Entries from May 2009
It’s halfway through week nine, and a lot has been accomplished. Monday and Tuesday (the 18th and 19th of May) I finished shooting. I shot transitions, the end of the colored conscience scene, and the end of a balanced world (the stars come out!). Thursday morning I worked in the 2D lab to export all my animation clips to quicktime. That afternoon, I imported everything into Final Cut and logged and captured all my time lapse footage and started organizing everything in general. Friday night I continued to cut and order clips. Over the weekend I recorded some more audio, then on Monday (the 25th) I finished ordering everything and then mostly worked on the audio. I tried to keep the audio pretty minimal: ambient nature, ukulele chords, fast and slow breathing, a few sound effects, etc.
So far, my most frustrating issue with editing, is framing! I kept a careful eye on those little turquoise lines in Dragon, outlining the visible action and was careful to keep the unwanted stuff outside those lines… alas, in Final Cut, the action-safe lines seem to be wider, and therefore pick up the animation pegs and the edges of the paper. I fussed with sizing and cropping for so long, and then when I saw my piece on the projector in the Com, I saw those nasty little pegs and paper edges again. SO I figured out I just need to give all my animated pieces a quaint little black border to cover up the ugly.
Tuesday (yesterday) everyone showed off their rough cuts. Though sitting in the tiny closet that is com 326 on a warm day with no circulation picking on each other was a little tedious, overall it was a very productive day. It seemed everyone’s audio was a little rough, but all had great video to show. It’s really helpful to see others’ pieces, here about what they struggle with, and see which techniques work and don’t work. After showing mine, Laurie and I watched it several more times and discussed various alternative orders for the three animation clips and time lapse sequences. As I showed it, I had all the time lapse clips at the beginning of my piece. Starting out at a high speed with rapid breathing, the sequence gradually slowed along with my breathing, elucidating my struggle to stop concentrating on the time, deadlines, or my own life issues, and keep my focus centered on the actual animation process. Ambient nature sounds drift in as I complete my drawing. Then I cut to the balanced world scene, which transitions into the moving doors. After the arrow of time squirms off the page, my animated head pops up, and cut-outs proceed to plague my attempted meditation. After finally clearing my mind, my cut-out conscience slips off and into the next scene. The piece ends with the color conscience scene. In this original version, the flow is unbalanced by the intense beginning, the cut-out scene is a little long and awkward, and the scene of my meditation is too short. So instead, the order will be as follows: time lapse (quick breathing), beginning of cut-out, time lapse (moderate breathing), moving doors, time lapse (easy breathing), mountains (with the transition to one door), a clip of meditation, the ending of the cut-out scene, then the whole meditation scene.
I also finished Secret of the Golden Flower. The very last quote sums it up well, “The Way is present before our eyes, yet what is before your eyes is hard to understand. People like the unusual and enjoy the new; they miss what is right in front of their eyes and do no know where the Way is. The Way is the immediate presence; if you are unaware of the immediate presence, then your mind races, your intellect runs, and you go on thinking compulsively. All of this is due to shallowness of spiritual power, and shallowness of spiritual power is due to racing in the mind (pg. 71).” The world is confusing and upsetting and wonderful and flabbergasting. We don’t always know what to make of it, or what to do with ourselves living in it. The only thing to do is work with the present. To accept what is around you and to strive to bet
Now I have started Nothingness and Emptiness and am slogging through the text, which somehow manages to be abstract, yet highly technical at the same time… that’s what I get for reading a book with the subtitle being “A Buddhist Engagement With the Ontology of Jean-Paul Sartre”. Never fear, I shall conquer!
Tags: Weekly Entries
Well, I didn’t get all my shooting done this week as I had hoped (scheduling issues), but I did get the majority of it done. Monday I filmed the weeping shot in the “balanced world”. Tuesday I checked in with Laurie and then shot for six hours and almost finished my “distracted mind” cut-out scene. Wednesday night I made the cut-outs for the “human concept of time” piece and filmed myself drawing the last few seconds of the “balanced world” scene. Thursday I completely shot the “human concept of time”. Friday I fussed around with the framing of the old 16mm transfer footage of my meditation. It will work perfectly. I was able to size down and crop the shot so that I can layer the animation of my consciousness underneath the smaller video frame. I also captured some of the footage I shot Wednesday night. The first shot had too much of my shoulder in it and not enough of my work visible so I’m not sure I will use that part, but I know I got a better couple of shots later on.
