motion|sound

I saw this video in the summer, but had completely forgotten about until I re-stumbled upon it the other day…It’s shot & directed by Natalie van den Dungen with help from Karl Siemon and Don Brooker.

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♥ MD

WOLF AND PIG
We watched this short stop-motion movie during one of the first classes, and I keep coming back to it. I think we watched this before we attempted any real stop motion projects, so at the time I couldn’t grasp how hard it must have been to film, or how long it probably took. It seemed really simple, but now that I understand the time needed not only to film, but to edit (working one frame at a time) I’m even more impressed by the outcome. Aside from the technical aspect, I really enjoy how 2D space around the wolf and pig transform into the 3d space of the room it was filled in. I especially love the part when the sink becomes a swimming pool, and the photograph of the wolf swimming floats across the water.

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DEERHUNTER — FAMOUS LAST WORDS
This is a music video that Greig and I stumbled upon while brainstorming for stop-motion ideas. Like the wolf and pig video, I’m forever impressed at how much work must have gone into making this, but it really pays off. This video goes the extra mile and has the 2D photograph interacting with the 3D space (again, much like the Wolf and Pig), but in a more direct way. Whereas the wolf and pig photographs were laid on top of related 3D spaces, the 2D figure in the this music video is actually interacting with the normal 3D elements of the room.

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WESTERN SPAGHETTI
I’m a huge fan of PES! I love how they always use Bressant’s principles of not duplicating sound and visuals. What you see relates to the sound in some manner, but out of the context of the video, would have no actual relationship to the subject matter. If you were to watch a lot of their videos on mute (this one being an exception, I suppose), you would have no idea what was going on. In that way, the sounds and the visuals work together to send a message instead of competing for dominance. Another thing that amazed me and those I showed it to, was how perfectly registered everything was. Like Franci mentioned to us, it’s a real shame when registration issues take away from your video and all the hard work you’ve out into it. While filming the countdown, and even to some extent Project 1, a lot of the class still experienced shifting despite using tripods and tape. For some of was easier to fix than others (and certainly mine was quite hard) but that just made me wonder how PES was able to achieve such stability (or how long it took them to re-register everything if there was some shifting). Either way, this video is really sweet and I’d definitely like to do something this ambitious in the future…once i master the tripod, or get a team of minions to align everything in Photoshop for me ;D

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♥ MD

I’ve discovered I’m a mesh of two very strong, very different personalities…my fixations and obsessions are proof of this.

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1. DRAWING/DOODLING
I don’t think I’m alone with this one, but if you ever set a piece of paper in front of me, regardless of what it is, it will be covered with doodles the next time you see it. I draw when I’m bored or when I’m thinking. In elementary school, I used to draw large colourful pictures on the backs of my tests and around each question (especially math tests because they’d give you a lot of room to show your work). They’d take up the whole back page! They’d amuse some teachers and annoy others. Even now, I tend to draw on the test papers, and my lecture notes are always filled with more drawings than actual notes.

2. MUSIC
I need music and lots of it. Wherever I go, and whatever I do, I need to have it with me. My music collection is probably my most prized possession, and in a fire, that would be the first thing I’d grab. In relation to my daydreaming, music helps me concentrate…not necessarily on my work, but I tend to focus on one or two things max, as opposed to the millions that fight for my brain space. My mind tends to wander unless I have my headphones on and one of my favourite songs is blasting full volume. A friend who used to supply me with music once attributed himself to my dealer, and me to a junkie looking for her next fix. Not an ideal picture, but it’s true in some respects. I lost quite a large bit in The Great Move of 07 (from PC to Mac…the CDs i burned them on got corrupted), and I haven’t been able to recover a lot of it, but I’ve been extremely overprotective of what I have amassed since then. I listen to quite the variety, and each genre has a different effect on me.  Classical & Meditative music help me to focus, Oldies & Indie Rock put me in a really good mood, Soca & Reggae/Dancehall get me moving wherever I am, but Electronic music is by far the genre that I connect with the most. It’s sort of an out of body experience—with the right track, I can close my eyes and be “gone” for hours. My current obsession (and has been for a while)…there’s just something about this part

3. DAYDREAMING
I’m a very quiet and private person; I tend to be “in my head” a lot. Because I don’t talk very much, there’s always 50 things going on in my head and it’s really hard to focus my thoughts (which I assume is the reason I sometimes forget what I’m taking about mid sentence). The only time I’m ever focused on one thing is when I’m dreaming, and I do that a lot. There’s the regular dreams that happen when I’m sleeping and the daydreams that plague me during the day. They come out of nowhere and remove me from reality for a significant portion of time. My dreams are always vivid, full colour and in third-person; they play out like movies (and pretty awesome movies, I might add). They start the second my head touches the pillow, before I’m even asleep, and they end while I’m eating breakfast, or walking to school. I saw a movie about a month or so ago called Waking Life. It was a completely rotoscoped movie, but the messages in it were so big. It really spoke to me about the importance of dreams, and how real they can seem sometimes.

These three are all connected, and stem form my inability to focus. I think that rotoscoping or loose illustration is something that would fit with the surreal and looseness of my mind.

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Conversely, I’m also compulsively organized or structured.

