Experimental Media
We have been asked to research, design and produce a media arts project for public exhibition.
What is experimental film making?
(Robert Hardy - 2013)
Experimental film is difficult to define, not because its guidelines are so abstract or even esoteric, but because it's such a wide-ranging genre that defining it almost defeats the purpose of the genre itself. In one sense, it refers to anything that defies the conventions of traditional narrative and documentary cinema. It doesn't have to tell a story. There don't have to be characters. There doesn't even necessarily need to be a message of any kind. It can be visceral or mundane, engaging or a complete bore. It can be highly personal or overtly political. It can be literally anything.
On the other hand, experimental film is an aesthetic and aural art form. Film inherently takes some of the most expressive elements from other artistic mediums and combines them into a magnificent smörgåsbord of sight and sound.
All films have elements of photography, music, painting, dance, etc. However, narrative and documentary films don't necessarily use all of these artistic elements to their full potential; they're more focused on creating an enhanced sense of narrative reality than creating pure aesthetic art. With experimental films, however, the extent to which these elements can be mixed and manipulated to evoke or portray emotion or ideology is infinite.
As a result, experimental filmmaking is an absurdly powerful artistic medium that can be matched by few, if any, other art forms in terms of pure expressionistic potential. If that's not reason enough to get started with this fantastic genre, here are a few more of its copious benefits.
Experimental film is difficult to define, not because its guidelines are so abstract or even esoteric, but because it's such a wide-ranging genre that defining it almost defeats the purpose of the genre itself. In one sense, it refers to anything that defies the conventions of traditional narrative and documentary cinema. It doesn't have to tell a story. There don't have to be characters. There doesn't even necessarily need to be a message of any kind. It can be visceral or mundane, engaging or a complete bore. It can be highly personal or overtly political. It can be literally anything.
On the other hand, experimental film is an aesthetic and aural art form. Film inherently takes some of the most expressive elements from other artistic mediums and combines them into a magnificent smörgåsbord of sight and sound.
All films have elements of photography, music, painting, dance, etc. However, narrative and documentary films don't necessarily use all of these artistic elements to their full potential; they're more focused on creating an enhanced sense of narrative reality than creating pure aesthetic art. With experimental films, however, the extent to which these elements can be mixed and manipulated to evoke or portray emotion or ideology is infinite.
As a result, experimental filmmaking is an absurdly powerful artistic medium that can be matched by few, if any, other art forms in terms of pure expressionistic potential. If that's not reason enough to get started with this fantastic genre, here are a few more of its copious benefits.
Inspiration
Here are some films that I am taking inspiration from, my main idea is to trick the mind, show things that are not obvious at a first instance. All three films play on the mind but also incorporate time travel, I would like to work with time and work that into a story, the films also trick the audience with big twists and unexpected changes in the story line.
IDEA 1
I’ve been thinking of using time travel as my main idea but this did spawn off another idea of using deception, such as a scene is played with no context or dialog and you will then re watch this scene but the second time around you will find something to look for or you will know a new piece of information about a character that will change your perception on the scene, this could also be accompanied by sound or visual effects, all of this can make you see a scene in a different way, I would also like to use this idea as I believe it can play with your mind and make you think about scenes and the use of sound and visuals a lot more. Although I want to use time travel I want to separate myself from the iconic films such as ‘Back to the Future’ and other big Hollywood films that center around time travel as this is too predictable. The reason why I have chosen to look at films such as ‘Inception’ is because they use concepts such as dimensions within time travel, this is an aspect that I want to use as I feel it will get people engrossed and almost lost in a film. I think this will be a hard task to complete as it will need a strong story line to keep people interested and follow the path. I would also like to incorporate different styles within the film such as VJ or Cut-ups as I think this will add a good feel to the film, I may even use found footage of news reports etc. to add into and show what dimension or time period the film is in at that time.
Style 1
In my previous films or short that I have made my style has been very clean or commercial, I think this is my personal style so I feel like this brief is a good place to explore different style and edit such as scratch or VJ work, I am very interested in this as it is something I haven’t tried before but I like the way it is used. I think it will work quite well as the film is running off the idea of time travel and there will be a lot of moving parts so it should make it easier to incorporate the story into the edit of the film. I think for some parts of the film I will stick to my style of editing and filming as I want it to still have a feel that I like and it may also work as a good contrast to the main edit.
Idea 2
My second idea is to work with different experiments involving water and macro lenses, I have looked at different videos on YouTube mainly involving oil getting placed into water with food colorings mixed in and getting filmed in slow motion with a white background and front lit with some additional lighting to bring out details in the water. I want to work with this idea but the main aspect of it will be the editing and the music and sound choice. I will be finding the music that I am going to use once I have filmed the shots as I want it to fit with what I have and due to this being something I have never done before I am not sure on the exact outcome.
I have previously worked with water for a photography experiment involving dropping small droplets of water at a certain time so that it will create a crown effect when shot with a camera as the two drops meet. I also want to experiment with the editing of the film after I have filmed it, this will be a major part of the film as I will need to look into different types of music and various genre. When it come to the shooing of this film at the Cube Cinema in May I am looking to have a lighting set-up that corresponds with the visual on the screen, for example when a certain colour of liquid is poured into the glass the lights will change to that colour and fill the room with that colour.
Idea 3 (Final Idea)
This is my final idea and the one I have used for my video, it is an effect known as “Scribble Effect” and is used in music videos and some adverts now. The video I have used to use this effect on was shot on my DJI Osmo earlier this year and was not directly made for this use but I felt like it worked quite well as the shots were steady and clean enough to use for this idea. I think this effect is going to be used a lot more in the near future as it is very simple yet effective, the only thing that make it tricky is it can be very time consuming but so can most other creative effects like this. I feel this has all come from the old art of scratching onto film which would get a very similar effect, not in as much detail as film was physical and you would only have the space given on the film to scratch on, I have linked a video below of this so you can see the similarity.
It has been quite hard to find exact music videos that use this effect as when searched all that commonly comes up is tutorials on how to use the effect, I have linked a few videos below that I used to help myself out when doing my video. With an effect like this you can be as creative as you like and also make it very much your own, I am usually one to stick with very clean straight lines and keep it very tidy but once I had been using the effect for a bit I found I liked it to be a little more jagged and messy.
Final edit.
Evaluation
My final idea was to use what is known as “Scribble Effect” over a video I had made a few weeks back. This is the process where you freeze each frame and draw on each individual one, there is 25 frames in a second so this process can be time consuming but the outcome can be very interesting. I originally got this idea when visiting the Cube Multiplex with our University, we were there to work with film and the process of scratching each frame so that when it is running through a projector it would create different effects such as animated drawings or whatever you choose to scratch. I then saw this same effect used on a few different music videos on a digital format and I was interested in how it was done. I then did research into the process and found it was all done using Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro. I then had to choose a video to use and a few weeks before I found this I had shot a video at the seafront with a friend of mine that I was hoping to use for something like this, I began to work on it one evening and spent around two hours on it. I only managed to get about 20 seconds completed which just shows how long this process is. I believe the outcome is good but I feel I could have spent more time on each frame and making them match to get a smoother animation but in some ways I feel this also works.