I am attempting to go read all of shakespeare's plays in chronological order. I am at the beginning of the beginning - Henry VI Pt 1. I think I may have read this in my freshman humanities class - (is this one of the ones with falstaff). When writing films, I have started telling paul that our scripts have too many characters for a low budget film. (I think we had 23 in our last film) This probably betrays my lack of vision, but luckily Paul ignores me and I lack conviction and so we continue to write for too many characters. So does Shakespeare!
Granted it is really not fare to compare plays with films, but in many ways i am not quiet sure why. The most obvious reason is first, in theater there has to be more obvious action to direct the viewer's attention. How do we direct action? Dialogue. Our attention is directed towards the character talking and attends to what that character is doing. Here the playwright holds sway (which is probably the playwright rather than the director is the prestige position in theater.
In film we can manipulate the visual field. We can use a close up or a zoom or a dolly to direct the view towards a particular action - AND we dont have to use dialogue as a signal. We can just use visual cues. So here we have the director as opposed to the writer holding the prestige position, because it is the nuance of the acting and the location of the shots that tell the audience what to pay attention to - dialogue is not less important - but it is not the only tool in the tool chest.
In film we dont need as many characters. Props become characters, environments become characters - I wonder what it would be to film Henry VI pt 1 and turn some characters into 'filmic characters.'
It seems this blog post ended up at a completely different place than I had anticipated when I started, I was going to talk about how shakespeare differentiates his characters with dialogue - but i like this subject matter better.
Showing posts with label film. Show all posts
Showing posts with label film. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Ecstatic Literature
I did not know which blog post to write - so I am writing one about an idea I was thinking about in Greece.
What is ecstatic literature?
I am convinced I stole this expression from some place, but a quick google only revealed some links to ecstatic poetry.
By ecstatic literature I mean a mode of storytelling where the goal is not necessarily to tell a story but to arouse a certain emotional & visceral response in the reader. This does seem more akin to poetry - poetry is an attempt to transcend language with language - to express some unexpressible sentiment or feeling (because language is limited and in every day speech cannot cause us to have such emotional responses.
These sorts of reactions are perhaps more common in film and perhaps the performing arts since they use a wider range of media and in many instances media that is not open to interpretation. When I watch a moving film, the director has selected the particular angle or close up I should view, the attitude of the actor, the music - the audience is there to receive the film not to engage or interpret the film. Reading is primarily an act of interpretation - it does not engage with one of the 5 senses. Watching a film is an act of sense-perception - we dont need interpretation to understand what we saw (unless it is symbolic performance art)
I am no thinking that it is perhaps the element of time that makes these forms more emotionally stirring than a novel which is not bound by time but can be read/re read/pondered upon by the reader. There is one book that is read, and another book that is the dialogue between the reader and the writer in the reader's mind.
Back to ecstatic literature. I was reading the colossus of maroussi by Henry Miller (an author I dont like at all). But this novel is unlike anything I have read in recent memory (except The Fan Man). The florid language, which I normally deplore, transported me to a state beyond that of communicating a story. It made me see the power of literature - which sounds a bit banal - but it is true. Perhaps contemporary literature can do better than roman a clef and magical realism - perhaps we can inject some poetry into the prose and awaken ourselves from dogmatic slumber.
What is ecstatic literature?
I am convinced I stole this expression from some place, but a quick google only revealed some links to ecstatic poetry.
By ecstatic literature I mean a mode of storytelling where the goal is not necessarily to tell a story but to arouse a certain emotional & visceral response in the reader. This does seem more akin to poetry - poetry is an attempt to transcend language with language - to express some unexpressible sentiment or feeling (because language is limited and in every day speech cannot cause us to have such emotional responses.
These sorts of reactions are perhaps more common in film and perhaps the performing arts since they use a wider range of media and in many instances media that is not open to interpretation. When I watch a moving film, the director has selected the particular angle or close up I should view, the attitude of the actor, the music - the audience is there to receive the film not to engage or interpret the film. Reading is primarily an act of interpretation - it does not engage with one of the 5 senses. Watching a film is an act of sense-perception - we dont need interpretation to understand what we saw (unless it is symbolic performance art)
I am no thinking that it is perhaps the element of time that makes these forms more emotionally stirring than a novel which is not bound by time but can be read/re read/pondered upon by the reader. There is one book that is read, and another book that is the dialogue between the reader and the writer in the reader's mind.
Back to ecstatic literature. I was reading the colossus of maroussi by Henry Miller (an author I dont like at all). But this novel is unlike anything I have read in recent memory (except The Fan Man). The florid language, which I normally deplore, transported me to a state beyond that of communicating a story. It made me see the power of literature - which sounds a bit banal - but it is true. Perhaps contemporary literature can do better than roman a clef and magical realism - perhaps we can inject some poetry into the prose and awaken ourselves from dogmatic slumber.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Open Source Culture: Video Mashups
Why open source?
The most compelling reason is to paraphrase Newton - to see farther by standing on the shoulders of giants.
In software development, this means that I can, for example, use django to publish a content rich website, instead of writing my own web publishing software.
