Filmaking today

Film making today is in danger of becoming boring. there are to many idea that are being uses over and over again. There needs to be some new innovations in film making. Filmmakers have to develop a new way of thinking when it comes to stories and writing techniques. Directors need to be more imaginative. Studios need to be understanding of this and allow filmmakers more time to develop new and better ideas. We just need a bit of time and then something new and exciting will appear. It's that simple.

New Article from Cinema Scope

As I was searching through cinema-scope.com one day, I came across a very interesting article. It was called “The Art of Not Seeing: On Blindness and blindness by Jason Anderson.” The article started off by talking about a recent book by Alberto Manguel, a man who spent several years being a reader and a viewer for Borges. Borges was a film critic for an Argentinean magazine in the late forties and early fifties, until he went blind. A few years after going completely blind, Borges met Manguel in a bookstore in Buenos Aries. However, the two occasionally attended films and Manguel would describe the images to Borges. The author of this article states, “ Nevertheless, the writer—a film critic for the Argentinian literary magazine Sur from 1931 to 1944—remained an enthusiastic moviegoer, especially when it came to gangster pictures and musicals.” Alexander writes about how it was absolutely incredible for Manguel to sit and hear what Borges reaction was to the films. He states, “ He comments on the epic quality of the rivalry between the gangs, on the role of the women, on the use of the colour red.” There is an irony to that though, Borges always stated that the first colors that were robbed of him were red and black. I think its extremely interesting that he comments on the use of red when that is the color he was robbed of first. I think that there was something in his mind that from the moment he lost it, made him understand the color better. He developed a fondness to it and felt he knew more about the intimacy of the color and how it was represented and what it stood for. Alexander then goes into describing, for a sighted person, what Borges viewing of films must have looked like. He then uses that idea to begin to review that latest adaptation of José Saramago’s novel, by Fernando Mereilles, about a city’s collapse after all the people in the city go blind except one. Alexander goes about reviewing this movie in a strange way, he compares elements of it to other films. He goes on to state that “Blindness may also belong to a category of literary adaptations—including Gus Van Sant’s Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993), Terry Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), and Alan Rudolph’s Breakfast of Champions (1999)—whose dogged faithfulness to their sources inadvertently prove just how unfilmable the books were in the first place.” I chose to read about this article for this reason actually, I was completely entranced by the comparisons that Alexander was making. I have really seen anybody review like this before, I’m more used to critics commenting on how a film is like another, on the whole. It was fascinating to read how elements were similar to elements of other films and not just to hear how a film is going to be film this other film that has already been compared to other films. It gets confusing, like my last statement, but confused is usually how I feel after reading a review and I wasn’t confused after reading this. I understood what Alexander was and saying and how he said it. I believe that Alexander was not only trying to say how he felt about “Blindness,” which I believe he didn’t like the film, but he was trying to get across another point using Borges as a reference. Borges began to see a rather dull and strange nighttime after he lost the ability to see the color black. It went into a bluish-green color, that was rather drab. Alexander states that “maybe what he saw was more like the milky, slightly blue-tinted whiteness that continually swallows up the frame in Fernando Mereilles’ new adaptation of Blindness.” Films are becoming a bit drab in there design and execution as well and I believe that is what Alexander is trying to communicate. Films are in danger of losing their appeal because so many things are like so many other things that have already been done in the movies. Which I believe is true, most of the movies that come out now aren’t very good. They’re just trying to something that another film has already done. In some cases, new films come out and try to copy the idea of a film before it and completely ruin what was special about the idea behind the film. Whether that be humor, drama, action, romance, etc. The article felt very natural to me and I thought it was very clever of Alexander to use the failing sight of a film critic as the basis to write his review of a film.