4. CHECKING THE TIME
I’m not sure why, but I have this sort of “obsession” with time. I’ve always worn a watch since I was two years old, but last year, my watch broke and I didn’t have the time (no pun intended) to replace it. I soon forgot about getting a watch, but I’m now attached to my cell phone because of the built-in clock. I absolutely have to have a clock wherever I go. At home, I have a bedside clock. When I stay over at anybody’s house however, I tend to sleep with my cell phone in hand or under my pillow so when I do inevitably check the time, I don’t have to fumble around looking for a clock. Every little while, sometimes multiple times per minute, I feel compelled to check the time. It’s more so the action of it though because sometimes, I “check the time” but I don’t actually look at the numbers. I often wake up in the middle of the night, half-asleep, check the time and go back to bed. You’d think this fixation with time would make me a punctual person, but unfortunately not. (ugghh, I think this is the 4th time i’ve checked the clock while writing just this paragraph)

5. COLOUR COORDINATION
This is a big one…I’m not sure how it started, but since I can remember, I’ve been very anal about having everything organized by colour, size or number; the biggest one was colour. I used to get furious with classmates who borrowed my crayons, only to return them out of order. I don’t have an excessive amount of clothes, but take a look in my closet, and you’ll see it organized by colour too. My pens and markers are all organized based on colour, my collection of Post-It notes…even the files on my computer have little coloured labels based on subject, term and status (not to mention my dock)…

It’s a little weird that I can be both obsessively organized, and yet so unfocused. I guess it creates a very interesting dynamic in terms of personality, and it’ll be interesting to see how I can tie these together in project 3. I’m thinking loose drawings and concept, but structured loop?

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♥ MD

My inspiration for this countdown project was the passage of time and how fleeting moments can be. I chose to focus on birthdays as they were recognizable and important milestones of a person’s life, and something that could be represented numerically and passed at regular intervals. I wanted it to be eerie and uncomfortable, instead of the traditional happy imagery associated with birthdays. The traditional imagery of birthdays suggest a celebration of getting older, though conversely, birthdays can be seen as a countdown to our death. Just the imagery of a candle burning seemed to go hand-in-hand with the aspect of a countdown; a whole candles burns down to a puddle of wax, nothing, just as 10 counts down to 0. In essence, it’s a metaphor for how we can be there one minute, and gone the next. I’m not a very dark/brooding person, so this was very much out of my comfort zone to portray these feelings (and talking about this now is actually making me really sad).

For the sound, I chose to get rid of the singing as it was getting too distracting, and focus on something less literal. I found some clips of old music boxes and record players on the freesound website, and I worked in Audacity (for the first time) to distort the naturally uplifting and friendly tune into something that got under my skin. It was still the childhood tune I remembered, but it was damaged and wrong. I felt that the music, along with the “crescendo-ing” heartbeats, was what my imagery needed to go the extra mile and create the movie that I intended.

Although I typically don’t like to make people sad, I really hope that you feel at least a little heavyhearted after you watch this…ummm, enjoy??

more about “Project 2 » Fleeting“, posted with vodpod

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♥ MD

So my last attempt at shooting these birthday candles. I’m a little frustrated, but my setup generally looks a lot better than my first bunch of attempts. I used a double chocolate cupcake, a dark background, and a tripod. After reviewing my pictures, there’s still a lot of shaking and registration issues (some of it is due to the shadows being cast by the candlelight) but i still can’t fathom how everything managed to move so much! I wish I had time to reshoot this, but I could barely find the 6 hours I needed to dedicate to it last week (not to mention the editing). I will do some more realigning in Photoshop and play around with the sound (I’m not entirely sold on the singing, and I’m getting mixed reviews from people I ask).  I’m liking the heartbeat, although working with bass is very tricky, especially when it’s being output through computer speakers. Hmmm, a lot to think about….

more about “Project 2, Attempt 2» 10 Candles“, posted with vodpod

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♥ MD

All of my ideas for the countdown project dealt with the theme of finality and the swiftness of time. There was an underlying narrative wherein a sense of happiness & community was turned into loneliness to give the ending more of an emotional impact. The idea I settled on begins with a birthday party; there is lots of chatter and singing, and happiness all around. It cuts to 9 seconds of numbered birthday candles melting down until they’re a puddle of wax. By the end, all that’s left is that puddle of wax and fallen/ruined decorations.

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Shooting by candlelight is hard enough, but shooting fire and melting wax is even more of a challenge. The amount of light in the shot fluctuates depending on the size of the flame, which depends on how much wax is being burned and how large the wick is. The birthday candles I found (although according to the experiences of many others I talked to, it’s a general problem) are not designed to burn down to the base (for safety reasons, I suppose). I ended up having to jam used matchsticks down the center of the candles so that they would burn down fully instead of dying when the wick fell out.

I took about 500 images over the span of 6 hours, narrowed it down to 30 images per number and imported them into FinalCut Express to see what they look like in movie format. My blacks turned out pretty muddy, despite using a Digital SLR and the candle shifts (from me jamming the matches in the middle) are quite noticeable and distracting. I will definitely be reshooting this….

Things to remember for attempt 2:
1. Use a tripod! …tables shake and are unreliable
2. Shoot against a black background; a material that absorbs light (like a sheet) instead of reflects it (like paper)
3. Use a darker cake; the white cake reflects light and contributes to the muddy blacks
3b. Get multiple cakes; the wax melts onto the cake, and when removing the candle, the cake comes with
4. Get help; it’s nice to have help with shooting and managing the lighting and positioning of the shots, and also, being alone for 6 hours is not fun

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In terms of sound, I was able to get some video of my nephew’s birthday party and isolate some of the singing and chatter. I’m still not sure how to integrate it, but I really like the tone of it and I think it  goes really well with the imagery. I don’t know what to do for the audio blips or second markers, though. I was thinking crackling fire or cheers, but those might be too literal. Boy, I have a lot of work to do for next week…

more about “Raw countdown on Vimeo“, posted with vodpod

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♥MD