media, rights?

I have always felt that art in general would work better if it was freely shared among the community. I don’t believe that people should be able to profit from others’ work without adding something original, but I do strongly feel that if something I create can bring inspiration to someone else to make something that is meaningful to them, they should go ahead and use my work. Such a creative process is exemplified in On the rights of man article. A single meaningful photograph inspired paintings, flyers, tee-shirts, etc. etc. The coolest part of that process was that because of this inspiration more and more people became aware of the problem at hand; knowledge was passed along. As far as credit goes I’m not sure how I feel about this issue. It would have been nice for Miss Garnett to mention the original photographer, I know if I had taken the picture, I would have wanted at least a thank you, but I don’t think that she should be sued or criticized because she recreated this photograph in an entirely different medium. As the Ecstasy article mentions, or at least this is what I got out of it, we are surrounded with all sorts of media all of the time, everything is mixed together, and some of the best works of literature, music, and art, have come into being because of the same type of “plagiarism” Garnett was sued for. The tradition of borrowing/ building on other people’s works of art goes back as far as Shakespeare, and probably even further. In this day and age there are too many laws and regulations; ways for us to try and hurt each other when that time could be spend doing something much more productive. The stupid napster fiasco is a perfect example of this ridiculousness. Suing kids as young as twelve… give me a break, what is the purpose of this? Did Metallica really need those few thousands of dollars this lawsuit took away from hundreds of people who were probably not very well off to begin with. I understand that artists whose livelihood depends on the sales of their works being upset about it being shared freely, but I also think that this free share of media can bring about more fans and followers who will eventually contribute to the artists’ success by going to see them perform, or buying their merchandise, or even passing their work along to others who will do the same. Many underground musicians post their work freely online for people to use and share with one another, perhaps because they realize this. The business of art has been spoiled by having so many branches of people who make money off the artist legally, i.e. record companies, producers, advertisers, and the list goes on and on, but instead of cutting out these middle men who at times serve very little purpose, the lawyers are going after those who want to enjoy the art just for its own sake. Maybe I don’t want to go buy a CD in a record store, if I’m aware that the original creators of this music wont’ see more then maybe a penny of every ten dollars in sales! This is why I personally don’t’ spend money on CDs unless I’m buying them from the musicians themselves. I support the artistic community as much as I can, but I refuse to buy into the corporate portion of this business; hope that’s something I keep along my way through my chosen profession.

Yes Men

I truly enjoyed watching Yes Men in class last week. I had no idea that anyone could carry out such an elaborate impersonation of cooperate representatives without going to jail. The point of the film that really stuck with me was that the other people at the various conventions they went to, not only didn’t kick them out, but reacted as if the information they were presenting was totally acceptable. If the top employees of one of the largest global corporations in existence can accept the concept of a phallus shaped observation monitor that sends out electrical impulses to various workers, the problems this world has to deal with are much worse then I had previously imagined. At least the Australian students in the film reacted with anger and frustration to the group’s presentation. If they hadn’t I would have walked out of that film severely depressed. I was also impressed with how much preparation and work the ‘yes men’ did in order to accomplish their stunts, and it was also nice to see them get financial sponsorship. The Yes Men have taken the concept of the culture jam and perpetuated it into live action/ the real world. As opposed to taking things out of context and creating a new meaning, they dive into the thing itself and show how ridiculous the concepts that powerful people are willing to put up with. How conformity of their cooperate world has taken away every last bit of free thought away…The people they interact with at the conference do not actually matter to them, it’s the stories in the papers, the publicity, the film that get their message out to the general public. The conference attendees are just puppets that dance along to their plan. As far as this assignment I’m not quite sure where to begin, but I usually don’t get struck with an idea for a project until the due date is fast approaching, so I’m not too worried about. I did create a culture jam for Shannon’s intro to editing class, and it came out pretty good in my opinion. I remember it took me like twelve straight hours of editing to complete that assignment, so I will try to plan better for this one. I appreciate the fact that the yes men are actually making a difference with their work and I am inspired to once again create something that I feel strongly about, I’m just not quite sure what at the moment.

