FST 302 Matt K

I think more than any other film maker we saw I had really polarizing opinions on her films. I wasn't a huge fan of the ones that use dolls and boats in that kind of herky-jerky fashion. But I thought the Freedom Force film was incredible, I'm not even sure what I was watching but it was so unlike any other cutout animation I had ever seen before. And the Pug Adventures thing was easily my favorite thing I've seen in this class. I mean, a smiling puddle of urine named Puddle? Earth shattering stuff. If I'm coming across as sarcastic, I promise I'm not being so, that whole video is right in line with my sense of humor. Overall Martha seems like a really interesting person and I hope her work continues for decades to come. As for their presentation, it was good, but I noticed they did more videos and less slides than most of the other groups, I don't have a problem with that personally except I would have liked to have done the same but I thought we could only h...

I really enjoyed the few clips of Riggs' films we saw, honestly more than I expected. What we saw was both really powerful and at times really funny. And Riggs himself definitely has a certain charisma when he talks, I felt like I was hanging on his every word. Definitely a tragedy that he died so young, but I'm glad I at least know now who he was. As far as their presentation, it was solid, no complaints here. I'm glad that we got to see the Snap! part of the film which they weren't originally going to show, that was awesome.

I enjoyed working on my self portrait, and I'm really glad that I was allowed to use some music. For what it's worth, I was basically done with my project at about 12:30 AM the day before it was due, but a couple things felt slightly off to me and I ended up staying up all night (finally went to sleep at 6:45) to get these few things how I wanted them. This wasn't in the interest of getting a better grade, as I'm pretty sure my grade would have been the same before or after these changes. I did that because I wanted the video to be more accurate to my experiences and memories. I'm not saying any of this to get brownie points or anything like that, I just wanted to share. I definitely don't always go the extra mile, especially when the only difference it would make would be for me and no one else. In this case though I'm glad I did, I'm not really going to show this project to people and if I do they won't understand it they way that I do, so it was r...

So we really haven't had a chance to work on this yet, we've exchanged some ideas but nothing concrete yet. The most likely so far sounds like cymatics, I personally have no clue on how to set up something like that but I think some of my group members do. I have no idea what my role is, I haven't really had a chance to focus on this yet as I have 5 other classes and it feels like every day a new assignment is dive bombed on my head from the sky. But I will be there for whatever the group needs and help in any way I can. If we do cymatics the only instrument I could possibly play is piano/keyboard and I'm really out of practice, I suppose I could do something simple though. I really don't know what else to write for this since we've only barely started talking about it so far.

I really, really dislike their music. I could write this whole post about why and how I dislike their music but I won't. The visual portion of the videos was pretty cool though, especially the more recent ones. I had never seen the treadmill video before but it didn't really have much of an effect on me, that clearly took a lot of rehearsal but compared to the ingenuity of the newer ones it was pretty inferior. My favorite was probably the one that messed with perspectives, that's just really cool and I wish I had a better word to describe it but I don't so cool will have to do. As far as the presentation, they did a solid job, no complaints.

I've been thinking more about the specifics for my self portrait idea as well as finding some good found footage. I've mostly been focusing on the first portion of the video. I want it to be a compilation of some of my vague, early memories (not the exact memories but more imagery/sound that evokes the memories for me). I will add post production to these effects to give them a sort of hazy, long-ago feeling.  For the soundscape I've thought of a few specific musical snippets to use for this portion. My parents were both huge hippies back in the day and were really into Indian meditation and stuff like that, it was a pretty big part of my childhood so I want to use some sound effects that remind me of that. I also have in mind a few samples from 90's hip hop songs that I remember as a child that really remind me of where I grew up in upstate NY.  Once my video transitions to the negative section when I went to 8th grade, I like the idea of using black and white, ...