Jennifer Thomas
Peter Haratonik
12/7/09
Jennifer Thomas’s Academic Plan: Master’s in Media Studie
Goals:
My goals reflect both my personal, professional and academic interests, so the ideas behind my goals are very diverse. One of the overarching themes is to combine film production and new media with an international focus. I hope to also work closely with some of the faculty here at The New School, including my advisor Paul Ryan, and others. I am interested in working with Paul Ryan especially as he has been able to somehow fuse new media technologies with sustainability. His work right now is somewhat of a mystery to me, as I do not fully understand it yet. As I will talk about later, I am interested in also combining my passion for helping to establish a better food system with my passion for filmmaking. For instance Christiane Paul’s research interests are vey much something that I could see myself working on and have started a literature that is in the works on Expanded Cinema. Her class that she is teaching, this coming semester did not really interest me as it has to do with mobile technologies.
Another goal of mine is to do some type of internship experience every semester. This semester I had the chance to intern at The Weinstein Company. I am still unsure whether I am going to continue this, but I am leaning more towards no as there are other places I wish to intern. One of the places I hope to apply to soon for an internship is Eyebeam. Here is a brief description of Eyebeam found on their website:
“Eyebeam is the leading not-for-profit art and technology center in the United States. Founded in 1996 and incorporated in 1997, Eyebeam was conceived as a non-profit art and technology center dedicated to exposing broad and diverse audiences to new technologies and media arts, while simultaneously establishing and demonstrating new media as a significant genre of cultural production. Today, Eyebeam offers residencies and fellowships for artists and technologists working in a wide range of media”.
I feel an internship here will help me fuse together my creative and academic pursuits. Some of the projects that Eyebeam fellows are working on cover issues such as healthcare, sustainability, neuroscience and brain imaging scanning (I have taken neuroscience courses as an undergrad). Eyebeam reflects the interdisciplinary nature of media and technology and I would like to become a part of this growing movement. It really is the only thing like it in the United States.
Other places of interest for internships include IFC, the Sundance Channel, and any non-profit having to do with film. I plan on going to the career-counseling center here at The New School soon. While practical, real world experience is very important to me, I also plan to do a thesis. One of the major concerns I have with doing a thesis is the lack of credits I have with the classes I want to take. I would definitely have to add on a semester and would have to possibly rearrange my timeline and drop classes I am really interested in taking. Things will become clearer when I find out about a potential scholarship. If I am going to do a thesis it might be best to start during the summer. However, financial aid is not available to me this summer, so coming up with that much cash might be a problem. I feel like I need one more semester though to figure out what I would want to do for a thesis. Some potential research interests right now include Expanded Cinema, semiotics and film, and media in China. These are broad areas of interest that I need to learn more about. I am also interested in working on films as a production assistant.
Strategies:
One of my goals and a one of the reasons I wanted to go to graduate school is the connections it allows one to make. I have already made some solid connection with fellow students by working on projects with them and volunteering my time helping out on video shoots. It’s also a reason why I like working in film because there is a social aspect there that is not always available in other art forms. I also plan on taking the Film Form production sequence and have already outlined my plan of action as follows. Each course I feel is essential to what I would like to do. However I am a little apprehensive about if I will be able to fit in all the classes. The courses I am most excited about taking out all the Film Form studios, and the Cinematography course. Taking “Semiotics For the Digital Producer” will allow me to have Paul Ryan as a teacher. He is also my mentor for a project I have applied to and waiting to hear the results from The India China Institute. The India China Institute’s student travel and research program allows New School students to create a research project based on a particular theme in India or China. This year’s theme was “social innovation and sustainable solutions”. Based on my previous experience working with Health, a non-profit who educates students on nutrition, I became very passionate on reformulating where our society gets their food and how. This will allow me to also combine my interests in documentary filmmaking and photography. However, it is not definite that I will receive this scholarship, but if I do, I hope to apply to more scholarships to fund this project.
Another way I wish to incorporate an international component to my education is to do an International Field Placement through the Masters in International Affairs, here at The New School. I have already applied for this year and gotten in, but there are some financial hindrances that are in the way. If I were to go this summer I would have had to take out additional student loans. The Grad Plus loans have a significantly higher interest rate than the normal Stafford loans. I went to a financial aid advisor and was informed that if I wait another year, that I could use my last semester Fall 2011 loan money. I would actually get more money than if I took out a Grad Plus loan. Another benefit is that it would be my last six credits, not counting if I do a thesis, and could incorporate my travels into a thesis paper. I was originally accepted into the Hong Kong International Field Placement. If I do end up going to China this summer, and study the effects of sustainable agriculture on the city and country, I am wondering if it would be more beneficial to go to China again, or continue my research in another place like Nepal or India, both bordering countries, but vastly different culturally speaking.
Recent developments have made my plans more firm as I have been awarded the student travel funds to go to China. While I am there, and beforehand, I want to research how I can incorporate China into a thesis project. Based on the work of my advisor, and mentor for the project, Paul Ryan, I am thinking about doing something with sustainability and communication. Maybe I can even incorporate Christiane Paul’s research on Expanded Cinema, that I used to write my Literature Review, and connect these two themes.
Fall 2009
Understanding Media Studies 3
Media Studies: Ideas 3
Media Practices: Concepts3
9
Spring 2010
Media Practices: Film Form (production class) 3
Semiotics and the Digital Producer (production) 3
Projects in Multi-Sensorial Spaces (production) 3
18
Fall 2010
Film Form Production Studio (fall only) (production class) 3
Visual Systems (seminar) 3
Cinematography Art and Technique (production) 3
27 (thesis proposal)
Spring 2011 4th
Film Form Post-Production Studio spring only,(3 production)
*GPIA course (methods) (approval)
*GPIA Seminar course & Language Course (3 credit seminar, approval)
33 credits so far
*Thesis tutorial (1) and supervision (1) (approval)
Summer 2011 (39)
*Field Placement (6 credits of seminar course approval)
December 2011 Graduation
4 seminar courses (12)
6 production courses (18)
1 methods (3)
Required Courses (9)
Thesis (3)
Total (45)
Now in this plan there are some minor inconsistencies with the general Media Studies program requirements.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Monday, November 16, 2009
Lit Review
Jennifer Thomas
Professor Peter Haratonik
Understanding Media studies
November 16, 2009
Introduction: History into Expanded Cinema
The focus of this paper is to research what has digital technology in film helped to already enhance and where is it going in the future? This discussion lead to the film genre known as Expanded Cinema. Expanded Cinema artists are at the cutting edge in digital technologies, including artificial intelligence, color and mastering abstraction. This genre of experimental film was initially a reaction against mainstream narrative film. Where this genre has been and is going will be discussed. Further research needs to be done with the use of two defining books on the topic, Cinema in the Digital Age, and Fluid Screens, Expanded Cinema, which will both be reviewed and added to this literature review shortly.
