Chion, here's a sound: BLOBOBOBOBOBBBL!!!!

I've always wondered how music/sound for a lot of people is very emotional. Certain notes and progression of notes tend to make people's emotions react to it. Some psychologists say that when we "feel music" or those few notes that "hit us" are because of deep rooted memories we have of sounds from the outside world bouncing off the womb before we were born. I feel that the right choice of music in a film can turn a good film into a great one. Music can be the soul of a piece because it works the emotions so strongly. When people have asked me hypothetical situations would you rather be blind or deaf and I always chose deaf. Sound is important in film but to me images speak much more volume than sound. I feel like the sound is the spice or the extra life to the film. Sound not only speaks to our emotions but also other parts of our psychology. The article talked about tempo and sound speed affects our behavior. Many restaurants will pace their music based on the type of service. For example fast food restaurants play fast paced music because it will cause people to eat faster and get them out quicker. I've thought that people's responses in movies has much to do with the music and how much it affected their emotions. There are so many other factors but people with very similar taste in films I feel music is the dividing line on how much they liked the movie. Everybody that can hear enjoys some type of sound on their own and theres no proven reason to why they like particular types of sound. Sound never has to explain itself, its just instantaneously explained when it enters your brain, a movie or book or painting you have to look at and somewhat try to understand it, but with a sound it's quicker, your reaction is almost immediately without having to interpret and form it into a meaning. It's hard to explain why people like certain notes in teh same order or certain sounds played in sequence next to each other but theres no exact explanation as to why that's appealing. Sound is personal. It is very individual. People debate all the time about what music is better or what sounds are better because it's so individual. You don't have to think when you hear music or sounds its a gut feeling, I feel that's why much scores are in the background but still has a big impact. I feel that sound especially sound that accompanies an image is like the backbone of the piece. Theres a certain type of validation that comes with an image and a fitting sound. The ability to hear is possibly for just defense and a tool to help hunt for food and somewhere along the line it got strung with emotion. And now it seems that the primary purpose of sound is to elicit an emotion then it serves a purpose: defend/hunt.

Wells Reading Response blblbobobolboboblobbol!

I agree with a lot of Wells said. The viewers grew up and have been trained at a very early age to be used to narrative linear films and the animation that followed was a drawn version of those films. I don't think experimental animations got as popular because it's harder to comprehend and appreciate because our brains have been interpreting experience and time as linear. It's going against years of conditioning thinking and interpreting everything as having a beginning middle and end when really a linear timeline of existence is impossible. The linear story is just close to our day to day experience so the first filmmakers I believe were clinging to what they know best. Experimental animations can be interesting, but they don't hold my attention for very long. I get frustrated or bored that I can't understand a story that is completely non-linear. I wouldn't be entertained or interested to flip through a book of abstract paintings for 2 hours straight. I feel that alot of the experimental animation filmmaker's intentions are never clearly shown in their work, and then the piece doesn't interest me. If it's so vague what their intention is then that piece is made just for them and not for the audience. And Wells said something similar that the relationship is between the artist and modes of expression rather than what is expressed. That’s cool for the artist but it sucks for the audience. So it just depends on what kind of animation you want to make, one for your audience or one for yourself. Or a little bit of both. The more you make it for yourself the less reaction you’ll get from the audience. If a filmmaker has made a film for himself with vague messages and the intention routed deep in his subconscious and you as the audience member likes to decipher it and come up with a meaning that is probably not close to the filmmakers intention but just reflects all the experiences in your mind then that’s how I think alot of experimental films work.

Cameraless filmmaking blboboboblblblo!

I think cameraless filmmaking is very creative and also very difficult. It seems that the filmmaker "does more work" in order to get an image, instead of using a camera. It's also much harder to control the image and get what you want out of it if you're trying to produce a coherent streamed idea. It also seems more difficult because we're using 16 rather than a larger format. I think it would be much eaier if we had a bigger space to work in. I think the process of making cameraless work is fun but I don't appreciate the end product as much as other experiementals. I like animation, but I don't really like the end products of ink application/scratching etc. I just like images that have a more direct meaning. The colors and designs are nice but they go by so fast I feel like I dont have time to suck them in and appreciate them. I think the newspaper/magazine transfers could be really interesting if you could see what was being put onto the film instead of a closeup of the ink dyed on the paper. I'd appreciate it more if I saw an intention of the filmmker clearly through that process. I've done contact printing before in high school but it was on 8X10 sheets which gave us alot of freedom but of course it wasn't a moving image. I wish I had brought in smaller objects so I could form some sort of rhythmic pattern. My favorite technique in cameraless filmmaking is probably scratching an animation. It can get tedious especially on a small 16mm square but I like the end product. I want to see if there are any feature length cameraless films, but that have some sort of structure. Cameraless filmmaking is good because it gets you to break your normal patterns and get creative again. Sometimes the creativity can turn into routines or patterns and it loses its purpose.

Synesthesia blbolbobobolbolbolbol!!

This is an interesting phenomenon because most of us don't experience the world this way. We as humans have agreed for the most part on certain symbols to represent expereinces through our senses and sometimes our wires get crossed differently. As far as who is right in the symbols there are two answers. I think the day to day answer the majority of people in the world agree on a symbol and it becomes truth like red blue green. But jsut because the majority of us can agree on calling an object the same name doesn't mean that's what the object really is. Its tough to say what is really the truth since we only have one vessell to expereince the world, our own bodies. That's something I've always wanted to do is step inside someones body just to see how they perceive light and if the world looks the same. And I never understood how studies show that dogs see in a certain color.

I think alot of senses can get mixed into one symbol as well. Certain symbols like love can have tons of different memories and visuals sounds and smells attatched to them. For example the person with synesthesia learning his words at a young age learns the letter H. and perhaps that child's mother was cooking chicken soup at the time. Later in life the letter H smells like chicken soup. That child has a very good sense of smell and whatever comes into his nose attaches itself to whatever he learns. The defenition of synesthesia itself is kind of just the minority of agreed experience. I wonder how much we could learn or discover if our minds/eyes saw the world differently or more accuratley to what it really is rather than having to dull itself down for our brains.

Its interesting that we use symbols for everything including math to understand the universe that we live in. Symbols that we have assigned end up answering big questions for us even though we created every symbol that make up the answer. We have all the little pieces but just don’t know how everything comes together. Things that are considered actually true to me are things that don’t have emotions involved. I feel that the more emotions are brought into trying to understand something the more opinionated and subjective it becomes. Humans have many emotions and I don’t think in trying to understand why we're here has anything to do with an answer that is rooted in emotion. For example being on earth to help/serve each other or “god” I don’t feel is the truth. I feel like the sum of our parts (our brain) can create the imagination and illusion of more possibilities and answers to our why questions but there is no big why. It just is. I don’t think humans are an exception to nature or an exception to the chemicals and compounds of the earth. I don’t think we are separate from the chemicals that operate our entire body and mind. Me “choosing” to move left or right down the road is composed of millions of chemical reactions bouncing off my environment. It just seems foolish to think that we are so special of creatures that we defy the particle behaviors that bond our body. A human walking around with an iphone is just as natural as a bear with a fish in its mouth or oxygen bonding with hydrogen. It’s all chemicals reacting to one other even if it is a million times more complex than hydrogen bonding with oxygen it is still just a reaction. But I’m not saying we can’t be happy and eat some cupcakes! :-)