Journal 4 - Week of Feb 12th - Day five

This concludes our five day challenge. So far I have written about our class to unique films and what is kind of happening in my life. I feel this class so far has shown me a lot on experimental film. It has also shown me that I do not want to go as extreme as the experimental film we have seen. I like that it gives me ideas about the films I like to write, but I would never go as far as how experimental they are. They are just to extreme for me on the spectrum of normal film to experimental film. Sometimes I feel the people are trying to hard to be unique and show there personal side. Also when we are in class I find it kind of weird when people are trying to dig for this deeper meaning in the film that isn't already shown. I mean its good that they try hard to be unique, but I mean sometimes it just doesn't sound right. There is a scene from this movie called "Art School Confidential" where the main character is a really good artist and everyone in the class is praising this worse artist for his work even though it is very plain. They are trying to find this deep meaning to it, when there is really no meaning to it. Here is a little clip for it. This challenge has made me think in a different way about posting.

Journal 4 - Week of Feb 12th - Day Four

Well for the past few post I have been trying to come up with things to talk about and discuss. Well in the email from Carl Bogner, he gives us some ideas to talk about. He asks us if this five day challenge impacts us on how we post, what we post, when we post. Does it encourage to step out of your regular routine to post differently than you have in the past. I feel this challenge has made me think in a different way. Because each week we would have something to talk about because of lecture, but now we have no lecture and it is on us to come up with something to discuss. I have felt out of place and it is kind of tough to keep coming up with something to think about. This is how I have felt so far with this five day challenge.

I always wonder if film is the right choice for me. I am extremely passionate for it and I know it is my calling, but is it right for my future. I know it will be tough to get started with it and my film 203 class isn't convincing me that it is getting any easier. Film 203 is titled: business behind the film. It is all about networking so when job opportunities come up, people can refer you. It is always good to know people and people to know you. I am confident about film and my career in it, but there are always some what if's. Here is a preview that a group of my friends did for "the lot". The contest where Steven Spielberg is judging and they submitted to it. It is called Bad Dog. Anyway it is nice to see that people are trying things. Thats all for today.

Journal 4 - Week of Feb 12th - Day three

Well this is the third post of the five day challenge. So far I feel it is going well. This is a big week actually for me because in a few days my daughter will be born. I will be the proud father of Lilly Addison. Anyways, enough of that, I have been working on this one project outside of class. I am writing a film script that I really like. It is a psychological thriller, that I feel many people will enjoy because of its darkness and twists that I have thrown in there. I have been working on it now for about a month and I hope to finish it soon. I have base my vision off of many directors. I would have to say my color choices come from Gus Van Sant. And my style from the director who did the indie film "Stay". I forget who is now, but I love his style and how he brought that film to the screen. That is a little about what I am doing right now outside of this class. Here is a trailer for the film "Stay" if you haven't seen the movie:

Trailer for Stay

I am also adding a trailer for a film done by Gus Van Sant called Elephant. This film is so colorful and at the same time very dark and disturbing. I think it is brilliantly done by this director. He also directed Drugstore Cowboy which I think is one of Matt Dillons finest films.

Journal 4 - Week of Feb 12th - Day two

Today was my discussion day at eleven in the morning. We actually did something out of the norm today to help us discuss Monday's lecture. Instead of taking a horrible quiz (ha jk teach), we got into groups and received two cards. After that we had to combine them and form a skit to relate to a film that was screened on Monday. It helped to see people act out what their vision of how to interpret ate the films we see.
The one our group did was on the film "I Learn Something New Every Single Day" by Renato Umali. I can't exactly remember the saying we had that went a long with it, but I feel our presentation was the hardest one to figure out which I liked. It was so unique that nobody could figure it out.

On that note here is a short film for St. Valentine's Day, the holiday I dislike the most!

Bullet for my Valentine!

Journal 4 - Week of Feb 12th - Day one

This class is all about unique, experimental films and how we percieve them in the world today. I have decided for my first post of this five day challenge to post some unique one to two minute clips that I think are considered experimental film and also interesting.

The Kiss - This is a short film from Suzanna Oshinsky where she passionately kisses the lens of the camera. I feel she is trying to reach out to the world because before and after the kiss she looks very depressed at a downward angle.

Discurso - This is from filmmaker Alex Stikich. It shows visuals of horrible neughborhoods, decaying animals, and hunger in people. In the background is a speech about how a politician plans to clean up all aspects of life. It shows how little is getting done in the world today, and how easy it could be to help.