Expanded Cinema:
The notion of Expanded Cinema began in the mid 1960’s, which was a reaction to the new digital media technologies of the day. Artists such as John and Jay Whitney and Frank Stella were influential in the development of redefining how we watch film. Expanded Cinema was a movement in the art community to explore interdisciplinary media unions, and to challenge the constraints of existing art discussions. Expanded Cinema opened up the art of cinema and created a sub-genre of Experimental Film (Grice 273). The overwhelming majority of artistes who started experimenting with digital film, had a visual arts background, namely sculpture or painting. Many artists, such a Peter Gidal, turned to Expanded Cinema and developed theoretical viewpoints that were clearly in opposition to mainstream narrative film. Theses viewpoints took a more modernist art approach than a film theory approach (Grice 267). Although Expanded Cinema is still considered in the avant-garde realm, and thus usually only shown in art galleries and other art spaces, analyzing early Expanded Cinema using a film theory approach could be beneficial.
Gene Youngblood, in his book, Expanded Cinema, defined Expanded Cinema as an exploration of new techniques and technologies in the broad field of experiment with image and sound (5). He recognizes the radical influence of an artist like Stan Brakhage, who made very few technological innovations in film, but was innovative in that he used existing technology and used it in an innovative way. In the wake of digital systems, artists began using the opportunities offered with digital technologies (Grice 260). Malcolm Le Grice states, “The greatest difficulty posed by digital media is the idea of basing an artistic language on the ‘material’ conditions of a new medium- the notions of media specificity”. This statement harks back to Marshall McLuhan infamous proclamation, “The medium is the message”. However, is Grice stating that because a new medium is still developing that one should not prematurely create an artistic language for the material?
The other conflicting definition of Expanded Cinema is a European interpretation , and is characterized by a concern to bring the cinematic experience into the space of the spectator through performed action and installation (Grice 319). This type of platform thus requires a certain amount of interactivity between audience and medium that is inherently lost in mainstream narrative cinema. This interactivity is explored through the visage of the Internet, video, and the space of virtual reality. More and more film is relying on computer based technologies to assist in production processes, including editing. Computer based technologies and cinema are also connecting via virtuality. Here, the Internet is seen as a new and expanding medium for artists to work in and to connect with other forms, of media, including film. The active interplay between artist, work, and user, shifting the work closer to the user’s life experience, is consistent with one major aspect of Expanded Cinema.
Immersive Cinematic Environments
Christiane Paul, in her article Expanding Cinema: The Moving Image in Digital Art summarizes a wide-range of new formats of Expanded Cinema. The first use of digital technologies in Expanded Cinema, is with immersive cinematic environments. Artists create a space where the audience can participate in a virtual environment that is not unlike film. This is unlike interactive narrative cinema, because you create the meaning and the story though your interaction with the moving image. Paul gives the example of Michael Naimarks’s installation Be Here Now. Be Here Now consisted of a projection screen and rotating floor, where the audience views the images (136). The viewer is surrounded by images of UNESCO World Heritage sites, while wearing 3-D glasses. Users then choose time and place by means of an input interface on a pedestal (Paul 136). Through the interactivity and immersion of the digital, 3-D, moving images, Naimark creates a piece that combines, “expanded representation with traditional notions of landscape photography as well as non-narrative cultural activism” (Paul, 137).
Interactive Narrative Cinema
Contrasted with immersive digital space, Interactive narrative cinema, allows the audience to influence the story that is being shown. Considered to be the very first interactive film, Kinoatomat. was conceived by Radúz Činčera for the Czechoslovak Pavilion at Expo '67 in Montreal. During the film, the action stops, and a moderator appears on stage to ask the audience to choose between two scenes; following an audience vote, the chosen scene is played (Wikipedia).
The challenge with this type of medium is that visuals tend to characterize the story more than the text (Paul, p. 138). One of the many issues that arise in Interactive Narrative Cinema is the relationship from film viewer and observer to participant and interactor. In Nitzan Ben Shawl’s book, Hyper Narrative Interactive Cinema: Problems and Solutions, he outlines three major problems in designing substantial and engaging interactive cinema. First, there is the interactor as film protagonist fallacy. This has to do with an identification issue, where the interactor is so immersed with the medium that they are living vicariously though the protagonist character (39-40). Secondly, the presumption that an audience member’s cognitive activity is a seamless transition from observer to interactor can is an issue that should be researched further. And lastly, the third presumption is that the computer game’s interactivity can be fused with hyper-narrative (Shawl, 60). The idea is that the visualization of the text is subject to a more diverse interpretation than the actual text, which goes back to Christiane Paul’s viewpoint.
Database Cinema
Further discussion of Expanded Cinema leads to the evolving field of Database Cinema. In this type of cinema, media elements are selected from a large database to construct a potentially unlimited number of different narrative films, or different versions of the same film (Paul 139). One of the principal features defining traditional cinema is a fixed and linear narrative structure. In Database Cinema however, the story develops by selecting scenes from a given collection. Non-linearity and interactivity are two of the defining concepts of the new digital experimental film. Grice in his article, A Non-Linear Tradition- Experimental Film and Digital Cinema, described some concerns over the current hype in using non-linear formats in digital cinema. Grice asks if linearity is synonymous with narrative and if there are forms of sequential structure, which are linear but not narrative. These are some of the conceptual dilemmas that new media artists within this field face. However, many artists are finding great success with the interplay between database cinema, linearity, and other media.
Lev Manovich, is considered one of the definitive artists in within Database Cinema. Manovich states four criteria to define Soft Cinema in his research:
“1. Following the standard convention of the human-computer interface, the display area is always divided into multiple frames.
2. Using a set of rules defined by the authors, the Soft Cinema software controls both the layout of the screen (number and position of frames) and the sequences of media elements that appear in these frames.
3. The media elements (video clips, sound, still images, text, etc.) are selected from a large database to construct a potentially unlimited number of different films.
4. In Soft Cinema ‘films’ video is used as only one type of representation among others: motion graphics, 3D animations, diagrams, ect.” (Lev Manovich: Soft Cinema).
Soft Cinema, which began in 2002, uses custom-made software to edit films in real time on the directions of given by the authors and their software (Soft Cinema). Along with Soft Cinema, another key piece within this field was the film project Short Film About Flying 2003, which is an installation and film in which an open edition of unique cinematic works are automatically generated in the gallery, and in real-time from existing live data found on the world-wide web. The imagery used was from a commercial website that allowed users to control the camera at an airport, thus making the web-users cinematographers (Paul 140). These pieces are in stark contrast to linear film and can often be seen as an opposing new media to interactive narrative film.
3D and Video Games
The last form discussed in Paul’s “Expanding Cinema” is the ever-growing world of 3D and video games. Paul states that “the most radical change that the digital medium has brought about for the ‘moving image’ can be traced in entirely computer generated 3D worlds that can be created on the fly and occasionally incorporate artificial intelligence as a new narrative element” (140-141). In gaming, the narrative rules of cinema, can now be made more realistic and transferred into a real-time animated world. The story arcs that are used in cinema, are often made into a video game and vise versa, precisely because of the fact that these gaming worlds can now look more like the cinema world, due to the digital medium (Hanson 55).
