My eclectic collection of notes, thoughts, ideas, and rants.
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
recent portraits
Although I feel more at home behind the camera than in front of it, a few people have managed to capture some portraits of me in my element. Many thanks to Paivi, Jack, and Kai!
A fellow APA Film Festival volunteer photographer I met last week, Jack Whitsitt (blog, flickr photostream), is the chair for ArtOutlet, a local organization that puts together art events.
This coming Saturday 13 October from 3 PM until midnight, ArtOutlet is hosting Ofrenda: Art for the Dead in the empty space next to Mexicali Blues in the Clarendon neighborhood of Arlington, Va. (The space formerly occupied by the Lazy Sundae ice cream shop is slated to become an extension of Mexicali Blues.)
Photographing some of the APA Film Festival (website, photo pool) events brought me back into some nightclub venues for the first time in a while. I realized I don't miss much about them: the artificial lines at the door, the overpriced drinks, and the pretentious attitude. By the way, what ever happened to the dilapidated warehouse clubs? Do they all have to act swanky now?
Two $15 drinks the bartender "discounted" to $7 for us volunteers.
To each their own, but one thing I do miss is good electronic music in the style that I like it. I know the DJs today are probably playing what's en vogue and what they know best, but I just really didn't get into the new music. It didn't convey any energy and it wasn't particularly relaxing either. Sure, it sounds like I'm just getting old and feeling nostalgic, but I think I've finally put my finger on what I like in terms of electronic music.
Synthpop (1980s): a-ha, Berlin, Eurythmics, Human League, New Order, Simple Minds, Tears for Fears
Big beat (mid 1990s): The Chemical Brothers, The Crystal Method, Fatboy Slim, The Prodigy, Propellerheads, The Wiseguys
French house (late 1990s to early 2000s): Daft Punk
And now for some music videos... First up, a classic video by a-ha, Take on Me.
I want to try rotoscoping at some point. It basically involves filming a scene, individually tracing each frame, and then assembling the frames together to create an animation. In the a-ha video, it was just pencil tracings and renderings to add depth and shadows, but it can involve coloring and painting as well, like in the movie A Scanner Darkly. If not a whole rotoscoping effort, at least tracing a few photos to get the effect in some stills.
Next up, probably one of my favorite works of electronic music: Digital Love, by Daft Punk. So, Daft Punk are a little strange, walking around in robot costumes no matter where they go, but I like what they have to offer. The video for this song comes from Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem, a movie produced by Daft Punk.
Some things I noticed and liked in the animated video: the lens flare as if there were a lens, the motion of the hand slapping the control at 1:00, the shifting of focus from foreground to background at 1:27 as if there were a lens to focus, and at 1:40, an effect borrowed from the a-ha Take on Me video -- being pulled through a frame into another dimension.
If you're wondering how Daft Punk got the vocals to sound the way they did, they used a talk box, as demonstrated in the Digital Love cover below.
I think I can do the rotoscoping, but I'm not sure if I can pull off a talk box.
