us some good news, anything at all would sound great right now. I hope I can post a blog post tomorrow saying "Hey! Everything is fine!". I hate Corona Time.

 As for now, I will be posting the completed storyboard sometime tomorrow in case filming for Tuesday goes back on :(
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