Bronte Daydream self-critique

I am very conflictd over how I feel about this project. I started out with a specific goal in mind and the result is so far abstracted, it doesn’t seem possible. I am however, pleased with the result I achieved, even if it wasn’t planned. My original concept was to mimic either turn of the century silent movies or film noir style using animation over video and stills. The production method remained the same, but my concept was simplified over time.
The end result is somewhat of a self-portrait. I was thinking about the idea of time and how fascinated i am with our connection to the people of the past. People haven't really changed over time. We are all still driven by the same things and have the same human emotions. This project is an expression of the female inclination to swoon over the dark and mysterious figures in fiction. I, myself, am especially guilty of staring at a stand of trees and watching a story unfold in my head only to be brought back to reality.
there's many things I would change about this project, the first being the amount of detail in the facial expressions and body movements. I'd intended to experiment with after effects, but that didn't happen. I wanted to achieve smooth transitions and detailed facial expressions. The jerkiness bothers me. It is, however, a distinct style and in the end, I think it lends itself well to the imaginary "phasing" aspect of this piece.
I am very pleased with the soundtrack as well as the filming. It was tough to only film on cloudy days and with no tripod, sp I think I achieved a soft and muted affect.
If I had more time, I'd focus on small movements and maybe even make the piece longer, too linger on dramatic moments. This piece was hours of work so I'm pleased over all.

Bronte Daydream

Animation Project: "Ode to the Actor" dedicated to TCNJ Musical Theater

final project proposal

My final project is going to stretch my understanding of gesture and special effects in both final cut and after effects. It is going to be a heavily animated sweeping romance. All of the scenery where I will place my characters will be shot in video with the exception of zoomed stills for close-ups on small gestures. I am extremely inspired by imperfect animation that has artifacts of the animator’s hand. I think it adds warmth that plain photos and videos lack. I want my project to have a very overcast feel with subtle and graceful colors, maybe even black and white. I think the combination of animation with manipulated video made to look as if it was filmed in the silent movie era is very compelling.
I am torn over my plot. I am very drawn to history and anything period in it’s look and feel. I want to make a silent animated film with dialogue pages. I want the characters to move and act like Lillian Gish, Charlie Chaplin, and Errol Flynn. Everything will be very melodramatic with characters that mimic the smooth and swooping lines of the early 20th century. For the plot’s setting, I’m torn between Edwardian, Victorian, or turn of the century costuming and subject matter. It will be a corny, yet poignant forbidden love story that ends in tragedy, as if the characters are ghosts haunting the locations.

"Ode to an Actor" self-critique

I am very proud of the result given the immense amount of technological difficulties I encountered during the process. I was greatly inspired by the rotoscoping examples on the blog for the darkened figures, which I just now realized are almost identical to iPod commercials. That's one of my self-critiques. The similarity didn't cross my mind and I hate the unoriginality, but I'm hoping that the animated feature changes the overall feel enough so that it doesn't look like I directly copied a commercial. If given more time, I would like to have included more intricate animations that are interactive with the figure. I would also like to expand the genres so that the audience receives at least eight different settings and visuals. On the whole, the masking done with the figure is quite clean and I'm happy there's no fuzz around his movements. For a small project, I'm happy with the result but would like to expand and pay more attention to detail

Anthony, Ryan and Kyle's Sound Critiques

Anthony:
Ah, losing a valuable piece of expensive machinery. We’ve all done it at some point or another. This piece was successful and unsuccessful at the same time. I am a big fan of spoken internal monologues and this one was very honest and not at all overdone. At the same time, I would have liked to hear more of the uncertainty and panic of misplacing such an important item. I know that even when I lose something as cheap as my student ID, it’s a few good hours of panic and plan-making before I can relax in the knowledge that either I’ve found it or made a replacement plan. The voice and tone seemed a little too calm and bemused for the situation. I did however, appreciate the ambient sounds provided. They were the exact right volume and level of reverb for their surroundings. The fade-in interiors of buildings like Eickoff were dead-on. Really great job! Also the muffled winter footsteps were particularly effective, especially since footsteps tend to be one’s main focus when retracing them. Overall, great job, just would have like more of a build-up to the final discovery and relief. The panic and relief contrast could have been stronger.

Ryan:
Is this you playing the guitar? You are very talented. The first thing that struck me was the sharp tone of the guitar compared the warm and casual tones of your voices. This is both positive and negative in that it communicates the focus of music in your life, but also overshadows and outshines otherwise important dialogue for the narrative. I love seeing creative processes, especially in music. Music is one of my passions but the talent of writing it has always eluded me. I especially loved how ideas were immediately realized audibly to us as if they were already completed the minute they were conceived. Again, the strumming guitar is prominent but also distracting to the verbal creative process. I loved how natural the conversations were between the speakers and how absorbed you, in particular were in the emotional value of the music. The memory evoked halfway through was unclear, again, a result of the overpowering guitar. If that was changed, it would be an especially successful project.