The similarities between the new gaming world, and other 3d environments to the cinema is usually expressed in relation to the narrative plot and the relationship between interactor and game. In the book The End of Celluloid: Film Futures in the Digital Age, a description of the elements that make a game more cinematic our outlined. First, a game is considered to be cinematically authentic when they contain manipulability within the confines of the character and his movement between places, but are guided through a the game-world to set off occurrences that help to move the story along (56) . The use of a narrative sequence, again, is not consequential in having linearity within the gaming worlds. A great amount of connected and disconnected plotlines can weave throughout the game all at once.
What the gaming world lacks certain cinematic elements, being mostly character development and the use of cuts, jumps, flashbacks, and montages (Paul 141). However, this is becoming more common as digital technology and artificial intelligence become more advanced. Also an extensive amount of dialogue is usually not employed. However, like the use of jumps, cut, ect., the interaction between user and video game character are becoming more linked. Christiane Paul notes that the use of more complex narrative forms that are more commonly seen in films and literature require further professional, academic, and artistic investigation.
Role of Audience
As already discussed, one of the major contributions that digital, Expanded Cinema has provided is its alteration of the audience’s perspective. In some cases of Expanded Cinema, to call a person an audience member would be incorrect. Participant, avatar, interactor, gamer, observer, are all titles that show the shift in function based on the alteration of the medium of cinema. To understand a person’s relationship in Expanded Cinema, is to understand the very function of the film. Expanded Cinema has the potential to change the relationship between audience member and film to something wholly different. Artists that are working with Expanded Cinema, are fighting the idea that the audience must be sitting and receiving work. Thus the goal for Expanded Cinema is to have the audience engage with it. This could be done by “making the mechanisms of cinema visible, or just making a person think about the relationship between the screen and the observer” (Tate Live: Expanded Cinema). This fundamental concept is what is guiding the technology in digital Expanded Cinema. But, with this notion as audience member to participant, comes a need for more advanced technology. What re the techniques that have been used and will be used to advance this type of digital cinema?
Conclusion
Expanded cinema is just that; expanding the cinema and breaking its normative, mainstream hold. More works of Expanded Cinema need to be reviewed in order for this literature review to be complete. Christiane Paul, in Expanding Cinema: The Moving Image in Digital Art, has provided and excellent overview of the different sub-genres within Expanded Cinema, and key works from emerging and established artists. Digital technology has also helped to contribute to expanding Expanded Cinema, and being able to blur lines between narrative and non-narrative, video game and film, reality and virtual reality, and linearity versus non-linearity. These concepts should be further explored both in the production aspects of the cinema as well as academically.
Works Cited
"Database cinema." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Web. 16 Nov. 2009..
Expanding Cinema: The Moving Image in Digital Art in Stuart Comer (ed.), Film and Video Art (Tate Publishing: London, UK, 2009)
Grice, Malcolm Le. Experimental cinema in the digital age. London: BFI Pub., 2001. Print.
Hanson, Matt. End of Celluloid Film Futures in the Digital Age. Switzerland: Rotovision, 2004. Print.
Jeffrey Shaw a user's manual, from expanded cinema to virtual reality = Jeffrey Shaw : eine Gebrauchsanweisung, vom expanded Cinema zur virtuellen Realität. Ostfildern: Cantz, 1997. Print.
Lev Manovich: Soft Cinema. Web. 16 Nov. 2009..
Marchessault, Janine. Fluid Screens, Expanded Cinema (Digital Futures). New York: University of Toronto, 2007. Print.
Rombes, Nicholas. Cinema in the Digital Age. London: Wallflower, 2009. Print.
Shaul, Nitzan Ben. Hyper-Narrative Interactive Cinema: Problems and Solutions. New York: Rodopi, 2008. Print.
Soft cinema : navigating the database. Dir. Lev Manovich and Andreas Kratky. MIT Press, 2005. DVD.
Tate Live: Expanded Cinema. Tate Channel. Tate, 14 Apr. 2009. Web. 15 Nov. 2009..
Willis, Holly. New Digital Cinema Reinventing the Moving Image (Short Cuts). New York: Wallflower, 2005. Print.
Youngblood, Gene. Expanded cinema. New York: Dutton, 1970. Print.
Professor Peter Haratonik
Understanding Media studies
November 16, 2009
Introduction: History into Expanded Cinema
The focus of this paper is to research what has digital technology in film helped to already enhance and where is it going in the future? This discussion lead to the film genre known as Expanded Cinema. Expanded Cinema artists are at the cutting edge in digital technologies, including artificial intelligence, color and mastering abstraction. This genre of experimental film was initially a reaction against mainstream narrative film. Where this genre has been and is going will be discussed. Further research needs to be done with the use of two defining books on the topic, Cinema in the Digital Age, and Fluid Screens, Expanded Cinema, which will both be reviewed and added to this literature review shortly.
Expanded Cinema:
The notion of Expanded Cinema began in the mid 1960’s, which was a reaction to the new digital media technologies of the day. Artists such as John and Jay Whitney and Frank Stella were influential in the development of redefining how we watch film. Expanded Cinema was a movement in the art community to explore interdisciplinary media unions, and to challenge the constraints of existing art discussions. Expanded Cinema opened up the art of cinema and created a sub-genre of Experimental Film (Grice 273). The overwhelming majority of artistes who started experimenting with digital film, had a visual arts background, namely sculpture or painting. Many artists, such a Peter Gidal, turned to Expanded Cinema and developed theoretical viewpoints that were clearly in opposition to mainstream narrative film. Theses viewpoints took a more modernist art approach than a film theory approach (Grice 267). Although Expanded Cinema is still considered in the avant-garde realm, and thus usually only shown in art galleries and other art spaces, analyzing early Expanded Cinema using a film theory approach could be beneficial.
Gene Youngblood, in his book, Expanded Cinema, defined Expanded Cinema as an exploration of new techniques and technologies in the broad field of experiment with image and sound (5). He recognizes the radical influence of an artist like Stan Brakhage, who made very few technological innovations in film, but was innovative in that he used existing technology and used it in an innovative way. In the wake of digital systems, artists began using the opportunities offered with digital technologies (Grice 260). Malcolm Le Grice states, “The greatest difficulty posed by digital media is the idea of basing an artistic language on the ‘material’ conditions of a new medium- the notions of media specificity”. This statement harks back to Marshall McLuhan infamous proclamation, “The medium is the message”. However, is Grice stating that because a new medium is still developing that one should not prematurely create an artistic language for the material?
