Jeff's Blog

Crew Support for Jeremy Hill “The Trials and Tribulations of Craig Scheihing”

graysomers — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 04:53:01 +0000

Working on Jeremy’s project was fun. I worked entirely in post production with him, just basically helping him make editing decisions of how to orchestrate the piece. The end result of a documentary, it’s theme’s and general overall ambiance rely equally, if not more important in how it is edited. One of my best projects I’ve ever done till this day at Temple was a study of a relationship project I did back in my freshman/sophomore year. I remember being incredibly worried about the project because it was shot last minute and the story I wasn’t really sure what story I was trying to tell. I had managed to stay up for like two days editing and managed to pull together a solid piece with a clear story intact. This was all due to responsible and well crafted editing. I thought is project ended up being a thoroughly crafted if, light-hearted piece.But basically, I just sat back and watched and would let him know when I found something to be really wrong with the piece.

FINAL PROJECT ‘The Ballad O’Lady Prince’

graysomers — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 04:14:13 +0000

I wanted to make a project that was experimental, but with it’s intent on stimulating the viewer and affecting them either physically or emotionally. I was originally going to do extremely slow motion, but that deemed to be problematic in regards to finding something interesting enough to play at 24 frames per minute. I really just wanted to make a surrealist work without doing too much in the realm of special affects or experimental film cliches. It’s more like a surrealist fairy tale in a sense, not that I think it really deserves to be considered a tale, because the foundation of this piece lies in the visual affect of the looped stutter more so than the story. The story arc adds to the surreality of piece of it does anything. All the edits were done with about 3 frames of video, more or less on certain edits, looped. This sort of makes sense in lieu of my original project idea, where i was going to split one second of video into 29 frames and then slow them down individually.Anyway I think this piece worked, and it definitely opened me up to a new set of ideas i would like to work with in the future.

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VBS.TV

graysomers — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 03:40:53 +0000

I just finished watching a documentary on VBS.TV which is an offshoot of Vice magazine’s Viceland.com website. This website specializes, in a sort of, all subculture specialties. This doesn’t just like in American underground rock culture, but it entails everything from covering the underground Gun trade in Pakistans to North Korea to American Domestic Terrorism groups. The documentaries are extremely realist, and tend to work in the “fly on the wall” brand of journalism where there is not P.O.V. of the camera person or interviewer. They usually let their subjects to the majority of the talking. And if there is a host, they usually try their best to be as objective as possible, which is refreshing in our American corporate controlled “news” media. I really don’t watch the news, because i don’t even have television, but I find I often get more out of this than I do out of a newspaper.

What I just watched tonight was a documentary on the “Heavy Metal Gangs of Aboriginal Australia”, (or something close), of the town of Weydaye. (sp.) This was something I think really the rest of the world would have other wise never heard of, and still for the most part, probably never will. This documentary investigates a small village in Australia, created by Christian missionaries some 50 years ago to educate and civilize the aboriginal people. When this happened it brought loads of tribes together who had never lived together before. Normally they had tribal boundaries, but now were forced to live together. Over time, this turned into rivalries and violence, and strangely enough, in recent years, many of these different tribes went onto to form gangs assigning themselves with names related to western heavy metal music, like Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and even, sadly, Evanessence. This documentary investigated the supposed violence of these heavy metal gangs only to come back with much different story than was read in Melbourne city newspapers. Rather than fighting, the gangs of this village, (made dry from alcohol by govt. mandate), would have totally sober parties, where each gang would dance to their respective metal bands song, in a sort of dance off. This documentary left the the viewer and the host to come back enlightened and hopeful, something that wasn’t expected.

