Long Take Bolex Shoot

Personally I enjoyed this shoot. I like working with my group very much and i felt that we had some very good ideas for this project. Shooting with the bolex was also a huge plus. Having shot with it before in Shannon's Documentary class I already made about every mistake I could and it's safe to say I learned the hard way. Well, It ended up paying off a lot for this shoot because we did not have any problems with the camera aspect of the shoot. One thing that we all agree would have been helpful would have been a wide angle lens, but it was not necessary and I feel we definitely pulled it off without it. One of my friends Stick helped out with acting and stood in as our lead character. I was very pleased with his performance, and it seemed everybody else was too.

One aspect of our project I feel could have been better was the developing process. My processing partner Nate and I followed the directions, but were still a bit unsure at parts if we had submerged the film long enough or not. So we dipped it again, and even one more time! So we thought for sure we had pushed our film too far and nothing was going to show up, however, when we showed it to Andre, he thought we had maybe not even left it in the developer long enough. Soooo... now we are a bit confused as to what happened, but somehow, the film showed up way better than we thought anyway. So we'll see, when we invert it in final cut and mess around a bit how it looks.

Synesthesia and Cymatics

This article about synesthesia really got me thinking about a lot of things. It was most interesting to me because I have never really put words to this sort of feeling before but at times I definitely visualize my art through the form of music or vice versa and my music is influenced somehow by some sort of natural or artificial work of art. So I don't necessarily know if that means I'm a synesthete, but I feel like I can relate somehow to what I was reading about it. The artist's quotes about how they pre-visualized their work or how some tune is reflected in their work work just made so much sense to me.

One part of the article I found to be particular interesting was about the color organs. The ability to convert musical tones into color is very fascinating because it opens up a whole new world of artistic capabilities. To me, music is already made more powerful when linked with a graphical or color stimulus. To then make that color stimulus one that is appropriately matched to the tone would boost that musical experience by a lot in my opinion.

This idea is also made more powerful when linked to the idea of Cymatics. After learning about the idea of cymatics I was very intrigued. Maybe this is because I have always been curiously interested in fractal patterns and sacred geometry, but to me cymatics felt very similar. The idea that music could actually produce a distinct pattern based on its frequency got me thinking about shows where VJ's perform along with bands. I thought of how cool it would be if the images being shown were the actual cymatic pattern from the song being played while it was playing. Then to take it a step further, the colors of the pattern could reflect the notes of the song similar to a color organ. If this were possible I feel like the synesthesia would just be un-avoidable and the audience would have some sort of sensory orgasm. Or maybe just smile a lot, but the point is that it would be a very good experience.

Reaction to first film

Production Schedule

March 18- Have opening man and child drawn, with some animation. Have audio track laid down.
march 25- have up until the disco lemonade puddle scene animated
april 8- have action animated up to bubble man.
april 15- have animation finished. add finishing touches/touch up backgrounds
april 22- final project finished, exported, and posted

final animation storyboard

Final Animation Treatment

For my 2d animation final project I plan on creating an animated music video to a Lamping Shades song entitled, Disco Lemonade. There will not be a problem with copyright issues because it is my band’s original song. Originally, I wanted to do a cartoon based around my friends/band because they are the most colorful group of characters I know. I’m thinking one day I still might do this, but in the meantime I thought just making an animation to go along with one of our songs would be best. The song is about people relaxing and enjoying life. I think that throughout the video I will use just one animated character. This character will probably wander through some interesting scenarios that will be influenced only mildly by the lyrics. By this I mean that I don’t plan on animating a band playing instruments at all. I definitely want to incorporate a funny looking glass of lemonade with a large disco ball sticking out of it at one point. I think it would be funny to have my character trying to drink this glass of lemonade but unable to because of the disco ball being so large and throwing his balance off, but that will only be a small part. I have yet to decide everywhere my character will travel to, and everything he will do, but I have decided on the look I want the video to have. I want to use a mixture of drawing in photoshop and after effects and try to create a nice sense of “flow” to it. I really want the images to look smooth and artistic, rather than jagged and computerized. I definitely want it to have a cartoon look to it too. I was considering rotoscoping some, but I think I prefer the more traditional cartoon look for this video.