cucalorus paper excerpt.

"I moved to Wilmington a little over a year ago now. I made the transition to a new city, a new state even, because of the things I had heard about Wilmington's film industry. I knew only one person when I first moved here and it was the first time I had ever moved somewhere so isolated from people I knew. I took advantage of being friendless (having no social life/distractions) to focus on jumping into anything that had to do with film. I figured that I could get my feet wet in this film community and make friends involved with film as well. It was through a group I joined on campus, Flicker Film Society, that I first learned about the Cucalorus Film Festival, the kids in the group described it as some magical event that took place here in my new town every year, I was overwhelmed with excitement from the first time I heard about it. With no hesitation, I immediately asked around everywhere on how to get involved with the festival or even how to get a pass to it. I ultimately found out that you could volunteer to work at the festival and in return you would get passes to most everything involved. This was perfect for me, I wanted to get involved, I wanted to see the films, and I wanted to meet people. I can honestly say it was everything I could have hoped for and more. Cucalorus helped me find my identity in Wilmington."

Cucalorus

CUCALORUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I made a lot of plans for the wonderful time of the year! I took off the entire week mainly because I am a part of the staff.. i wanted to see as much as i could, but only ended up seeing a group of shorts and 2 features. I definitely wanted to see Chip's premiere and even made arrangements so that I could go but being the procrastinator I am i waited till right before the screening to get my ticket and it was sold out. other than that i was planning to spend most of the festival checking, distributing, and monitoring passes! Fun right? but awesome. I love Cucalorus and I'm sure you'll be able to see that in my paper.

Shooting for project three.

Shooting our music video was so much fun, we had planned a lot so it was easy. It also didn't hurt that our actors were my two best friends! They were so awesome too! In the middle of October (usually nice weather) when we went to shoot our first day it was freeeeeeeeeeeeeeezing and raining and we were on the beach. Laura our actress was wearing a tiny mini-dress and i swear it must have been 50 degrees. we all took turns huddling in Courtney's jeep when we weren't needed filming. Her and Nick our actor, were so cooperative, I thought it was awesome they didn't even complain except when we were all shivering our asses off together. It was no secret we were all miserable, but we got through it and that particular footage actually ended up being our best. The next day was much much better, the weather was nicer and we found an awesome alley to do our shooting in near Carolina beach.. the colors were perfect. evan even got a little risky and climbed on top of one of the buildings to get an overhead shot of them dancing in the alley, we were all really excited about that shot. Then we moved to the middle of the woods where designed a lot of shots and tried a lot of new things with the exposure and frame rates and such. Over all the experience was awesome, everyone was so cooperative and excited. Our actors looked awesome and we had a great time throughout it all.

Installation idea.

I'm a little late on this blog, but the installation idea i HAD before I got put into Evan's group was to do a piece on mass media and personalities. LIke using a projection of facebook or myspace and putting the subject in front of their page and have them make a statement that would be on their main page, then add someone else, and then someone else, and giving information like their favorite song or music video at the moment so it just ends up getting noisier and noisier until its almost unbearable to hear.. and the pages are flashing like strobe lights and the people are talking and talking and their songs are playing and their voices are just overbearing and then all of a sudden all black and a spotlight on one person asking a simple question like 'what am i' or something like that to illustrate the confusion youth has today on their individuality because their surrounded by so much technological clutter that persuades them and guides them among adolescence.

MiCrocinemA

The idea about screening experimental films that are out of the public limelight has been an issue going on for forever (obviously) so it says in the article.. but i think that the opportunity to see these films in a unique space outside of your average cinema can be a lot of fun, for instance jengo's here in wilmington, holding cucalorus.. cucalorus is awesome.. its got this atmosphere of energy where you can just feel everyone's enthusiasm for underground cinema around you.. it makes the experience so much more different than just your average going to sit down in the theater and then leaving, like when you see mainstream films.

I think whats cool is that Carolyn and I were talking in the hall one day before class about the article, specifically where they explain the kind of "portable drive in theater" like thing where people find out the information of where the films will be projected and you tune into the station to hear it.. i think that sounds like a lot of fun.. and so creative.. carolyn and i were saying we want to do this around wilmington some time.

music video.

