Crowdsourcing and Film Manipulation

This week I viewed my direct film manipulation which involved drawing, bleaching and scratching film stock to create interesting patterns of color and light during the film screening. It was a really interesting experience to create something that is so unique and unusual. Understanding how film can be manipulated both manually and digitally is incredibly important to a filmmaker because it helps us think beyond current perceived limitations of the media. Hollywood has given filmmakers a language of cinema that is rarely challenged. This viewpoint makes the story structure of a film carry more importance than any other cinematic element but this is only one way to view cinema. If a filmmaker wants to create revolutionary films and achieve critical acclaim then it is important to understand ways to interact with the film media beyond classical film setups and editing. Even if these direct film manipulations are rarely used, perhaps a horror film could be enhanced by purposely scratching a portion of the film. Or a character's insanity could be illustrated by an animation that is drawn onto the film stock by hand. These tricks and techniques can come in handy and can even be used in classic Hollywood avenues by a talented filmmaker to add some spice and zest to his or her films.

Now the class is investigating creative crowdsourcing to generate unique ways of symbolically representing the importance of the number four. Recently, the power of micro financing has generated a lot of attention through sites like Indigogo and Kickstarter. But the concept of crowd creativity is still new. This is probably because it is difficult to read through a ton of creative ideas that are drastically different from each other by nature. But when firm parameters are established, idea crowdsourcing is becoming a new art form that will probably grow in popularity as the process becomes more streamlined through trial and error. Fiver.com offers a type of crowdsourcing where you can pay five dollars to different artists and have them perform different micro-tasks that are simple and can be combined to create a larger project. The internet is helping almost any task or activity become collective if the user decides they want to have multiple perspectives. This is simpler with things like crowdsourcing design elements and choosing the best one, but things get more complicated when something larger (like a film) is created. Different skill levels, tones and styles can create a disjointed story, but the human experience is not always cohesive so this could actually represent the human experience with more authenticity.

Link for Media Fast Discussion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AeF442G6PY&feature=youtu.be

Media Fast

*Note: I sing around town and also work as a performance artist so that is what I am referring to when I talk about "taking care of business". I just watched this and realized I look like I'm in the mafia or something by continually referencing business transactions without specifying what I was talking about...

Synesthesia and Cymatics

Currently I am working on a project to convey the elements; fire, water, earth and air through abstract shapes and colors. This process involves placing textured objects and previously developed film stock on unexposed film stock in a dark room. Then the film is exposed by flashing a light and the textures begin to appear on the film stock after it has been dipped into a developer. Next the film is rinsed in two consecutive tubs of water to before dipping it in the fix (which sets the images on the film stock and makes it safe to view in regular light). Meanwhile, my partner manipulated his film stock by painting with ink, oil and of course paint, to give the film strip the textures of the ddd and flow of water. When we are finished our piece will have a rhythmic quality that portrays elements in not only color but texture and movement as well.
Synethesia is a condition where an individual's sensory experience is mixed with unique results. This happens in many ways. For example; numbers or letters can be perceived to have a color. Essentially, synethesia can occur when any sensory experiences are mixed, sounds can trigger tactile experiences or emotional experiences while numbers can appear to have spatial positions. It is believed that synethesia occurs when neural pathways are less inhabited and different sensory processing systems over-share information.
This film project of directly manipulating film stock to create a variety of rhythms, colors and textures is meant to evoke a concept for the viewer. In this case the concept is an element. To do this, it is important to use of these principals of sensory intertextuality.
Cymatics takes this concept a bit further and makes use of this principal of sensory interaction by capturing the pattern that sound waves produce. This emerging technology offers hope that people who are deaf will be able to enjoy visual music. This is a similar concept to the one displayed in the previously discussed film where synethesia is clearly employed artistically to turn an auditory experience into a visual experience. Generally cymatics involve a thin plate or membrane that vibrates with sound to shake loose particles or liquid into patterns or shapes the correspond to the sound pattern.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvJAgrUBF4w

Thoughts on Direct Film Manipulation

The filmmaker painted and drew directly on the reel's celluloid. The filmmaker also scratched off the film stock's emulsion. It seems digitally edited because the soundtrack matches the image progression so perfectly. These rhythmic visuals would be incredibly difficult to match to the films soundtrack without digital modification (unless the sound was recorded to match the images after the modification of the film stock). Maybe the filmmaker even glued textured materials to the film stock.... Maybe.  

Another aspect that makes the film appear to have digital manipulations is the extremely controlled movements of images in each frame. A bird like figure seems to fly across the screen with fluidity that does not suggest a raw cut of direct modifications to the film stock itself.  

The changes in color/color temperature modulated the mood/tone of this piece. The lack of narrative in this film and the inclusion of recognizable shapes (i.e. a house) challenges the audience to look for a missing narrative. The resulting inability to generate a solid narrative structure is frustrating. This combined with the frantic onscreen movement creates a level of energy that assaults the eye. 

This film can best be described as visual sound.