Bolex Shoot The Cooliest Experience

For the Bolex shoot I worked with Zoe, Andrew, and Chris.  After scouting some locations before the allotted time on Saturday we decided to shoot at the Village Clubhouse pool, specifically interacting with the surface of the pool waters.  We used multiple elements to bring our concept together:  Zoe swimming, a sheet being pulled, flowers floating, and stationary framing.  I enjoyed the process we went through creatively, the problem solving we achieved to attain the final product.  For example, we spent multiple ghost takes practicing pulling the blanket out of frame, Zoe swimming in the water from frame left to frame right, flowers floating, and Zoe swimming back into frame from the right to leave it from the top.  This had evolved from our original idea to use a play of shadows on the surface of the water rather than the blanket.  The play of shadows, we discovered, were too small in the frame of the Bolex when shot with everything else we needed so we scrapped that idea.  I enjoyed the shoot itself, and using a Bolex film camera - with its added risk of having an unintentioned product - brings a certain excitement to seeing the finished film that using digital does not.  It was good as well to process the film for ourselves again, the second time ever for myself.

Media Fast

Synesthesia, Cymatics, and Different Ways of Knowing

I had no idea that there were people whose senses overlapped like those who are synesthetic.  The thought of having a conversation with a person, or reading a book, and seeing different types of color and shapes intrigues me.  It also, in the more experimental form, allows me to imagine a whole different world of perceptual presentation in film.  I immediately see two actors speaking words, gun shots exploding, simple body movements that make sound with color (specifically, in my mind's eye I am seeing the scene from the Wachowski brothers 1999 film The Matrix, where Keanu Reeves is fighting Hugo Weaving and in slow motion dodging bullets from his gun).  The thought of cymatics is truly interesting as well.  I always knew sound had the capability to create movement but the precise and intentional creation of shapes through it was never something I considered.  Once again, in an experimental context, I could see the potential of cymatics.  It makes me think of films from Stan Brakhage in which he uses closes ups of intentionally colored and manipulated film stock throughout as a visual experience.  I imagine doing the same with a close up of sand or some type of lighter material, while manipulating it with sound waves.  I am sure this would create an intriguing visual experience.