Minimalist Shakespeare covers

Hey I made these. I'm digging Intro to Shakespeare.

- Avery Violet

Proposal for assignment 5 (?)

Hello!
So for this project I have a few ideas and I don't know which would be more interesting.

Ideas:
1.) Wear a sign all day that reads "please don't touch me" and record how people respond. I'm aware that it is possible that people will touch me anyways just to make a joke. With this I really want to emphasize on personal space and issues many women face with unwanted touching or closeness. Some could argue the sign is provoking that reaction, but what it says is contradictory. Kind of like when people say "what she was wearing provoked him".
Also, I hate when people touch me without consent or if I don't know them. I feel like slapping some hands... (just kidding). What I hope to point out is people's inability to follow a simple unspoken rule once it's plastered on my body.

2.) unravel a sweater or long knitted garment while talking aloud about nothing at all or something personal. I'd probably film this.

3.) play violin without knowing what I sound like in public.

4.) read aloud on film every horrible name you can call a woman, and then a man. Compare lists.

5.) smash a bunch of snow globes.

I think I like the top one best but I haven't really developed the other ideas yet.

-Avery Violet

Assignment 4: This is what you want to see.

Let me begin by saying I do not support 50 Shades of Grey, the books or the movies. I have not seen the movie, but based on the original trailer alone, I don't really think I'm missing out on any cinematic gold. Also from the parts I have read, or heard read on youtube, the writing is so bad it's hysterical. The actual plot of the movie is not that exciting so here's a really good youtube channel that goes through each chapter and critiques it in a funny concise way. She's much funner to watch and also free so there's that.

For my project I took the trailers and a few movie clips from the movie 50 Shades of Grey and transformed them into a "trailer" for a romantic comedy version of the film. The goal for what I created is that I want people to watch my version and then watch the original (posted below) and see how very different they are. I honestly want to make the original feel like a horror movie trailer. This is entirely because the storyline is in all actuallity very problematic and potentially dangerous.

The biggest problem with the book/movie is that it cloaks domestic abuse under a thin veil of "romance". Some of Christian Grey's behavior towards Anastasia is controlling and non-consensual. Not to mention a little creepy. At one point in the book he gives her a list of things she can't do, eat, or wear while they're involved. In a few of the more racier scenes he ignores her asking him to stop. In my trailer any trace of him stalking her or harming her in anyway is wiped away. It looks as if they have a grand ol' time together. In the scene where they first meet she look nervous and uncomfortable,   almost scared of Christian. He looks at her as if she's food, very predator like. When I watch it, I feel scared for Ana.
In my version, he looks at her like he actually in interested in her and she's just nervous because he's handsome or because of this attention. The hardware scene was crucial to get because the acting is sort of comedic and fun. I wanted it to actually look like christian was just a regular nice guy asking Anastasia on a date at work (and not showing up to her work creepily). They go on dates, they're passionate, they go on adventures, every clip I selected makes it all seem very positive and sweet.  

The movie's big plot point is that Christian is into BDSM. Like really into it. However, some have commented that the book shows a false representation of the BDSM lifestyle and plays too much on the stereotype that the female always has to be submissive. Personally, I don't know anything about BDSM or kinks. But from what I've researched, the two biggest non-optional rules are that everything must be consensual and safety is top priority. In some scenes involving this sexual behavior it seems that those rules aren't even on the table or are completely ignored.
So, when I thought about including a nod to that part of the story, it was very hard to find footage that showed either of them actually excited about it. The shots they used were probably supposed to be "mysterious" and seductive but they came off scary and awkward. Honestly, I can only think of one clip that would've worked., where in it, Ana holds her hands up and says "yes please", but unfortunately I can't find it in any of the trailers. I say this because I don't want it to seem like I excluded that part of the movie almost entirely to shame people who engage in BDSM or even sex in any way. I don't have a problem with that; I do have a problem with there being no consent prior to the act occurring.

I think the feeling of my trailer is light spirited and sweet. It really shows a couple meeting and having an adventurous enjoyable relationship. With the music, I made a deliberate choice to use a song that I've already seen used in romantic comedy trailers/movies. The song is Sweet Disposition by Temper Tramp. It's beautiful, light, and nostalgic so it fits in well in almost any rom-com. I picked soundbites that were light-hearted and could denote a positive relationship. He asks her about her interest in literature, and when she says something that's self deprecating he twists it in a positive way to show he likes her ("look at me..." "I am."). It was a matter of taking these small lines and strategically placing them so that it's shows how their fondness of each other grows (in a healthy way). What was weird was including the line "I'm incapable of leaving you alone". It strikes me as obsessive alone, but it somehow didn't completely come off that way in the context I put it in. Leading up to it you believe they've already fallen in love, so why would he want to be without her? He comes off sweet and devoted, and she wants him to stay just as much.

