Dear Megan

Dear Megan from michelle lee on Vimeo.

Final project: combine audio/sound, storytelling, and painting and drawing.

For this video, I decided to experiment with animating simple drawings with an audio recording of a story. The story itself, in the beginning, had been a typical narration of a memory. I chose to break it down into phrases that were concrete but also abstracted in some way. It references a memory of the games my sister and I played during the summertime - imagining places and stories that only we knew. The drawings are meant to illustrate the simple symbols and meanings within the audio, but I did not want them to be direct, concrete references.

VIDEO REMIX

VIDEO from michelle lee on Vimeo.

VIDEO IN THE CLASSROOM

1.

Experimenting with set creation, characters, and the camera. The lesson might allow students to experiment with materials to create a world for a video project. Students might partner up to create sets together using paint and cardboard, playing within the "frame" of a video and creating different props and masks to fulfill their overall idea, such as a trip to the future or a day in the jungle. Further exploration would require script writing and different elements of making a movie. A fun idea might be to create a background where students can poke their faces through and talk in a video, eliminating the need for many separate parts. This lesson might take cues from the videos of Michel Gondry that utilize everyday materials and "lo-fi" qualities to their full advantage.



2.

Video as documentation? Students might choose to make a video to document a day in their life; a way to show a portrait of themselves through making clips about their favorite activities. Similar to photo documentation but with video; ideally students would have access to video cameras and a lab to edit footage. They could also narrate a sequence of images in a still-image video. Time lapse could also be interesting.

Homework: Video

train experiment #1 from michelle lee on Vimeo.



I'd like to experiment with splicing these videos together and playing with how the light flickers on and off.
train experiment #2 from michelle lee on Vimeo.

Research, Video Artist: Callum Cooper

Paradoxical Plane (Excerpt) from Callum Cooper on Vimeo.

Full Circle from Callum Cooper on Vimeo.

Callum Cooper is an artist from London. He distinguishes between artist and filmmaker - and the video "Full Circle" is actually for a fashion label - but I find it interesting that there are relationships between his sculptures and his videos. The motion of the camera is really enticing visually and the way one views spaces and plane, especially in "Paradoxical Plane." He shows different points of view in a way that really has you questioning, how did he shoot this video? how much of it is edited? It also gives you the notion of going in 360. 

Research, Video Artist: Len Lye

Len Lye (1901 - 1980) was one of the first artists to experiment with film and animation as an artistic process. He was also a kinetic sculptor. "Free Radicals" was created by scratching into black film stock. "A Colour Box" was actually made for the British General Post. I like how he uses a direct process with the film and is able to create these abstract, but musical and actually quite tangible animations paired with music.His work is a great reference for students who are just starting out in animation, and to discuss the pairing of music and sound. It is also a good example of how one can manipulate physical film by hand, and really explore how many ways it can be altered and changed in a playful manner.