The other conflicting definition of Expanded Cinema is a European interpretation , and is characterized by a concern to bring the cinematic experience into the space of the spectator through performed action and installation (Grice 319). This type of platform thus requires a certain amount of interactivity between audience and medium that is inherently lost in mainstream narrative cinema. This interactivity is explored through the visage of the Internet, video, and the space of virtual reality. More and more film is relying on computer based technologies to assist in production processes, including editing. Computer based technologies and cinema are also connecting via virtuality. Here, the Internet is seen as a new and expanding medium for artists to work in and to connect with other forms, of media, including film. The active interplay between artist, work, and user, shifting the work closer to the user’s life experience, is consistent with one major aspect of Expanded Cinema.
Immersive Cinematic Environments
Christiane Paul, in her article Expanding Cinema: The Moving Image in Digital Art summarizes a wide-range of new formats of Expanded Cinema. The first use of digital technologies in Expanded Cinema, is with immersive cinematic environments. Artists create a space where the audience can participate in a virtual environment that is not unlike film. This is unlike interactive narrative cinema, because you create the meaning and the story though your interaction with the moving image. Paul gives the example of Michael Naimarks’s installation Be Here Now. Be Here Now consisted of a projection screen and rotating floor, where the audience views the images (136). The viewer is surrounded by images of UNESCO World Heritage sites, while wearing 3-D glasses. Users then choose time and place by means of an input interface on a pedestal (Paul 136). Through the interactivity and immersion of the digital, 3-D, moving images, Naimark creates a piece that combines, “expanded representation with traditional notions of landscape photography as well as non-narrative cultural activism” (Paul, 137).
Interactive Narrative Cinema
Contrasted with immersive digital space, Interactive narrative cinema, allows the audience to influence the story that is being shown. Considered to be the very first interactive film, Kinoatomat. was conceived by Radúz Činčera for the Czechoslovak Pavilion at Expo '67 in Montreal. During the film, the action stops, and a moderator appears on stage to ask the audience to choose between two scenes; following an audience vote, the chosen scene is played (Wikipedia).
The challenge with this type of medium is that visuals tend to characterize the story more than the text (Paul, p. 138). One of the many issues that arise in Interactive Narrative Cinema is the relationship from film viewer and observer to participant and interactor. In Nitzan Ben Shawl’s book, Hyper Narrative Interactive Cinema: Problems and Solutions, he outlines three major problems in designing substantial and engaging interactive cinema. First, there is the interactor as film protagonist fallacy. This has to do with an identification issue, where the interactor is so immersed with the medium that they are living vicariously though the protagonist character (39-40). Secondly, the presumption that an audience member’s cognitive activity is a seamless transition from observer to interactor can is an issue that should be researched further. And lastly, the third presumption is that the computer game’s interactivity can be fused with hyper-narrative (Shawl, 60). The idea is that the visualization of the text is subject to a more diverse interpretation than the actual text, which goes back to Christiane Paul’s viewpoint.
Database Cinema
Further discussion of Expanded Cinema leads to the evolving field of Database Cinema. In this type of cinema, media elements are selected from a large database to construct a potentially unlimited number of different narrative films, or different versions of the same film (Paul 139). One of the principal features defining traditional cinema is a fixed and linear narrative structure. In Database Cinema however, the story develops by selecting scenes from a given collection. Non-linearity and interactivity are two of the defining concepts of the new digital experimental film. Grice in his article, A Non-Linear Tradition- Experimental Film and Digital Cinema, described some concerns over the current hype in using non-linear formats in digital cinema. Grice asks if linearity is synonymous with narrative and if there are forms of sequential structure, which are linear but not narrative. These are some of the conceptual dilemmas that new media artists within this field face. However, many artists are finding great success with the interplay between database cinema, linearity, and other media.
Lev Manovich, is considered one of the definitive artists in within Database Cinema. Manovich states four criteria to define Soft Cinema in his research:
“1. Following the standard convention of the human-computer interface, the display area is always divided into multiple frames.
2. Using a set of rules defined by the authors, the Soft Cinema software controls both the layout of the screen (number and position of frames) and the sequences of media elements that appear in these frames.
3. The media elements (video clips, sound, still images, text, etc.) are selected from a large database to construct a potentially unlimited number of different films.
4. In Soft Cinema ‘films’ video is used as only one type of representation among others: motion graphics, 3D animations, diagrams, ect.” (Lev Manovich: Soft Cinema).
Soft Cinema, which began in 2002, uses custom-made software to edit films in real time on the directions of given by the authors and their software (Soft Cinema). Along with Soft Cinema, another key piece within this field was the film project Short Film About Flying 2003, which is an installation and film in which an open edition of unique cinematic works are automatically generated in the gallery, and in real-time from existing live data found on the world-wide web. The imagery used was from a commercial website that allowed users to control the camera at an airport, thus making the web-users cinematographers (Paul 140). These pieces are in stark contrast to linear film and can often be seen as an opposing new media to interactive narrative film.
3D and Video Games
The last form discussed in Paul’s “Expanding Cinema” is the ever-growing world of 3D and video games. Paul states that “the most radical change that the digital medium has brought about for the ‘moving image’ can be traced in entirely computer generated 3D worlds that can be created on the fly and occasionally incorporate artificial intelligence as a new narrative element” (140-141). In gaming, the narrative rules of cinema, can now be made more realistic and transferred into a real-time animated world. The story arcs that are used in cinema, are often made into a video game and vise versa, precisely because of the fact that these gaming worlds can now look more like the cinema world, due to the digital medium (Hanson 55).
The similarities between the new gaming world, and other 3d environments to the cinema is usually expressed in relation to the narrative plot and the relationship between interactor and game. In the book The End of Celluloid: Film Futures in the Digital Age, a description of the elements that make a game more cinematic our outlined. First, a game is considered to be cinematically authentic when they contain manipulability within the confines of the character and his movement between places, but are guided through a the game-world to set off occurrences that help to move the story along (56) . The use of a narrative sequence, again, is not consequential in having linearity within the gaming worlds. A great amount of connected and disconnected plotlines can weave throughout the game all at once.
What the gaming world lacks certain cinematic elements, being mostly character development and the use of cuts, jumps, flashbacks, and montages (Paul 141). However, this is becoming more common as digital technology and artificial intelligence become more advanced. Also an extensive amount of dialogue is usually not employed. However, like the use of jumps, cut, ect., the interaction between user and video game character are becoming more linked. Christiane Paul notes that the use of more complex narrative forms that are more commonly seen in films and literature require further professional, academic, and artistic investigation.
Role of Audience
As already discussed, one of the major contributions that digital, Expanded Cinema has provided is its alteration of the audience’s perspective. In some cases of Expanded Cinema, to call a person an audience member would be incorrect. Participant, avatar, interactor, gamer, observer, are all titles that show the shift in function based on the alteration of the medium of cinema. To understand a person’s relationship in Expanded Cinema, is to understand the very function of the film. Expanded Cinema has the potential to change the relationship between audience member and film to something wholly different. Artists that are working with Expanded Cinema, are fighting the idea that the audience must be sitting and receiving work. Thus the goal for Expanded Cinema is to have the audience engage with it. This could be done by “making the mechanisms of cinema visible, or just making a person think about the relationship between the screen and the observer” (Tate Live: Expanded Cinema). This fundamental concept is what is guiding the technology in digital Expanded Cinema. But, with this notion as audience member to participant, comes a need for more advanced technology. What re the techniques that have been used and will be used to advance this type of digital cinema?