long take

I loved working on the long take last weekend, even though it was on a saturday. I got to operate the camera which was very exciting for me because i've never worked with a 16 mm camera before. I was pretty nervous about getting all of the setting correctly, but after carefully following instructions i think i got a hold of it. I still treat film as such a delicate substance, when in actuality its not as fragile as i like to think that it is. After loading the camera we spend the majority of our allowed time planning out the long take. Luckily we had already come up with a concept we were going to shoot the previous class, so all we had to do was block our actors and get the timing right. We used a wheelchair dolly to track our long take. Getting accustomed to sitting in it was a little bit of a challenge. I had some trouble finding a position that was comfortable, and practical. I had to sit in such a way where i could steady the camera from bouncing around, as well as be able to look through the view finder. Eventually i sat across the chair with my legs hanging from one side and held the camera steady against my knee. The dolly worked well, although there were problems with the uneven sidewalk and cracks. It was hard to keep the camera steady but I did the best I could. We blocked and rehearsed the shot five or six different times, with the actors doing their blocking and me following them along pretending to shoot. The timing worked out pretty well, although we didn't get the final shot in the end because we ran out of tape. I believe i might have set the fps a little too high on the camera, I will have to make sure to double and triple check this the next time i work on a similar project. The sun was on our side it seems, when we were ready to shoot the real thing the clouds gave way to a perfect window of opportunity. I had a good time watching the film being developed, someday i hope to be able to developed some of my personal work in this way, at least now i'll some idea of what to do if this happens. When i saw the developed film i was a little concerned because so much of it was dark, but then realized that it was because of the brick columns we used in our shot which stretched across the entire minute of footage. It actually came out looking great, and I can't wait to start working on the sound editing for this assignment. To be honest I was a little surprised that it came out looking that good, but i have low confidence in my abilities to operate camera, which is something i need to overcome ASAP because I hope to operate equipment and cameras as a profession some day, and confidence is something I will need to project to potential employers. I enjoyed looking at the negative image of our long take, and sort of wish we could leave it looking this way, but it’ll probably look even better after me and my partner take it into final cut. I’m not quite sure yet of what sort of sound track I want to add to this footage, but I’m sure we will come up with something great. So far it is reminiscent of some sort of skate board commercial, and I wish to steer the project away from that direction. Anyways, I had a great time working on this assignment, and hope to continue such work on my own in the future.

48 hours...

I'm intrigued by the idea of working with a mystery prop to create a short film. I am, however, intimidated by the restriction of not being able to use any sort of video camera or even the video mode on a digital still camera. Technology and me are at constant odds, and always have been. I've never worked with a scanner or copier except in the usual ways, and although I’m interested to try to use these machines as film making tools, I’m scared that some simple technical problems will come up that will drive me insane. Problems such as converting the files to jpgs or importing them into final cut or after effects, or even exporting to quicktime. I guess it will be a learning experience but I would also like my final product to be something I'm proud to have my name on, and I'm scared this might not be the case. Its a good idea to use a cell phone camera, but I have no clue on how to get such videos onto a computer to begin with. While writing this I'm realizing that maybe I need to go back to some older methods of image capture. Even something as simple as animating jpgs can turn out really well if I spent enough time on it, but I want to include something more original. Taking pictures of a flip book is an interesting thought as well. I’ve also considered making something like the phenakistoscope, but I don’t know if I will be able to do this. Hand drawing intricate animated scenes will be time consuming but it seems like the rest of it wouldn’t be that hard; making a spinning disk with slits in it. I would have to bring a mirror to class for people to be able to watch this, and would have to include some other type of film to make the whole minute. Maybe I could have different stations set up to where the viewer could watch the phenakistoscope for like twenty seconds and then move to watch the rest of the film somewhere else. Or maybe I could just take still images projected on the mirror, but that wouldn’t be nearly as much fun. The time constriction on this project I think will actually be helpful to me, because I usually only work well under pressure. The mystery prop will have a lot to do with helping me determine how to attack this project. For example, if it’s a sound clip I might have some issues including it with anything that’s hand drawn, but then again I’m sure this is somehow possible. Either way I’m happy that I get to work in this way, I just hope that I can come up with something that looks great and is created in a unique way.