I believe VBS.TV does a great job at trying to connect an audience to a world that needs them. Their work succeeds at this without trying to appeal to a certain aesthetic or political agenda. It does it with honesty, smarts and taste.

see it for yourself.

http://www.vbs.tv/watch/music-world/heavy-metal-gangs-of-wadeye-1-of-2

My Process Chance Piece

graysomers — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 03:23:27 +0000

I’m working on a piece right now for my Experimental Media class that involves “process” and “chance”. What this means is that the shooting and audio decisions of my project should be based on a certain random process of chance, rather than be subjected to my own subjective perspective. So, this is essentially an objective assignment, where the outcome is totally left up to a chance process. For my project I am basing it off the chance of rolled of dice. For my first rolls, the first dice will be assigned shot movements, (pans, trucks, zooms) and second dice will be assigned scene selection (different materials and textures, like grass, carpet etc…). One the second roll i determine the audio selection. I have recorded six different instruments playing six different keys per instrument. So, the first dice determines the key and the second dice determines the instrument. One the third and final roll, i will only roll one dice. This dice will determine the length of time per shot. Each number on the dice equals one half second, so a full die of 6 numbers totals 6 seconds. However, this may be subject to change.

What do I wish to accomplish with this piece? I don’t really wish to “accomplish” anything. But I think it will make interesting sound and video “collage” that maybe says something about where I live and the different textures and colors of human inhabited enviornment?

I don’t know, it is what it is. I’ll post it when I’m finished.

the Aluminum Fowl by James Clauer

graysomers — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 05:21:45 +0000

I came across this short film on youtube the other day when i was doing my periodic search of things related to Harmony Korine. I like to check up on him because his work is always highly original and severely absurd/insane/hilarious/profound. So when i was on this fan site i came across the video called “the Aluminum Fowl” which he supposedly produced.

This film was directed by James Clauer who worked with Korine on the set of Gummo as a cinemetographer. It follows three southern, rural (as is the case in much of Korines early work) black brothers who kill their time in their suffocating and aimless lives by fighting chickens, or cock fighting. It features a monologue by one of the brothers describing their everyday, their relationships and what makes them all unique. The film is at once very humorous if not borderline exploitative, but at the same too absurd to be and at times truly profound. The film really seems like a direct product of Korine, though apparently he had involvement in the writing or directing of this, so it leads me to believe that these two film makers must influence each other, unless of course one is ripping off the other, which i would be hardpressed to believe, considering they are collaborating.

Anyway, there are scenes which do feature live animal abuse, which I am not sure how i feel about. And it’s also hard to tell if this is entirely fiction or a mix of both fiction and reality, as many of Korine’s films “appear” to be and sometimes are. The more absurd things, like a scene when one character covers his head, car, rooster and everything else with tin foil in order to ward of the aliens seems fictional, whereas the animal fighting scenes seem almost too realistic to be fictional. The characters just seem too relaxed in the environment and too natural around excessive violence.

The film just pretty much chronicles the daily life of these boys, climaxing into a shot featuring fields of chicken coops time lapsed with one really great monologue that is just too good to be fiction…or maybe the other way around! Here it is: “It’s kind of like when you realize your life ain’t goin’ no goddamn where. And you can’t get rid of it, cause it’s just too damn hard to swallow.”

Funny Games by Michael Haneke

graysomers — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:03:47 +0000

">funny games

I saw Funny Games for the second time last night, and more two years after it came out, I was equally “shocked” as i was the first time. Funny Games is not a “horror movie”, but is atleast equally, if not more terrifying than most gruesome slasher flicks out there. This movie challengers the viewer as to what their conscience is willing to endure. This movie is not about the boogie man or any sort of supernatural evil, no this is more relentless. What happens when you make a movie where the Boogie Man doesn’t die in the end, when the Biggie Man WINS in the end? Moreover, what effect will that have an audience? You know from pretty early on that this movie is not going to have a good outcome, yet this viewer, (me and my girlfriend in this case…and imagine thousands of others) persisted in watching it all fall apart. It’s like that whole thing they say about when you see a terrible car accident on the side of the road and look over to see terrible after math. What does this say about the viewer and about society as a whole? Are we all secret masochists?
What is interesting about this film is that it gets to the core of this question. At the end of it all you left with is the Boogie Man, because the Boogie Man wins, and so, do you join his team? Beyond all this, Funny Games was a brilliantly written, directed and acted movie. The directing style of Haneke is plain and classic, steering far from horror movie cliches like over editing and “pop out scenes”. Instead this film builds with momentum and the knowledge of the inevitable tragedy that leaves you hanging off your seat, ready to turn off the tv while eager for more. Michael Pitt is excellent has existential prep boy-cum sado masochistic nietzian murderer, oddly reminiscent of his character in Larry Clark’s failure, “Ken Park”. The movie also featured some excellent music neo-experimental spazz jazz by John Zorn over Jean Luc Godard style titling shots. I give this film a 9 out of 10.

