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This video essay was given with the premise of making a video about something that you like.

I really wasn’t sure what to do, especially with the stipulation of using footage I had already shot.

Thus I was left with the footage I had recently shot either at Hong Kong or from Japan from when I had visited my grandparents.

I was quite hesitant to be honest dealing with quite a personal space. But I did it anyway.

I intended for it to be spoken word simultaneous to the footage mainly because it would save me having to listen to my own voice for hours.

But this came out with an unintended effect of having a lot of ambient sound on the video, something I really enjoyed when I watch the edit back.

It makes the video able to stand on it’s own without the words, while maybe even giving a sense of what I was trying to say with words. Although that might just be because I know what the words and mood I intended for was.

As such, I think it’d be better to leave the footage and words as separate entities. Thought I was thinking of perhaps translating or subtitling in the future, but I really feel that the text at the bottom detracts a little from the whole image by cutting out the lower portion visually while also commanding the strongest presence.

 

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1CxFbc8Z15JOOzc2A5sv8PKXKI8eUOGVz

 

Text below, Video Above

 

At the end of May last year, I went to Kagoshima, Japan to visit my Grandparents.

Kagoshima is in the south of Japan and to get to my Grandparents house, we had to take a long ride into the mountains where the average age seems to be in the late 60s

I generally thought of myself to be more of a city boy, but the two weeks I spent there seemed to say otherwise.

A lot of the places are in the middle of nowhere but seem like the typical anime tropes

Train crossing, grassy fields, typical Japanese houses, crows

But I digress

This was the same house my mother and her sisters grew up in

This is the same river that they played in as kids

And it brings to mind how peculiar the passage of time is

Something change while other things stay the same

There’s a strange disconnect between the two

My grandfather doesn’t remember much and doesn’t even recognize some of the people in the photos of family.

My Grandmother doesn’t remember much at all

As my two weeks drew to an end, I really didn’t want to leave

Because I worried that that would be the last time I have a reason to be there

I don’t know if that’s true or not

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The title is a pun, but the technique I’m really talking about is the act of directly applying a medium or technique onto the film stock itself.

Funnily enough, after doing the exercise in class, Rose Bond, a projection artist came to ADM for a talk.

Her previous work however, were animations done straight onto film.

While visually or topically not as experimental as the works show or done in class, I thought it was a funny coincidence.

Still though, I’d consider her works on some level, experimental.

A blend of sounds and visuals that all tie into one idea. Visuals ranging from patterns to swashes of color and lines ebbing and flowing, merging and melding and then taking on human or animal forms before ripping apart again and going back into the more abstract.

On the more experimental side of things, it was pretty cool to desecrate such a “up there” and physical medium.

Puncturing it and coloring over it lead to surprisingly great visuals.

but things don’t always turn out as planned, that’s probably some of the joys that people have in handling film this way.

i tried scratching the images on the film but the image got flipped and the visceral or more frantic jittering that i was hoping for didn’t happen.

Puncturing actually became a more interesting effect even tho it was kind of sketchy to load when the surface was warped.

The idea of pasting insect bits and twigs was also quite interesting purely in concept alone. Reminded me of those insect collections where they’re pinned in an array, except this time the layout was different.

Lastly, while unintended or even unwanted, the film burning produced a nice overlay of a decaying image over the slowly slipping film stock.

Overall a Fun/10 rating.

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A peculiar movie indeed, any movie that has an extended shitting scene is surely a stunner in its own right.

The first thing that struck me is how everyday they make the shoot feel. Even at the very start, there’s a shot of a corridor on the second floor, and before anything happens, we see a person run by a small portion of road momentarily. It really made me wonder how choreographed this movie could be or if in fact it was editing together a series of unplanned moment alongside their scripted and produced moments.

Blurring this line really made for an interesting series of thoughts through the viewing. I don’t know if it’s my constant overthought or something else, but the extended holding of a shot really lends itself for my mind to frantically scramble for a meaning or reason. What is he trying to do by holding it so long, what’s going on, where is this leading, can someone give me an answer (probably not). But the longer it goes on the more I think that there is a motive to induce discomfort within the viewer. Surely in the scene where one lady is cleaning an older ladies leg with some kind of ailment is intended to induce some level of grotesque discomfort, especially when a mouth starts to get involved.

Additionally I learnt that the song at the end is the only time a song or audio is heard that wasn’t present during/in the scene itself. It’s not something I particularly thought of till i was informed. Though that’s often my approach to a lot of things.

Lastly, it reminded my of another film wherein a family or something living in a rural/jungle house is inhabited or visited by spirits. It’s styling was similar to this movie and having seen more than just one of these kinds of shows really made me start to ponder about the intents involved in shooting in this manner. The people involved in these styles of film are doing so with very specific intents and I tend to lean onto the idea that nothing is left to chance. This harks back a little to wondering how choreographed even the most seemingly everyday background events are. And with nothing left to chance, perhaps part of the intent is to indeed induce this sort of dialogue and extended thought, active engaged thought in the themes and events portrayed in the film. Which I’d hazard a guess, that the directors find more effective than conventional methods of film narratives, and I personally, considering how much this show has made me seek for answers, I’d agree.