Aaron Stewart-Ahn on Nagi Noda

Aaron Stewart-Ahn, director of several Chris Walla videos, wrote the following on japanese multimedia artist Nagi Noda who passed away last week:

I was lucky enough to have met Nagi. It was one of the more interesting evenings in my life. What was supposed to be a short chat over coffee turned into an up til 3am ramble on just about everything. One time meeting a person is never enough, but she was extremely endearing.

Nagi exuded and lived art, as it was something to be lived. It made me feel like an amateur - so connected was her feeling about life invested in what she wanted to do. She had no barriers, pretty much laid as much of her life story in our awkward English (littered with impressive words) as she could. She talked about the unfairness of being a female director, how she felt she had to act twenty times as tough as she was just to get the modicum of respect necessary to do her job. She told me about the start of her artistic life lived with her parents - both artists themselves who had given her a sense of how difficult it can be to navigate the world of art. She also talked about the need for artists to not be divorced from the divine, past lives, a recent trip to Angkor Wat so full of meaning - which planted the seed in my head which led to me shooting there in my last video.

The drawing above was something she put down on the napkin in front of me - she told me it was the secret to the universe, but I shouldn't tell anyone. I think it's ok now. She said most of us look out at the world, but if you close your eyes and look up, you're looking at the universe through your mind, looking at the universe.


She struck me as free spirited, eccentric, and beneath it all incredibly strong. In one evening in her company she affected me greatly. I miss her.

from antville.org

5 cans of 16mm film.

I checked my fridge and realised that I still have several cans of 16mm film leftover from last year's film.

My options are to sell the film, or write something quick and fast, and shoot that for november or december's film.

why not? it's my last year in melbourne. if i don't do it now, i'd probably regret it.

R.E.M. | Imitation Of Life

A brilliant idea delivered to perfection.

"The single's video, depicting a scene of an elaborate pool party, was shot in Los Angeles by Garth Jennings. Michael Stipe, in an interview with MTV UK in 2001, explained how the video was made. "The entire video took twenty seconds to shoot. What you're watching is a loop that goes forwards for twenty seconds, backwards for twenty seconds, forwards for twenty seconds, backwards for twenty seconds, with one camera, static, and then using a technique called 'pan and scan', which is a technical thing that is used when they go from a widescreen format and reformat to fit your television or DVD, moving in on certain parts of the entire picture. And you'll see that we do that picking up various people within the frame."
from wikipedia

"

By the genius that is Garth Jennings.

3films - Director's Statement: What?

‘3films’ is the working title of a series of 3 short vignettes in the secret lives of several disparate characters; part of a pentalogy of 5 films, which are in turn inspired by the 5 human senses. Each film is a micro-short of no more than 2 minutes in length, and will be screened in conjunction with each other as a collected narrative piece of no more than 15 minutes.

Each film blossomed from the seed of a random daydream, or the excited epiphany that follows the inadvertent observation of something that interested me on the way to work or school in the morning. They are among other stories that
write themselves, that are hastily scrawled in a Moleskine notebook I keep in my back pocket. They exist in this compendium of 5 because of their anthropologically sensorial origins. Their stories are separate, but because of their common source,
share the themes of connection/disconnection. Human beings are strange, social animals – these films are a small testament to that.

April's film.

Was supposed to be an animation, for which i've some conceptual work prepared for.

The dicky thing is that I'm already so far behind some of my other work, and it's already mid april so i'm not sure whether or not i've the time to prepare something in two weeks, whilst juggling my other commitments.

(stupid wisdom teeth removal threw me into a daze for two weeks.)

So the big question is, should I revisit my 16mm film from last year, and finish the thing once and for all? (am i emotionally and mentally prepared to trough through the olde thing again? after all, the actors are waiting for a final print.)

or should i still make that animation? whilst juggling two freelance assignments, preparation for May's film, and preparation for October/November's film? (alongside finishing my movie-watching quota of the month, and practising the guitar so that i can remix the NIN ghosts songs.)

or, as my housemate said, should i work on a short 30s TVC with the two weeks that i have left; or spend time preparing for it now while juggling my olde film?

Decisions.

Feist - I Feel It All

Patrick Daughters strikes again.

I wonder if his one-shot takes for almost all of his feist videos are premeditated, or done at the request of feist? or is it some sort of trope that he plans to continue for all of feist's clips? am i asking too many questions again? am i still high on codeine no thanks to my post-wisdom-teeth-op?

(note to self: night-urban-film, light with sparklers.)

(edit: upon closer inspection, there's probably also a gaffer with a large flickering light just behind the camera...)

Pareidolia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pareidolia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: 

"...describes a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus... being perceived as significant. 

Common examples include images of animals or faces in clouds."

Another idea worth exploring. Think.

obsession: an elderly woman and her obsession with symbols, faces that appear on mundane household objects. The idea that she's being haunted by the ghost of her dead husband whose face keeps appearing in various forms around the house...

religious: a couple chance upon the image of the virgin mary on a grilled cheese sandwich... (oh wait. this actually happened...)

supernatural: self explanatory. a character plagued by a negative emotion such as depression, guilt, or remorse fails to notice objects in her house arranging themselves in faces which constantly glare at her, and occasionally, at the audience.

sound: a feedback loop that begins to sound increasingly like a worded message. Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP)

significance...? maybe. sometimes. depends on the story i want to tell.

(more random scribblings to continue...)