the YES!

oh wow, i would have to say this was quite an impressive display to see two men completely fool big corporation type meetings and yet they receive little to no negative response, continuing what they are doing till who knows when?! I dont know how they do it! it was a different from assignment 6 --- the re contextualization--- in that it was more of a re-routing of context to a different source, which then tweaked it to pretty much say the same thing, but in a way that they were trying to prove a point. these big corporations use meetings and conferences to share their new ideas, but it would seem that the presentations are just a formality. This is shown by the difference in the responses of the two groups they YES men presented to. The first was the actual business people, stiff in there suits waiting for the coffee break. they sat and calmly listened while the men presented their "findings" from their "research" . they didnt even care! it wasnt until the one guy stripped off his clothes that they got a reaction out of them. true, it may be out of shock that the mature business audience may have been embarrassed to a state of silence. But there was a complete switch when they presented to the students something of a different matter. They talked about McDonalds and hit on poverty in 3rd world countries, commenting on the fact that they recieve our leftovers anyways, so whats so bad about sending them our crap? The students were outraged!! I bet they didnt think it was real at first, but still they actively engaged in a brutal debate asking tons of questions, tryin to tear apart the WTO "representaion". I found it interesting the way it is fake and yet real at the same time. Its almost tricking the public for a genuine response as some sort of giant social commentary....fabulous.

Molotov &/or Ecstasy

It was interesting to see today the topic of copyright infringement and the endless possibilities we as filmmakers really do have this day and age. it seems so overwhelming in fact that starting from scratch could seem easier than scrubbing thru hours and hour of footage picking and choosing the little building blocks you want to assemble into your image. with the readings, i saw how the specific case of the molotov man and his rendition of a photograph in paint calls into question what is defined under the laws of owning rights to ideas and art. personally, i think it would be ridiculous for a photographer to try and win a legal battle with a painter for the direct inspiration of an image she herself captured or possibly even "stole from the world" as it were. it is true that all things especially pertaining to art and creativity is influenced in one form or another. this fact can make some artists seem silly for locking their fresh and shiny work in a cage or legal protection instead of allowing to it pass openly from one person to the next, feeding into the mass pool of thought and creativity all people draw from. in response to this stingy attitude towards art, we have the capability of nibbling at any resource we can find. in a way, it is an understood commune all artists share. sure, many people may become sore upon seeing their inspiration uncredited but in a way they should use that as a motivation to excel further into new ideas, trying to explore, in contrast to those who dwell on old recyclables. however, i can see the desire and feelings present as we try and protect our movies some may even see as important as hiding a child from the world. there seems to be a sense of offense and possibly even paranoia surrounding how we handle media. that somehow if its mass produced the value isnt present, no matter the quality or amount of work gone into the production. but in a sense there are many people who take things too far when they should be honored that something they made has influence and been processed to create something new. each person sees things differently in their styles and techniques, reflected in the vast variety of art seen all over the world. in this way i think people need to lighten up and really step back and visualize the scope of media available for inpiration. thinking about it further, the whole copyright thing simply comes down to money or any kind of profitable experience one can achieve thru their work. if art was always practiced as a creative outlet with no real material gains or advantages, none of this would be an issue.

ideas for 48 our film rayce

so ive been thinking about any possible other techniques i could combine to create a truly unique and still "cameraless" composition by combining a few techniques. i think im going to take still shots of the environments and whatever subjects are necessary for the idea i will think about (that comes later) but until then ive figured i can do a 2d image projection with after effects. this technique basically uses a 3d camera and 3d light in aftereffects and "projects the 2 dimensional image onto a set up 3d plane layout which simulates 3d perspective when you actually do a camera move. it has the illusion of depth and movement, but in actuality its just relative to how the camera and light are placed in the scene. in this way, the movie will resemble a cutout of sorts like a diorama. I was also just thinking about ways to somehow transer images from one medium to another and see what kind of interesting effect that give the final image. when someone mentioned silly putty i got to really thinking, how do we capture images??? i bet that stumped people for hundreds of years, and now e have myspace and facebook with people posting millions of images from all over the place... seems unfair. i will basically just play around until i come out with something i think works, and its almost torture not knowing what the mystery item is !! but i guess thats part of the fun eh? i was a bit confused when it was mentioned to bring orange food items in as well as a blanket.... im not sure what is being schemed but it should be a good time.

2nd Scratch Film Juhnkees

ok ok, I will admit, the second time around i felt a lot more comfortable about what the scratch film junkies are actually trying to do with their films because of all the experience we've had with our own scratch films. It was a lot easier to point out and separate different styles such as the ink, paint, scratching, bleach, magazine tranfer, and the desktop printing. Another thing I realized was we sort of haphazardly assembled these techniques in an unorganized manner in a structure resembling nothing more than an example reel for film manipulation. however, the junkies organized theirs in a methodical, purposeful and stylized manner, using full advantage of the techniques previously mentioned. it was so hard to figure out the timing of the frames, just for our short animation. animation in and of itself is so difficult to do because of the inner sense of timing that is required to do it properly. i dont know how they can see what it looks like before they scratch it out of the emulsion! its ridiculous. but with the knowledge of the techniques learned in class, I found i could better appreciated the style, a lot more than the first time. this usually goes for most things i suppose; the more you know about it the better you can potentially connect with it. another thing i noticed this time the music wasnt distracting and it definitely bridged across the visuals, giving the overall poise of the film a boost in its "structural integrity". Good Form!