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March 19, 2007

This is the second unstable server encounter. I apologize for any browsing issues.

Posted by scribblepop at 12:18 AM| Comments (0)

The Ice Apartment Project: Phase 1

March 18, 2007

Today, I filmed the first iteration of "The Ice Apartment" in a studio apartment on the East Side (thanks to Heather McPherson). A series of actions between four characters are shot from the four walls of the room. They will be projected, in an uncut, one-shot fashion, onto a small-scale ice room this Tuesday.

Here are some screenshots of the footage:

I had to fight the urges to do close-ups. There were some aspects of the scenes that warranted this kind of attention. I repeatedly reminded myself during the shoot: "alternative narrative. Don't cave into the conventions. Don't cave in..."

Posted by scribblepop at 11:45 PM| Comments (0)

Update II: Current Projects

As an extension to the experimentations with film narrative technologies I made during last fall, I am currently exploring the spatiality with two new projects.

Project 1: Bike Camera

Modes of transportation have always been an integral part of filmmaking, whether functioning as dollies or characters in the story (especially since the popularization of road movies). Just like how everything we see is filtered, the visual experience of watching the road fly by through a car window is a manipulated image. Time and space are both redefined by the car's velocity, shakiness, directionality, and the relative speed at which other objects pass by.

(click on image for details)

I first conceived of the idea of rigging up a film camera to the wheel of a bicycle when I was brainstorming for the most symbolic way to connect documentary narratives to the environment. I started with the idea of a motor scooter - but the machinery is far too complicated for the result I wanted. Eventually, I felt confident about the physical resemblance that a simple bicycle has to the film magazine. The two wheels of the bicycle, in rotation, functions just like the feed and take-up reels of a celluloid film camera. Where for the bicycle, the road is being treaded, and for the camera, the perforated film.

My experiment would proceed like so:

1. A vintage bicycle light power generator (aka. dynamo) is installed to the front wheel, so that it makes a rotation proportionally to the turn of the wheel and the distance traveled by the wheel.

2. The axle of the dynamo is connected to the axle of the take-up reel of an 8mm film camera.

3. As a result, every turn of the wheel = x amount distance traveled = y number of rotation by the dynamo = z amount of film exposed. Distance dictates the shooting frame rate of the camera instead of time.

4. ...and as a result, when the bicycle travels slower, the wheel rotates slower, the film is exposed slower, despite time being constant.

5. ...and as a further result, during playback, which proceeds at a normal rate of 24 frames per second, the speed of the objects moving past the bicyle on screen is inversely related to their movements in reality.

(click on image for details)

The project, with a projected finishing date of 04.30.07 (Monday), will consist of two iterations: film and DV. The bicycle mounted with the film camera will serve as a stronger physical metaphor for the tangibility of a "film world." The DV version (process elaborated in the paragraph below) will support multiple users to experience the disparity between time as perceived as a real life witness (the bicycle rider) and a projected, altered time that is "real" nontheless.

The process of digitally portraying the mechanism should be straightforward. Instead of directly connecting the dynamo to the rotation of the film (in this case, the miniDV tape), the voltage generated by the dynamo is recoreded by a microcontroller. This numeric data set is then transposed into editing programs, either AfterEffects or Final Cut Pro, to time-remap footage shot by the DV camera. The reason for a DV iteration of the project is my desire to emphasize on the equal importance of both the content and the process. I want the physical relationship between the witness/audience to the environment to be just as important as the viewership mediated by the moving images within a movie projection.

I have recently acquired an analogue 8mm film camera, whose mechanical components and operational concepts are analogous to that of a 16mm film camera (hopefully, my final product). I have also purchased some dynamos. The first actual testing of the project will take place during late March.

Project 2: Ice Apartment

The Ice Apartment is another experimentation with physically representing the spatial quality within a film narrative. Blocks of ice are welded together to form rooms, and multiple footages of characters moving within a similiarly configured interior space are projected onto the various faces of the ice archiecture.

I am fascinated by the self-decaying quality of ice. As it constantly re-structures itself in response to the atmosphere, it also changes in opacity to reveal its inner facets, cracks, bubbles, and tensions. Furthermore, our familiarity with ice liquifying makes us expect its disappearance - the story of the "Life of an Ice Cube" is teleological. We know how it's going to end.

Since this project is a large undertaking in terms of scale, I will first test out the nature of the ice with only one room, or four walls of ice. A door will be cut to make the projections' overlapping more interesting. The construction of this iteration, in its must rudimentary form, consists of four 30 inch x 20 inch blocks of ice, joint to form a rectangular space resting on a wooden platform with a drainage pipe. Projectors are installed from all four sides of the architecture.

(click on image for details)

Four films of different actions, shot within the same room, will be projected. As the ice melts, the narrative, too, will change.

The first testing of this installation will take place on 03.20.07 (Tuesday), in the early evening. I am not certain of its outcome due to temperature. However, I believe that the atmospherical variable will make the project more interesting.

The test will be thoroughly documented.

Posted by scribblepop at 12:33 AM| Comments (0)