Kyle:

Yet another guitar, might have guessed! Though they share the guitar element, yours is very different from your brother’s. It’s more of a jumbled collage of sounds, almost like a cut and pasted stream of consciousness. It’s very electronics based and I got the visual of speakers, laptops and tine cans while listening. The snipping sound at the beginning was very clear and your sound quality is crisp throughout. Again, music is very prominent and I can see it plays a large role in your day to day perception. I would, however, like to have heard some original sounds and voices in your piece. There’s only so much re-recorded audio can accomplish and the result was slightly impersonal. Some organic contrast sounds would have been nice, but overall, it had a sort of swift beat and rhythm, almost as if it was the sound of checking things off a list, a mix of work and leisure, the sounds of a college student. Though the narrative was unclear, it did come off as a very robotic, youthful rhythm of a life lived through electronics.

The Old Negro Space Program reaction

The Old Negro Space Program spoof takes everything that made Ken Burns Civil War a heavy and evocative slice of history and turns it on it’s head. The result is awkwardness and hilarity. Part of the reason Ken Burns’ original was so successful was that it took the audience deep into the heart of the American crisis while maintaining its gravity and mystery. By zooming in and out of still photos, he achieves motion picture standards of reality and continuity while maintaining the authenticity of the photographs and not attempting to reenact such heavy material that could easily be misrepresented by human error. The untold stories of the narrative lie in the spaces between the stills.
The spoof is very aware of what makes the original successful, so they, in turn, were able to successfully mock the drama of it all. They took note of the extreme authenticity of the photographs, so it was immediately funny when the clumsily photo shopped pictures of the “original black astronauts” were shown and zoomed into, as if zooming was going to make them any less fake. The awkwardness in the fact that you know you are supposed to feel something profound when that effect is being used is what makes it so funny.
Another technique is the juxtaposition of using both primary source speakers and academic figureheads to propel and explain the narrative. The spoof latched onto the effect of having old gritty people going on tangent about the old days while a contrasting self-important professor gives a formal recount and analysis of the events, often reiterating words to appeal to an “audience of lesser intelligence”. In the Ken Burns piece, these academic authorities demand respect and due the emotional evocation of the piece, the audience does not even consider that they are being condescended to. As the parody is totally devoid of authenticity and emotional weight, we are made extremely aware of the stuffy professor’s self-importance and the humor in his constant use of similes.
Perhaps the most hilarious part is their choice of music. Its nearly the same, twanging, meandering fiddle music as Ken Burns and it totally clashes with the subject matter! The moment it starts, you are immediately aware of the inconsistency and to not take it seriously. The gospel music behind the perseverance of the “blackstronauts” is particularly ridiculous. The true finale is the mention of the landing on the moon alongside the wig advertisements in a dramatic pan of a yellowed newspaper. Brilliant.

Project 1

2 Examples of Sampling

The introductory examples of sampling demonstrated a very director approach to gathering audio information from the world, audio sampling in its purest form. When introduced to DAVID BRYNE/BRIAN ENO: MY LIFE IN THE BUSH OF GHOSTS ALBUM
AMERICA IS WAITING, 1986 the listener is immediately aware that the piece is a mixture between rhythmic audio sampling of talk radio broadcasts and what sounds like springs of some sort, along with instrumental supplement to fill in the musical gaps. A base line of funky rhythm and simple musical theme is established within the first fifteen seconds, then follows the humorously rhythmic radio announcer voice. Is it Rush Limbaugh? The phrases are cut, pasted, and repeated as icing overtop the springy funk foundation. It is interesting that humans, and most especially, radio announcers speak in an almost musical manner. This piece uses the harmony is his speech patterns to not only make a catchy song, but also communicate his theme “America is waiting for an event of some sort or another”, “again, again” in a social and political parody. The recognition of the musical and rhythmic aspect of speech is a profound underline to this piece. We as humans live according to time and rhythm that is always felt and rarely expressed. By making voice and sound into musical elements, we see how time’s meter often escapes our notice. In a country that values time as money’s equal it was appropriate to measure a political fear and speculation in a form that is ever-present, music.