Five AM - This is by far my favorite one of these three. What I percieved this film to be was the anxiety of getting up early for whatever, work or school, or anything. But than realizing why you are going to work so early and it is because of your children you live for. I can relate on many levels to this film and it personally touched me

Journal 3 - Week of Feb 5th

I was very sick this past week and was not able to make it to class on Monday, February 5^th. I did go into e-reserves and read the readings and saw extra footage that can compare, to what I hear, to what we saw in class. I know the films that we saw in class were considered dark and creepy. They had unique images that can be considered not normal and mentally challenging to see. I actually in a strange way enjoy these films. Everyday out and about you see normal visions. But to be able to see disturbing images that you rarely see in reality, I find very intriguing. For example, knowing this is not an experimental piece, the film Hostel is one of my favorite films. Call me sick, but I find it interesting to see the reenactment of people getting tortured. I will and hope not to ever see any thing in my life like that, but to be able to see what it could be like satisfies me in a way.

I did not get too see the film by Vito Acconci in class, but I did read on his techniques of film and how he uses these to make his film. It talks about how his image on video is flat and grainy making the vision blurry. This can add uniqueness to shots when filming or maybe just confusion. He also questions himself in relation to the viewer, where am I? – below, above, to the side, hidden. Once that is figured out he than reason what physical position to place him.

I have to give credit to Acconci for making his films feel real. The realism he brings to the screen is through the technique. You think at first that Vito just simply was depressed and brought out the camera, laid it on the floor and simply just spilled his lonely self into the lens. But when it comes down to it, everything had to have been planned out to the finest detail. The realism I feel from his films makes me uncomfortable and that is his goal, which I applaud him.

Journal 2 - Week of Jan 29

This is the second week of class and today's film I found I related more with them than last weeks films. These were more recent films than last week and the technology was better. The best film for me to watch was "Variations" done by filmmaker Nathaniel Dorsky. I related a lot to this film because I took the class film 116 last semester and I did a film that was much like this one. We had to record unique visions out in the field and mine was out together like his. This made me feel much better about myself and the path I am taking. Here are some examples of the clips I did: project 2 and project 3. These are silent clips that I recorded in Lake Park for that class. One section I liked from this film was the visually beauty from the beginning shot of sparkling water. I also liked how he shot images that reflected off glass because it makes you look at a lot more than just glass. I feel I can compare with my shot in project 2 where I recorded a reflecting puddle. This film intrigued me the most out of all of them.

The other film that got my attention was the short films by Tomonari Nishikaka. "Market Street" and "Clear Blue Day" were two films that captured visuall perfection. I don't know yet how he did Market Street, but the patterns of squares and circles with the images were crazy to look at. I find it crazy in Clear Blue Day when he uses light to capture images. People actually look like images of light. I think the professor was saying that he tooks the lens off the camera to distort the image with light. I would like to find out how to do that so I could use it toward my work in the future. Overall this weeks films have opened my eyes to a new kind of filming that could be use to others to make unique.

Journal 1 - Week of Jan 22

Well for the first week we have watched some interesting films. The first one we watched was "So Is This" by the filmmaker Michael Snow. This film is unique to say the least. I was not a big fan of this film, not because it was a silent black and white film, but because his point of view was so redundant and he tried to enforce over and over again. There were some points of comedic relief that was a nice break from his boring film. But on the other side I couldn't take my eyes away from what he was spelling out, so maybe he is brilliant. I found what he had to say interesting, but the way he brought it across the screen for his audience was annoying to me. I hate to be brash, but that is how I feel. One part I really liked in the film was when he asked us to sing together in our heads and actually spelled out the notes and keys for us. Because in reality everyone in their heads are reading and actually singing to themselves making it a silent sing a long. If you would ask people to sing that out loud together I bet you wouldn't get even half the people in lecture to sing.
The next film we watched was "There There Square" by filmmaker Jackie Goss. This was a shorter film that had color, but was still silent. It centered itself around a map of the United States. It would cut in and out of the map giving us history of the places it would key in on. The map would also transform and change colors. I thought this film was interesting because it gave me knowledge about history I did not know about. Also it was short enough to keep my attention long enough not to get distracted like the first film. These films were the first silent word films I have never seen before and I would have to say I wasn't that intrigued.