This sort of example though is not very powerful, after all you could make a similar claim about microsoft word.
The additional power comes from the release of the code behind the application.
why?
1) From a pedogogical standpoint, I can look at successful and well architected open source projects and improve my own coding abilities
2) From a practical standpoint, if I think that I can improve say the data aggregation feature in django then I can contribute to the django source code (rather than wait for the team to get around to implementing this feature)
The economic model for open source software is consulting, if I am a large contributor to django then I can go out and assist people in implementing their django implementations. Write the software for free and charge on the maintenance fees so to speak.
Open source software is very compelling as a model to emulate probably because
1) I can use software that other people make and realize my software vision
2) Perhaps I dont have the time to build an entire software package myself, but I can still contribute to an open source product and thus satisfy my desire to be part of this creative/technical/whatever process
Now writers, filmmakers, artists, etc look to the open source and are interested in emulating some of these aspects
Say I want to use the music of miles davis as the soundtrack to an animation, or clips from taxi driver in a movie, or if i want to make an animation staring mickey mouse, or I want to use parts of a the fan man in my own novel about the east village (Walter Benjamin for example kept notebooks composed entirely of quotations from other books)
Why open source culture?
The pedogogical nature is apparent.
I want to make an animated movie but I want to using an existing character, or I want to learn how to edit rather than shoot, so I want to use some existing clips to make into a movie.
However from a creative standpoint - perhaps I want to respond to a particular work by using that particular work, or an aspect of that work (think of all art that uses mass market appropriation like Warhol's brillo boxes, or Richard Prince)
But what does it mean to open source a cultural artifact and how can you use a these cultural atoms to create a work of originality? What are the atoms of cultural that we need to isolate in order to talk about open source culture.
I'll first talk about filmmaking, since I have made some movies.
The building blocks of film is the footage, the assets. In an animation, you could also imagine the assets being a character as well as all the photoshop layers of different character parts that can be animated seperately.
However the building blocks of film is also the score, the dialogue, the script, and the editing timeline.
There is a difference between releasing all the assets in a 'hard day's night', and the wav file of the song 'a hard day's night'. In the case of audio - I can go in and cancel out certain notes and frequencies. I apply certain filters and actually turn the song into an entirely new song. With a clip of a hard day's night - I am in many ways bound to the baked clip unless I want to insert a green screened character or use another compositing technique (for example forrest gump meeting past presidents, or the old coke commercials combining living performers with deceased performers). Now, it is possible that I could take all the clips of say, 'The Shinning' and turn it into a romantic comedy, however I am stuck with the framing, the acting, the lighting, the cinematography of the original movie. It will always look like 'The Shinning' more than my remix 'Winter in the Old Hotel'. A video mashup looks much different from a musical mash up. A musical mashup can still be considered a song, most video mashups dont resemble a narrative.
Another building block of film is the editing timeline. This is an interesting aspect of filmmaking that people dont really look into when considering open source culture, but is another aspect that could be shared. The cutting, the pacing, and the types of cuts will be different for Hitchcock's Rope compared to Lucas' Star Wars. In addition to open sourcing assets, filmmakers could open source editing timelines. In final cut pro, for example, you can export your timeline as an xml document. The clips are referenced as filenames that can be replaced by any other clip. So I can upload the cutting of a film for other people to use in their own films.
Further to build on open source software collaboration is the notion of version control.
In an open source software I different people can build on different version of the same software, diverge for a time, and then recombine into a master version. There is a lineage to open source software. I can see the same thing taking place with open source culture, placing culture within a context, an artistic lineage.
I am going to explore this a bit more in a series of studies providing the editing framework for classic movies - stay tuned!
Also - please contribute comments, criticisms, and suggestions.
The most compelling reason is to paraphrase Newton - to see farther by standing on the shoulders of giants.
In software development, this means that I can, for example, use django to publish a content rich website, instead of writing my own web publishing software.
This sort of example though is not very powerful, after all you could make a similar claim about microsoft word.
The additional power comes from the release of the code behind the application.
why?
1) From a pedogogical standpoint, I can look at successful and well architected open source projects and improve my own coding abilities
2) From a practical standpoint, if I think that I can improve say the data aggregation feature in django then I can contribute to the django source code (rather than wait for the team to get around to implementing this feature)
The economic model for open source software is consulting, if I am a large contributor to django then I can go out and assist people in implementing their django implementations. Write the software for free and charge on the maintenance fees so to speak.
Open source software is very compelling as a model to emulate probably because
1) I can use software that other people make and realize my software vision
2) Perhaps I dont have the time to build an entire software package myself, but I can still contribute to an open source product and thus satisfy my desire to be part of this creative/technical/whatever process
Now writers, filmmakers, artists, etc look to the open source and are interested in emulating some of these aspects
Say I want to use the music of miles davis as the soundtrack to an animation, or clips from taxi driver in a movie, or if i want to make an animation staring mickey mouse, or I want to use parts of a the fan man in my own novel about the east village (Walter Benjamin for example kept notebooks composed entirely of quotations from other books)
Why open source culture?
The pedogogical nature is apparent.
