ATTACK OF THE 50FT TEACHER - IN 3D!!!!!!

**** 3D glasses sold separately ******
This is a test. This is only a test. If this were an actual B-movie horror/sci-fi flick, you would be seeing several sixbyone students invading the UNCW campus . . . which should be happening around next week.

Click To Play

For best viewing use a pair of anaglyph 3d glasses or hold up a deep-red gel to your left eye and a blue (blue/green) gel to your right eye. CLICK HERE to select the Quicktime movie format instead of the default Flash format offered here. The 3D effect may be more clear in Quicktime.

Week 10: In case you didn't get your fill

A couple of supplemental videos within the realm of culture jamming.



ABOVE: POPaganda: The Art and Subversion of Ron English



ABOVE: The Yes Men - Exxon Hoax: Vivoleum Pt1



ABOVE: The Yes Men - Exxon Hoax: Vivoleum Pt2 (The Reggie Video)

Week 9: Long-Take Bolextravaganzahhh3!

This past Saturday (yes, we had class on Saturday) our class gathered on campus from 12pm-4pm with the task of shooting (in groups of four) one continuous minute-long take on a 16mm Bolex, then processing the footage in a darkroom and finally projecting and transferring the footage to video.

A few days in advance, the weather forecast was not promising for Saturday: rain and drizzle fo' shizzle.

But, the class was instructed that the show would go on - barring a tornado - and students were strongly encouraged to bring umbrellas, swimsuits, raincoats or other impervious accouterments - hence, a few umbrellas in the long-takes. The result was four pretty off-the-wall long-takes and a rollicking good time.

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So, a bit more about the process. As mentioned, the class shot with a 16mm Bolex, which has a 28 second wind (at 24fps - sound speed). Since each group needed a one-minute long-take, they needed to undercrank the camera at half-sound-speed (12fps). Thus, they were able to shoot for 56 seconds. However, when the film was projected at 24fps, it played at twice the speed (see movie clip, below).

Click To Play

In Final Cut, students take the transferred-to-video Bolex footage and invert it to a positive image and then slow the footage down to half the speed to get something closer to reality. See the modified footage, below:

Click To Play

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Below, a few more digital stills from the shoot.





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AND FINALLY! ~ All four of the long-takes

Click To Play

Week 8: Artistic Appropriation or Culture Jamming?

What sentiment do the below pictures convey? Which works lean more toward artistic appropriation and which works lean more toward culture jamming?








Oh, and also a video of Disney clips

WEEK 7: The Rough Theater

~ The word "excellence" is a foreigner here ~

(Thanks to waterwinterwonderland.org for the image)

This week, we read as a class a short excerpt from the Empty Space, a book by former Royal Shakespeare Company Director, Peter Brook. More specifically, we focused on the concept of "the Rough Theater," an idea of a theater that brings dirt and grit to a performance - a ramshackle theater that might lend more to an audiences enjoyment than a pristine, state-of-the-art theater could. Certainly there are instances where a top-line theater is the best choice, but likewise, there are also instances where a scrappy hole-in-the-wall joint is more appropriate.

While Brook was talking about theater in the traditional stage-theater sense, we could apply the same principles to filmmaking as well as film viewing.

In an age where cameras and other filmmaking tools are becoming more high-tech and able to render image and sound with a hyper-real fidelity, where does black and white 16mm film, shot on the fly and processed in a bucket have a place? Or, with the ongoing desire to equip multiplex theaters with the best seats, projection and acoustic environment, where does a shower curtain, serving as a projection screen, strung up between two trees in someone's backyard have a place?

As the semester goes on, we will explore these questions.