Cecelia Condit's work

I believe I have seen Cecelia's video before in an art class. I will say that the one part that I didn't like about it was the audio. The voice was horrible and made it hard to listen to---too high of a voice. I made me want to just get up and walk out of the room. However, although I hardly had any idea of what seemed to be going on, I will say that the filming of this work is interesting. I particularly like when the dark haired woman was laying down and seemed to be dreaming and it was dark except for the one light on her face. She laid still and the light on her face was a video playing--her face was being used as a projection screen. Another person's face was being shown on there, and this was interesting, because the lady was lying there with her mouth and eyes closed and the face being projected had the eyes blinking and the mouth was moving as the person talked. It was weird to see the open eyes and mouth opening and closing over the closed eyes and closed mouth of the sleeping actress.

January 29th Class

I had come late to class this day and came in towards the end of what I think was the first film to be shown. I was pretty tired and ended up sleeping through most of the films. One I shut my eyes on purpose a couple of times before giving in to sleep because the visual was making me dizzy. There was a bunch of things moving around at once...it looked like black and white photographs of buildings...

My favorite piece was Commingled Containers. I thought the concept of putting the lens underwater was unique and made some nice visual artwork. Before I knew the lens had been underwater, I thought the work looked like clouds, bubbles, and water.

As for the readings for that week, I did not enjoy Jonas Mekas' as much. The last piece had and interesting idea of a person's skull being like a dark theater in which we view movies. Stan Brakhage's passages on the second page of our text were interesting; I particularly the first two--the one about the eye that "does not respond to the name of everything..." (like green grass) and the one about deliberately changing the film or lens to create new ways of filming.

I would say my favorite was the first reading (by Maya Deren) talking about how amateur film-makers should use their freedom to their advantage. I liked how she was talking about how to use the "movement of wind, or water, children, people, elevators, balls, etc ..." in the work and that "your mistakes will not get you fired"; this is something that college students should keep in mind as they are learning, even if they are not film majors. Amateurs don't have to worry about big budgets for their work. She also talked about how a human can make the equiment work to its full advantage.

January 22nd class

I found the So Is This film to be very boring. I did not like the idea of reading one word at a time and thought the content of what we were reading not interesting at all. I remember my head started to hurt as well as my neck and wanted to look away, but then knew I'd miss the words. There should have been a message or story, but I just found it rather pointless. I hope I never have to see that film again. I do remember that my mind started to wander after awhile...

There There Square I found to be more of an interest to me. It seemed to have a point compared to the other film, and I liked how the maps became deformed and changed to create other images.