NOTES ON PROJECT 3

I am not really satisfied with my project 3. Initially, I just shot a whole bunch of super 8 film during the break because I really wanted to try out the camera. That was a really exciting process. I have never shot film before (except for still photography). I've only shot with a video camera and the experience is fundamentally different. I think that for people who really love to make things the process of shooting something on film is so much more rewarding. When I was doing it, I guess I was imagining the best, or imagining some version of the choppy, colorful super 8 films I'd seen but I had not idea what I was going to get. And the surprise when you see a roll of film you've made is so great - it's better than any other surprise because it's something that you created.
Anyway it was really rewarding shooting the super 8 because it turned out so much better than I ever could have imagined. The colours are so beautiful and the really mundane things that I shot - like fields and the view from my car and the montreal streets looks so dream-like and anachronistic. The quality of the movement and the fact that the medium is so visible in the product - like the film grain and the imperfections- gives it such a nice aesthetic.

Anwyay so I had these two rolls of super 8 that I was so in love with and I've just had a really difficult time figuring out what to do with them. This has often been a problem for me because I really like to create imagery and my initial interest was in photography and not design and I often feel that when you add words to something it can become so literal and straightforward that it ruins it. But it didn't seem like enough to present the film on it's own.

So at the time I was reading Susan Sontag's On Photography and I had noticed some really beautiful lines in her writing (my favourite being 'a photograph is both a pseudo-presence and a token of absence' and I thought that it would be really great to do something with these words and pair them with images to try and make a really dreamy sort of unsettling instructional video of sorts. Which sounds really strange but made a lot of sense in my head!

So I did a TON of research and then I also read Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes which I thought was even more beautifully written than Susan Sontag's work and I wrote this whole script about it and recorded myself speaking and it just sounded awful. I thought it was pretentious, and it also became obvious that pulling all these quotes from these really famous authors without the context wasn't really working. I had also tried to tie it into a script of my own writing which didn't really work either.

Anyway so then I paired it down to a few quotes that I thought were working and telling a more ambiguous story. But it's hard to see what your own work really looks like sometimes and when I showed it to the class it was too fast and busy and hard to read.

So ultimately I ended up with about one tenth of my original writing (or less than that) just a few lines that don't entirely make sense together but make sense with the images. I am not really satisfied with it. I know that some of the type is still too fast. And it doesn't entirely make sense. Anyway I guess it doesn't entirely need to.

I guess I'm just really glad that I shot the Super 8 and I've been shooting more since and I know it is going to become something that I do all the time so I think that was a really great thing that came from this project. I really want to accumulate an archive of super 8 films from my life and from this time.

I think that this was a really good project for me for that reason but I am not entirely satisfied with the final results.

LA JETEE!

Everyone has probably already heard of these but Chris Marker's La Jetee and Sans Soleil are such great videos. La Jetee is made up entirely of still images except for one shot that moves but you get such a sense of narrative and movement that you hardly even notice.

THESE VIDEOS ARE REALLY COOL!

This girl goes to Yale for her graphic design masters and her videos are quite charming I think.

I can't embed her movies but go to her funny website here:

MIN OH AWESOME WEBSITE!

'Math' is my favourite, it is really charming and I like the analog aesthetic (it's about halfway down), I also like 'Duelers' (which looks like a wildlife educational video from the fifties or something) and 'A Walk" and 'A Monkey's Butt is Red' which is sort of wierd but also kind of awesome. I like how she doesn't need any fancy technical skills or effects to make her work totally great! I think it's really interesting and conceptual but not pretentious at all which is nice.

TEN THINGS THAT ARE VERY IMPORTANT TO ME

1. MY OLD PHOTO COLLECTION

I love collecting and taking photographs more than pretty much anything. I have been collecting for years and before that I used photographs in the normal way that everyone does - as reminders of people who are not there, as proof that we were once in a certain place, as a way of seeing the parts of the world that are not accessible to us, and all the other ways that photographs can be used. I love photographs. This picture represents about one fiftieth of the amount of photographs that I actually have. I particularly enjoy collecting photographs from a long time ago. Susan Sontag says that photographs are both "pseudo-presences and tokens of absence". I like the idea of experiencing things that I wasn't around for through these tiny, carefully chosen slices of the past.





