Saturday, January 30, 2010

S Y []\[] E S T []-[] E S [] A

The first thing I thought of while reading this article on Wiki was the movie, “August Rush”. In the movie there is a young boy who can hear music from things no one else could even catch a beat from. He hears it in the wind, on the streets of the city, in lights, etc. They even call him a “music prodigy”. I believe in some way we all are synesthetes. Basically, if you answer yes to any of these kind of questions you are a synesthete. Do you see the color blue when listening to the LADY GAGA? Do you taste salt when you see a stop sign? Does the smell of fresh rain make you see a certain letter in the alphabet? Congrats, you have a form of synesthesia. After reading about synesthesia and what it really means, it made me to think of who is really right? Who says the color “white” is really white. Could we all be seeing the same color white, or is my white your purple who is someone else’s green? Hmm weird right? This “condition” is when your brain mixes up all your senses and now something that you see, you begin to taste, or maybe even smell, etc. I think it would be AWESOME to experience this for a day, but only a day. I’m sure I would get annoyed with it if it was something that I had to live with on a day to day basis. How awful would it be if every time you went to brush your teeth you smelt dog poooooooo or when you saw the letter “G” you heard a JoBro song! Yikes! I do believe this is a beneficial “condition” for artists because they can let their creativity flow without even thinking about it. One sense triggers another which can lead to a master piece. One can correlate this idea of synesthesia to film, especially to experimental films in which you scratch, bleach, ink, etc. the film strip in order to create a flamboyant color show. I found it amazing how the Scratch Film Junkies film manipulation matched the music that accompanied it. Somehow they were able to make their designs and drawings perfectly match a beat. Soon a shape forming before your eyes takes on a specific color and even a certain sound. As exciting and interesting synesthesia is, I don’t think it’s for me. I feel like I’d be too distracted if I was trying to study for a test and while doing so colors were illuminating around the text of my book. It would be more of a color/picture book to me then a college text book, oh wells.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

What's up Scratch Film Junkies



I’ve seen experimental films ever since stepping into Introduction to Film Production class back my freshman year. I remember the first time I saw an experimental film, I was awestruck because I’d never seen anything like that before. I didn’t know something you could draw or scratch on would be considered film. I also thought film=camera. When I first started watching the experimental film I remember being mesmerized by the colors that flashed across the screen in which looked like frozen water on a pond. Occasionally the colors and shapes of the scratches would change which would make you realize it was a moving picture, not just a still. After the lights came up in the room our professor informed us that this was an experimental film which is considered “cameraless filmmaking”.
After watching “To the Beat” by the Scratch Film Junkies I was inspired and totally ready to color, scratch, dye, cut, paint, and bleach my own strip of film. Wow, film student’s actually using film? HOW EXCITING :D What inspired me about “To the Beat” was the tasteful choice of colors. The choices of colors were bright and flamboyant. I noticed that for each frame they seemed to use like colors from the same families, whether it be primary, secondary, tertiary or complementary colors. I personally loved the part where the film was mostly black with blue and green puddles of color. The colors popped out against the black backdrop. I remember watching the film and being amazed that the Scratch Film Junkies could scratch or even paint an object through hundreds of frames to look exactly the same shape and size and have it move across the screen or morph into another object with ease. Even when we were given a strip of film to play around with, I had difficulty keeping a line looking the same through several frames, so I can only imagine the time and patience that went into their films. Mad props to the Scratch Film Junkies! It was also interesting that they used found footage behind their tampering methods. I liked how they would scratch away at the film so that you only saw the subjects head or outline a person’s body. Finally, I thought their transitions between shapes and colors were smooth and subtle, nothing too jarring to where it distracted me from the film as a whole. However, the music could be jarring at times, but I thought it fit as a whole. I also thought it was amazing how when the objects moved and bursts of colors exploded it went along to the beat perfectly. That must have been really hard to master and to plan out. All in all, I enjoyed watching “To the Beat” and can’t wait to create my own beat via film strips.