Quick Link to 6x1 Topix Week by Week

WEEK 1: INTRODUCTION TO DIRECT FILM MANIPULATION (CAMERALESS FILMMAKING)

Film sizes and aspect ratios
What film manipulation looks like - at a glance
Cymatics

WEEK 2: DIRECT FILM MANIPULATION CONT'D (MAGAZINE TRANSFERS, FILM PAINTING, ETC.)

Frame-by-frame drawn on film animation
Magazine and newspaper print magnified
Magazine transfer sample loop
Norman McLaren frames
Rhythmic editing sample 40-frame cycle
Desktop printing on clear leader

WEEK 3&4: FILM PROCESSING (B&W DARKROOM)AND BUILDING REELS.
Film processing example strips
Processing with Caffenol
Building reels for Assignment 1

WEEK 5: MULTI-PLANE SUPER 8 ANIMATION SHOOT
The multi-plane workspace and sample movies.

WEEK 6: THE BOLEX LONG-TAKE
Creating a minute-long continuous take using a 16mm Bolex
Bolex exposure test (using Kodak hi-con 7363 film)
Bolex Anatomy
Loading the Bolex

WEEK 7: 48-HOUR VIDEO RACE
The challenge of making film without a film or video camera

WEEK 8: THE ROUGH THEATER
The Rough Theater
Line Describing a Cone

WEEK 9-11: RECYCLED FOOTAGE: RECONTEXTUALIZATION
Culture Jamming or Artistic Appropriation
A Humament
Co-opting the "revolution?"
Creative Commons
Some culture-jamming videos

WEEK 12: MYSTERY PROP WORKSHOP
Example 1: 3D Filmmaking
Example 1a: More 3D Filmmaking
Example 2: Supery-Dupery Projector Loopery

Cymatics - Sound Made Visible

48-Hour Video Race "Prop" Spring 2009

And the mystery prop is . . .

. . . actually a line from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. The line is:

"MY GOD, IT'S FULL OF STARS"



If you wish to use the audio file, download it by CLICKING HERE

OR . . . you may represent the line through text that we see OR . . . have some one say the line in your film OR . . . the possibilities are endless - so long as the line appears or is heard or sung or whatever ~ somewhere ~ in your 1-minute film.

Don't feel obligated to reference the film, in any way beyond the quote, itself. Your interpretation of the line can take on a life of its own.

And Finally, don't forget to also incorporate a cheese sandwich somewhere in your film, as well - in the spirit of the Cheese Sandwich Film Festival.

Your Teacher and Trusted Leader in the Sixbyoniverse

YES YOU CAN . . . check out the article about the AP photograph of Obama appropriated by artist, Shepard Fairey.

Week 14, 15 and Beyond

This Spring, the mothership blog will be on hiatus (while the Silvas focus on their brand-spanking-new minature Silva) but there are a new crop of student links (to the right) setting off on the 6x1 journey. Above is a picture of last semester's year end blow-out screening/installation experiemental-stravaganzah at Jengo's playhouse. Everyone was very cold but had lots of fun - in part due to the really great final projects and in part due to the endless cans of free Rockstar Energy drink donated by Cucalorus. The event featured work from the 302 Experimental Film class, 6x1, 2D Animation and the 302 Documentary class.

6x1 offered a crop of 48-hour video race featuring as the mystery prop . . .



. . . a cookie cutter.

Week 13: Sixbyonalorus

This week, we're having class at Cucalorus 14 - for 4 days!

Week 12: 3D Workshop

Click To Play

Get out yer 3D Glasses!!!

Above is one of the four 3D flicks made during our 3D film workshop.

For the workshop, we set two Panasonic DVX mini-dv cameras side by side - one camera served as "right eye" and the other as "left eye," - at identical focal lengths. Then, we synced up the footage from both tapes and composited the two "eyes" in After Effects.

Another part of the workshop included creating 3D glasses. Below is the Fall 2009 Class posing with their 3D Glasses.

Week 11: Making a Film without the Ususal Suspects

For the 48-hour video race (our final assignment), we will explore the many possibilites of creating films/videos without a film or video camera.

So besides working the "mystery prop" into a 1-3-minute film, we'll need to figure out how to do it without the obvious technology.

This still leaves us with: cell phones, web-cams, digital still cameras (with or without movie mode), rayograms, pinhole shoebox cameras, computer animation, copy machines and of course, their grand-children image scanners. Are silly puddy flipbooks too far out or physically impossible? Jamie suggested a zoetrope and why not? Is there anything I left out?