Aaron Ximm

A few weeks ago, I attended a performance by Aaron Ximm. Ximm is a sound artist who goes out into the world and records the sounds of the world. Anything, he will record it. He then takes these sounds that he has gathered, into his studio and turns them into sound art. He jumbles them up, adds effects, and mixes them and then presents them to the public. When I went in, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from his pieces. I thought that they might get a little weird and try to be overly ‘artsy,’ and by that I mean he would come across as trying to hard to prove something instead of working from the heart. However, Ximm’s evening of sound was nothing short of amazing. The room was completely pitch black and Ximm even encouraged us to close our eyes. The sounds came rolling out at me and I sat back and closed my eyes and I began to wonder what these sounds were. I couldn’t stop listening, I needed to listen closely and try to identify what I was hearing. Ximm’s sound were incredible to listen to. The clarity and volume of the sounds just pulverized you and you could move. You needed to listen, you wanted to listen and see where this man was going to go with this. To me, his pieces were like a mini-operetta, and were broken up into separate movements. I also began to notice that there were some incredible rhythms Ximm created in the piece. One example comes to mind in Ximm’s first piece. What sounded like a thousand different voices saying different things began to morph and become a phrase we could hear. Then it would split off again into some madness but eventually return to another phrase we could understand. I believe I was tapping my foot along with the piece at that point. I picked out a beat and felt it, which I’m sure Ximm felt as well. In fact, that I point that Bach brought up in our lecture about hearing music when you least suspect it. Ximm accomplished that well here. They had an incredible flow to them as well, each piece felt right in it’s placement, it didn’t feel awkward. It was just an environment of relaxation and you just need to sit and listen. It’s in our nature to try and to identify sounds, the funny thing about that is I didn’t force myself to imagine the images, it happened completely on it’s own. I wanted a visual compliment to these sound naturally. Which is very similar but also different than Sutton’s work with “At Sea.” Both pieces were designed to get the audience involved in the work. They wanted us to help them out. They were asking for our help, they wanted us to complete the work. In the privacy of our own minds. However, both in different way. Hutton by picture with no sound and Ximm with sound but no visual. When I was watching “At Sea,” I was a bit on edge and was trying a bit to hard to hear what the images would sound like. I think that took away from the experience, looking back on it now. The silence in the theater also took away from the experience due to the fact that you can hear every movement that everyone in the theater makes. I was just a bit into creating the sounds and maybe should have paid more attention to the film. With Ximm, I felt very relaxed, it was easier to imagine what sound looked like rather than making sounds for a picture. At least for me.

Peter Hutton's "At Sea"

I recently attended a screening of Peter Hutton’s “At Sea,” which is a film that he made documenting the birth, life and death, of a huge sea vessel. The scale of the film is immense. It is mostly made up of these wide shots, covering massive ship and cranes need to construct the ship. There are very few close up shots of people in the film, for the most part they are these little dots moving through out the frame. What is so unique about this film however is that it’s silent. There is absolutely no sound what so ever throughout the entire film. Hutton offers us these amazing images to look at with no sound compliment to it. You have to sit there in complete silence, and it’s a bit distracting. You can hear the people around you breathing and coughing. It gets a bit eerie. However, above all that, you can’t look away from the screen. The images hold your attention extremely well, and you begin to image what these scenes would sound like. This is the only film that I have ever seen that was completely silent. All other silent films I’ve seen have had at least a music track to accompany it. This was up to me to decide what it sounded like. Looking at all the great big machines as they are putting the ship together, I began to imagine how loud it must be in this setting. All the cranes, pumps and people yelling on top of all those sounds to give instructions to other workers. An entire new world began to develop in my head and I was trying to keep up with the changes on the screen, in my head. I was attempting to make, what could be the soundtrack and sound of this film, as realistic as possible in my head. With the changing frames, I wanted to change the sound in my head as quickly as a I could and really try to put myself in the setting. This became very true once the ship was launched and was out at sea. This offered a completely new set of sounds to be imagined. You know have the water crashing up against the ship in the background and all the various sea noises. Birds, other ships, the wind, whistles, these were all sounds that I was trying to place in their proper context of the frame I was seeing in my head. I was just so entranced by the clarity and colors on the screen, that I wanted the soundtrack to put me there. It became almost like music to me when the ship was out at sea and it was a bit surprising to me that it was taking a musically form in my head. Of course, I am musician and often think of things in a musical way, but these were sounds that I was imagining, and now they were taking a musical form. That is a point that Glenn Bach brought up during his lecture to our class as well. He stated that, “If I’ve made you hear music in something that really isn’t music, I’ve done my job.” And I believe that Sutton had a very similar view on sound. He wanted the viewers to have to imagine the sounds, but he knew himself that there was a great rhythm to the images he was showing. The sounds accompanying the film, if there was to be sounds, would have to have rhythm to them as well, otherwise it would be a bit awkward, seeing as how there are so many different sounds represented in the images. It was an event to see this film, each viewer had the opportunity create their own soundtrack to the film. You had to bay attention, you had to be on your toes. And I can’t imagine that I was the only one in that theater you was trying to come up with what it might sound like.