2. OLD PHONE

This phone is special to me for several reasons. First of all, it comes from my early adolescent years just before I was allowed a cellphone and reminds me of really different times. It also holds a special sentiment because a phone will probably never be as important to you again as it was when you were a fourteen year old girl! At that point in life, a phone seems like a lifeline to everything important. I also keep it around because it's been years since I haven't spoken to anyone I used to talk to so much on that phones. Its is a small token of people that moved out of my life as I got older.





3. OLD COUCH

This is a beautiful old couch that my great aunt Doris gave to me. I love it because it is something I remember in a completely different context from my childhood - as a couch I had to sit stiffly in while wearing my best clothes when I visited my mildly frightening great aunt - and now it has revived itself in a much more casual context in my apartment as something that my friends hang out around when they come over.




4. PAPIER MACHE OCTOPUS

Someone I love a lot made this octopus for me. There is a very long and meaningful explanation for why someone would make me this strange little octopus as a gift.






5. SHOE COLLECTION

This is my shoe collection. I have been hoarding shoes since I was about fifteen and my feet stopped growing. Shoes are just utilitarian objects for a lot of people, but I can track different stages of my life by which pairs of shoes I liked to wear. I never get rid of any shoes because I always end up coming back to them.





6. MY CAMERAS

My cameras are probably my favourite belongings. Some of them are from high school and earlier and some of them are more recent acquisitions. I love photographs, but I particularly love producing them myself. I love the possibilities involved in taking a photograph and the element of chance. I use a camera almost every single day.




7. MY OLD TYPEWRITER



8. MY COLLECTION OF FOUND SLIDES

There are a lot of strange things in this slide collection, There is a wedding that takes place in China in the 60's I think, there is a 1970's thanksgiving day parade in New York, and all of these things are from a fairly specific timeframe because they are all captured on the same brand of kodak slides. There is a nostalgia in the colouring and often in the choice of subject matter. I also find it interesting how these whole collections of carefully taken chosen slides have been discarded because the technoglogy became obsolete.



9. MY MOTHER'S TOY

This monkey toy belonged to my mother when she was small. It's amazing because it is one of those toys that used to be normal for children but comes off as incredibly creepy now in a really charming sort of way. It's probably too simple for a child to enjoy now. It also reminds me of everything that my mother has been through since she was young enough to enjoy this mechanical monkey.



10. MY BOOKS

I think I would be really different if I hadn't read all these books. I also love books as objects.

IN-CLASS CRITIQUE

In-class critique notes for Time-based project 2.

I have decided to go with my image-based countdown concept.

Tracy and Stephen critiqued my video so far. They said:

- I should have thematic connections between the image in the inner circle and the outer part.
- I should also have one theme per number.
- I should also consider having an overall theme.
- I should make sure I keep the frame still so that there is no change perceptible as the number changes. They said that the second will seem longer if it doesn't move at all which is a good point because I was disappointed with how short the second was.
- There was a suggestion that the numbers should also be made up of patterns but I am concerned that this might get too busy.
- There was another suggestion that I choose a different font for the letter. Stephen suggested a more angular sans serif like Neutra or Akkurat.
- WE also discussed whether there should be an obvious line going around as it rotates but I think it might be better without.

Overall, this critique was very helpful. I will take up a bunch of these suggestions, especially the thematic ones.

Project 2

I have been having a lot of trouble deciding on a topic for my project 2. I had first decided to do a really conceptual project that didn't contain the actual numbers but rather a group of x's representing days that would disappear gradually throughout the countdown. I have revised this concept to include the actual numbers.

CREATIVE BRIEF
TIME BASED MEDIA
SARA CWYNAR

WORKING TITLE
One Second Year, Macro/Micro Countdown


OVERVIEW
The idea is that a whole year of time is represented in each second of my countdown. Someone is crossing off the days of a ‘calendar’. Originally it was going to be a giant sheet of squares (like days in a calendar) will have chunks of x’s crossed out that correspond to the numbers 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2. There will be fewer X’s for each number in the countdown. These shots will be filmed normally and then played backwards so that the x’s continue to disappear. In each shot of the countdown another chunk is missing. A mouth was going to say the corresponding number in slow motion while a voice that clearly does not correspond to the voice says the number much more quickly, making the mouth seem outside of the timeframe of the rest of the video. .