Sunday I spent the day recording most of my audio. I walked through the Garfield Nature Trail and recorded some great natural ambient sounds… lots of bugs and babbling creeks and birds… though it was hard to exclude all the sounds of mowers and power washers in the surrounding neighborhood (of course I had to pick the best day for garden improvement). I was also almost ran over by two kids on dirt bikes… brats. I was thankful for the sunny day when I was able to hear and record jets passing over. Then I trundled downtown and meandered the docks listening for appropriate sounds. The only thing I found which I needed was electronic industrial noise made by the fans on top of Bayview Thriftway. Most of the other sounds I will have to create myself (breathing, clicking, popping, ukulele, rumbling, etc.).
Later that night I completely finished drawing my consciousness scene… which I know I will have to slow down a ton in final cut. The minute accuracy needed for animation is hard to maintain while using pastels.
As far as reading goes, I am still chipping away at The Secret of the Golden Flower. On page twenty I found a very good quote that perfectly describes the type of focus meditation and awareness take, “To focus meansto focus on this as a hint, not to become rigidly fixated. The meaning of the word focus has life to it; it is very subtle.” It’s not healthy to live in a state of mind so focused that you become single minded and single spirited. I believe you should be careful, considerate and aware of everything you do. When you concentrate single mindedly, you lose the natural relaxation of doing. If you let go and simply do, you will naturally be focused. I also liked the quote on page 41, “When you want to enter quietude, first tune and concentrate body and mind, so that they are free and peaceful. Let go of all objects, so that nothing whatsoever hangs on your mind, and the celestial mind takes its rightful place in this center. After that, lower your eyelids and gaze inward at the chamber of water. Where the light reaches, true positive energy comes forth in response.” Sometime I feel as if my conscience is not within my body. I feel like it is slightly above and behind my physical head. I don’t know if this is healthy, or not, but from this reading, it seems I need to work on bringing my conscience down and into my physical body, down into the center. Yesterday I read about oblivion and distraction, the two most frequent problems beginners find. Distraction is more easily dealt with because it has direction. Usually one is aware of their distraction and is able to pull your focus together. However, true oblivion means you lack awareness. How do you fix something when you lack awareness?
I think I made great progress last week, and with some hard work this week I should have a decent rough cut by friday. Yay! Almost done with the quarter!
Tags: Weekly Entries
So I’m a little late on this post- busy days… ya know.
I haven’t had much time for reading, but I have read a little of The Secret of the Golden Flower, which is the basic guide for Buddhists and Taoists. The Golden flower symbolizes the opening of the light of the mind, the release of the spirit, enlightenment, the discovery of the true self, etc. Written simply and poetically, The Secret of the Golden Flower verbalizes that which is very very difficult to verbalize. How do you write about awareness and being without giving concrete statements and directions? “Naturalness is called the way. The way has no name or form; it is just the essence, just the primal spirit (pg. 9).” How does one write about simply and naturally existing? I have already found the only way to read this book is to read a little bit at a time, read between the lines, and try to let myself gain a sense of the material instead of concrete ideas. “The beauties of the highest heavens and the marvels of the sublimest realms are all within the heart: this is where the perfectly open and aware spirit concentrates (pg. 11).” If your heart and mind are not open to the world around you, good and bad, how will you grow? Anyways, I am really enjoying this book and will continue to read and use these ideas to keep my mind in the now.
As for my animation, Monday I re-shot a few seconds of my hand-drawn scene (the world tilted too quickly) and moved more cut-outs across my mind in the second scene. After shooting, I tried to export my clips to quicktime, and failed miserably! It was VERY frustrating. I’m pretty sure I had all the compression settings correct, so unless there was one big step I was missing, something was not working correctly. When I checked the box to process the images before exporting, Dragon would process the images, and then tell me it failed to export. Then, when I did not check the box, Dragon would go ahead and export, but the video clip would come out black with an occasional flash… I will try to find the animation intern to help me today.
