Orthodox vs. Experimental Animation

While I agree with the opening paragraph to the extent that the normal Saturday morning cartoon animation and that of the Disney classics has overshadowed other, often more interesting and more engaging and creative, forms of filmmaking. However, even now I find myself longing for those old Disney classics because it seems now that the movies have been taken over by the new ways of computer animating everything a la Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Wall-E just to name a few. In the film world this is all we seem to be seeing anymore, and I fear due to the successes of Pixar, we may never see the likes of the Disney classics, let alone any other more interesting form of animation.

I then go on to agree with the comparison of orthodox animation and experimental animation where orthodox is certainly very narrative and planned out. There is certainly something to say for orthodox narrative, but I feel there is even more to say about experimental, be it animation or not. Experimental animation, or any other animation that is not orthodox, allows the artistry to come through. This artistry may be evident through what many may see as errors, but does anyone think the cigarette ashes dropped into Jackson Pollock’s paintings are errors? No, and neither does he. When doing our animations tomorrow the goal isn’t to make our objects look fluid and lifelike, if we wanted to do that we wouldn’t be animating, or we would be using an orthodox form. Experimental animation is like any other form of art besides realism. Regular animation is realism, coloring inside the lines, which after a while gets boring. Painting outside the lines, or without lines at all in a more abstract form can be a breath of fresh air for audiences.

Experimental animation seems to be more about the artist, the soundtrack, and the overall feel of the film, while orthodox animation is focused on mass production with a lack of an artistic feel and a focus on dialogue and narrative story. A hybrid that comes to mind would be Fantasia. I really have no idea what that movie was about, but I’m sure it had some form of narrative, it was very focused on the musicality of the score. Wells goes on to say in the reading that early narrative animation was often more focused on the music. What happened to that? Where did all of the Disney musicals go?! (On a side note, I know Disney is pretty much an evil corporation, but I can’t help but love those movies and those songs.)

Wells notes that abstract films are more concerned with rhythm and movement in their own right as opposed to the rhythm and movement of a particular character. I feel another sort of hybrid seen very often in today’s culture is that of the rarely seen, but existent, animated music video. The artist Knarles Barkley uses this abstract animation focused on the beat of the music as opposed to a character and a story. While the “Take On Me” music video by the group Ah-Ha is more realistically drawn and follows a bit more of a storyline, it is certainly not completely linear and focuses on the drawings themselves as art. It isn’t trying to be overly fluid or realistic.

So while I’m a fan of both types of animation, I am very excited to be working in the experimental form, and hope that more people are exposed to this sort of non-orthodox animation. Music videos may be the segue we need.

Cameraless Filmmaking... so far

Cameraless filmmaking has been a complete blast for me so far. Every Thursday I get so excited to come to class to see what new and exciting thing we are going to be doing. Because chances are I’ve never done anything like it before, and new experiences really get me excited.

I have also developed a newfound respect for those who make cameraless films. We’ve seen ours that we have roughly put together, and they’re alright, but obviously not planned in any meticulous way. However, going back and watching some of the other films that we have seen in class, there is some very obvious planning and effort going into these films that the untrained eye may not be able to see. An average person could see one of our class creations and then a film by Brakhage and not know the difference, but there very clearly is one, and I feel that I can now see it, and have much more of an appreciation for it.

I was really into the rayograms that we did last week. I’ve always been interested in photography and developing my own film with the chemicals in a dark room, but have never taken a class or gotten around to having someone teach me how to do it, so that was my first experience with developing. Seeing the finished product after not really knowing what you had laid down and where do to the extreme darkness was like a little gift or surprise. I embrace those little gifts of life, you’ve got to enjoy the little things to make it worthwhile! I have to say I enjoyed the experience thoroughly and think very interesting things could come from experimenting with it.

I also really enjoyed the magazine transfer lesson. I was always a big silly putty fan because it could transfer newsprint, and now I’ve learned that I can transfer pretty much anything and put it onto film. After watching the reel we made in class I discovered what colors look best (bright, lots of contrast) and if you want anything to really show up you’ve got to repeat it over and over and OVER. I felt so badly for the boy next to me (sorry I forgot your name man) who cut out all of those eyes and worked pretty much the whole class time putting that together, and then I barely saw it in the final film. It just goes to show people who make these sort of films must be EXTREMELY patient.

Patience is something I’ve been having trouble with while working on my animation portion of the cameraless filmmaking project. I’m just not sure if I’m doing small enough movements, and working in such a small frame is really difficult as well. Detail is next to impossible it seems, and I’m just really worried that when it is played through the projector it won’t animate properly. I know it will go by in a matter of seconds, but I really want those couple of seconds to look good, and for the audience to be able to tell what is going on!

Like I said, overall I’m really enjoying the whole process of cameraless filmmaking and can’t wait to see what all of the groups come up with because I feel that they will all be similar, in that we are all using the same techniques with the same assignment, yet radically different because of everyone’s own personal interpretation.

Good luck to everyone in your finalizations of your projects!

A Moving Picture Giving and Taking response

The first part of this reading by Brakhage was a bit confusing to me. Not because it wasn’t well explained, but let’s take the part about loading a projector for example. Had Andre not taught me how to do this in class last week, I feel I would have been extremely confused while reading about how to do it. While I liked how he explained what all of the different parts were, I know had I not done this hands-on previously I would have been completely lost. This is why I certainly believe film to be a very hands-on learning experience. A book can only teach a person so much in this industry, and while I have learned a lot about film by reading books, I know that I won’t be able to go out and create anything worthwhile just by reading and not by having any hands-on experience, something I know I am getting every week in this class.

This idea of hands on learning is also displayed in Part II when the letter-writer starts to talk about splicing, and then goes on a tangent about glue's and what-not. I had quite a bit of trouble following what he was talking about due to the fact that I had never handled many of the things that he was talking about so I had trouble grasping the specifics. I believe the overall concept was gotten across, but it seemed his goal was to present specifics to an audience, which certainly did not get across to me.

On another note, later in the letter the author writes that although he can not help Gregory in his efforts for his new film, he certainly does not discourage him from doing it. I truly believe in the idea that if you really want to do something, you will certainly be able to do it if you put enough time and effort into it. Especially pleasing to both the author of this letter and myself is if one of these seemingly impossible ideas any individual filmmaker might have will present something new and exciting to the film community, please, by all means, do it! Share it, and maybe others can help to perfect it. And true that if this new creation does turn out to be impossible to project it will be more of a wall hanging or a necklace than an actual film, it certainly wasn't a complete failure. As a film, maybe, but not as a learning experience and insight into how you might go on to create a successful new form that will work as a film.

In part three Brakhage explains how to create a rayogram. I am assuming the "Rayogram" image that Brakhage talks about in the "dark room with a magic wand of light" is an exercise that we are going to attempt in class tomorrow. Whether this is a correct assumption or not, I'm not sure. I'm going by the mention of tiny objects in the reading, and the e-mail that Andre sent us asking us to bring in similarly small objects for an “x-ray” like effect.

Going back to the learning hands-on is better than reading it in a book idea, I don’t know if I would have fully understood this portion had I not gotten that simple e-mail from Andre asking us to bring in these objects and saying they would be used for an “x-ray” effect. Simply using the word x-ray made the whole concept so much easier for me to understand as opposed to Brakhage’s longwinded and somewhat complicated explanation of it all. I can understand why he had trouble explaining it, because again, film is a visual medium and more often than not must be taught as such.

On an ending note, I would just like to note how times have changed since this article was written, for I wish I could just “come across” or go out and easily find an 8mm camera for a mere $10-15.