Keiran McCann
Spring 2010
Videography 002
Reading/Screening Blog#3
For this reading/screening blog I read the 2007 article The Svankmajer Touch by Cathryn Vasseleu and watched the 1998 film Flat is Beautiful by Sadie Benning. The article was about Swedish artist Jan Svankmajer and his various art pieces/works. The film was similar to the teachings and ways of Svankmajer while exploring experimental techniques and themes of acceptance and homosexuality. What Svankmajer was trying to explain and what Benning was trying to do was to create a film, or “tactile experiment”, which does not only utilize film. A “tactile experiment” is anything that creates a sensation or feeling for the person watching or engaging it. Art can be anything. A film is art and art genres can be mixed however the artist sees fit.
Flat is Beautiful is an experimental film, which utilizes live-action footage and cartoons. The filmmaking techniques of masks, animation, subtitles, drawings, and dramatic scenes are used to create an inventive world of black and white intrigue. The purpose of the film was to investigate the intuitive life of an androgynous eleven-year-old girl named Taylor. Taylor grows up with her single mother and gay roommate in a working class Milwaukee neighborhood. Taylor is obviously lonely and confused about the difference between masculine and feminine in a culture obsessed with defining gender difference. She is concerned with confronting these issues. The director Sadie Benning does a good job with story and technique to convey the world of this character. What is unique about this film is that it shifts between black and white film and grainy video. Flat is Beautiful explores the internal and external worlds of sadness, confusion, and growing up.
In Flat is Beautiful, the concept of identity or lack of identity is conceived experimentally by way of the characters wearing masks. The film can probably be considered exploitative in terms of it’s sexual content mixed with child like innocence of the live action actors. The grainy, floating images convey a sense of psychological uneasiness and the black and white aspect creates a bleak depressing atmosphere.
What Jan Svankmajer was trying to do was create interactive art which allows the viewers to participate physically and/ or emotionally. Benning uses the same principles as Svankmajer when creating her films. This is specifically seen in her film Flat is Beautiful. All art is a concept.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Blog Entry#2
Keiran McCann
Videography 002
Gorker
Blog Entry#2: Documentary Forms
According to Bill Nichols, there are six different forms of documentary: expository, reflexive, poetic, participant, observational, or performative. All of these forms of documentary are similar in that the subject(s) is/are often intimately portrayed by the filmmaker and that each form of documentary is based on reality and captured in real time but edited to suit the needs of the viewer. Bill Nichols explores these documentary forms as well as the subjects within documentary itself in his article The Voice of Documentary.
Expository documentary often uses the “voice of god” technique, which addresses the viewers directly and conveys are particular side to the story the filmmaker is trying to tell. Reflexive documentary involves the filmmaker and the audience. It is the most self-aware mode and challenges the more traditional documentary aesthetics of the filmmaker’s absence. Poetic documentaries are often an ode to a particular subject, for instance the film Helvetica can be considered a poetic documentary about fonts and typeface. Observational documentary is an exploration and depiction of everyday human life and is often described as direct cinema or cinema verité. Participant documentary involves the filmmaker and the subject. Performative documentary raises questions about the subject and “tries to demonstrate how understanding such personal knowledge can help us understand more general processes of society.”
Some documentaries employ only one form throughout the entire art piece, but some documentaries employ multiple forms. One such documentary is Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 by Kazuo Hara. This film is particularly unique in its documentary styles in that it employs participant, observational, and poetic forms into one piece. Not only is it unique in its documentary forms but it is unique in its subject. It documents the life of a one of a kind Japanese woman in the early 1970s. This woman personified the sexual and cultural revolutions that were occurring in the world at the time, which is particularly important due her race and gender.
The director Hara films this woman, his ex-love Takeda Miyuki, for approximately three years and employs his various documentary aesthetics and forms into his documented healing process. His participant mode is utilized in the form of him crying onscreen, both a moving and terrifying portion of this film because it shows the filmmaker, a man, in a most distraught and vulnerable state, something which is not accepted in most masculine cultures today. The film is observational in Hara’s careful study of his ex’s everyday life, sex life, and even captures the birthing of a baby through the lens of his camera. One unique aspect of this documentary that the filmmaker employs is that of voiceover. He doesn’t always layer the correct sound with its corresponding image, creating a complex artistic manipulation to his documentary style. With his combination of voiceover narration and strategic jump-cuts, the film has a home-video style to it only disproven by its various editing techniques and subject matter.
