Process Piece - Making Bacon

For our process piece, we decided to record the process of somebody making breakfast. This breakfast just happened to include bacon, which, as we all know, makes scrumptious sizzles and pops as it cooks, so much so, that you can almost taste it while it’s cooking.

We tried to vary the distance of the microphone to the subject in order to record the best sound. For instance, the bacon was sizzling and popping very loudly, so we didn’t put the mic as close as, say, the person washing their hands at the end. We didn’t do this perfectly, however, because when the person gets the pans out of the cupboard and sets them on the stove, it’s a very loud “clank!” sound, and we should have backed the mic off of that a bit.

We recorded over 14 minutes of audio for this Process Piece, and only ended up using around a minute and  a half, meaning that 12 ½ minutes went unused. Not that the audio in and of itself was bad, but we chose to just use the process of cooking the bacon and preparing the breakfast. We chose to assemble the clips in a logical order, so that it would be easy to identify what was happening in the process at any specific time. We feel that all of the sounds that we used are “everyday sounds,” meaning that most people would be able to identify what is going on at any given moment.

Our process piece is a very observational piece, what Broderick Fox calls “direct cinema,” with the uninterrupted actions are the focus. There is no human voice-over, dictating what’s going on. It’s up to the listener to observe what is going on, and to then make the proper connections to the visuals in their minds.

More than anything we just wanted to make something that sounded interesting. We wanted to take regular, everyday sounds that everyone is familiar with but focus in on them and make something deeper. We recorded over fourteen minutes of audio; however, we meticulously went through each clip and selected only the parts that we felt were interesting to the ear. So even though our sounds might be everyday sounds, our first aspect of stylization is that we specifically chose to not include uninteresting sounds. Another way in which we stylized our process piece was by using the vinyl sound of a record throughout, in the background, almost as if we’re listening to a record of somebody cooking breakfast. We thought that it was a good way to give the piece some poetic texture, in an effort to “seek new ways to represent reality,” as Broderick Fox calls it in his book on documentary media.

Group Members:

Steven Bills

Aaron Hinton

Round Robin Assignment

What follows are the five tiny stories:

1)

There once was a boy named Ted. Ted was very very tired, so he went to bed.

2)

And after Ted’s eyes were shut, he heard a noise that he knew not what!

3)

He sighed and closed his eyes. He had been locked in the basement for 8 years now; he could only speculate what was going on above him.

4)

He called for his friend Maurice, a little grey mouse, to spy on the family upstairs (and bring back some dinner). Maurice declined and told him he was too needy.

5)

A family of five sat down to their dinner, they could hear banging up stairs but ignored it. It was just the Michael's family, stomping as usual.

Artist's Statement

In his essay entitled “Totems without Taboos: The Exquisite Corpse,” DJ Spooky asserts that “the remix, as always, is what you make of it. Juxtapose, fragment, flip the script — anything else, simply put, would be boring.” During our Round Robin exercise, it seemed as if everybody was “flipping the script” as each group member continued the previous person’s story, this led to some drastic tonal shifts within the narratives. On the flip side of that, there are some stories where a thread is woven finely throughout all five of the mini-stories, making a (more or less) complete narrative, with each story complementing the last.

This technique of starting a story and then passing it on to another to complete is nothing new; there is a game called “Photoshop Tennis” during which one person introduces a photograph and then sends it off to another person to add a visual element to it, who then passes it on to another person to edit. This goes on indefinitely, unless a specified  number of edits has been pre-agreed upon. Examples of this include:

“The “text” is never inanimate — it’s the human imagination that gives shape and meaning, the elixir that breathes life into the golem.” In some ways, pieces of art that we create and “finish” are never really done. Unbeknownst to us, somebody could pick up that piece of work that we created and add to it until it is unrecognizable from the work that we created initially.

Another art form that can be remixed is music. Famous artists create and release music that then gets into the hands of the remixers, who then make the music their own by adding and removing musical elements. By doing so, they restructure the song in a way that was never meant by its original author.

In our Round Robin storytelling experience, each of the tiny stories stand alone. However, combining five of the stories together creates a collage of different ideas that all spring from the same seed. Each contributor used a different vocabulary to try to make sense of the unusual and limited information they were given. In a way, one artist’s choice to use “the hardiest of folk” to describe a group of people that a previous artist described as “notoriously rowdy bunch” differed in verbal texture as much as water colors and oil paints do. Thus, even if all of us tried to preserve the tone and content of the story, it would inevitably change over time.