For the music video project I'm the director, which is awesome it's definitely what I wanted to be. My group and i have already had 2 meetings... we came up with some awesome ideas and i'm confident that this music video is going to be awesome looking. it's kind of scary that we only have 9 minutes of film to shoot with but we have put in a lot ofplanning to what we are going to use each roll for and how we are going to use it. We started out with this really abstract concept of a guy wearing a full suit and top hat reading a newspaper on the beach sitting parrallel to the ocean. A girl walks toward him wearing a tutu or some kind of strange party dress and boots, she sits down back to back with him and neither of them make contact, the guy sees something shiny in the sand and goes to dig it out and he finds its a ring attatched to a finger, surrounded by other fingers. the most interesting aspect of it all is that both remain emotionless and almost melancholic.. this little scene ends with the guy standing up and feeding the fingers to the birds, we are hoping that buy using bread or something we can get an awesome shot of birds hovering the two of them eating the fingers (bread).

That was the core of our idea, then we wanted to come up with other shots that form a montage like effect of this guy and girl in other parts of their world. we came up with the girl smashing items like a mirror and glass vases in the woods with a baseball bat, and the guy opening a door thats taken out of a door frame in the woods, in an alley, and on a beach, so he's basically just carrying around the door. we have other oddshots that we think will look cool like some stop animation of the girl crying pennies, or of the guy dancing alone in the alley, juxtaposed with shots of the guy AND the girl's feet dancing, giving the feel that she's there dancing with him when she's really not.

I'm really excited to shoot this, which i think we are going to start and finish this weekend, and i'm even more excited to see how it all looks when we get the film back. I'm even more thankful that I have such an awesome group with great ideas and dedication..

My self protrait..

For my self portrait i have a lot of pretty cool ideas that i want to use.. one being a theme throughout, the color red and cats. I want both to be interspersed throughout.. i feel like both are concepts that explain me well...the color red has always been my favorite color and i still appreciate its warmth and beauty so much.. i fell in love with brakhage's cat's cradle because of its red imagery..i just felt warm watching it...and i love cats in general... so im sure ill be using a lot of red filters on images and i'm going to film my cat a lot throughout his daily routine..

another idea i had was that i have a box of love letters throughout my life from different boyfriends and admirers.. i think they're funny.. and landmark a lot of my love life..i think im going to get different shots of each letter and record different male voices reading them..i kind of got the idea from the film we watched the other day.. 'talk to me'? i think it was called...

Also....last year i took all of my home videos and transferred them to video files so that i could edit them into a film for my family for christmas.. so i still have all those files of me and my sisters when we were kids.. so im definitely going to put some of that... when i was editing the film i found tiny brief moments in the footage that just really made me melt.. those are probably going to be the parts that i use

i know in class you said you didn't want a lot of voiceovers, but i think im going to use fragmented parts of some of my writing from past experiences that correlate with what is shown.. it won't run together though.. and i'll try to make it all brief so that the voiceovers don't overpower the whole film. ..

i do plan on using a LITTLE music.. just because that's a huge factor in my life.. my best friend and roommate produces music and djs a lot of what we do revolves around music and all different kinds.. i want to incorporate him in the film so some of his original music might be shown over his shots...

for my opening shot i invision myself holding my handheld minidv camera pointed at the mirror where i want to write my name across is with marker.. i think that would look neat and really set the tone..

im sure along the way of making this film i will come up with many more ideas.. but i also think what i've come up with so far is going to make for some good shit!

Sound and Light project

For the completed sound and light project I'm planning on trying a lot of different things... it's been a long time since I messed around with photoshop but I'm excited to really experiment with the rhythm i can make with the photos to our sound design. When I was starting to do the sound design I was a little intimidated but when I sat down and started messing with it all it started to be really fun and I got into it, so now I have a new attitude about going into something I'm not familiar with... I think that Carolyn and I will come up with some cool ideas. I want to play around with contrasts and colors with the photos and crop certain parts of the photos..also I want to play with the rhythm in which the photos appear.

