Sally Cloninger

It’s official.  Media Artist Studio will be hosting our final screening at the Capital Theatre on June 9.  We are renting the space (with a very good deal from OFS).  In support of OFS I have agreed that we will have a “pay what you can” admission policy ($1.00 and above) that will go to the Olympia Film Society.  We will need to have a written description of our program and some visuals in to Audrey by March 9.  That is a little bit of pressure (re: visuals) but we will just have to go with whatever we have at this time.  We can talk about this in Week 10.  We will also be doing our own publicity and can accomodate other production stills from your projects in that format.  Thanks especiallly to Mclayla for talking the initiative to make this happen.

And remember, this changes nothing.  Your work is good and will be good.  I know from reading the blogs that some of you are feeling stress re:  your projects.  Please trust yourselves.  You know I do.

The title of this entry may invite more than it delivers.  But I do wish to report that the concept of the Personal Archive has become a more central theme for my experimental piece, a result of this new direction (briefly described in an earlier post but not yet fully articulated*). I have been finding visual elements from my own vault, assembling these and trying to figure what needs to be converted.  I am going to use footage that I shot in Turkey (S-8) that has never had a decent transfer.  Also, footage from the Philippines (1985 and 1995) in 16mm that has had a decent transfer but is in an analog format.  And lots of other stuff of course.  I am puzzling over the HD implications when working with all this very disparate material.  Do I really want to retransfer all material shot in film or not?  Do I care about the HD format really?  For this project…I mean of course I care about it.  I cannot find some Super 8 shot in Bangladesh that I need but I will.  I guess I never thought I would need it again but it must be stuffed in a closet somewhere. Okay, I hear Team Funk Yeah! at my door so I must stop for now.  I blog when I have a moment…

*I have been intentionally leaving some space around this project, trying to create an intentional “vacuum” to let some new ideas come in to the design.  I am interested particularly in this aspect of creativity i.e, how to create the conditions for spontaneity of thought and the unexpected.

Number 1: I spent hours on Monday doing the lynda.com tutorial for Lightroom. I mean hours. You know, maybe I should just buy the book. I learned some things but I must admit I have never been a good student when it comes to tutorials. I am trying to be very thorough this time. But of course will end up talking to Tommy about exactly what I need to do re: batch exposure/color corrections for my animated landscapes. Okay, here is an image that I worked with in LR

and another one.

Number 2: I read for and got the role of Dottie in Film School University. Channeling Jonathan Winters (Maude Frickett character) and Sophia of The Golden Girls I recorded my lines today with some additional ad libs and considerable improvised farting. Very fun. I see my future: playing the comedic elderly (as opposed to the extreme elderly). Oh well. It had to come at some point.

I am slowly finding my way to a new experimental piece (working title: Living in the Medium) and this morning have been reading JG Bennett and listening to this gentleman, Robert Fripp who coined the phrase that is the title of this blog. I think this is a lot like Return On Failure that we learned from John Maeda.

Enjoy. Or not.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSStufx6jYU

racherito1h264

Well, I just learned something, I guess.  I can link to a larger video test from this blog.  Hmmm.

Early evening on the way to Rancherito. Jan. 2009