We've also talked, in the past two weeks about considering the technolgy of choice within the context of concept. For example, consider the warped scanned image of the rubber duck, below:



Our mystery prop, in this case could be a rubber duck, and we're creating a story about the duck living in a universe, where suddenly all the molecules have a war and things start to melt. So we're not just using the scanned images because they look cool, but because it best communicates the story or concept. Incidentally, the warped image was created using only the scanner and by dragging the duck while the scanning progressed.

Oh, and just as a reference point, here's what the duck looked like, before all hell broke loose.

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.

*****

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.

Week 6: Pixillation

As we have quite a bit of super 8 footage left over from last week's animation shoot, there is an opportunity experiment with pixillation, a stop motion technique where live actors are used as frame-by-frame subjects in an animated film. The actors repeatedly pose while one or more frames are taken and then change poses slightly before the next frame or frames are clicked off. These actors become living stop motion puppets.

Also, this week, we watched the finished cameraless filmmaking assignment, "the Four Elements." See below, a compilation of excerpts from each of the 8 projects.

Click To Play

Week 5: Super 8 multi-plane animation shoot

This week, our class met for four hours for the super 8 animation shoot. The first hour was spent setting up the multiplane environment and the next three were spent animating.

Below are the completed multi-plane animation projects:

Click To Play

And below are some pix from the shoot.









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AND BELOW ARE SOME SHORT VIDEOS OF THE PRODUCTION PROCESS:
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Click To Play

Click To Play

One of the components of the animation project was for one or more of the group members to collect random objects while blindfolded and led by another group member and then to animate blindfolded (as seen in the video, below).

Click To Play

And below is the film that made it all possible:

Week 4: Putting it all together

(thanks to Lvx Lvcis for the photo)

This week, our class split into two. Half went into "the darkroom" (aka Blackbox) to create Rayograms & experiment with contact printing and half stayed in the classroom to paint/scratch etc. It was an in-class work-day, dedicated to working on the 4-elements projects and applying all the cameraless filmmaking techniques, we've learned thus far.

WEEK 3: More film-manipulation techniques

Thus far in class, we've talked about scratching, painting and bleaching film, creating magazine transfers and rayograms in addition to contact printing.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

There is so much we can do in the realm of cameraless filmmaking that a semester (much less, six weeks) couldn't possibly cover the territory.

But to arouse your imaginations further, below is another example of film manipuation, inspired by Roger Beebe's TBTX Dance .

This example shows how we can print images (using a standard desktop printer) directly onto clear leader.

First, it helps to have a template that perfectly represents the dimensions of the clear leader on which we will print (in this case 16mm leader).



Print out the template and tape 16mm clear leader, so that the sprocket holes of the film match up with the black sprocket holes on the template.



Then, take the template FILE into Photoshop or some other digital image creating program and superimpose a series of images (I have used vector shapes) within the sprocket holes. Save this as a SECOND file.



Next, take your template with the clear leader filmstrips taped to it and print the second file (the one with the repetative images) onto the template with the filmstrips.



Splice those clear leader strips together, load them into the projector and you're ready to go. See example of projected image, below:

Click To Play

Another movie example:

Click To Play

And a bit of the filmstrip from which the film was created:



To get a filmstrip animation template, CLICK HERE. This pdf document can be printed out and also opened in Photoshop.

Week 2: Magazine Transfers

This week, we continue exploring film manipulation techniques (last week, we broke the ice with film scratching).

Two of the techniques we'll learn this week are magazine transfers and film painting.

For the mag transfer, we'll be tearing up bits of magazines, newspapers, phonebooks etc. and sticking these bits onto clear packaging tape.

Then, we will cut the packaging tape into strips, dunk the strips into buckets of warm to hot water, leave the strips immersed for about 3-5 minutes and then rub the magazine pulp off the tape.

Only the ink remains on the tape. Then, just slap the strips of tape onto 16mm clear leader film (avoid the sprocket holes) and project.

It's important to note that variables like color vs. black and white or glossy magazine vs. newsprint have an effect on the overall look of the image patterns we create on film. See how printing styles differ, below, by clicking on the CLOSE UPS to see the detailed printing patterns:


above: black and white newsprint


above: black and white glossy magazine print


above: color newsprint (wide view)


above: color newsprint


above: color glossy magazine print (wide view)


above: color glossy magazine print

To catch a snippet of what your magazine transfer might look like, in motion, CLICK HERE