I found that one of the most important aspects that Bill Nichols was trying to convey in his article was that of capturing the essence of a time or a person. It is a way to capture the present, reconstruct the past, or send a message to the future. Overall, Hara was able to accomplish these things. He created a timeless piece that captures the spirit of a woman rebelling against her own culture, the frustration and sadness of a man rejected by love, and the raw power of everyday human life being lived. Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 is a great example of the variety one can find in documentary aesthetics and is true to the number one rule of documentary filmmaking: honesty. Whether Takeda was berating him in front of other people or documenting the gory birth of an infant that is not his own, Hara was honest with the documentation and presentation of his film content.
Videography 002
Gorker
Blog Entry#2: Documentary Forms
According to Bill Nichols, there are six different forms of documentary: expository, reflexive, poetic, participant, observational, or performative. All of these forms of documentary are similar in that the subject(s) is/are often intimately portrayed by the filmmaker and that each form of documentary is based on reality and captured in real time but edited to suit the needs of the viewer. Bill Nichols explores these documentary forms as well as the subjects within documentary itself in his article The Voice of Documentary.
Expository documentary often uses the “voice of god” technique, which addresses the viewers directly and conveys are particular side to the story the filmmaker is trying to tell. Reflexive documentary involves the filmmaker and the audience. It is the most self-aware mode and challenges the more traditional documentary aesthetics of the filmmaker’s absence. Poetic documentaries are often an ode to a particular subject, for instance the film Helvetica can be considered a poetic documentary about fonts and typeface. Observational documentary is an exploration and depiction of everyday human life and is often described as direct cinema or cinema verité. Participant documentary involves the filmmaker and the subject. Performative documentary raises questions about the subject and “tries to demonstrate how understanding such personal knowledge can help us understand more general processes of society.”
Some documentaries employ only one form throughout the entire art piece, but some documentaries employ multiple forms. One such documentary is Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 by Kazuo Hara. This film is particularly unique in its documentary styles in that it employs participant, observational, and poetic forms into one piece. Not only is it unique in its documentary forms but it is unique in its subject. It documents the life of a one of a kind Japanese woman in the early 1970s. This woman personified the sexual and cultural revolutions that were occurring in the world at the time, which is particularly important due her race and gender.
The director Hara films this woman, his ex-love Takeda Miyuki, for approximately three years and employs his various documentary aesthetics and forms into his documented healing process. His participant mode is utilized in the form of him crying onscreen, both a moving and terrifying portion of this film because it shows the filmmaker, a man, in a most distraught and vulnerable state, something which is not accepted in most masculine cultures today. The film is observational in Hara’s careful study of his ex’s everyday life, sex life, and even captures the birthing of a baby through the lens of his camera. One unique aspect of this documentary that the filmmaker employs is that of voiceover. He doesn’t always layer the correct sound with its corresponding image, creating a complex artistic manipulation to his documentary style. With his combination of voiceover narration and strategic jump-cuts, the film has a home-video style to it only disproven by its various editing techniques and subject matter.
I found that one of the most important aspects that Bill Nichols was trying to convey in his article was that of capturing the essence of a time or a person. It is a way to capture the present, reconstruct the past, or send a message to the future. Overall, Hara was able to accomplish these things. He created a timeless piece that captures the spirit of a woman rebelling against her own culture, the frustration and sadness of a man rejected by love, and the raw power of everyday human life being lived. Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 is a great example of the variety one can find in documentary aesthetics and is true to the number one rule of documentary filmmaking: honesty. Whether Takeda was berating him in front of other people or documenting the gory birth of an infant that is not his own, Hara was honest with the documentation and presentation of his film content.
Blog Entry#1
Keiran McCann
Videography
Spring 2010
Blog#1
Craig Baldwin is an experimental filmmaker and a pioneer of artistic expression. He uses found footage as well as his own footage and manipulates it with the use of editing and various sound adding/reduction. He uses photomontage to construct and assemble new art forms from old and previously accepted art forms. He takes something that already has a powerful or profound meaning and warps it beyond recognition to explain his own beliefs or idea. In a way, he is a folk artist.
His particular piece, Sonic Outlaws (1995) is mostly about the “band” Negativeland. Negativeland was an experimental music group who used stolen pre-existing sound and with it created new sounds of their own. Baldwin refers to this as “culture jamming” and he and Negativeland were not the only ones participating in this movement at the time. Baldwin knew exactly what he was doing but did it despite the fact that it is illegal. It is a political statement about advertising and propaganda, which he addresses in Sonic Outlaws multiple times. “The original act of taking it out of context and placing it in a new context…that is the act of the artwork.”