Article #2

Another article that caught my attention over the past few weeks on cinema-scope.com, was something very different than the Farber piece. This article was more of what I am doing right, I’m suppose to be writing about what is interesting to me in a piece of art and explain my reasoning. The article was entitled, “The Exiles,” it was written by someone who only refers to themselves as Quintin. The article is talking about a classic film by Kent Mackenzie called “The Exiles.” This was filmed in the late 1950’s but not released until much later and well after the death of Mackenzie. The film has been circulating at screenings around the world due to Thom Anderson using a few clips in one of his pieces. The film is about a group of Native Americans that no longer live on a ranch, but in the city. However, they live in the slums of the city. The two main people are Yvonne and Homer, Homer is a drunk and Yvonne a house wife.

What I found so interesting about this article, was the fact that it wasn’t a review of the film, it was more of a justification of why this was a great and important film. Quintin goes into a great deal of detail about the theme of ambiguity in the film and how he feels about it. He states that it starts out a bit dark with a brief history of the Native Americans but then goes to the a scene of a woman shopping and loving it. And the author just loves it. He talks about how the film shows that the rich and the poor are still together and having a night life. Even though they are poor, they still have a the options to go out and be out on the town. Quintin states “The Exiles shows that the distance between the rich and the poor in the U.S. was immensely smaller that it is now.” It was great to read an opinionated review from someone who actually enjoyed seeing and writing about the film. There is a definite enthusiasm that comes across in this piece. He ends the piece with this, “There are not many films that deal with the obvious, but so important, theme of film: the proletarian class having fun.” He was excited to see this movie and wanted to tell everyone that it is a masterpiece and needs to be seen. That was incredibly refreshing to see in this article. Usually when I read articles, even opinion articles, they seem very dry and bland. They all seem to be written in a monotone voice and lack what it takes to keep me reading. Quintin, who ever he maybe, kept me interested and even got me interested in the movie. I think I’m going try and track it down. I would be very happy to understand exactly all of what he was express in his writing of this article.

Article #1

I have been following a the website cinema-scope.com over the last few weeks and have come across many interesting articles. About a week ago, I read one article that really fascinated me, because I really didn’t understand it at first and needed to read it over a few times. The format of this article is very strange and not conventional at all. The article is called “Manny Farber and All That Jazz,” written by Jean-Pierre Gorin. The article is about how in 2006, Jean-Pierre Gorin held a tribute for the late writer and painter, Manny Farber. This tribute was held at the University of California, San Diego. The article starts off in a very convention way, a description of the night and the events that occurred. Gorin states, “An exhaustive affair, the evening included a panel discussion, live music and excerpts from various Farber films.”

The main presentation of the of the night was something I have never heard of, a 4K technology presentation of 13 of Manny’s paintings. The 4K technology is a military mapping technology and showed these paintings from a digitally created perspective that was the same as Manny’s, as he painted them. That sounds really cool. To be able to experience a piece of art, the same way the painter did, that’s a completely new idea in the world of interactive art and really needs to be build upon and expanded more, in my opinion. Now, as I stated, I was really fascinated by this article because of the format. After this paragraph of introducing what happened that night, Gorin has included what was handed out to the spectators of this tribute. I thought that was an interesting choice because there really only one paragraph in this article, that is like an article. The rest is essentially just a list of what Gorin wants the people to get out of this night and what he is trying to accomplish with this tribute. I’m not sure if I’ve ever really seen that before in a publication and I thought it was a bit confusing, but it worked There are 10 different, as Gorin puts it ‘precepts,’ that he has written for these people. They are written a very interesting way. He repeats phrases a lot to get points across. For example the second precept begins, “Let the paintings be seen. Let the paintings be seen. Let the paintings be seen.” he wants these people to look and enjoy these paintings. He doesn’t want them to just look and be like, oh yeah, that looks nice. He wants them to really look at them. And with the 4K technology, he wants these people to experience the painting and truly get their minds around it. That’s what I really liked about these precepts, was that Gorin would go into a lot of detail about Manny and what we should be looking at in these pieces. However, the way it is written, there is an overriding message of just enjoy these paintings and really look at them and appreciate them for the beauty that they are. Precept 8 really explains this well, “There is a fundamental playfulness and pervading sense of pleasure that every inch of a Farber painting or article communicates. Try to get some of it in the way this evening will function.”