Our individual pictures added an extra element of expression and another opportunity to leave our mark on the story. We had varying styles and a wide variety of framing to suggest plot. As mentioned earlier “The remix, as always, is what you make of it. Juxtapose, fragment, flip the script”. On occasion, an author would create a juxtaposition, fragmentation, or script-flip between the picture and the text, thus creating an odd precedence in the mind of the next author. Close-ups versus wide shots, color versus monochrome, and other such aesthetic decisions all added something different to the mix.

Group Members:

Morgan
Jesse
Steven
Bryce
Helen

Bill Draper Forum Response - Extra Credit

Today was a special forum with Bill Draper, an executive at Warner Brothers. This was very educational and informative, and made me think very hard about having a future in the entertainment industry.

            Mr. Draper talked about how working in the entertainment industry isn’t an 8-5 job, it’s a lifestyle. He talked about how he had to turn his phone off for the forum, or else it would ring off the hook. He talked about how he can be whisked away across the world at the drop of a hat, and how he won’t be able to see his family for weeks and weeks at a time. He also discussed how his wife and family deals with his long hours, and he even told a story of how his wife and kids went on a cruise to the Mediterranean without him, because he had work obligations. He talked about how it’s a very tough industry to be in, and how you need to work hard, have lots of talent, and to have a thick skin. These things really resonated with me, because I love my family, and I love spending time with my wife, and I want to be around for my kids. It doesn’t sound like Mr. Draper is around much. I wonder if he has missed seeing his kids grow up, and to hit their milestones and to attend their baseball games…?

            Another thing that he talked about was the money. He talked at length about how “it’s all about the money,” or, “it’s all about the bottom line.” He mentioned that it’s called “Show-Biz,” and not “Show-Art.” When he said that, I felt a ripple go through the audience, and I thought that was a very interesting statement, because here at BYU we focus very much on the artistic aspect of the film industry, and not so much on the business side of the film industry, or the production side of things. I feel like that was a stinger for the TMA program, coming straight from the “horse’s mouth,” as it were (a high-level executive with 30+ years of experience). He also talked about how BYU had gotten rid of the BFA program, and how that was, in his opinion, a mistake. He felt that film students weren’t ready for the entertainment-industry world when they graduated, and even called BYU students “sheltered,” which we are, to a degree. 

I very much enjoyed learning from him, but I don’t think that I could live that life myself.

Music Mosaic - Chopin

Here is the music piece which I have chosen to do this assignment about:

Here are eight mosaics which go with the music:

For this assignment I chose to use Chopin’s Prelude Op. 28, No. 15, also commonly referred to as the “Raindrops Prelude.”  The piece begins very lightly on the piano, and sounds as if raindrops are falling onto something, be it a lake, or a puddle, or your head. 

With the first mosaic, I wanted to illustrate the rain by using diagonal lines, and then illustrate the puddle by having an organic form. I decided to take a photo of water on the windshield of my car (as it had rained previously), and then I composited that onto the puddle to give it a more added sense that it is water.  

In Dillard’s essay, she states that sight is only a template of the reality that we perceive, and that our other senses form the window into really discovering the reality around us. Chopin’s music has a very rhythmic pattern to it, which mostly stays consistent throughout the piece. I wanted to incorporate this into a mosaic somehow, and so I made a pattern. But the whole song doesn’t just go on in a predictable way, as it ends with a very solidary high note (not perfectly sure which note it is, but I digress). I incorporated this into the mosaic by filling in part of the pattern, which was not done in any other place, and thus unexpected, just like one of the ending notes of Chopin’s song. 

One of the constants in the song is the bass line, which feels like it has a constant rhythm throughout. This I indicate by using a solid, strong line across the bottom of my next mosaic, running throughout the piece. Another thing that I got from the Dillard essay is that people should stop to smell the roses, figuratively speaking. Notice the small things in life. Really see them, because every little thing matters, and is there for a reason. As the music swells and crescendos, I feel like there is conflict evident, and so I used red in my next mosaic to illustrate that. The bass line, as stated above, feels like a constant pattern, but the conflict is happening in the upper notes. Thus, the grey and red paint conflicting with each other, and seemingly overlapping, but while still in harmony with each other. 

The music piece feels fluid, but at times there are interjections .Thus, I used many curved lines and organic shapes, but I nearly always interjected those natural lines with very straight and rigid shapes, helping to illustrate the point that, while harmony is present, conflict is also present.