Conclusion
Expanded cinema is just that; expanding the cinema and breaking its normative, mainstream hold. More works of Expanded Cinema need to be reviewed in order for this literature review to be complete. Christiane Paul, in Expanding Cinema: The Moving Image in Digital Art, has provided and excellent overview of the different sub-genres within Expanded Cinema, and key works from emerging and established artists. Digital technology has also helped to contribute to expanding Expanded Cinema, and being able to blur lines between narrative and non-narrative, video game and film, reality and virtual reality, and linearity versus non-linearity. These concepts should be further explored both in the production aspects of the cinema as well as academically.
Works Cited
"Database cinema." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Web. 16 Nov. 2009.
Expanding Cinema: The Moving Image in Digital Art in Stuart Comer (ed.), Film and Video Art (Tate Publishing: London, UK, 2009)
Grice, Malcolm Le. Experimental cinema in the digital age. London: BFI Pub., 2001. Print.
Hanson, Matt. End of Celluloid Film Futures in the Digital Age. Switzerland: Rotovision, 2004. Print.
Jeffrey Shaw a user's manual, from expanded cinema to virtual reality = Jeffrey Shaw : eine Gebrauchsanweisung, vom expanded Cinema zur virtuellen Realität. Ostfildern: Cantz, 1997. Print.
Lev Manovich: Soft Cinema. Web. 16 Nov. 2009.
Marchessault, Janine. Fluid Screens, Expanded Cinema (Digital Futures). New York: University of Toronto, 2007. Print.
Rombes, Nicholas. Cinema in the Digital Age. London: Wallflower, 2009. Print.
Shaul, Nitzan Ben. Hyper-Narrative Interactive Cinema: Problems and Solutions. New York: Rodopi, 2008. Print.
Soft cinema : navigating the database. Dir. Lev Manovich and Andreas Kratky. MIT Press, 2005. DVD.
Tate Live: Expanded Cinema. Tate Channel. Tate, 14 Apr. 2009. Web. 15 Nov. 2009.
Willis, Holly. New Digital Cinema Reinventing the Moving Image (Short Cuts). New York: Wallflower, 2005. Print.
Youngblood, Gene. Expanded cinema. New York: Dutton, 1970. Print.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Updated Reaction Paper
Jennifer Thomas
Professor peter Hartnik
Understanding Media Studies
19 October 2009
Brakhage’s Inspiration: In His Own Words
In “Stan Brakhage and the Long beach of Maya Deren’s Poetics of Film”, the author, John Pruitt, argues for the case that the visionary filmmaker’s immediate predecessor was the “mother” of avant-garde film, Maya Deren (1). His main argument does not have to do with comparing the content and techniques used in their films, but by the fact that unlike other contemporaries of the era, both Deren and Brakhage took to writing their own theoretical viewpoints on film. Pruitt seems to acknowledge the fact that Deren’s writings are actually contradictory to Brakhage’s films. Deren likens abstract films to have more of an aura of a painting, while realistic films that portray a story have the aura of a photograph ( Deren, 155). Brakhage’s essays on film and speeches on film, have to do more with art in general, and likens his films to music and painting (Rich).
According to Maya Deren’s viewpoint, “nothing can be achieved in film until its form is understood” (Pruitt). However, what is the point of experimental film? The very name means that it is experimental. Deren’s approach to filmmaking was one that was methodical, planned out, and her essays were often referred to as classical (Pruitt). Pruitt sites P. Adams Sitney, the first scholar to analyze Deren’s work after her death. In Sitney’s Visionary Film, he breaks down the avant-garde film, and its filmmakers into various categories. (5) Deren is placed in the poetic film category and Brakhage in the lyrical film category. Pruitt claims that this should be treated as evidence that Deren is Brakhage’s predecessor, because for him, Brakhage is thought of as choosing this particular classification, and thus rejecting Deren’s “insistence that filmmaking must begin with a respect for the conventional means of the photographic image.” However, although Deren was a friend, Brakhage sites many other influences that seem to take precedence over Deren’s theoretical writings.
If one actually listens to Brakhage’s own writings and words; ideas and influences, to see where his films originate from he does not mention Deren as an influence or predecessor (Rich). However, he does name many other artists as influential to him such as, Orson Welles, Jean Cocteau, Rossellini, and Kurosawa. But these directors do not tell the whole story of the influences to Brakhage’s films. Brakhage was also very much influenced by painting, music, and poetry. Deren was also seen to be influenced by poetry, which becomes a sore spot for Brakhage as he has been fighting off this very notion the two are linked through their own writing and poetry.
Pruitt also seems to take the stance that because Deren and Brakhage’s films are so different, and the fact that the two both had these opposing theoretical viewpoints that Brakhage’s films are a denial of Maya Deren’s writings, thus he has been influenced by her and therefore he is her student. In a sense Pruitt is saying that his films are based on a need to prove Deren wrong. Brakhage’s first film, Anticipation of the Night was seen as a combination of both the trance film and the “graphic” film (Faller). As time has gone on Brakhage’s later works move even further from the aesthetics and psycho-drama of the trance film, and move further into the category of the graphic approach, which” featured animated, abstract images often hand-applied directly onto the film”(Sitney).
Not only were their theoretical viewpoints often in contrast but also so were the way they went about filmmaking. For Maya, filmmaking was vey much a collaborative art. She worked with her friends, husbands and lovers. Brakhage on the other hand saw filmmaking and art in general as either borrowing from other sources and influences, or being one’s own complete creation. In an interview with B. Ruby, Brakhage sees his work as the work of a singular artist, more along the lines of certain Renaissance artists, such as Michelangelo, who single handedly constructed the sithstene Chapel . Brakhage even went so far as to call Meshes of the Afternoon, “Hammid’s film”, Deren’s husband and cinematographer at the time. In her dissertation, Sullivan quotes Brakhage directly from Brakhage Scrapbook :
When I was young, the then director of the MOMA film department, Richard Griffith, said my films were “imitative of Maya Deren.” I had, at the time, only seen Meshes of the Afternoon once; but he was picking up on the tilt-wall sequence (a conscious steal) and dismissing not only In Between , Desistfilm (made before any knowledge of Deren) The Way to Shadow Garden, and even Interim…and…me because that slight use of Deren’s effect gave him the excuse to do so.
Although the argument that Deren is the mother of avant-garde filmmaking, to then call Brakhage her son does not make sense since their art is theoretically and visually unrelated. Avant-garde filmmaking is in its very essence experimental, and Brakhage strove to define a new type of film that had the rhythm of music and the aesthetics of a painting. Deren has been seen as a classical avant-garde filmmaker, while Brakhage has stated that each film comes out of not knowing what he will do next. Brakhage and Deren is both visionary filmmaker in their own respect, and even though they were part of the same movement, their visions are diametrically different.
