Tag: Week 5

Found Footage: Society’s Critic

Alaine Thompson on

Found Footage by definition is footage that has been rappropriated and redefined for an entirely new and different context. As Tilly Walnes puts it, “there is no end to its newness.” (Walnes, 2015). This much is true, as through this act of remixing and reappropriating, the footage takes on an entirely new meaning and context, in an entirely new film.

Found footage films, such as Bruce Conner’s 1958 “A Movie”, often critique the “mass media’s use of images, narrative codes, and editing conventions, exposing their ideological function and questioning their authority as conveyors of meaning.” (Walnes, 2015). Through this critiquing, such films play an essential role in our current society, as they allow for social commentary to occur through a familiar, accessible and viral means.

The first ever found footage film was Joseph Cornell’s “Rose Hobart” (1936) which “stitched together and slowed down movie reels featuring the eponymous actress and added a blue filter and samba soundtrack.” (Walnes, 2015):

The film ends up being a rather strange and depressingly unique insight into the world of an actress and the seemingly fake emotions and person that is constantly created on screen, the blue emphasising these emotions while the samba soundtrack detracts from this and gives the idea that what she is doing is a pointless dance with not just the audience, but possibly even herself.

The art of utilising found footage to create an entirely new piece of work has become incredibly popular in recent times, as the internet has allowed more and more footage to become available to the average person, hosting sites such as YouTube have become more and more popular allowing people to voice their social criticisms, and editing software is becoming more readily available. All of these factors heavily contribute to the increased popularity of the found footage film, as well as remix films, but one other factor had a great deal of influence as well: the creation of creative commons.

The creative commons is a licensing agreement that allows artists to release their work to the public for free to be used as they see fit, whether that’s an attribution license, meaning their work can be used in anyone else’s work in any way, shape, or form, around the world so long as they are attributed correctly. Or a non-derivative license which means the work cannot be altered in any way or included in any other work, but can be shared as much as you want, for free. Creative commons gives the artists control over their work and it was only created in 2001 (Walnes, 2015). Before creative commons was established the only options for artists publishing on the web was ‘all rights reserved’ or ‘public domain’ (Walnes, 2015).

While many of the advocates for found footage film-making consider it to be a kind of “no-budget folk art” (Walnes, 2015), the art form is gaining considerable popularity, and with the creation of creative commons and the increase in the digitisation of artwork, its popularity will only continue to increase.

– Walnes, Tilly. “Movement 1.1:The Futures of Cinema. Story Without End? Found Footage in the Digital Era.” Feb. 4th 2015. Available at: http://www.movementjournal.com/issue_1.1_futures_of_cinema/01_story_without_end_walnes.html

Camera Practice on the Sony MC50E: Shaking Hands Three Different Ways

Alaine Thompson on

On Monday for our media 1 workshop we did a camera practice on the Sony MC50E HD video camera, in which we had to show two people meeting and shaking hands then parting ways. We also, somehow managed to create a coherent and flowing narrative with a beginning middle and end. So enjoy this very random story of, shaking hands.

First Shot: Alaine Thompson
Second Shot: Samantha Antolini
Third Shot: Oliver Clark

This practice was very useful to not only get used to how to effectively use the tripod and video camera, but it also opened up my eyes to visual composition. Through each sequence it was easy to see, especially since we actually gave each its own meaning within the sequence of shots, that the way you present the action within the shot can give your story an entirely new meaning, allowing for a filmmaker to really have great control over the overall feel and flow of their film, simply by adjusting the composition of the shot slightly.

Found Footage: The Art of the Portrait

Alaine Thompson on

Today in our lectorial Brian Morris talked to us about found footage for our forthcoming project; a portrait of someone we know consisting of a significant portion of found footage. Found footage is “pre-existing footage appropriated by a filmmaker and used in a way that was not originally intended”(Morris, 2015). The earliest examples come from avant-garde experimental films in the 1920’s which were then revived in the 1950’s during the new wave of American cinema (Morris, 2015).

Found footage has a constantly evolving meaning which depends upon the context of the film within which it is placed and the cultural and social context of the time, as this is where audiences draw meanings from the text. A good example of this is Bruce Conner’s ‘A Movie’ as it utilizes various pieces of found footage to satirize and criticize film-making:

We were then an Adam Curtis documentary trailer, as Curtis is notorious for his ability to mix mediums, that is found footage, captured footage, text, sound and photos to create a very distinct and clear message:

We were also shown many examples of portraits which gave us some good ideas of the basic conventions of the portrait genre. All of these examples combined to create a great overall image of what to do and how to create this ‘found footage portrait’. Now all that is needed is the subject.

We took some time to brainstorm some people who we thought would be interesting to do a portrait of and the one person that really stuck out for me was my dad because of his creative genius, love of 3D printing and amazing skills with a computer. Now all that’s left to do is to get dad to sign a release form and the project is off and running.

– (Morris, 2015), Brian Morris Lectorial.

Self Portrait Reveals: Video Edition

Alaine Thompson on

Today we watched everyone’s self portrait videos film festival style. It was really interesting to see just how much people had done with only one minute of editing together bits and pieces of themselves. Every single one was its own unique, coherent little narrative. It was really nice to see.

It’s so interesting seeing how many different ways a one minute video can be told, so inspiring too to see how unique every person’s idea was. It gives me hope, even if it is a naive hope at this point, for the future of the narrative, because there really are infinite possibilities.

Self Portrait: Video Edition. (Naivety)

Alaine Thompson on

Here is the second assignment of the year, a video self portrait combining all the mediums from the previous self portrait:

Through this piece I really wanted to show an emotional journey, the kind I feel my life has been and still is. From the beginning of this project I knew I wanted to create an emotional crescendo through the music, which starts out calm and peaceful but quickly becomes hectic, crazy and cluttered, as my mind often is.

I also wanted to show myself through images of my favourite places, and as I have grown up literally surrounded by parks, I have used trees as a motif to convey different areas of my personality throughout the piece. At the beginning I use trees moving in the breeze and fades to show my calm and positive side. This then develops into the idea that I myself have been labelled a tree because of my height. The vascular tree images, which I created using Adobe Illustrator, also give the idea that the tree is alive, through the use of montage theory which makes the tree pulsate.

To me, trees also symbolise growth and development, as each bump in its trunk was created by some event, it grows in a certain direction, it has many branches and thick roots. Trees to me also symbolise life itself and the journey of growth and change throughout life.

I found it very difficult to get the right meanings and ideas across in the middle of the piece, where things become more hectic, as I was originally going for a quantity rather than quality approach to the editing. But once I really thought about it I found an idea that worked. I still think there is a little too much going on, but I like the meaning that comes across throughout the piece through the editing.

The main idea I wanted to get across through this piece is that I changed so much in Year 12 that over the summer holidays, I felt I had finally gotten to know myself, only to discover once I reached university that I had continued to change and now I feel as though I know nothing again. I really wanted to capture that confusion and feeling of both freedom and being trapped at the same time.