Film manipulation: Second Response

After working on this project I simply don't understand how the film makers (that we watched in class the first day) achieved their animations and motion. The difficult part about this assignment is that there are so many frames all so small that it is hard to draw in detail on every single one. Mason and I intended to show the birth and death of the world from start to finish. We partially achieved this, but I do not think the viewer would extract that information and understand it. Instead of drawing in very fine detail we started the film off with our black strips we made in the dark room, then transitioned to a blue paint, sharpie, and oil texture showing drops of water filling up the frame then flooding it represent water, then a green oil and paint texture representing land, then a tree formation animation, then clips from Trapper John to show human formation on which I scratched fire to show the destruction of humans, and finally the magazine transfer to show the aftermath of the earth. Now typing this on my computer this idea seems pretty out there. Either way, I was stoked to work on this and even more stoked to see the final product. Its really something special when you use film and cannot access it until many days after. Not that we needed to let our film develop but it was the same sort of feeling. Not seeing what you are shooting or creating builds up so much hype for footage as opposed to instant satisfaction you get out of digital cameras- which is not much. It is still good today to have a balance of digital and film to cover all aspects of the art. Who knows, if some students hit it big they may be shooting feature films on film stock instead of digital because they learned the art of film in this class. AND we havent even done our bolex projects which I am even more stoked for!