Works Cited
Brakhage, Stan. Brakhage Scrapbook. New York: Documentext, 1982. Print.
Deren, Maya. “Cinematography: The Creative Use of Reality”. The Art of Cinema: Selected Essays. Ed. Gyorgy Kepes. New York: Arno Press, 1972. 154-171. Print.
Faller, George C. “Anticipation of the Night”. Filmreference.com. Film Reference, n.d. Web. 19 Oct. 2009.
In the Mirror of Maya Deren. Dir. Martina Kudlacek. Zeitgeist Video, 2002. DVD.
Pruitt, John. "Stan Brakhage and the Long Beach of Maya Deren’s Poetics of Film." Chicago Review 47/48.4/1 (2001): 116-20. Print.
Rich, B. Ruby. Stan Brakhage: The Appreciation of the Art. Video Data Bank on Art and Artists. Chicago: Video Data Bank, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 1997. VHS.
Sitney, P. Adams. Visionary Film, The American Avant Garde 1943-1978. New York: Oxford University press, 1974. Print.
Sullivan, Moira. “An Anagram of the Ideas of Filmmaker Maya Deren”. Diss. Stockholm University, 1997. Print.
Professor peter Hartnik
Understanding Media Studies
19 October 2009
Brakhage’s Inspiration: In His Own Words
In “Stan Brakhage and the Long beach of Maya Deren’s Poetics of Film”, the author, John Pruitt, argues for the case that the visionary filmmaker’s immediate predecessor was the “mother” of avant-garde film, Maya Deren (1). His main argument does not have to do with comparing the content and techniques used in their films, but by the fact that unlike other contemporaries of the era, both Deren and Brakhage took to writing their own theoretical viewpoints on film. Pruitt seems to acknowledge the fact that Deren’s writings are actually contradictory to Brakhage’s films. Deren likens abstract films to have more of an aura of a painting, while realistic films that portray a story have the aura of a photograph ( Deren, 155). Brakhage’s essays on film and speeches on film, have to do more with art in general, and likens his films to music and painting (Rich).
According to Maya Deren’s viewpoint, “nothing can be achieved in film until its form is understood” (Pruitt). However, what is the point of experimental film? The very name means that it is experimental. Deren’s approach to filmmaking was one that was methodical, planned out, and her essays were often referred to as classical (Pruitt). Pruitt sites P. Adams Sitney, the first scholar to analyze Deren’s work after her death. In Sitney’s Visionary Film, he breaks down the avant-garde film, and its filmmakers into various categories. (5) Deren is placed in the poetic film category and Brakhage in the lyrical film category. Pruitt claims that this should be treated as evidence that Deren is Brakhage’s predecessor, because for him, Brakhage is thought of as choosing this particular classification, and thus rejecting Deren’s “insistence that filmmaking must begin with a respect for the conventional means of the photographic image.” However, although Deren was a friend, Brakhage sites many other influences that seem to take precedence over Deren’s theoretical writings.
If one actually listens to Brakhage’s own writings and words; ideas and influences, to see where his films originate from he does not mention Deren as an influence or predecessor (Rich). However, he does name many other artists as influential to him such as, Orson Welles, Jean Cocteau, Rossellini, and Kurosawa. But these directors do not tell the whole story of the influences to Brakhage’s films. Brakhage was also very much influenced by painting, music, and poetry. Deren was also seen to be influenced by poetry, which becomes a sore spot for Brakhage as he has been fighting off this very notion the two are linked through their own writing and poetry.
Pruitt also seems to take the stance that because Deren and Brakhage’s films are so different, and the fact that the two both had these opposing theoretical viewpoints that Brakhage’s films are a denial of Maya Deren’s writings, thus he has been influenced by her and therefore he is her student. In a sense Pruitt is saying that his films are based on a need to prove Deren wrong. Brakhage’s first film, Anticipation of the Night was seen as a combination of both the trance film and the “graphic” film (Faller). As time has gone on Brakhage’s later works move even further from the aesthetics and psycho-drama of the trance film, and move further into the category of the graphic approach, which” featured animated, abstract images often hand-applied directly onto the film”(Sitney).
Not only were their theoretical viewpoints often in contrast but also so were the way they went about filmmaking. For Maya, filmmaking was vey much a collaborative art. She worked with her friends, husbands and lovers. Brakhage on the other hand saw filmmaking and art in general as either borrowing from other sources and influences, or being one’s own complete creation. In an interview with B. Ruby, Brakhage sees his work as the work of a singular artist, more along the lines of certain Renaissance artists, such as Michelangelo, who single handedly constructed the sithstene Chapel . Brakhage even went so far as to call Meshes of the Afternoon, “Hammid’s film”, Deren’s husband and cinematographer at the time. In her dissertation, Sullivan quotes Brakhage directly from Brakhage Scrapbook :
When I was young, the then director of the MOMA film department, Richard Griffith, said my films were “imitative of Maya Deren.” I had, at the time, only seen Meshes of the Afternoon once; but he was picking up on the tilt-wall sequence (a conscious steal) and dismissing not only In Between , Desistfilm (made before any knowledge of Deren) The Way to Shadow Garden, and even Interim…and…me because that slight use of Deren’s effect gave him the excuse to do so.
Although the argument that Deren is the mother of avant-garde filmmaking, to then call Brakhage her son does not make sense since their art is theoretically and visually unrelated. Avant-garde filmmaking is in its very essence experimental, and Brakhage strove to define a new type of film that had the rhythm of music and the aesthetics of a painting. Deren has been seen as a classical avant-garde filmmaker, while Brakhage has stated that each film comes out of not knowing what he will do next. Brakhage and Deren is both visionary filmmaker in their own respect, and even though they were part of the same movement, their visions are diametrically different.
Works Cited
Brakhage, Stan. Brakhage Scrapbook. New York: Documentext, 1982. Print.
Deren, Maya. “Cinematography: The Creative Use of Reality”. The Art of Cinema: Selected Essays. Ed. Gyorgy Kepes. New York: Arno Press, 1972. 154-171. Print.
Faller, George C. “Anticipation of the Night”. Filmreference.com. Film Reference, n.d. Web. 19 Oct. 2009.
In the Mirror of Maya Deren. Dir. Martina Kudlacek. Zeitgeist Video, 2002. DVD.
Pruitt, John. "Stan Brakhage and the Long Beach of Maya Deren’s Poetics of Film." Chicago Review 47/48.4/1 (2001): 116-20. Print.
Rich, B. Ruby. Stan Brakhage: The Appreciation of the Art. Video Data Bank on Art and Artists. Chicago: Video Data Bank, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 1997. VHS.
Sitney, P. Adams. Visionary Film, The American Avant Garde 1943-1978. New York: Oxford University press, 1974. Print.
Sullivan, Moira. “An Anagram of the Ideas of Filmmaker Maya Deren”. Diss. Stockholm University, 1997. Print.