Termite Tv Segment “I’m Not Running”

graysomers — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 02:12:02 +0000

This is a remix of the show “Guiding Light”. I didn’t want to include a shot with any credits or title, because i thought the cut up title of “Guiding Light” was suitable. If the FCC has a problem with this I can change it, other wise, to hell with them. The point of this project was, that by the manipulation of video, i show the manipulative nature of the characters on the show. As I progressed I started to feel a certain connection between the show and that sort of insane idea of “middle america”, as what is normal. Though these are far from “normal people”, much of its audience is.

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On Leighton Pierce’s “He Likes To Cut Down Trees”

graysomers — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 02:41:17 +0000

Leighton Pierce was introduced to me in my experimental media class. We were being shown examples of different sort of rule based film experiments that follow strict guidelines devoid of creative influence. One such piece was Pierce’s, “He Likes to Cut Down Trees”, which follows a man cutting down a tree over time from one side of the tree, around to the other in a full circle. It was intended to be edited in camera, however, it ended up being edited into a sort of rhythmic style, with some repeats of shots. What I liked is that he started initially with the goal of making a film devoid of personal feelings or intentions, to be completely left up to the mechanical structure which leaves the meaning of the film up to chance. This gave the film strict parameters, however, he eventually broke them. His decision to increase editing towards the end of the film worked, because, it seems that he is influenced by the structure of film and was developing new meanings out of the structure which would go onto influence his editing, which i found to get increasingly violent towards the end.

Leighton Pierce has other work, that he works on until this day. Another work of his entitle “Number One” is a beautiful abstract piece which juxtaposes nature alongside movement and sound. It’s beautiful in its visual structure and in that the motion on the screen sort of goes against each other the screens different frames. It seems to be almost about nature, from the perspective of something very close to nature, as there is little commentary on it, it just seems very natural.

Termite Tv Response

graysomers — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 05:01:37 +0000

I watched the episodes entitled “Television” as well as “Desert Storm” from the first season of Termite Tv. Both these episodes exhibited a real solid conceptual premise, as well as being clearly inspired pieces of art. The introduction scene, which showed a reversed clip of a television reading “This is Only a Test” makes on obvious statement about the show itself. The show focused primarily on the television and it’s use as a tool of social manipulation. However, the ironic undertones of this, being that it is indeed a television show were not under looked. The show was very self aware in that sense, namely, that at the end of the show there was a scene of the television the television from the introduction being destroyed in slow motion, with the same television, while working, super imposed over. The narrator went on to describe the importance of ritual, the importance of destroying a television after every video is made, and the overtones of this rung obvious and deep with the show. They were aware of the fact that they were making a television show, and how ironic it was that the episode focused so largely on the fact that television can be such detrimental tool, and yet there they are making a show to be watched on television. I found it interesting that the during the interview portion of the show, when they went around and asked people in the street about their television habits, how many hours a day people watched tv. At least two of the people said over six hours today, to which my girlfriends immediate response was, “oh my god!”. However, at the very same time, I noted – well yeah but we’re watching this on a fucking computer! we’re awatching a reproduction of a television show, intended originally on a television, on a more a comprehensive form of television, and how many hours a day do we spend on this newfangled television relative? The episode echoed inside me because a I began to think of how much less control we have over our media input we have had ever before. In this movie they were complaining about cable companies ripping off the customer, and now not only cable companies, but cable, internet and phone companies all under one empirical roof. Not only that, but there’s pop adds too. I’d be interested to see what the filmmakers would have to say about what they were doing then, today.

The Cat Whisperer (self portrait)

graysomers — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:52:33 +0000

This was intended to be a parody on the atypical short bio piece often seen in intro’s to reality tv shows or at times commercials. I try to use cliches to the point of absurdity.

http://graysomers.blip.tv/file/2633741/