Baldwin is unique in his use of cutups. He utilizes various clips from his own films as well as, advertisements, TV shows, feature films, documentary films, education films etc. He gets his message across without actually visually portraying his message. It is all done through visual and auditory cutups. He merely makes the suggestions, but it is the audience who makes the connections themselves. He is someone who causes disorder or upheaval, but by way of filmmaking. In a way, he is a film anarchist.
Videography
Spring 2010
Blog#1
Craig Baldwin is an experimental filmmaker and a pioneer of artistic expression. He uses found footage as well as his own footage and manipulates it with the use of editing and various sound adding/reduction. He uses photomontage to construct and assemble new art forms from old and previously accepted art forms. He takes something that already has a powerful or profound meaning and warps it beyond recognition to explain his own beliefs or idea. In a way, he is a folk artist.
His particular piece, Sonic Outlaws (1995) is mostly about the “band” Negativeland. Negativeland was an experimental music group who used stolen pre-existing sound and with it created new sounds of their own. Baldwin refers to this as “culture jamming” and he and Negativeland were not the only ones participating in this movement at the time. Baldwin knew exactly what he was doing but did it despite the fact that it is illegal. It is a political statement about advertising and propaganda, which he addresses in Sonic Outlaws multiple times. “The original act of taking it out of context and placing it in a new context…that is the act of the artwork.”
Baldwin is unique in his use of cutups. He utilizes various clips from his own films as well as, advertisements, TV shows, feature films, documentary films, education films etc. He gets his message across without actually visually portraying his message. It is all done through visual and auditory cutups. He merely makes the suggestions, but it is the audience who makes the connections themselves. He is someone who causes disorder or upheaval, but by way of filmmaking. In a way, he is a film anarchist.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Artist's Statement
My name is Keiran McCann and I am a sophomore Film & Media Arts major at Temple University. I am inspired by texture, color, stop motion, animation, fine arts, experimental mediums, and documentary aesthetics. I hope to one day utilize all of these inspirations to create various works of media art.
I like to experiment with various post production techniques and enjoy the complexity of editing.
Some things/people which inspire me:
Norman McClaren
Oren Lavie
BLU
The Mighty Boosh
Mitchell W. Block
Michel Gondry
I like to experiment with various post production techniques and enjoy the complexity of editing.
Some things/people which inspire me:
Norman McClaren
Oren Lavie
BLU
The Mighty Boosh
Mitchell W. Block
Michel Gondry
Monday, February 22, 2010
60 Second Self Portrait
A non-sync sound exercise.
For the 60 Second Self Portrait project, I recorded myself over a series of days doing various things in different natural lights and spaces. I tried utilizing various filmmaking techniques, like manual focus, white balance, and tint (primary colors) to create a 60 second piece about me. I also experimented with stop motion concepts.
The sounds were all recorded myself from objects found around my apartment or using my body. They include such things as my stovetop, a cardboard box, jewelry being chimed together, my mouth, footsteps etc.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Video {RE/MIX}
This is a non-sync editing exercise using pre-existing video and audio materials to construct a 90 second piece that responds to and reconfigures the found material in a fresh, new way.
For the RE/MIX project, I used various audio and video sources to create a piece that comments on society’s obsession with bad things happening to people, usually involving sex or love, for the sake of entertainment.
The video sources were all taken from YouTube and are either clips from The Maury Pauvich Show, Lady GaGa’s Bad Romance music video, and a condom usage Public Service Announcement from Telugu, India. The audio sources were ripped from The Maury Pauvich Show clips and the Indian condom usage PSA. The background music from the Indian condom usage PSA was shortened and put on a loop while various screams, applause, and exclamations from The Maury Pauvich Show were spliced in between. Sounds are repeated and the contrast between them is meant to be comical.
For the RE/MIX project, I used various audio and video sources to create a piece that comments on society’s obsession with bad things happening to people, usually involving sex or love, for the sake of entertainment.
The video sources were all taken from YouTube and are either clips from The Maury Pauvich Show, Lady GaGa’s Bad Romance music video, and a condom usage Public Service Announcement from Telugu, India. The audio sources were ripped from The Maury Pauvich Show clips and the Indian condom usage PSA. The background music from the Indian condom usage PSA was shortened and put on a loop while various screams, applause, and exclamations from The Maury Pauvich Show were spliced in between. Sounds are repeated and the contrast between them is meant to be comical.
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About Me
- Keiran McCann
- I am a 20 year old film major at Temple University. If home is where the heart is then my heart is currently divided amongst NYC and Philadelphia. I am studying abroad in London this fall.