Wishlist. Classless, I know, especially when this is the first post in ages. Summer’s come and gone, I haven’t made new work worth commenting on during my hiatus, nor have I accomplished anything spectacular beyond paying a great deal of bills and purchase a car. Let’s not dwell overlong on the past, shall we?
This is a list of stuff I like, some frivolous, some definitely dream-material, but it should help someone if they were convinced they’d like to buy me something for birthday/holidays and was struggling to pick something. Onwards!
Black Milk ‘3D Ribs’ swimsuit and MCQ Alexander Mcqueen’s Cape Zip Coat in Black. Would absolutely murder for that jacket, I love it like crazy, but it’s a total dream. Half a grand on a jacket is beyond what I can reason as reasonable. Drool!
Mac ‘Black Knight’ Lipstick and Illamasqua ‘Pristine’ Lipstick.
Magnetic Nail Polish by Nails Inc
Winsor and Newton Artists Oil Colour
I currently have Zinc White, Flake White, Mars Black, Chromium of Oxide, Cobalt Turquoise, Green Gold, Burnt Umber, Brown Ochre, Yellow Ochre, Jaune Brilliant, and Transparent Red Ochre.
Sienna Horizon Plein Air Easel from Colours Art Supplies
Song is ‘Home’ by Timber Timbre. All scenes shot in Saskatchewan, July 23/24th 2011.
Gobble Gobble will be our Friday night headliner at Ness Creek! I’m incredibly excited for the weekend. I’ve been forcing myself to stay awake until silly hours for several nights now as we’ll be operating the After Hours tent from 1:30 am all the way to 4:30 am. Got to be prepared for the late night dance party.
Source: gobblegbl
You must be the call
The evil at night
Speaking words of grace
While spellwork delights.
Feel my desire, it burns like a fire
Feel my desire, it burns like a fire
I’m so shivery. Austra’s minimal synths plus this three part vocal is so exciting, and to hear it in this raw acapella makes me feel really emotional. I get shivers around 0:49. I can’t stress how excited I am about Austra. The lead singer of Austra, Katie Stelmanis, joined the Canadian Children’s Opera at age ten and pursued a career in opera. Her powerful and trained vocals come through each song of Austra’s debut album Feel It Break, which is easily going to be one of my favorite albums of 2011. Brr.
She stands on a hill, her back to the camera and the target of her words.
“I feel like dying because I no longer love you. That’s why I’m desperate,” she says, blurting out the second sentence as she pivots to gaze at something, presumably a figure off-screen. After a pause and a breath, she continues, fumbling at something dark and sequined.
“I wish I were old, my life’s dedication to you over,” she says, briefly making eye contact with the figure standing to our right. Her eyes fall.
“I wish I never existed, because I can’t love you.” Instantly the sound of a saxophone cuts in. The camera turns to the target of these words. At exactly twenty five seconds in, his head sinks.
Ow.
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I have been feeling so intensely inspired by the mass of video I’ve been taking in. I rarely get into fits of watching serious dramatic films, but I find now I tend to approach them with a different, more critically aware stance. It’s like when I started to distinguish the bass melody in songs when I was younger, or when I realized what parts of songs would be considered samples.
Video transitions and effects previously were things I was aware of and partook in as a viewer, but from now a blossoming baby editor perspective I now wonder why those calls have been made. Why would one decide on a crossfade rather then a sharp scene transition? What does this effect for the viewer? And certainly, as I have been muddling in my mind what the possibilities could be for scenes, I start to think of narratives and ways to pull them off cohesively, though, in a subtle and classy manner. I think that simple, clean transitions and effects are what I want, and thus, classic black and white films have been a fine place to look for direction.
I recently had ‘Un Chien Andalou’ shared with me by my previous Animating Textiles professor. The film is sixteen minute surrealist short which was shot in 1928 by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí. The manner with which they pull off their special effects reaffirms with me what can be done with straight up crossfades and some creative scene transitions. And, how good a dismembered hand prop can appear when in grainy black and white.
A more modern short that I believe takes it’s thematic and spiritual cues from black and white classics is the video that was created for Portishead’s ‘Humming’. The emphasis on proper lighting to create emotion, effects such as the close up of burning photograph paper, the simplicity in the transition and the number of figures depicted in the entirety of the film - each of these elements are excellent tools with which to grasp basic concepts of this classic style of film. The flexibility and style that can be accomplished with such analog techniques is something I desire for film making.