I have revised this concept so that a year's worth of month-long calendars (in a big grid corresponding to an actual year) will be filled up with only the x's that correspond to the number (that make the shape of the number). After the number appears the rest of the X's will fill up very quickly and the calendar will peel off the wall revealing another year. I will count down through ten years.

AUDIENCE
This will lean more towards being an art project than a design project (I hope!) so it will be directed towards and audience who is well-versed in contemporary art, probably educated, but not necessarily so. People who aren’t necessarily looking for a really literal project, who are prepared for some level of ambiguity. But really it is for everyone!

KEY MESSAGE
Originally the video was about simultaneously counting down to the end of a life and counting up as the days pass. Time accumulates and disappears simultaneously. I will still retain this concept but in a more literal way (although still not too literal!)
Now the key message is a of macro/micro countdown. A year will disappear in a second. It is about our obsession with time and youth and the feeling that time passes way too quickly. It will also be about the difficulty of conceiving of time and representing the passage of time and about the impossibility of thinking about a tiny chunk of time like a ten second countdown relative to the rest of your life or a year of your life. What does ten seconds mean in the giant time frame between birth and death?

CONTENT
Originally the frames of the x’s being crossed out were going to be cut quickly to the shots of the mouth and back again. There was going to be a fluid sountrack throughout, featuring the numbers being said at each second.
Now the camera will stay on the calendar the whole time. During the second, the x's will fill up to form the letter, then all of the x's will fill up, then the calendar will peel away to reveal the next year. The x's will appear in different ways. Some will appear gradually and sporadically to form the letter, some will appear top-down, others will appear as dashes and then will cross themselves to form an x. This will hopefully be filmed in stop-motion on a super 8 if it works out.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
None as of yet.

VISUAL REFERENCES
I have been looking at a lot of Roger Ballen black and white photos of really stark sort of dingy looking rooms with strange-looking people and objects in them. This is the sort of aesthetic I want for my video. I’ve also been watching some Cassavetes films like the Killing of a Chinese Bookie and A Woman Under The Influence and I really like the sort of washed out colours of them. I am hoping to achieve this with super 8 film.


STORYBOARDS







Here are the storyboards for my initial concept.



Here are some other concepts I was thinking about:

Girl Countdown, numbers made of different items associated with ideas of femininity. Number made of iconic hairdos, number made of flowers, madonna imagery, bathing suits, Rosie the riveter types assembling a number, etc. All on a flowery background.

Flowers



Hairdos


Updated old-fashioned countdown. A countdown like the old fashioned ones with the circles but made of paper and photographs. More of the photo is revealed as the clock-arm countdown thingy goes around.



Other concept where I was going to make 3 rigs and move papers gradually across them while crumpling and uncrmpling and then speeding it up a lot so they look like they're blowing across the screen. One paper in front would uncrumple to reveal the number.



Pigment concept - for this idea I wanted to have the letters appear out of coloured pigment and then wipe them away with my hand. But this is a bad idea because pigment is unhealthy!

Thatthatisis

Here is our Project 1 Video about language




This video uses abstract shapes to represent language. The shapes being passed between hands depict the ways in which human beings use arbitrary word to make up the language with which they communicate. The shapes are simple and abstract to show the randomness with which a word corresponds to that which it depicts in a language. The shapes are passed between disjointed arms and finally assembled into coherent but still abstract shapes. More mechanical shapes come in later to show the nature of language as a construction and the fact that eventually language will be gone, and that it is increasingly being replaced by artifical representations, and all that will be left are these mechanical representations of language (or the remains of them). Our noun was language and our verbs were bloom and fracture. We used a stilted quality of movement and a sporadic-sounding soundtrack t represent fracture and a slow start building up to a frenetic ending (both in the music and in the pace of the images) to represent the word bloom.