Updated Abstracts
Article: Stan Brakhage and the Long Beach of Maya Deren’s Poetics of film
Pruitt, John. "Stan Brakhage and the Long Beach of Maya Deren’s Poetics of Film." Chicago Review 47/48.4/1 (2001): 116-20. Print.
Abstract:
Maya Deren is argued to be the direct predecessor of Stan Brakhage, one of the most influential avant-garde filmmakers of the 20th century. However, there are also notable differences described. These differences are highlighted through the theoretical writings of Maya Deren when contrasted with Brakhage’s films. Through analyzing Maya Deren’s writings and poems on film, reality, and photography, we are better able to understand the themes, and concepts presented in Brakhage’s films.
Article: Performance and Persona in the U.S. Avant-Garde: The Case of Maya Deren
Pramaggiore, Maria. “Performance and Persona in the U.S. Avant-Garde: The Case of Maya Deren”. Cinema Journal 36/2 (1997): 17-40. Print.
Abstract:
The symbol of a Hollywood movie star is usually not related to avant-garde film-making, but the theory of persona production is not regulated just to Hollywood, and is exemplified in the persona that avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren created for herself. The theory of persona production deals in avant-garde filmmaking deals with how closely the filmmaker’s life is related to her films. Within the three films of hers in which she appears, Maya Deren created a persona that mirrored her off camera life. Her persona, however, is full of contradictions from that of the stereotype of a bohemian artist, and one that is highly individualized as the mother of avant-garde film.
Article: Maya Deren’s Fatal Attraction: A Psychoanalytic Reading of Meshes of the Afternoon with a Psycho-Biographical Afterword
Fabe, Marilyn. “Maya Deren’s Fatal Attraction: A Psychoanalytic Reading of Meshes of the Afternoon with a Psycho-Biographical Afterword.” Women’s Studies 25/1 (1996): 137-141. Print.
Abstract:
In this paper, Maya Deren’s “Meshes of the Afternoon” is broken down into a reading of the film as an expression of a woman’s fatal desire for her lover. The film is also looked at from a feminist perspective. And lastly, to better understand the film, the author also presents evidence that “Meshes” grew out of the circumstances of Deren’s life and psychological state at the time the film was made particularly that of her father’s death, and the need to distance herself from her mother.
Pruitt, John. "Stan Brakhage and the Long Beach of Maya Deren’s Poetics of Film." Chicago Review 47/48.4/1 (2001): 116-20. Print.
Abstract:
Maya Deren is argued to be the direct predecessor of Stan Brakhage, one of the most influential avant-garde filmmakers of the 20th century. However, there are also notable differences described. These differences are highlighted through the theoretical writings of Maya Deren when contrasted with Brakhage’s films. Through analyzing Maya Deren’s writings and poems on film, reality, and photography, we are better able to understand the themes, and concepts presented in Brakhage’s films.
Article: Performance and Persona in the U.S. Avant-Garde: The Case of Maya Deren
Pramaggiore, Maria. “Performance and Persona in the U.S. Avant-Garde: The Case of Maya Deren”. Cinema Journal 36/2 (1997): 17-40. Print.
Abstract:
The symbol of a Hollywood movie star is usually not related to avant-garde film-making, but the theory of persona production is not regulated just to Hollywood, and is exemplified in the persona that avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren created for herself. The theory of persona production deals in avant-garde filmmaking deals with how closely the filmmaker’s life is related to her films. Within the three films of hers in which she appears, Maya Deren created a persona that mirrored her off camera life. Her persona, however, is full of contradictions from that of the stereotype of a bohemian artist, and one that is highly individualized as the mother of avant-garde film.
Article: Maya Deren’s Fatal Attraction: A Psychoanalytic Reading of Meshes of the Afternoon with a Psycho-Biographical Afterword
Fabe, Marilyn. “Maya Deren’s Fatal Attraction: A Psychoanalytic Reading of Meshes of the Afternoon with a Psycho-Biographical Afterword.” Women’s Studies 25/1 (1996): 137-141. Print.
Abstract:
In this paper, Maya Deren’s “Meshes of the Afternoon” is broken down into a reading of the film as an expression of a woman’s fatal desire for her lover. The film is also looked at from a feminist perspective. And lastly, to better understand the film, the author also presents evidence that “Meshes” grew out of the circumstances of Deren’s life and psychological state at the time the film was made particularly that of her father’s death, and the need to distance herself from her mother.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Article: Stan Brakhage and the Long Beach of Maya Deren’s poetics of film
Abstract:
Although Maya Deren is often seen as a direct predecessor of Stan Brakhage, one of the most influential avant-garde filmmakers of the 20th century, there are also notable differences described. These differences are highlighted through the theoretical writings of Maya Deren when contrasted with Brakhage’s films. Through analyzing Maya Deren’s writings and poems on film, reality, and photography, we are better able to understand the themes, and concepts presented in Brakhage’s films.
Article: Performance and Persona in the U.S. Avant-Garde: The Case of Maya Deren
Abstract:
The symbol of a Hollywood movie star is usually not related to avant-garde film-making, but the theory of persona production is not regulated just to Hollywood, and is exemplified in the persona that avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren created for herself. The theory of persona production deals in avant-garde filmmaking deals with how closely the filmmaker’s life is related to her films. Within the three films of hers in which she appears, Maya Deren created a persona that mirrored her off camera life. Her persona, however, is full of contradictions from that of the stereotype of a bohemian artist, and one that is highly individualized as the mother of avant-garde film.
Article: Maya Deren’s Fatal Attraction: A Psychoanalytic Reading of Meshes of the Afternoon with a Psycho-Biographical Afterword
Abstract:
In this paper, Maya Deren’s “Meshes of the Afternoon” is broken down into a reading of the film as an expression of a woman’s fatal desire for her lover. The film is also looked at from a feminist perspective. And lastly, to better understand the film, the author also presents evidence that “Meshes” grew out of the circumstances of Deren’s life and psychological state at the time the film was made particularly that of her father’s death, and the need to distance herself from her mother.
Abstract:
Although Maya Deren is often seen as a direct predecessor of Stan Brakhage, one of the most influential avant-garde filmmakers of the 20th century, there are also notable differences described. These differences are highlighted through the theoretical writings of Maya Deren when contrasted with Brakhage’s films. Through analyzing Maya Deren’s writings and poems on film, reality, and photography, we are better able to understand the themes, and concepts presented in Brakhage’s films.
Article: Performance and Persona in the U.S. Avant-Garde: The Case of Maya Deren
Abstract:
The symbol of a Hollywood movie star is usually not related to avant-garde film-making, but the theory of persona production is not regulated just to Hollywood, and is exemplified in the persona that avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren created for herself. The theory of persona production deals in avant-garde filmmaking deals with how closely the filmmaker’s life is related to her films. Within the three films of hers in which she appears, Maya Deren created a persona that mirrored her off camera life. Her persona, however, is full of contradictions from that of the stereotype of a bohemian artist, and one that is highly individualized as the mother of avant-garde film.