This user on Vimeo, allblurry, has a few really neat user made music videos. Dream Boat’s ‘young & fine’ is worth a look - the editing is simple but the aesthetic is really nice. I nominate See Birds for our solstice party’s theme song. Or, perhaps Luminary Youth’s ‘Diamond Skies (Warpaint). It was a good night.
WORDS FOR JUNE 22ND: thebes, lectures, timelessness, crystallization, memory, repetition
The show has been over for a week now! Installation week was a bit stressful, especially since we had such a short deadline. I had quite a bit of editing to do to get the video to show up properly - I was concerned about the amount of ambient light that would be in the gallery to show the other works, but even with most of the lights averted the Nothing Between Me and Nothing installation was a bit washed out. I could see an entire show of split ‘light curtains’ and projections - the walls all hidden by a network or hallway of these curtains with video all throughout. I think then I could lessen the amount of layers these curtains had to allow some of the projection to pass through and hit the observers and opposite screen. Certainly have some ideas there.
In the meanwhile I think I will turn my attentions to music and have video follow in a promo vhs tape that I’ll send about. I have so many intentions - this lengthy music video in vhs format, the script I want to write for a horror short for Bad Monster Films, the Ness Creek Afterhours tent installation, a number of illustrations for clothing I want to silkscreen for for the fall. So many projects to do, so many job I should be trying to be hired at.
Though, if Emma Lake and the More Big Fun Collaboration this spring have taught me anything, it’s that you can do an incredible amount in brief periods of time. Just need to run ragged, listen to increasingly uncomfortable music, be more of a social pariah, have weirder and weirder dreams.
Had a dream last night that I skinned a rabbit with bare hands and a knife to express my guilt and disgust at myself to someone who I wanted to apologize to. I cracked open a wine, and in the dream it wasn’t mine, and was intended for some important guests. I was so ashamed because I couldn’t afford to replace the bottle, so I did what I thought was right. Subject myself to some hunting and skinning. In a dream I had earlier this week I think I was contemplating Debbie Harry, and her life on whole. That she’s sort of all documented so her transition through the years is all obvious. Of course, I apply that whole concept of time and aging to myself, and I wake up with a pain in my chest and some anxiety. Awesome.
oOoOO’s track ‘EGYPTYNLVR’. In shoegaze there was the term ‘blissing out’. I think ‘bleaking out’ should be a term too. 2:10 is a big bleak out.
Didn’t sleep for forty one hours, starting from 7:30 am on Wednesday morning. I spent the day Wednesday running around to buy materials for my screen and shooting extra bits of video for my personal project, then, finally, in the afternoon I ran to the Digital Research lab and started uploading and editing. After fighting away with an annoying techy issue I literally edited all night - at two in the morning I considered going home, but it would have entailed walking home in the dark by myself with a suitcase of video recording equipment that apparently retails at around $2500. So, I edited, and rendered, and edited, and rendered, all the way to quarter to eight am. Then, after a much needed shower, I returned to the studio space and continued to grind.
Grind is the best way to put it at this point. There’s nothing specifically nourishing at this point about the creative process - like the rest of the class, I’m running on no sleep and frayed nerves. Which is funny, because our show and book have officially been named as ‘Fray’. Stay classy, Sextiles.
WORDS FOR MAY 25TH/26TH: frayed, no sleep, editing marathon, grind, marrow, anti-nourishment in the creative process
Last night after Pam and I got together and this morning before class I squeezed in some time to shoot bits for my personal video. I shaped the concept of having a sequence with a mild narrative of the ghost-persona lurking about and haunting, but it didn’t seem to click in my head. I cut with an art knife teensy words and shot the projector light through them and filmed the result. I did a few more experiments and decided on the music for the looped video - a recording of a haunting I did on Saturday night in the Kenderdine main building’s dining room. Dressed in bog hag ghostly garb, I played some piano with my guileless fingers. I sang in some, but it came off weak in the recording. I was happy to have some material from my hauntings included in my personal project as they felt very integral to the development of the concept for the piece.
WORDS FOR MAY 24TH: keyholes, black holes, space, matter, mystery