concerto di lumineso

life lighting.. basically everything in the video i posted, is how i like to explain night life in lights on the streets. The lights make the most amazing patterns and designs. when we brainstormed for that video we tried to come up with as many sources of light as we could.. then we actually went downtown to do some observing of what we should and can use.. we ended up with more than we ever thought. going into the project we figured it would mainly consists of traffic and neon signs.. but there was so much more. the reflections were incredible... they were pure beauty..something about the way a bright light can wiggle with a small ripple in the water, when we really payed attention to it.. it was like finding a rare gem. other cool things were the way we could manipulate the lights with the lenses.. by focusing and not focusing..we made the lights almost dance in some parts of our movie. the time lapses were also fun... and driving by bundles of light to make a long stretch of fuzzy brightness...the neon signs got redundant as hell..

this is a project i worked on last year with some of my friends...its theme is light. specifically the lights we find on the streets at night..

evening sun

it was around 6 when i got home today.. i have three large windows that stretch across the front of my room. by 6, the sun had lowered to an angle that threw shadows of my blinds across to the opposite of my room...the wall then became a canvas for any objects shadow that stood near the window. in between the darkness and light parallel lines i could cast a figure of different sorts. in exhaustion from a hard day's work, i danced in the shadows for a minute or two and watched my body disfigure in the bends and curves of the wall, it looked so fun and free. 

I then decided to take a picture for our project...my body stretched out on the blinds. 

About 30 minutes later, I walked into the living room where another beautiful product from the evening's descending sun appeared. there were two windows side by side, one that had the blinds completely closed and one with them pulled up to the top. this time there was a casted shadow that laid slanted and bright across the living room floor.. here i found my cat Rafael, it was like a portrait. I'm sure he had found the warmest spot to nap on the hardwood floors, he lay almost sun bathing in the thin stretched aisle of brightness, while the rest of the room sat in darkness.. most likely jealous of the warm panels on the floor...

the dim lit rooms became comfortable to me and i decided to get some writing done for a screenplay i'm writing. comfortable, because i think there's something in the way you don't need to turn on the overhead lights yet..and the whole room isn't bursting with sun. it was this middle ground of almost a golden color, soft and delicate. comfortable.

during recording light observations.. i found my favorite lighting of the day. im calling it comfort light. 

inspirational photo

inspirational photo

finding the right sound.

I learned from this assignment that a lot of the noises we gathered could double as other noises, and sound pretty cool. the one where we opened a bag of chips that was difficult to open made almost like a gun shot.. it was interesting...i learned that pouring water slowly out of a pan sounds like pee.. and that my roommate can make a lot of different sounds with his voice. the other group that we listened to had a lot of really neat sounds also.. i really liked the sound of the electric razor and the different humming from people's voices sounded like a buzzing bee. and the ambient sounds of someone taking a shower sounded like rain when it was running. im more excited to see how this turns out all together.

surrounding sounds. 'computer lab'

Throughout this assignment I've tried to find the most unique ambient sounds as i could, when i decided to go to the computer lab in the library. I figured the sound of a large group of people, like the fisher center, or wag, or the mall would be redundant.. so i tried different things.. the computer lab was notable, i'm a firm believe you can find a rhythm in almost anything.. and the lab proved that all the same. while the most obvious sound is the constant taptaptaptap on the keys of the keyboards like little tiny robots doing manual labor, which i expected.. the other noises fell in nicely.. my favorite being the hum of the printer along side of the sound of the machinary inside dancing to produce patterns of ink on paper.. which lead to the shifting of papers being picked up from the tray. Also, its one thing to hear a group of people talking, but a mass amount of whispering.. if you can imagine is like a lull of falling water...whispering telephone conversations, the whispering of freshman and giggling to their facebook finds.. the mice clicking that are a higher pitch that add a nice layer of noise. to finally the buzz of the AC above...that seems to fill the room with not only cold air, but a musical piece to the rhythmic puzzle of the computer lab.

surrounding sounds. 'catch your breath'

