Piece Touchee experiment

2/2/11

To start off this semester I want to jump start back into video with a short video and editing experiment. My goal is:

To make a short piece to get me back into the groove of narrative. I want to also work with elements that I haven’t tackled yet and will need to before thesis production. These being; costume, artificial lighting, USING A TRIPOD, makeup, special effect etc.

To accomplish these things by re-creating Martin Arnold’s Piece Touchee. Also this piece will function as an editing exercise, which is my favorite process, and I feel the solid meaning or crux of the piece will only reveal itself, while editing.

2/8/11

So, now that the piece has been shot I've begun the editing experiment. I've learned the micro movements Arnold used and all the different ways I move the frames in FCP. Now the doubt also begins. I'm not sure what to use for the audio track, and a remix of a 1950s song doesn't quite seem appropriate anymore. I will bring this up tomorrow for discussion.

As for the reading I've been doing, I found an interview with Arnold in A Critical Cinema 3 where he briefly discusses Piece Touchee but I need to read it a few more times to interpret his ideas. Most of the things I read needed to steep for awhile and I will read them again tonight. I also checked out Film Theory and Criticism, a book that I've been picking through and really need to buy. Among that group of books were two more, Mythologies and Death at 24x a Second. Then yesterday I found A Barthes Reader in order to decode Barthes writing Garbo's Face. Again more steepage.

Hopefully I will have some more cohesive thoughts by Thursday. I will post my developments by the end of that day.