Final Blog Post

Audio and Video Works:
1a. Listening Experiment: "Easy Listening"
1b. Listening Experiment Song: "Easy Listening (song version)"

2. Chroma Key: "Queen Kong"

3. Animated GIF: "I'm Finished"

"I'm finished." (2013)

by Mike Zeile

1920x1080

Animated GIF

A simplistic GIF (cinemagraph) taken from the final scene of the film There Will Be Blood (2007). In terms of context, this scene shows the aftermath of a once powerful oil tycoon, Daniel Plainview, in the early 1900s who has just murdered his rival with nothing but a bowling pin. Once he's done beating his rival to a pulp he takes one last breath and utters, "I'm finished."

4. Found Footage: "Forward Motion"

5. Midterm Self-Portrait: "Me"

6. Multi-Channel: "Insomnia Arm Wrestling"

7. Sixty Second Shot: "Retrace Your Steps"

8. Final Project: "Dismal Dislocation"

Wiki Entries:

1. I'm Not the Girl Who Misses Much (1986) by Pipilotti Rist

2. Isabella Rossellini (2005) by Robert Wilson

3. Vivre Sa Vie (Godard, 1962) 2010's

Tech Demo 4/15/13

Film Transitions

Transitions made a huge impact on silent cinema in the 1920's because it was a major creative tool considering there was no sound. Once the silent era ended and the sound era began Hollywood utilized the "cut" most often and not until the French New Wave (60's) was the film transition morphed into a more conscious, artistic aspect of filmmaking. Nowadays the film transition has many forms including the "morph" effect that became available when computer generated imagery was invented.

Common transitions:
-Cut (straight cut, contrast cut, L cut, match cut, jump cut)
-Fade in/out (dissolve)
-Wipe (iris wipe)
-Morph

Classic examples of film transitions

Harmony Korine

Date and place of birth: January 4th, 1973 in Bolinas, California (raised in Nashville, Tennessee)

Current residence: Nashville, Tennessee

Current workplace: Lived and worked in New York for many years, now lives in Nashville and works (directing films) all over the place, mostly within the United States

Education: Hillsboro Highschool, briefly studied Dramatic Writing at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University

Work:

Curb Dance            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wu5Lpe8z40Y
Snowballs               http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8F8K27Cr6U
Act da Fool            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUsB3S0CfKE
Gummo (feature)   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nd9pyFZG-Qk
Umshini Wam        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMVNjMF1Suo

Final Project: Dismal Dirt Cheapskate (working title)

I plan for my final project to be a short video with a loose narrative. I want to express themes without dialogue as much as possible and carry out the action/narrative with some sort of structure. The first picture that came into my mind when I heard we could do anything we wanted for this project was a human rising from the earth covered in mud. I'd rather not give away the entire "plot" of my piece but it has to do with discovery and knowledge at a base level. To test my skills in the editing room I want to experiment with transitions. I'm very interested in transitions that flow with the piece. Trying to stay away from the simple jump cut will be a challenge in itself. Hopefully, if all goes well, I'll achieve  seamless fluidity throughout the entire work.

I wasn't able to attend the introduction class for the multi-channel project so my background may be a  bit uninformed. I did scan over the examples that were linked on Moodle and after reading some of the other ideas by my fellow classmates I think I've come up with a loose plan. I've decided to keep it simple when concerned with underlying meaning, yet somewhat complicated with the editing and execution. I've been very busy lately and this is causing me to become disoriented and tired. With that in mind, I want to use two screens. One will be upside down and on top of the other screen. Playing with the "multi-channel medium" I want to use a pillow that will fall back and forth between the subjects (me?) on either screen. They will both be yearning for the pillow, but can't ever seem to hold onto it. The screens will disorient themselves, twisting and turning, upside down and backwards, as the subjects fight for the pillow to be on their screen. This should work perfectly in a loop. I'm finding this hard to explain in words and that may be a good thing.