Field Report #2

Each year the Milwaukee Art Museum hosts a large number of very exciting guest exhibits, and this year is no exception to that. From October fourth to mid-January, the museum will be hosting, one the most exciting shows yet, Act React. The exhibit is comprised of contemporary pieces that call for the viewer to activate, and be a part of the piece. Interactive art is a modern art form in our increasingly digital world, that is based around viewer participation. The artists that gave created these 10 pieces are all pioneers in the field of interactive art and all are very entrancing and fascinating to see. Some of the more notable pieces however include pieces by Scott Snibbe and, possibly the most interesting, Janet Cardiff.
As you walk into the exhibit, a large, square pad is placed on the floor next to the entrance of the exhibit. A large projector is shining down on this pad and as you walk across it, a line appears on the pad in-between you and another person. This pad on the floor is really called a retroreflective floor. The piece only works if there are two or more people on this pad a given time. This is a piece by Scott Snibbe entitled, Boundary functions. As the viewers walk around this pad, the lines separating them, move as they move, while staying an exact distance from the people. The only way to make the line disappear is to reach out and physically touch the person. The piece invites and holds the viewers attention and participation. Just run around and notice that the line is will follow you where ever you may be standing. The movement and non-breaking down of the line separating you and another , also opens the door for some interpretation of the piece, why Snibbe is having you do this? There is a boundary separating you from the others, and is keeping a certain distance from others, could that mean something? Perhaps Snibbe is making a comment on our human society. Maybe we all keep boundaries from others, and the only way to get rid of boundaries are to touch and become one with other beings. The artist isn’t there to offer any enlightenment so its up to a viewers own imagination. This piece would be nothing without the viewer there, it wouldn’t even work to start off with. It needs a person to even turn the thing on. But beyond that, its up to you to interpret this piece. All the he gives you is a line to follow and you are to build off of that and go from there.
Possibly the strangest, but yet amazing, pieces in Act and react is Janet Cardiff’s To Touch. It is a sound activation piece, where you walk into a dark room, with a spot light on an old wooden table. Due to the low light around the rest of the room, the 20 different speakers used, are more like little black shadows and unable to define what they are. Once the table is touched, strange noises begin to a rise from the corners of the room. The sounds become louder and human voices begin saying disjointed sentences like, your skin’s so soft” and “out your hand on my breast.” Unsure of where this is all coming from, a viewer must then listen more closely to comprehend what exactly is going on. But the visual stays the same, just a wooden table. The piece relies on the sound effect and words being said all around the room. You must now paint the picture in your own mind. You are provided with what the picture may sound like, but the exact detail of the setting is up to you. This piece works so well on an artistic level. Lets say we have a painting of the outdoors in spring. Now we have all the detail of the landscape, the sky and the people in the image. However, we are never offered with an idea of what this painting might sound like. This is coming from a whole new direction, and new art form. The freedom to make up an image in your mind and be provided with a sound counterpart to that, is simply an phenomenal experience. Cardiff offers nothing but room for a viewer to be involved with this experience. Its up to you, you decide what the image is and what exactly is going on. Without sight is up to the imagination, however with sound, sight becomes almost unnecessary in art at times due to the fact that we can just make it up in our own minds. We have the ability to be creative, lets use it and see what happens.
While both of these pieces are very much similar, they are also very different from one another. They both are, fundamentally, interactive art pieces that call for the activity and involvement of an audience. Both of these artists want to know what you, the viewer thinks, so they leave room for you to bring in your own interpretations. However, they call upon you in different amounts. With To Touch, Cardiff leaves visual involvement for the viewer. You have to paint the picture in your mind. But she provides an audio compliment to this, so there is some that the artist includes in this piece. I feel that with Boundary Functions, Snibbe has left it all to the viewer. All he provides is a line in between you an another. It’s all up to you at the point, you have to explain this for yourself. With To Touch, the audio is a bit of a clue as to what is meant with the piece, Boundary Functions doesn’t have that. To Touch also has a bit of an emotionally effect on the viewer that Boundary functions doesn’t have as well. With To Touch, the sound effect and voices were chosen to set a mood with the piece. They are similar in tone and the way pitches change. Snibbe’s work has a bit of a mood as well, it is meant to be a fun piece. To get the viewer to walk, run, hop gallop etc. around the piece. Moods being set up in a piece, is something that I’ve only heard in music and it was cool to that other artists, were using a mood in a visual way.