Continuing the tradition of finding musical elements in our daily soundtrack is EMERGENCY BROADCAST NETWORK, 1995
FROM THE ALBUM, TELECOMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN. The artist found Rhythm and themes in both pop culture and current event broadcasts and clipped and pasted them like a musical and visual collage humorously resembling the song “Get Down Tonight” by KC & The Sunshine Band. The social codes that both pop culture and the mass media dictate are as cemented in our consciousness as is the passing of time. It is, whether we want it to be or not, a part of who we are and how we think about things in our society. The pop culture clips include Harrison Ford and Mariah Carry interspersed with real life events and broadcasts. Ironically, both worlds, superficial entertainment and global crisis are equally ingested by the American public. The piece is essentially brings about the great paradox of modern American culture: it’s reality is it’s art and it’s art reflects it’s reality. This is a music video using music videos and films about global crisis, while also featuring global crisis. It is real world versus culture—art imitates life, life imitates art. Everything influences itself and is ever-present within our society as shared knowledge. In both pieces lies the truth that everyone lives according to motion, and music is the manifestation of that innate sense.

2 Different Narratives on ubu.ocm

Ezra Pound “The Seafarer (with drums)”

The Harvard Vocarium Readings Recorded in Cambridge, Mass., May 17, 1939

This narrative poetically told the story of an old sailor recounting his days of watch on the tossing seas. He bellows with a quivering age to his English voice and a forlorn tone. He speaks of the nature of Seafarers and their relationship with God, nature, and destiny. He describes the sea spray as an eagle’s scream and alcohol as his muse, all the while rolling over the Rs and relishing in the abundant alliteration. The conclusion that the narrative comes to is that men on the sea do not want for the things land-bound men want and when they settle to their grave, it is with their ever-present hunger for the gold of the unknown.

The story is being told in a rocking cadence, so that as the listener strains to comprehend the words, a rolling sense is achieved. The poem lifts and subsides, a feeling caught between a soothing lull and dizzied nausea. This manner of storytelling is quite repetitive and truly disorienting. The effect however is spot on in illustrating the nature of the high seas. He throws out obscure metaphors and descriptions like “nose-gone companions” to describe old and withering sailors and “dragon tossed seas” to communicate the peril of the seafarer’s quest. The drums in the background are first perceived as ambiguous and superfluous, but after only the first minute, they seem to create a meandering tempo for the wandering words of the Seafarer. They also construct an atmosphere, as they could be the sounds of crashing waves, thunder, the creaks of the ship’s underbelly, etc. The drums also bring to mind the drums of the rowers below deck on slave ships and in movies such as Ben Hur. The almost slave-like relationship the speaker has to the open sea is very appropriate. He both loves and laments his chosen life and his weary non-rest is exhausting.

Robert Whitman: 4 Cinema Pieces. Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1968-- “Window” and “Sink” (1935)

Unlike the Seafarer, “Window” and “Sink” demonstrate real time and fairly unembellished narrative. “Window” is multi-layered, yet subtle in its construction of a large empty room with hardwood floors, which consists of many windows. The figure in the piece first opens the window one by one to reveal the soundtracks of completely separate settings. One suburban, one urban, one rural, and the other very still with only a slight suggestion of soft air and breeze. He opens them and the listener is amused by the possibility that this large warehouse/room could contain portals to many different worlds, existing everywhere at once. The figure then opens all of the windows and addresses the listener asking he/she to observe the activity outside them. Then, as if we were in danger of diverting our attention entirely from the indoors, we hear the phone ring and the hardwood floor reverb as the figure goes to answer it in a familiar, casual manner. “Sink” is similar in that the noises are familiar and in real-time, registering with the audience’s memory as commonplace, but it differs in that it’s a concentrated close-up of daily human activity. We hear the gurgle of the sink and familiar sounds of teeth brushing and shaving. We are then spoken to for the parts we can’t hear, like the way people examine themselves in the mirror. It’s a routine we all share, yet no one really talks about.

“Sink” and “Window” both succeed in creating a distinct setting gin the listeners mind using only sound. The reverb and textures are enough to communicate the size and nature of a space. They are also both repetitive, in case the audience did not comprehend the visual connection the first time the window was opened and closes, he opens another. The sink sounds are so familiar, yet we know it is a different sink than our own because of the subtle differences in the sound of the faucet water splashing against the bowl. We are unconsciously aware of these subtleties in our lives, but this piece brings them into focus. I do believe that the spoken narrative in both pieces is superfluous. I go the point of the piece without any real time words or explanations. “Sink”, however was somewhat successful with the spoken words in that mirror-gazing is inaudible. The prose “spilled toothpaste” and “hot washcloth” give texture and imperfection to the reality being creating. “Water rushing toothbrush washing washcloth” mimics the cadence and texture of the sink noises within words.

