First Response for Class Day Jan 29th

Well I've had some real annoying problems with Blogger, but I think it's working now? We shall see.

Anyways, my first blog on class stuff we watched today follows:


First off, I thought it was pretty enlightening to be able to see the difference between the 24 fps and the 18 fps that we saw today. It was pretty obvious when the film was only white, but once we saw the actual film it didn't actually look all that different to me. I guess that means I need more experience in watching film types projected. I should have been able to see the difference, but I couldn't.

Second, I really enjoyed "Market Place". I think I may have seen it before, at UW Waukesha, before I attended here. I was in a film class there also, and we saw his film, or something very like it, if it wasn't this one in particular. I don't remember going into much detail when we saw it at UWW, but here it seemed we made more critical thoughts into the processing of the film. For instance, we were not told that the film was shot frame by frame, and we were not told about the circles and patterns on the animation lens (I think is what Carl said). I noticed this in the film this time around, though. THe one segment where the circles were prevalent, the clock and the sign, etc all seemed to not only stick on the same circle, but masterfully the circle moved in a circle of its own as well, even while the circles themselves stayed together. I thought it was pretty cool. It was really the first time I've truly appreciated experimental film. Perhaps because this one actually seemed to take extra thought and genuine effort to pull off. I don't think art should be anything easy, and to me, nomatter how well you explain an abstract art, if it wasn't difficult to create, how is it art? Like the guy that took the random news footage and didn't do anything to it, but left it alone and called it art under his name. Who does that?! How is this claimed as art? Perhaps news is art in itself, a mofre practical art form of course, but still art...but just because random footage from rejected news issues was found by you, doesn't mean it's suddenly your art. Especially when you didn't even touch it yourself. That makes no sense to me, just like throwing undeveloped film into a purse and opening and closing the bag to light cannot be called art. Anyone can do that. Heck, I could have taken an unexposed film strip and walked it around in my semi lit closet and called it great art based on my closet. but it isn't art. You didn't plan anything really, and if you did it sure doens't look like it. I've done abstract art myself and I'vde done well at it...but I've also done greatly envolved paintings with elaborate colors and careful lighting. Which one do you think was harder to do? Heck yes. Anyone can slap paint on a canvas, even I can. That doesn't make it true art. True art is concieved over time, brainstorming, and careful planning. Yes, abstract art is still art. I just don't think it's GREAT art. You can stand before me all you want and tell me how cool your process was, but if all I see on the screen is a red and yellow overexposed blur, then I couldn't care less what you were thinking when you made it. I'd rather say what were you drinking....

Anyways, enough of that. My other favorite piece was the nature one in the woods. I forget the name, it was too wierd. Wot the Sod or something. But I liked it alot. It too was abstract, but you could tell more thought went into it than the others. She focused on the leaves and because she pulled so close and kept moving the camera like it was alive, the leaves seemed to come alive. One looked like a skull, and you could tell the filmmaker thought so, too because she kept getting new angles of it, and she seemed to like the shock value of its horrific "face". Another looked to me like a butterfly and it made me feel free and beautiful just looking at it. Others were also funny...the laughing leaves, in which the camera was used to help the illusion by moving it up and down in a laughing motion, the dragonlike faced leaves, adn the pinto horsehead. A few looked like insects. This abstract art I can appreciate because it truly DID do what it claimed to...make you see the forest in a whole new way. To me it seemed it glorified Christ, playing with your minds as it showed an inanimate object as having life, and often humorously at that.