Field Report #1

I wasn’t able to get out and see any of the great artistic features around the city of Milwaukee in last few weeks, due to my job, however I did read a very interesting article online. It was entitled “Waiting For Godot In A Wasteland.” Paul Chan, the writer and director of “Baghdad: In No Particular Order,“ along with a few supporting art companies from New York staged the play ‘Waiting for Godot’ in the streets of New Orleans. This took place towards the end of 2007, more than two years after the horror of Hurricane Katrina. These streets had long been striped of any human existence and various plant and flora had begun to turn these area into virtually, swamp land. The play is about two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, they are waiting for their friend Godot to come and tell them what to do next and give them some direction. However, they are told on several different occasions that Godot will not becoming today, but they still wait.

As soon as I read that Paul Chan was the main force behind this unusual production, I immediately wanted to hear more about it. What I personally find so interesting is that it was performed in the streets, broken down and terrible looking streets. I thought that was a great choice. It adds to the confusion, the loss and the lack of direction that the characters and the message of the story are trying to convey. The vast
and barren streets are representative of what the characters are going through in there minds. Abandonment, of there friend and the person who would guide them, Godot. Having it be the real thing, out in a real street, makes it that more intense to the viewer. To me it would almost be like watching reality than a play. Two men in the street, drunk, lost, in need of help, trying to be humorous to get through this terrible problem. It’s really heavy if you think about it like that, it begins to raise questions in the viewers mind. What are these people going to do exactly, should we help them?

The question enters our minds, and we begin to take make create our own ideas as to why they are out here. That is the very essence of we have been talking about in class this last month. You create a piece, knowing what you want out of it but you leave room for questions, ideas and attitudes that the viewer might bring out into the piece. I love that about Paul Chan, he brings the viewer into the piece. With “Baghdad: In No Particular Order,” he showed what life in Iraq was like, without any introduction. The film just started and jumped around from person to person. That made me wonder if there was any connection between these people and why he chose these particular people. It got me involved in the piece. I began to take me own meaning away of why these people were in
this film and what they meant to the film. He did that with “Waiting For Godot’ as well. He put it out in a setting that would bring the audience it to it by breaking away the barrier of the stage. There was no longer a place for the actors and a place for the audience in the conventional sense, they were all out in the street together, sharing the same experience but being forced to draw some conclusions on their own. In my opinion, that is the mark of a true artist. Create something that is real and interesting but yet mysterious at the same time and force the viewer to become involved. Being able to paint a beautiful picture or act in a play is one thing, but to create a piece that draws everyone in and offers no flat out meaning, is something that we need more of in the world today.

Film 202 Art Journal

Over the next semester, I have decided that I am going to follow cinema-scope.com. I have chosen this web site for one reason alone, diversity. There are a number of different articles about many different topics. I just read an article about the mastery of Jean-Claude Van Damme. I would never in a million years think of him as a master but this article was explaining why he is. But there were also articles about music in movies, plays and other art. I think its great that this website doesn't just focus on one aspect but all sorts of different aspects. That sounds very appealing to me.