Today we were given our art forms that would be the basis of our own personal experimental sound design project. I got given the 1953 painting "Study after Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X" by an Irish artist, Francis Bacon.

"Books have taken a battering recently but professional advice is invaluable. What turns me on, the joy of extremely violent acts of dado-masichism or Gordon Ramsey. Where art thou? It's here! Britain's best T, everything you'll never need ritually buried"

Individual Task 

We went through newspapers, randomly pointed at a word and then noted the word along with the 3 others either side of it. Then we formed sentences from these and were told to create our own little story in relation to the line we chose.

Line: Game is not one in which you take risks

The following is based (loosely) on true events.

I looked at the hungry hippos set. I had to win. The English had promised me a sack of potatoes. A WHOLE SACK. Probably from lidl but whatever, a potato is a potato no matter of origin. I had promised Nachos that if I lost I would do a parody of "What does the Fox say?" for his video, an obvious joke from my name. I told myself not this time. The suspense of waiting for the balls to emerge, glistening like silver pools of icy water in the gleaming moonlight was too much. There was too much at stake for me to mess this up. I had one chance and I wasn't going to waste it. Suddenly, like a beam of lightening across the sky the balls were released and my heart skipped a beat with the tension. The group watched me intently to see what would happen and how I would react. Would I be fast enough? Only time could tell. Katherine gazed on at me with the vacant stare of the typical essex twat that I'd become so accustomed to since starting uni but I wouldn't let this put me off...stop me from achieving my goal of obtaining the most balls. My hippo nom'ed for what seemed a century before finally all balls had vanished, and the board returned to being as deserted as the sahara desert. All of us had beads of sweat forming on our foreheads from the intense work out and Josh gave the nod to begin the counting, whilst trying to release the tension."Do you want a finger?" he asked. He handed me the chocolate which had been reduced in sainsburys to a fairly decent price which I thought was pretty reasonable indeed. I lifted each ball slowly from the compartment...one...two...three. Time had slowed down and everything was spinning as if I'd been put in a giant bingo wheel. I couldn't take anymore. I got up in silence and stumbled to the corner where I sat down rocking back and forth, tears streaming like a waterfall down my reddening cheeks. Suddenly strange people, dressed in suits burst through every hole in the room...doors...windows. They came closer encircling us and I screamed as I watched them carry my friends from the room. "Kaaaattt! Tooooooommmm! Someone help us!" I yelled as loud as my lungs would allow. I tried to run but they closed in grabbing me by the arms. Everything went black. I woke up, heart beating fast. Had it all been a dream? I sat up and realised I couldn't move. I was restrained by something...what was this? I looked down at my struggling body and realised the hell that was containing me. The straight jacket was too tight, yet felt cosy and snug. I looked across the padded white room and noticed everyone from the game was also there. We all looked at each other and then all at once began to chuckle, the sound of insanity playing like music in our ears. Haha I remember now. We're dfsa. We're the crazy ones. This was home. We were finally back where we belonged.

And that folks is my beautiful story.

We created an audio book for it as well which you can listen to here. Tis v dramatic. Enjoy!

PAPER MEMORIES from Theo Putzu on Vimeo.
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We were asked to make a re-enactment of a historic event of our choice and as a person from Northern Ireland I think we all instantly came to a collective decision for me to do the potato famine. I thought I would lighten the tone up though and make it mildly humorous and a wee bit ridiculous, as it's been definitely a mocking point surrounding me from my friends since I've been in England.

1. Leth must remake the film in Cuba (but with no set) with no shot longer than 12 frames, and he must answer the questions posed in the original film; Leth successfully completes this task.
2. Leth must remake the film in the worst place in the world but not show that place onscreen; additionally, Leth must play the role of "the man". The meal must be included but the woman is not to be included. Leth remakes the film in the red light district of Bombay, only partially hiding it behind a translucent screen.
3. Because Leth failed to complete task 2 perfectly, von Trier punishes him, telling him to either remake the film in any way he chooses, or redo obstruction 2 in Bombay again. Leth chooses the first option and remakes it in Brusselsusing split-screen effects.
4. Leth must remake the film as a cartoon. He does so with the aid of Bob Sabiston, a specialist in rotoscoping, who creates animated versions of shots from the previous films. As such the final product is technically an animation but not a cartoon. Nevertheless von Trier considers the task to be completed successfully.
5. The fifth obstruction is that von Trier has already made the fifth version, but it must be credited as Leth's, and Leth must read a voice-over narration ostensibly from his own perspective but in fact written by von Trier.

As a beginner at After Effects I've been looking into tutorials that interest me and seeing if there is any way I can incorporate them into the project, so as to broaden my skills while keeping me engaged. At first After Effects is very daunting but after Simon's tutorial I found it might not be as bad, providing you do the research to understand how it works. Here are some tutorials that I've come across that I found helpful and for me to possibly use in the future of the project.