I tried to think about scenarios of sound that usually go unnoticed in general, although it goes a bit astray from going out into the public world to find songs, i fell upon an interesting find that serves the same purpose. I was listening to a ballad the other day by some female artist, can't remember who... anyway i was getting really into the song, or actually just really into her voice, at the way she could mold this melody into an amazing sound.. when i noticed she would take quick deep breaths in between certain areas of the song, it makes perfect sense when you think of how long artists need to use their breath when holding a note for a significant amount of time, but the subtle quick deep gasp for breaths go pretty much unnoticed..(or i've just never noticed) but i think began to tune out the actual song and her voice, and paid attention to those gasps, when i started to follow them, the gasps themselves started to have a rhythm, i imagined a way where i could make every aspect of the song obsolete and really just form a song of the breathing....i then took it a bit further and scrolled through my itunes to pick out other songs that i know to have a lot of singing, and sure enough i found more and more subtle songs of breath...

surrounding sounds. 'the little dipper'

the place that i work is called The Little Dipper downtown. It's a fondue restaurant so we are a little bit different from others... the funny thing about this assignment is that my mind was automatically drawn to my work, because I've done it before unintentionally.. I can remember a time where I was cleaning a dirty table and all of a sudden i just zoned out from everything around and me and just let the sound of the place take over my senses. It was almost meditative to me. this past weekend I decided to do it again, but paid more attention to the different sounds rather than the orchestra of voices, dishes, and footstep as one. one of the main differences our restaurant has is that most of our parties are celebrations.. like birtdays, anniversaries, first dates, bachelorette parties.. all kinds, it's easy to work in the environment because most of the time, people are just happy. so the most interesting and beautiful noise that filled the room was laughter at one point it seemed like at every one of the 15 tables we have, there was laughter. I had never imagined i'd think it so lovely, but the notes and range of all the different types of laughing was just melodic. After, i stepped outside of my laughter symphony I picked up on the other sounds as well... we have tiled tables because fondue often gets messy, so theyre easy to clean.. the sounds of the silverware being picked up and placed back down, or the glasses being picked up and set back down made a significant noise of almost percussion, especially with the variations of amount of liquid in the glasses. the footsteps, usually high heels, predominantly females come to fondue, unless it's a family or a date. the clinking of the ice in the drinks. and the chatter all accompany my laughter symphony with a rhythmic notion and instead of just an interesting experience, I found it pleasurable and like I said earlier meditative. A way to escape my normal work routine driven job... shit i think that's a little more than 150 words..

about me:

I first moved to Wilmington a little over a year ago from Virginia when I transferred to UNCW from VCU. I transferred specifically for the film program that I had heard so much about. Film has been the only thing I have wanted to do for as long as I can remember, and especially movie trailers. I can remember being 12 or 13 and going to the movies by myself and hopping from theater to theater and watching the beginning trailers and then leaving. I've always been fascinated with the way the edit of a trailer can make the viewer so intrigued and anxious that they HAVE to see that movie. Since those days, I've realized that I want to be a part of the process in making those trailers, and cultivate that feeling. My goal is simply to graduate from UNCW with a film degree and hopefully gain an internship with any company in New York or California that make trailers. My main company of interest is one called Buddha Jones located in L.A. mostly, because I've loved a majority of the trailers they have produced. I'm looking forward to finishing out my college career here at UNCW and then continuing on with my goal. (=

Reading Responses

The Film as an Original Art Form:
It's apparent to me that Richter's main point in the article is that the entertainment industry in today's world has a view of cinema of being less of a filmic sensation in art, but rather a mechanism that captures other forms of art, like performance. Richter claims that there are two forms of cinema that still value the camera as a form of art, and that is documentary and experimental. He states that both forms are more cinematographic than your average entertaining narrative. I value his opinions, but I still believe that the act of filming anything, including narratives, still acts as a puzzle piece in the grand scheme of things to form the art itself.

Introduction to Avant-Garde Film:
This article to me was more of a review than anything. In previous classes such as History of Avant-Garde Film, we spent very much time going over the kind of attention and effort you need to put forth to really grasp the experience of watching Avant-Garde movies. It was also a review for me to read about how the average person is in a way trained to view movies in a classical way, like hollywood narratives and then do not know how to accept an experimental film. The latter part of the article was also a review that goes back to classes such as World Cinema and History of Film, when explaining the earlier aspects of cinema with the Lumiere brothers and Eadward Muybridge and their contributions to cinema today. I didn't mind reading it though, because a refresher is always nice.