Me by Mike Zeile
56 seconds
Digital Video

In Dick Goody's article titled "The Roving Eye: Aura and the Contemporary Portrait" he states, "From our various perspectives, when we look at a portrait we are naturally wary of falsity or the staged guise." Goody describes the search for truth in portraiture quite clearly as we, the viewer, try to pick out the falsity in a [sitter's] face. I agreed for the most part with this statement, but after viewing the exhibition I found a few that stuck out to me that made me think twice. Woman gliding southeast at 70 mph on Highway 101 sometime in March 1990 (Listening to the Silence), 1992-1993/2008, Andrew Bush, photograph. ----- A dozen useless actions for grieving blondes #1, 2009, Rosemary Laing, digital photograph. These two pieces in particular seemed to defy the notion that Goody was trying to convey. In the first one listed, a candid photo of a woman driving in the 90's is an easy example of true unawareness. The woman looks to have no idea she is being photographed and her expression feels real and uncaring of who's looking in on her. The second portrait listed is more staged, but could also be considered within the realist spectrum. The pure disheartened and woeful gaze the sitter gives the viewer feels more powerful than a "staged guise". Although one is candid, while the other staged, I feel that Goody can't lump all portraiture into false truths. I've found, in these two portraits, that truth can be revealed and real emotion has been captured.

Video Art Work-To-Date 2/4/13

Forward Motion (2013)

by Mike Zeile

1 minute 46 seconds

Digital Video

A study of motion in video. Moving ahead/forward is the centerpiece, trying to test the limits of the viewer's comfortability with repetition. All clips came from found footage.

https://soundcloud.com/mike-zeile/easy-listening

Easy Listening (2013)

by Mike Zeile

1 minute 38 seconds

Audio/Soundscape

An audio experience that attempts to tell a story using only sound effects and musical tones.

Queen Kong (2013)
by Meghan O'Bryan and Mike Zeile
29 seconds
Digital Video

A chroma-key experiment of Meghan O'Bryan seemingly crawling upward on a skyscraper as clouds briskly float by.

"I'm finished." (2013)

by Mike Zeile

1920x1080

Animated GIF

A simplistic GIF (cinemagraph) taken from the final scene of the film There Will Be Blood (2007). In terms of context, this scene shows the aftermath of a once powerful oil tycoon, Daniel Plainview, in the early 1900s who has just murdered his rival with nothing but a bowling pin. Once he's done beating his rival to a pulp he takes one last breath and utters, "I'm finished."

Negativland and Martha Rosler

Although both articles are about appropriation within artworks, they each seem to have a different mood. Negativland is more about the restrictions of modern day appropriation in the context of musical remixes, video appropriation, and other media outlets. They have a radical look at appropriation almost seeming outraged at the current laws that govern the use of media in artworks. The article goes through when appropriation first started being used and how it is used now. Negativland is appalled by all the obstacles one must jump over to get even a small "sample" to mess around and create with. They propose an idea on how to change the "Fair Use" laws so that artists can have more freedom to create.

The Martha Rosler article had a little more experience behind it. She started doing war collages in the late 60's and became highly regarded in the art community and also disliked by many others. The article goes deep into the process and reason behind her work. She uses a very simple medium of "cut-and-paste" art that has a certain innocence along with it. She's not using a song someone made or a scene from a film, she's simply cutting pictures from old magazines and pasting them on new backgrounds to create new meaning. Her worked sparked controversy but seemed to open people's eyes to the Vietnam War, what was actually happening, and how the mass population consumed this information. She eventually creates more collections of collage work for wars after the 60's and 70's, most recently, the Iraq War. Rosler has been in the appropriation game for a long time and seems to be a positive influence on the medium as a whole.

Easy Listening

How often do people really listen to the noises around them? What bleeds into white noise and what noises are meaningful? I guess I don't feel bad about drowning out certain sounds on a day to day basis because it's what we as humans do subconsciously. It is rather interesting once you do actually take the time out of your day to do something as simple as listening though. That's how the listening experiment made me feel as I roamed the hallways outside of my Video Art II class. There is so much detail in the audio we hear. When I boil it down in my head I think of it simply as the bustle of life around me. After I recorded my two minutes of listening in three separate places I chose to continue my assignment with the sounds I recorded in the stairwell down the hall. I liked the beat that peoples feet made on the steps and the door slams resonated beautifully. I tried to recreate that atmosphere as best I could with Final Cut's sound effects. After I did that the assignment continued further in that we had to make our audio piece more musical. I'm a drummer and have been for many years, but my sense of song structure is lacking almost entirely. I decided to use the beat of the steps, the door slams, and other noises along with musical percussion to get the feel I wanted. If I was successful in doing this, well, that's another story.