Article: Maya Deren’s Fatal Attraction: A Psychoanalytic Reading of Meshes of the Afternoon with a Psycho-Biographical Afterword
Abstract:
In this paper, Maya Deren’s “Meshes of the Afternoon” is broken down into a reading of the film as an expression of a woman’s fatal desire for her lover. The film is also looked at from a feminist perspective. And lastly, to better understand the film, the author also presents evidence that “Meshes” grew out of the circumstances of Deren’s life and psychological state at the time the film was made particularly that of her father’s death, and the need to distance herself from her mother.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Intellectual Autobiography
Jennifer Thomas
Professor Peter Hartnik
Understanding Media Studies
7 September 2009
Jennifer Thomas’s Intellectual Autobiography
I have waivered between the practical and unpractical all my life, trying to find a balance between who I want to be and who I am. In reality, I know that I am a generalist by nature, and even though I explore many topics deeply, I have too many wide-ranging interests to ever fully commit. I am an interdisciplinary student, and never want to be confined to studying just one subject. This is one reason that I am getting my Masters in Media Studies. As an undergraduate, I majored in Psychology, and have an interdisciplinary minor in Humanities. When I think of education and what I want to get out of it, one of my greatest sources of pleasure from learning is how I can connect various the dots between many varying subjects.
During the course of my academic undergraduate career, film was the great unifier between everything that I had been learning. The medium of film greatly enhanced all aspects of my studies. I continually asked myself how could film be used to increase social change. I saw the Nazi propaganda films to social commentary documentaries such as Super Size Me. So, I changed my major and began to fully immerse myself at Central Michigan University’s Broadcast and Cinematic Arts program. However, I realized that this was not the program for me, as it was mostly focused on television broadcasting and I only studied film and did not create it. However, one class will always stay with me and that was a class entitled Literature Dimensions of Films, where I first saw Carl Theoder Dryer’s Passion of Joan of Arc. This film very much impacted how I started to think of films, and what can be done with a camera.
Going back to practicality, I decided to change my major back to Psychology, and decided to further explore the field of humanistic psychology, and eastern philosophies on western psychology. After taking a Buddhism course, I wanted to learn more on how mental health practitioners, as well as alternative health organizations such as, non-profits were utilizing eastern medicine to not only treat patients but also prevent illnesses. During my research I came across the non-profit HealthCorps. HealthCorps works with high schools to set up an alternative health education program within that high school. Although HealthCorps employed me full-time, the majority of my work was done at New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn. Here, I had a leadership role in motivating youth to take an active role in their health. As a guest speaker, once a week in classes, I never wanted to just lecture to them. One of the ways I made health and nutrition relevant to them was through the use of media. I had the kids analyze advertising campaigns, make commercials for fruits and vegetables, and watch informative documentaries they would not usually watch on their own. Working with youth was an empowering experience and one that I hope to continue and connect with kids teaching media production.
Having recently returned from backpacking South America alone, I have come to have an even greater appreciation for the impact that travel can have on an individual’s worldview. Being in the media field, I think cross-cultural communication is very important. Very rarely does our media cover the voices of other cultures, both in our own society as well as others. Usually if the mainstream media does, it is to report about a war in a distant country, or other natural disaster. I would like to work on projects that involve a cross-cultural dialogue in our ever increasingly global society. Not to diminish the lines of culture, but to help facilitate a greater understanding of the “other” that many youth in our society do not get to experience. One organization that is truly inspiring is the non-profit BYKids. BYkids pairs experienced and influential filmmakers like Albert Maysles with children from around the world to tell their stories through short documentaries. I would like to contribute to the youth media field both through media education, documentary film, and narrative film. To gain greater international experience, I will also be applying, this fall to the Internal Affairs’ field placement program at The New School. I would like to travel to Nepal and combine my interests in health and society, and art and media. Nepal is particularly interesting to me, due to the political climate there. I think that as a representative of The New School in Nepal, there will be opportunities there that can facilitate real social change within the community.
My path here at The New School, is one that will represent who I am as an artist, activist, and educator. I plan on concentrating on film and taking as many film production courses as I can. Courses I look forward to taking include Avant Garde and The Moving Image, an Advocacy Media, and Cinematography: Art and technique. While studying and producing film, and working on advocacy projects, I plan to include diverse internships into my curriculum. This semester I am interning at The Weinstein Company, a major independent film production company. The business side of the film industry is highlighted here, and I am now involved in the early stages of film production. It is interesting to see first-hand, the non-creative aspect of the film industry. As we talk about capitalism and the film business in my courses here at The New School, it is also interesting to learn how much a films profitability is analyzed in considering whether it will be made or not.
However, my primary goal and reason for pursuing film is not to be in the film business, per say but more as a means of expression. Like influential psychologist Abraham Maslow once said,” the key question isn’t what fosters creativity? But why in God’s name isn’t everyone creative?” (Lewis). I also believe by learning about youth media, and becoming a practioner, I will also discover my own voice and hopefully be on the path to directing my own films. I plan on making a short film for the Media Studies: Concepts course, that explores the feelings one has about what it’s like to come home after traveling, which will be somewhat autobiographical in nature.
As a culmination to my studies at The New School, I would like to write a thesis, both as an end product and possibly a beginning to further my studies as a doctoral candidate. Although I am still very much exploring ideas, one of the artists that have influenced me thus far is the fascinating, early practioner of the essay film, Chris Marker. I like the idea of playing with multi media genres to explore a concept, such as memory, as he does in Immemory. It reminds me also of the mind mapping software discussed by Shannon Matern. Learning so much software at once has truly inspired me to explore these different platforms, however, and not merely focus on video filmmaking. I think an interactive, multi-media thesis project, accompanied by a written thesis, is an idea I will continue to think deeper about as I continue my graduate studies at The New School.
After receiving my Masters degree from The New School, I see myself following different paths that continuously intersect and weave around each other. This is how I would like my life to look like; definitely not on the straight and narrow path. As a new student here I have already learned, and subsequently taught myself so much in this exciting field. I believe my life will be enriched with a greater appreciation for art, as well as society. I am still not entirely sure what I would like my thesis t be on. Yet, I know there are key topics within the field of media that I am interested in. These include the wide-ranging fields of youth media education, new media technologies, avant garde filmmaking in the 21st century, and human rights and photography. Like The New School’s perspective on interdispilinary studies, I do not view these subjects as separate entities, but as paths weaving in and out. My goal is to practice these subjects in everyday life.
Works Cited
C&G Partners. ByKids. ByKids, Ford Foundation, Henry Nias Foundation, and UNICEF, 2009. Web. 7 October 2009.
Dreyer, Carl Theodor, dir. The Passion of Joan of Arc. The Criterion Collection, 1928. Film.
Immemory. Dir. Chris Marker. Exact Change, 2008. CD-Rom.
Lewis, Jone Johnson. Wisdom Qoutes.: Abraham Maslow. Wisdom Quotes, n.d. Web.
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