What's sickening to me is that people have mistook Christian's obsessive stalking behavior as romance or love. I actually had a friend describe them as "in love", but that's not what it looks like to me. I created the trailer with that thought in mind and gave them what they want to see from this story. I appeased the masses that said it's a love story, only to reveal how it isn't. Not only that, but also I conveyed how easy it is to cover up an abusive relationship with a little editing. 

-Avery Violet

Assignment 3 - "Emergency Sprinkles"

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

Nancy Floyd: Weathering Time

Weathering Time is comprised of a collection of black and white, self-portrait photographs of the Artist Nancy Floyd. The pictures were taken daily over the span of thirty years and all together they show the slow progression of time. 

She's pretty much centered and her whole body is visible, in every photo. Each picture presented in the work is unique, but because of the way she composes them they all tend  to look uniform and cohesive. Some of the collections have themes such as "misbehaving pets", where her pets in the photos are moving or interrupting the picture. The one I included above features the evolution of the typewriter into a mac computer; this shows the passage of time technologically as well as her age. Two of the pieces are pictures only taken during a short period of her life (like a month or two) and these really show how certain events effect her appearance and whether or not she could take a photo.  I also liked how she kept the blank spots in her film when she didn't take a photo because it keeps the eye moving. Also, I appreciate how none of her photos are edited because it shows how real and human this process was; there's mistakes, blurs, and sometimes half of the picture is missing. 

To me, this show is very raw. It's a simple idea; she just takes pictures of herself everyday for thirty years. But what came out of that is so complex and emotional to grasp. She has catalogued her life basically. What she wore, her family, her house, her job; she captured how she and everything around her has changed in a simple, raw way. During her artist talk she talked about the future of her project and how it in some ways reveals her mortality. In the progression of photos you see her age over thirty years, and it was sad to realize that she can't keep taking pictures forever. You don't really think about the artist as part of the art (even though they are the biggest part of the art!). They're the behind-the-scenes workers. Honestly, for some of the pieces I forgot that the woman in the photographs is the artist as well as the subject. I agree with what professor Thrasher said about him feeling like he knew her just by looking at her work. It's very personal and intimate, like a scrapbook.

I had the opportunity to talk to Nancy a little before the show opened, and even though I'm probably the most awkward little pipsqueak on the planet, she was so kind and warm. I told her about how I filmed parts for the next assignment using sprinkles in a bowl, saran wrap, and my camera to make a trippy surreal effect, and much to my surprise she went "That sounds FANTASTIC!". She told me about Cal-arts and how it's the place for animators. It was cool to feel like my art making made another artist excited, even for a little bit. I mean, her work definitely inspired me, so after meeting her I was stoked! Moral of the story: talk to artists. She was full of great advice on moving for school, being an art student, and creating art. Basically she's awesome.

Assignment 2: Breathe

I call this piece "breathe".
The sounds I used to create this piece are:
the tiny clock from my bathroom
the strings of my ukulele above the knot
keyboard typing
Beyonce's performance at the grammy's (reversed)
book pages being flipped through
my violin strings (plucked by my playing hand)
the washing machine
and my yawn

When I picked out what sounds to record for this project I was keeping in mind that I wanted an airy feeling to the piece. I originally wanted to do a whole composition made of sounds made from wrongly playing any of my instruments. However there isn't a lot of wrong ways to play instruments that make an unusual sound, so I had a small selection of violin and ukulele noises to incorporate somehow. I recorded bits and pieces of the Grammys to use and Beyonce's singing was so beautiful, I wanted to include it. However, I reversed it so that is sounds less like singing and more like a moaning of some kind. I sort of "fanned" the noises from left to right so that the listener is surrounded in it's atmosphere when they listen to it through headphones.
During the working process, I gravitated towards sounds that were light and airy, but also repetitious. The sounds create a building and rising of noise until a "breath" of resolution.

Working sonically was a challenge. It's really easy, almost too easy, to make everything sound creepy and cryptic. I tried to stay away from that because I'm not good at creepy. In my head I still had to visualize what the sound should "look" like. Which is weird because you can't see anything. For me, the layers of sound were equated to layers in photoshop, and I worked well that way. I made my piece very quiet in nature on purpose, however I think I may have made it too quiet. It was hard to tell if every layer was being heard and was working well together.

The atmosphere of my piece is very open. I used a lot of echo and paulstretch effects to give certain sounds more depth. It's starts out soft and almost silent and then grows into a flash of sound. I reversed the twinkling sound at the end and added a few more layers of sound to make the ending louder. The piece gradually builds and then there's a brief moment where it all dies down. Beyonce's "moaning" through the TV is very poltergeist and very creepy, but I wanted that to be subtle and faint. It adds a mysterious vibe.
It feels like anxiety or thoughts building up, and then being blown away. The ticking you hear softly at the beginning and end, signifies time continuing even as the stress mounts. It doesn't have a dark vibe of stress, instead it more neutral. It carries the essence of being anxious with out totally freaking the listener out.

-Avery Violet

Hello yes, I made this.
I collected sounds from walking around oval wood.

-Avery Violet