Wednesday, August 26, 2009

scratch film junkies

While watching the short films created by the Scratch Film Junkies I was struck by with a few different thoughts and ideas. The first thing that immediately drew my attention was their use of sound. For the first few seconds of the movie the screen remains black, that along with the weird music created mystery and made me want to know what was about to happen next. I also noticed that the types of music and sound changed with the images on screen, in my mind creating different "acts" or "scenes." This is an interesting parallel between conventional narrative or documentary movies. Although this work was much more abstract then those types of films, there was still a form or organization and division. During the film there was an interesting mix between geometric images and abstract ones. The shapes on the screen were sometimes recognizable, such as polygons and circles, and other times they were weird floating shapes that would at time only appear for a few seconds at a time. A few technical questions also came to mind. I was wondering if some of the multilayer sequences were done during production or later through editing. Perhaps they used multiple panes of glass to have several things going on in the mid, back, and foreground, or maybe they superimposed the images in post production. Throughout the work, the images flashed in sync with the music and made me wonder; did they choose the music first and then created the images to go along with it, or vice versa? Or maybe they did the animations, and then created the music to match them? It seemed as if they were trying to visually represent the music and sounds that were playing through the animations, like every note and beat was somehow accompanied by an image or series of images. The animations flowed with the music, almost bringing it alive on the screen. Overall the work was extremely visually stimulating! It took me away from the usual visual experience of regular movies because there was no plot to follow or characters to figure out. This allowed me to let my mind wonder and enjoy the art placed in front of me. This in turn made me wonder about how this art was created, which drew attention to the medium of film in itself. Most films and television shows attempt to recreate reality and take the viewer away into a different world. This film, on the other hand, did not attempt to make what was on screen seem realistic, and thus was more engaging to me, because it made think about the technical aspects of their work. It also reminded me of a structured dream. Since there were no narrative constraints it almost seemed as what one might experience if they let their mind wonder with no restrictions, although there was obviously some structure to the movie. Another thing I wondered about was the total cost of this production. The materials they used seemed to be easily accessible and not very expensive. I’m interested in creating experimental films, but I do not yet have to know how on how to go about this. Sometimes it seemed like the film was being shown in slow motion, I also wanted to know if they somehow accomplished this effect during the actual production or through editing.