Thinking and Writing - The Hero's Journey

The Hero’s Journey

In the book, “The Hero with a Thousand Faces,” Joseph Campbell unfolds his understanding and gives insight to comparative mythology, and outlines something that Campbell refers to as the “Hero’s Journey,” which is a universal motif of adventure and transformation that, “…runs through virtually all of the world’s mythic traditions.” In this essay, I’d like to present the first three steps of the Hero’s Journey, along with evidence that the design of the Hero’s Journey is indeed a universal storytelling tool, and that many successful storytellers have structured their stories in this way. I’m also going to present evidence that bits and pieces of the Hero’s Journey are present (in one form or another) in our everyday lives.

To begin, Campbell delves into comparative mythology, looking to the stories of the past that have inspired millions, to lay out the structure of the journey. To introduce the first element of the journey, called, “The Call to Adventure,” Campbell calls upon one of Grimm’s fairy tales, namely “The Frog King,” wherein he describes one of the ways that the protagonist is called on the adventure, which in the case of “The Frog King,” is by a blunder, or accident. Campbell states that, “A blunder – apparently the merest chance – reveals an unsuspected world, and the individual is drawn into a relationship with forces that are not rightly understood…[and] the blunder may amount to the opening of a destiny” (Campbell, p. 42).

Campbell calls the next step in the Hero’s Journey, if the hero does not refuse the call to adventure, “Supernatural Aid,” wherein the hero is helped along by a protective figure, who Campbell notes is “…often a little old crone or old man, who provides the adventurer with amulets against the dragon forces he is about to pass” (Campbell, p. 57). These figures provide purpose and confidence to our main character on their journey, but this mentor figure cannot stay with our hero for the duration of their journey, for the hero’s sake.

The third step in the journey is called, “The Crossing of the First Threshold.” This is the point of no return for the protagonist, the moment where the hero becomes profoundly aware that they’re not in Kansas anymore. The protagonist must move past the first threshold, even though they may feel uncomfortable or uncertain about doing so.

Many storytellers have used and adapted Campbell’s model of the Hero’s Journey as they have told their own stories. Some of the filmmakers who have used the Hero’s Journey include George Lucas (Star Wars), Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings), and JJ Abrams (Star Trek). Luke Skywalker is called on his journey by his mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi. James Kirk is called on his adventure by Captain Pike, and Frodo Baggins is called on his adventure by Gandalf the Grey. Luke is also aided by a few other forms of supernatural aid on his journey, those being the Force, and another mentor figure, Yoda. Once on the Hero’s Path, Luke crosses the first threshold in the form of the space port Mos Eisley. Almost nothing here is familiar to him as he has his first hostile encounter with the alien at the bar who threatens to kill him.

Star Wars has become a cultural phenomenon: something that has become so deeply rooted into the fabric of our society, that almost everybody knows what it means when they’re told, “May the Force be with you.” Lucas’ adaptation of Campbell’s model was critically successful as well as commercially successful. According to boxofficemojo.com, Star Wars (A New Hope) has earned over $775,398,007 worldwide, ranking among the most commercially successful films of all time. Film critic Roger Ebert gave the 1977 film five out of five stars, stating that, “The movie relies on the strength of pure narrative, in the most basic storytelling form known to man, the Journey. All of the best tales we remember from our childhoods had to do with heroes setting out to travel down roads filled with danger, and hoping to find treasure or heroism at the journey's end…Here, all mixed together, were whimsy and fantasy, simple wonderment and quietly sophisticated storytelling.” On that day in 1977, Roger Ebert became one of the millions of fans the world over who relate with the farm-boy Luke Skywalker, as he defies all odds and becomes the Hero that we all wish we could become.

Joseph Campbell’s model of the Hero’s Journey has had an influence on many influential filmmakers and storytellers, and is a model of patterning stories that continues to affect popular culture to this day. The Hero’s Journey resonates with so many people because of our innate desire to be the Hero: To be called on an adventure to quell the forces of evil and to save the galaxy, and to become a better person throughout the adventure. 

Thinking and Writing Assignment 1 - Or, what I'm going to do it about...

For my first thinking and writing assignment I am going to use the book "The Hero with a Thousand Faces," by Joseph Campbell.

This is a Test...

This is a test just to see if I'm able to post things here for my TMA 112 assignments...