48 Hour Film Race... 54 Hour Film Race...

The 48 Hour film race was a bunch of fun. I thought it was a good way to wrap up all the things we learned in six by one. Personally, this film race taught me that it is still possible to make quality work without having much sleep, something that has seemed to be a constant theme of the semester. Going into the race I was not terribly excited. I had way too much to do and not nearly enough time to do it. I was like great, on top of my exams and final projects now I have to completely improv a film and dedicate myself to this project for the next two days. The night before the start, Sunday I believe, my darling Annie and I stayed up all night interviewing each other for the documentary I have been directing for 495 all semester. We had long drawn out emotional conversation that seemed to last forever. Many conclusions were reached in my mind about the nature of technology and its relationship to human kind. I, not willing or able to fall asleep, decided to spend the early hours of Monday morning returning my equipment and logging my footage until 12:00, the time of the mystery prop. I show up to the film studies office to hear Andre’ explaining the assignment to Chris- patiently waiting outside, I hear him say, “it has to be one minute long, and it doesn’t have to make any sense.” A sense of relief pours over my soul because I knew my sleep deprived waking consciousness was unable to produce logical thoughts anyways. I remember feeling slightly disappointed at the idea of a cookie cutter for no good reason at all. I fumbled through all cookie cutters trying to find my perfect match. The dolphin, the foot, and the star intrigued me, but ultimately my fate rested with the dog bone. I’ve been working for this Organic Dog food company called BLUE all semester on the weekends. I pet puppies and kitties and tell their parents about the health benefits of feeding their animals a healthy balanced diet. I don’t think I would have ended up with the dog bone had I not worked this job all semester. Anyways, I carefully drove home after securing my mystery prop to take the photos. I had been planning on using Photo booth on Annie’s Macbook as my method of acquiring footage. I had success with it one time shooting an image sequence with the built in mirror effect. I realized that the dog bone had a plane of bilateral symmetry, like the human body or a face, and that this would probably look cool with the mirror effect on. Still with no sleep, I take lots of pictures with the built in counter beeping 1 2 3 before each photo. After a while I grabbed some mirrors and started trying to shoot the dog bone inside of it. The slinky and the googley eye glasses happened to be right next to me when I was shooting and became what I think was the best part of the film. I threw it together while falling asleep in animation class that afternoon and was done with it by the evening. I think it was more fun to make than any other film I’ve ever made. As ive watched it more the symbolism starts to make more sense to me. In lots of ways the slinky tries to get across the concept of dualities link to oscillation and mirrors in a way symbolize the many layers of reality. Of course, that could all mean something completely different to anyone else watching the film. I like the venture into personal meaning. I had a blast that night at Jengo’s. Wish I didn’t have to go straight to work afterwords, but it was still loads of fun. I think my favorite part was the instillation pieces, but everything was fun and awesome to watch. This semester more than others has let me learn to apprieciate the talented community of filmmakers at our school and has brought optimism about all of our projects. 6x1 let me relax and breathe enough to start to hit at my true artistic voice. Watching so many films from my classmates enabled me to see their individual artistic styles and in turn help to develop my style. I also think that if I ever go on to become a teacher of film this class has opening up a door in the right kind of attitute to approach exploration. I look forward to surfing future 6x1 blogs to see how the class develops, and wish the best of luck to all the kids in class this year. THANKS and HAVE AN AWESOME BREAK. SLEEP!!!!!!