Ann Arbor Film Festival

My trip to the Ann Arbor Film Festival Wednesday March 28th had its ups and downs. In the lobby of the theater there was art displayed throughout. The best piece was a 3 screen interactive piece arranged vertically that allowed the user to click a switchboard to change what each screen had on it. They transitioned side to side as they switched. They represented the head, body, and legs of a person.
The 1st movie I saw was very old. It was shot in film. The subject was simple home movies. There was no sound. It was one of the most amateur things I had ever seen. Recently, my family converted our home movies to DVD and even they had better quality than this movie. My families movies were older too, so there are no excuses.

The next 2 movies shown were pretty much the same concept. Their main focus seemed to be to make it look "trippy". It was very disappointing that they lacked a concept and that they kept repeating the same goofy effects over and over. It may have been interesting for a minute but it dragged on. The music for both was annoying ambient tones. This matched the dreadfulness of the video. One positive thing I took away from the 3rd movie was and effect that I had previously came across by accident during our 1st critique of project 2. This reinforced my use of it for my final project.

After the 3rd movie, my friends and I couldn't take it any longer. We left the theater and peeked our heads into the other screening. Before we walked in we saw a man naked in a field playing with himself. This was even more disturbing than the other movies! We decided that since we drove almost 2 hours to see some movies that we would wait it out and go in when he was done. We went into the theater 10 minutes later and sat down. On the screen was a man talking into the camera about his dad. Then, the screen split into 4 sections and other things started happening while he continued speaking. It was hard to tell what was going on in the other sections but 1 screen looked like 2 people having sex. Later, it became more graphic. Within time, it became obvious that it was 2 men. I am angry that they did not warn us about this because I could have brought my younger brother to this event. This is not the kind of thing you can surprise a family of people with. We left immediately. This has ruined my experience for film festivals. Next time I will have to do more reading before attending.

Alex Hancook Artist Site

http://alexhancook.weebly.com/

Shadow

Shadows are silhouettes opposite the light source. They are dark an typically undefined. We recognize our own shadow only because it is right next to us. In Jeffery's blog, he gives examples of shadows as well as some quotes. None of these pictures relate closely to the abstractions he has presented in class. The shadows presented are more defined and deliberate. His work is up for interpretation. There is an additional beauty in his work because it includes color. The only way for a shadow to have color is if there is some sort of transparent filter. This is a unique effect not seen much in everyday life. A few examp,es I can think of are cars that have tinted windows and sunglasses. There is a lot of artistic potential with shadows. You could take it in many directions, or simply apply them to an unrelated project.

I lent my helmetcam to a friend, Nick, the past few weeks and he came up with a little ski video in Colorado.
http://vimeo.com/38511011
The camera is not pointed at himself, but directly in front of him. Because of the suns position, he created a shadow in front of himself. The camera picked up his shadow instead of him. As we watch the footage, we forget that we are watching his shadow because it imitates him so well. I thought that I was watching Nick ski, rather than his shadow.

Perception V Reality

I enjoy this topic for its aesthetic value as well as its concept. It is an escape from reality and also a trick to our eyes. With photoshop, the illusion of seeing what isn't real becomes seamless. We can express any concept by altering a picture to our favor. In Kelsey's project, she showed an original image before showing the photoshopped version. I thought this was extremely effective because it starts us in reality before breaking away to the person's perception.

Picturesque Geography, Flint to Detroit

After working on timelapses using pictures for a few months, I have learned a lot about the process. There is still much to learn but I have figured out how to make them much faster. Many of the examples in the Finding Oregon video include a motor that I do not own. They are slightly expensive and since I am not making money from my timelapses yet, I don't think it is a good investment. My friend just ordered one from Europe so maybe I can play with his. Aside from the motor shots, I learned how to properly expose a timelapse that changes lighting. I learned the best way to convert the pictures to video without crashing the computer. I learned that tripods are absolutely necessary! I learned how to steady clips in after effects as well as merge them together.

food and color

I heard from a psychological study that we tend to eat 33% less in a blue room than a yellow or red one. I also heard that if the color of our food matches the color of our plate, we tend toeat significantly less. This goes to show that colors have a great effect on the food we eat. They alter our impression of food. Food generally has a specific color depending on what it is. We now have the ability to dye our food to change how we may feel about it. It is still the same food, just a new color. Many foods are only a color because of food coloring. The creators had to think of what color they wanted it to be and why.

Stop-Motion: The Circle of Life

Stop motion is very cool! It retains the high quality of a picture and is exported as a movie. Our eyes only need so much information in order to understand the motion that is being presented. It is amusing because real life is not in stop motion. We are immediately taken in to a new world with stop motion videos. Special effects can be easily manipulated because you have the ability to set up each shot. Photoshop has endless possibilities so working with photos is a plus. I have found with my current project that I need to compress my photos in order to not crash the computer.