For this piece I really took kate's instructions to heart and played with my footage and premiere. I didn't really have a narrative in mind when I began collecting clips, but I had a few ideas in mind.
I noticed after the fact that a lot of the things I filmed happened to be things loosely intended to make me more comfortable. Besides the thumbtacks- that was mostly fore aesthetic. I call the sprinkles my "emergency sprinkles"- hence the title- for when I have cake that has no sprinkles or vanilla yogurt. I filmed tums and sleep aid pills the same way, and those tend to help me with the daunting task of falling asleep. My walk to class is included because I spend what feels like most of my day walking through the woods to and from class. This time is spent thinking and listening to music, which is sometimes therapeutic. I layered film of my pretty fairy lights because it gives the room a calming atmosphere, and I prefer dark places to light places. All these things, filmed in an intimate way, make everything warm and comfy.
I'm not sure where I got the idea to put my camera in a bowl of sprinkles and shake it around a bit, but I love the way that turned out. I set the blending mode to overlay on the footage of the sprinkles over every video clip so that you see both at the same time but not through each other. Parts of the video actually have it set to "pin light" so that the sprinkles look more liquid-y. When I filmed my lights I had a piece of saran wrap over the lens and expo marker colored on two of the edges so it has a faux vignette look. The sound was collected while I was filming, and I later removed it from the clips and mixed it in premiere. It's mostly the noises of sprinkles in a bowl and f.r.i.e.n.d.s playing in the background slowed down or reversed.
When we started talking about experimental film, I thought of Yayoi Kusama's early brush with film and her piece "self-obliteration". (I did extensive research on her life and work for John's class last semester, and revealed that I am a massive Kusama nerd. She's terrific.). In the film she paints her trademark polka-dots on naked people, dogs, film strips of buildings, and herself. The film overall is really poor film quality, but super hippy-dippy-trippy and defiantly homemade. So when I thought about getting experimental with film, she was my inspiration. My sprinkles were sort of an homage to her polkadots, and the fairy lights are like the club lights she filmed. The sound in her film was weird and distant, and mine is very abstract and detached. It wasn't intentional, I just noticed how parallel they kind of are as I was working. Minus the nudity, of corse.
The feeling of my piece is either really nostalgic and positive, or like a sinister drug trip. It can go either way. I like how it turned out looking like a home movie; very shaky and kind of crappy quality. The overlapping of the sprinkles and the pills/tacks, sort of make it seem like they're chasing each other. It reminds me of waves coming in at the beach. Like a swirly vortex of candy and lights.
-Avery McGrail
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