Tuesday I met with my affinity group and we gave brief presentations on the progress and basic ideas of our individual projects. Everyone’s footage looked great! Even without the HD quality they filmed with, Jeremy and the LA water group’s footage was striking. Almost all of Jeremy’s footage was still shots, which I thought has potential for an interesting style. Jason showed us the first two scenes of his experimental documentary on peace consciousness and we discussed the possibilities for the transitions between his three sections: titles, no titles, audio overlap, segue images etc. I can’t wait to see the final projects. I showed the few clips of scenes that I have, and received some great feedback. I was wondering if the smiling lips were too subtle, but everyone agreed it was just right and they could tell what was happening.
The rest of the week was been devoted to drawing and making cut-outs (I have decided to incorporate some minor cut-outs in my hand-drawn scenes).
Tags: Weekly Entries
This week I had two shoots: one on Monday night and one on Wednesday night. Monday I shot the next five seconds of my hand-drawn scene, and Wednesday I shot the first part of my first cut-out scene, moving my cut-out fragments of paper millimeters at a time across the eight and a half by eleven rectangle of white. Tuesday, I had a conference with Jason and Laurie. I laid out my storyboard, and gave a synopsis of my piece. We discussed some of the transitions between my scenes, and I decided to create a swirling cut-out of the hand-drawn color in the last scene which will move from my cut-out head to the box that is my consciousness. Jason spoke about his difficulties with his interview subjects. Two of the men he interviewed spoke genuinely and without hubris about their philosophy on peace consciousness, while the two women mostly worked to promote their organization. Jason was worried about the balance of gender in his piece. I told him I didn’t think it was something to worry about, as it would be best not to make gender an issue and focal point and focus on the point of his piece instead. I also told Jason and Laurie about my interest in the Long Now project.
The Long Now Foundation is an organization set on expanding our society’s concept of time by building a monumental clock. Because we are obsessed with counting down the hours, minutes, and seconds, we seem to have lost our sense of long time. This clock will last ten thousand years, and will be so accurate it will only lose a day every twenty thousand years. The Long Now has bought land in the Sierra Nevadas and is possibly going to build a labyrinth around the clock to encourage myth and reverence about the monument. On the Long Now website, there are several links to essays written by Daniel Hillis on the philosophy behind the Foundation. This concept of enlarging people’s concept of time from years to centuries seems to conflict with my reading of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. Zen Mind encourages one to realize this very moment- that’s all. However, because the Long Now intends to give people a better sense of responsibility for the future and therefore encourages attention to the moment, along with awareness of the future, there is not complete conflict… I am still trying to work out the meeting point between deep time and the moment. “Long Now proposes both a mechanism and a myth. It began with an observation and idea by computer scientist Daniel Hillis:
“When I was a child, people used to talk about what would happen by the year 2000. For the next thirty years they kept talking about what would happen by the year 2000, and now no one mentions a future date at all. The future has been shrinking by one year per year for my entire life. I think it is time for us to start a long-term project that gets people thinking past the mental barrier of an ever-shortening future. I would like to propose a large (think Stonehenge) mechanical clock, powered by seasonal temperature changes. It ticks once a year, bongs once a century, and the cuckoo comes out every millennium.”
I found this concept of time and responsibility, and the speed in which we live our daily lives very applicable to my readings on awareness and consciousness. It is yet another philosophy I like and will try to incorporate into my developing personal philosophy.
Reading about the Long Now makes me wonder how long my own media art will last. Will my film projects last longer than my digital projects? Or vise versa? Thursday and Saturday I edited previous drawings, adding many many frames to smooth out and slow down the motion of the birds and the clouds moving past the mountains. In making these edits, I realized I hadn’t been focusing on my drawing as much as I should have the week before. Making the tiniest of adjustments takes the utmost concentration and attention to detail, which is trying when I am feeling a little behind in my work. Maybe if I think of this project as something more permanent and more important than just an independent project for Mediaworks I will take my time and make it the best it can be. Maybe my project will be kept for centuries and used as an example of student work in the years shortly after the millennium.
Tags: Weekly Entries