I want to make an animated movie but I want to using an existing character, or I want to learn how to edit rather than shoot, so I want to use some existing clips to make into a movie.
However from a creative standpoint - perhaps I want to respond to a particular work by using that particular work, or an aspect of that work (think of all art that uses mass market appropriation like Warhol's brillo boxes, or Richard Prince)
But what does it mean to open source a cultural artifact and how can you use a these cultural atoms to create a work of originality? What are the atoms of cultural that we need to isolate in order to talk about open source culture.
I'll first talk about filmmaking, since I have made some movies.
The building blocks of film is the footage, the assets. In an animation, you could also imagine the assets being a character as well as all the photoshop layers of different character parts that can be animated seperately.
However the building blocks of film is also the score, the dialogue, the script, and the editing timeline.
There is a difference between releasing all the assets in a 'hard day's night', and the wav file of the song 'a hard day's night'. In the case of audio - I can go in and cancel out certain notes and frequencies. I apply certain filters and actually turn the song into an entirely new song. With a clip of a hard day's night - I am in many ways bound to the baked clip unless I want to insert a green screened character or use another compositing technique (for example forrest gump meeting past presidents, or the old coke commercials combining living performers with deceased performers). Now, it is possible that I could take all the clips of say, 'The Shinning' and turn it into a romantic comedy, however I am stuck with the framing, the acting, the lighting, the cinematography of the original movie. It will always look like 'The Shinning' more than my remix 'Winter in the Old Hotel'. A video mashup looks much different from a musical mash up. A musical mashup can still be considered a song, most video mashups dont resemble a narrative.
Another building block of film is the editing timeline. This is an interesting aspect of filmmaking that people dont really look into when considering open source culture, but is another aspect that could be shared. The cutting, the pacing, and the types of cuts will be different for Hitchcock's Rope compared to Lucas' Star Wars. In addition to open sourcing assets, filmmakers could open source editing timelines. In final cut pro, for example, you can export your timeline as an xml document. The clips are referenced as filenames that can be replaced by any other clip. So I can upload the cutting of a film for other people to use in their own films.
Further to build on open source software collaboration is the notion of version control.
In an open source software I different people can build on different version of the same software, diverge for a time, and then recombine into a master version. There is a lineage to open source software. I can see the same thing taking place with open source culture, placing culture within a context, an artistic lineage.
I am going to explore this a bit more in a series of studies providing the editing framework for classic movies - stay tuned!
Also - please contribute comments, criticisms, and suggestions.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Inner Game
Last week I ventured above 50th street and went up to Morningside Heights for a meeting. It was a beautiful spring day, and I ended up wandering around the area vaguely looking for labyrinth books. However, due to my shopping moratorium, I ended up perusing the stalls at a second hand book store.
I found a copy of Inner Tennis, a self help book along the lines of improve your tennis game, improve your life. One section discusses how greater focus on a task seems cause time to slow down. Gallwey makes an analogy to film. In films of the 20s, for example, the action seems sped up. This is because the shutter speed on these cameras were slower. That means you had less images to work with. When you play back the images, you have less images to play and the action seems to proceed faster.
So apply this to focus. If I am half focused on a tennis ball, and half focused on my inner dialogue that says - this is a easy shot, or a hard shot, or I suck, or I am awesome - I have a slower shutter speed. I am taking less pictures of the ball. This means I have less information. When I "play back" the movie, the ball will seem faster because there are gaps in my inner movie of the ball's trajectory.
(This is not a great explanation - but I am trying with this blogging medium)
What if you focus completely intensely. Is time continuous or digital? Is time like the number line, with more irrational numbers (holes) than rational numbers? What does this mean for our inner movie?
On a more practical level: For kids time seems to move slower because we are more engaged and focus - there is more newness. As we become older, we experience this 'newness' less and are probably less attentive - we are taking less pictures of the here and now - and are spending more time with a wandering mind.
I am really having a lot of fun with this book - and I'm itching to pick up a racket.
I found a copy of Inner Tennis, a self help book along the lines of improve your tennis game, improve your life. One section discusses how greater focus on a task seems cause time to slow down. Gallwey makes an analogy to film. In films of the 20s, for example, the action seems sped up. This is because the shutter speed on these cameras were slower. That means you had less images to work with. When you play back the images, you have less images to play and the action seems to proceed faster.
So apply this to focus. If I am half focused on a tennis ball, and half focused on my inner dialogue that says - this is a easy shot, or a hard shot, or I suck, or I am awesome - I have a slower shutter speed. I am taking less pictures of the ball. This means I have less information. When I "play back" the movie, the ball will seem faster because there are gaps in my inner movie of the ball's trajectory.
(This is not a great explanation - but I am trying with this blogging medium)
What if you focus completely intensely. Is time continuous or digital? Is time like the number line, with more irrational numbers (holes) than rational numbers? What does this mean for our inner movie?
On a more practical level: For kids time seems to move slower because we are more engaged and focus - there is more newness. As we become older, we experience this 'newness' less and are probably less attentive - we are taking less pictures of the here and now - and are spending more time with a wandering mind.
I am really having a lot of fun with this book - and I'm itching to pick up a racket.
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