Just a quick update about the workshop today. Vicky showed us a lot of her own work and talked about how to do effective research. I thought it was cool how she had used bits of the body to make her films/ art, such as painting her feet and walking over a film reel. I found these to be interesting ways to show human movement through video and it got me thinking about if there are similar ways in which to show time.

We were also put into groups and told to discuss our ideas with each other, which proved to be helpful as we were able to contribute ideas to one another in order to make improvements and provide inspiration.

Over Christmas we were asked to do a little project in which we had to find a memory we wish to remember in six different ways. I chose to do my memory of going to Florida over the summer, one of my favourite places in the world.

Firstly the word 'reinvent' stood out to be in the brief and in true Christmas spirit noticed old, plain baubles that could do with a little touch up. In Downtown Disney they have a Christmas shop that my mother always liked to browse around for decorations for the tree (In summer - I don't know why?), but a nine hour journey home with highly breakable items isn't the most ideal for them so I thought it'd be cool to have a go at making my own now. Something we can use on the tree next year I guess.




Going a long with my desire to make things from different items, still trying to be resourceful and after messing around so much with the fireworks on the bauble, I decided it might be fun to make my own firework. So rummaged around the kitchen to find supplies.



I wanted to show my trip in some kind of story like sequence and this got me thinking about how we show things in pre-production. I liked the idea of creating my own story boards of the major events that happened on the holiday, reminding me of all the things I got to experience.






The storyboards were originally done in 2b pencil and then coloured using acrylic paints. While storyboards aren't usually coloured and are not traditionally too detailed, I thought it'd be an interesting way to shake things up a bit and make it more interesting. This also could have been just a way to display a sequence of otherwise seemingly unconnected paintings.

From all my trips to the theme parks I have gathered an extensive amount of maps and after thinking they would come in handy some day they finally did (take that non believers)!






As a film student, a video was alway going to make an appearance at some point in this and admittedly it was the first thought that popped into my head when I heard the brief. I took clips that I had taken and made a short display of memories from the entire trip, the ones that I really, really wanted to remember. The song used is by a Northern Irish musician Foy Vance, and this was used due to my constant playing of it almost every night on our journey back to the villa. It also felt like it meant I could put a little bit of Northern Irishness into it and relate it back to me a bit...just a personal touch I guess.



Lastly I created a playlist on youtube, a simple idea but one that I can connect with and brings back a lot of good memories which is the true point behind this. Originally I thought of creating a music playlist with all the songs from the different parks etc however I changed my mind and decided to go a bit of a different path, making one consisting of all my favourite roller coasters. As a bit of a roller coaster junkie this allowed me to briefly feel like I was back and made me long to go on all of them again! You can view the playlist here if you want.

We were shown a selection of experimental art, as well as more traditional documentary videos. I liked this as it meant we got to see a range of different style clips and it kept me more engaged and interested in seeing films that were not similar.

Dial History// Johan Grimonprez

This was our first day back after Christmas, and Rosie gave us the brief for what we would be doing this semester in the reflections module: A digital film project and a series of five photographs based around the idea of memories.

Afterwards we had a screening of several short films to get us thinking about the projects.

Watching Paint Dry// Jo Ann Kaplan



I found this an interesting piece as I love fine art and thought the self portrait was done very well, focussing on her ageing self. The choppiness of the video and music means it is slightly more low tech compared to the others, but the focal point is clearly aimed more towards her motions with the paint and how it reflects against her image.

La Jetee// Chris Marker

The lesson was very practical and I found this very helpful as I was able to remember important details from actually doing it myself and learning from any mistakes I made. We were shown how to mount the flash and use it in relation to the lights.

After a short break we were put into groups to test the skills we had just learnt and told to re-create this famous Steve Jobs portrait:


We each had a different role to play in the recreation: Lucy on camera, Amy on light meter, Joel posing as the model and me moving the lights around into position. We learnt about the importance of communication between all members of the team and how necessary talking to each other actually is to create a nice shot. For me, I was initially nervous about doing lights as I know how expensive the equipment is and I can be very clumsy at times! However the experience was very worthwhile and I learnt a lot about the different ways lighting can be changed to create tones and shadows. Here is my groups final recreation shot:

I found this really interesting as Brian Eno talks about time in a manner of being able to 'specify a starting point' but just like the garden he mentions the ending will be unpredictable. I like the idea of movement within time as well as the fact we can't really control certain things, so maybe I could try and incorporate that in the video in someway.

This short film on moments got me really thinking that sometimes time isn't about doing just massive things, but that it should be spent in the little things that make you happy as well. It's such a simple idea but for me is massively effective. It shows different time periods in people's lives such as birth, chasing after a bus, crying and tying laces to name a few, stuff that everyone goes through in everyday life. I feel like it makes the video a lot more relatable to the audience and the viewer becomes more engaged in appreciating a more tinier, but equally important aspect of life.