Reflection on Audio Links

Notes on Camp, WBEZ: (contributors) Adam Davidson, Julie Snyder 1998

The story is told through interchanging narration and audio clips from the camps themselves. The piece takes six story lines from summer camps relays different narratives to illustrate each scenario. Some, the recent ones written about for the project, have audio clips, while others which recount adult's memories of summer camp do not. All however, are linked with the same earthy harmonica music and create the same atmosphere which illustrates how camp is impervious to outside changes. Kids will always come back to camp no matter what video games may tempt them to stay indoors.

This program literally moved me to tears. By the end I had visual accounts of every camp introduced and made me yearn to be part of the comradery portrayed. It brought me back to my own past and present experiences both going to and working at a summer camp. It’s funny how it’s both a satire and an ode. On one hand, the narrators are almost mocking of the dramas of summer camp while also reminiscing about how camp was the embodiment of childhood. The most poignant moment comes near the end when a girl in her last few hours of camp realizes how much she is going to miss it. In her description of the sensory parts of camp like the slamming door and crunch of the path, we as the audience realize that this is the soundtrack we've heard all along and never paid much attention to either.

Her Long Black Hair, Janet Cardiff 2004

This piece takes walking tours to a whole new level. When it was presented, it required the listener to walk with headphones around London and carry photos with them. The listener, therefor is not only perceptive of their own present surroundings but they are also immersed in the stream of consciousness of the piece that both parallels and differs from what the listener actually sees. The speaker's tone is extremely flat as she weaves in and out of subjects both past and present, allowing the listener to delve inside her head rather than have her as a companion. We're never really sure of who, what or when because the narrative changes perspective to past lives and experiences coinciding with the places on the walk.

This is particularly fascinating because I’m always trying to conjur sensory aspects of ahistory site in order to somehow steep myself in it’s reality—like two hundred years ago, a woman my age might have stood just where I’m standing wearing petticoats and a corset and living a life entirely different from my own, but with the same emotions and feelings. This allows that. You can’t experience a place two-dimensionally and without sound. This is a beautiful way to tell the story and still leave enough for the imagination to hunger for more. This creates a 3-D atmosphere, how sound bounces off difference surfaces and how it erects a landscapes and eras with just sound—how you overhear so many narratives every day and never comprehend any of them and can never hope to know everyone’s story. It’s like the audio for the film of life and gives you a walking companion so that going to unknown places isn’t so alienating.

Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Dreams Telephone Series 2008-10

There was no audio clip to sample for this one but I can imagine the intimacy of picking up a phone and hearing a dream would be startling, especially since we are impulsively programmed to perceive a voice on a phone as direct communication to us. A dream is also something extremely personal it is the way the brain deals with everyday stresses. The way the dream is told is crucial to the presentation, whether it is just recounted vocally or given sound effects and an atmosphere. The approach is not clear.

Robert Ashley She Was A Visitor 1930

This piece begins with a proper-sounding voice stating "She was a visitor" in a very neutral way, almost as if it was just an informative sentence in an audiobook. The sentence repeats every second for 5 minutes, but what changes is the background noise. What starts as slight white noise gradually crescendos to ominous roaring and moaning of an unknown instrument. It's scary and abstract tones lead the listener to wonder was "she" a paranormal visitor? She obviously wasn't a pleasant visitor, or a visitor that did not meet a pleasant end. I find it intriguing that the mind creates so many scenarios in the space of one minute in order to fit the dictations of 4 words "she was a visitor". She becomes so illusive in the listener's mind that the ominous sounds almost allow you to hear her small whispers by the end when the white noise overshadows the dialogue.

John Cage Exerpt from Silence 1969

Whether or not this is meant to be serious is unclear. What seems like poetic prose is basically an intellectual projection and analysis of the modern world, or 1960s modern world, and US Imperialism. He remarks on the greedy nature of Americans and of mankind. To illustrate these truths, he uses simplistic voice recording and verbally creates visual metaphors to explain his logic.

The War of the Worlds, Orson Wells 1938

I could imagine this would be frightening to younger audiences since this 1938 radio broadcast involves the audience within the story. As radio was really the only mass media back then, it was much easier to create an illusion. The broadcast is dramatic but not too much so that it loses it's authenticity. The beginning is a bit humorous due to

the constant return to dance music between world events unfolding. It treats the listener as just that, a listener, as if the events of the radio show were happening right then and they were receiving news of it.

One by one each radio station fails and goes silent, giving a sense of abandonment and then is picked up at the end an ordinary citizen. It is apparent that The Twilight Zone andI Am Legend were heavily influenced and inspired by the themes in this broadcast. The sound effects in the background of the radio field announcers are also ominous and impressively realistic for the time period.