From: Dinorah de Jesús Rodriguez (email suppressed)
Date: Sun Mar 29 2009 - 09:55:36 PDT
JP your comments in regard to this work are truly on point (could
very well see this on an iPhone as well as filling a wall in a
gallery), and the suggestion of presenting the pieces as a tryptich
sounds awesome.
i too enjoy your movies, Ted. thanks for posting and thank you for
sharing your commentary on the work. beautiful!
enjoy today...
Dinorah de Jesús Rodríguez
Film/Video Artist and Freelance Writer
www.solislandmediaworks.com
www.artcinematic.blogspot.com
http://cinesthesia.blip.tv
On Mar 29, 2009, at 12:37 PM, JEFFREY PAULL wrote:
> Greetings, Ted,
>
> I'm glad you announced your work on FRAMEWORKS because I'd
> otherwise never have seen it
> and I very much enjoy watching your movies. They also set me
> thinking what these movies
> would look like on an iPhone, or on a really big screen. And, if a
> really big screen, would very dim
> be any better than regular brightness?
> Years ago (40.!) I was a visual artist with what used to
> be called an "intermedia" group.
> One number I'm still most pleased with, used only a pair of slide
> projectors in a very s-l-o-w
> dissolve mode, and a pianist, playing live, on stage. The static
> images were hi-con B&W slides,
> and the projectors' wide-angle lenses made the images huge, but dim.
> During this 20 minute number the solo pianist was sometimes unlit,
> and at other times
> lit by a 25 watt "spotlight" which slowly faded up, held, faded
> out. One was a real life-size human,
> the other was immense, dim, B&W static images. Often it would be
> the images only,
> and then the small on-stage light reminded the audience that the
> "sound track" was an actual human being,
> present, and playing the music at that moment.
> The dim images, which spilled off the screen onto the proscenium
> arch of the theatre,
> seemed suspended in nowhere. Their constant flow of “becoming” made
> them seem to float in your imagination
> rather than on screen. The moments of illuminated pianist
> questioned that illusion.
>
> Watching your movies' interplay of smooth sliding motions,
> with MAYBE a person
> over there in the corner, (are they dead? Asleep? Is it a bag of
> laundry?), and the fragments of
> muffled voices, allowed me time and space to let me wander in the
> landscapes of my imagination.
> So I saw them as contemplative as they revealed the wandering
> imagination of a rider suspended in transition, getting from here
> to there.
>
> I'll probably send you some more comments, but I'm behind
> with 2 other bits of writing.
> Your own comments and the movies themselves make it worth my effort
> and time.
>
> But for now, if you’d care to answer these questions, I'd like to
> understand more.
> (Either off-list to me only, or on-list is OK by me.)
>
> - How do you choose when and what to shoot?
> - Are these the only movies you've shot, or do
> you choose to show only the "best' ones?
> - Time to go on to something else entirely or
> take this group of movies in a new direction?
>
> Ted, maybe my asking you those questions is beyond what you want to
> do.. If that's so, simply by not answering, I'd understand.
> In any case, you'll probably get one more email from me as I work
> out my thoughts to myself also.
> Your movies get to me.
>
> Last comments:
> Have you tried projecting them as a tryptich?
> And, since your movies are about sliding overlapping planes, might
> you start as a tryptich, and while they're showing, slide the 3
> projector beams together getting a 3 layer movie?
>
> Right now, they begin nicely with the static image in the station
> which sets us up, but the ends seem "unfinished" or unresolved.
> (But maybe you don't want "resolved".)
>
> Jeffrey Paull
>
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> On Thu 19/03/09 09:27 , Ted Sonnenschein email suppressed
> sent:
>> Hello there,
>>
>> I mentioned and pointed towards my work earlier when we were talking
>> about the reconstruction of Bill Brand's subway installation but I
>> wanted to share a recent collection I put together and open it up to
>> any criticism on- or off-list. Here is a sort of write-up that I have
>> been working on and any thoughts or criticisms would be
>> appreciated. I
>> haven't had much response from festivals and such and not that it
>> is discouraging me from working, it has been a bit discouraging. I
>> guess I am just wondering what people make of it--if anything, and if
>> it inspires anything to share. The shots that you will say are all
>> recorded with sound but I have started to take it off as I am feeling
>> it is a bit tiring, first of all, to hear the stations being called
>> off and the opening and closing of doors, but also that it takes away
>> from the visual impact. Well, anyway, here is the link:
>> http://www.vimeo.com/3383756 [1]
>>
>> my millionth attempt at trying to write something up:
>>
>> In January 2008 I began to film the city of Berlin as it appears
>> through the windows of the S-Bahn. This ongoing project is not only
>> about the city, as it changes over time through the lens of the
>> camera, but also the train, which reveals itself to be a cinematic
>> devise, capable of producing and presenting images for the
>> passengers.
>> The recording of these films all follow the same procedure. They
>> begin as the train leaves one station and ends once it arrives at the
>> next. There are no post-production changes or effects made to the
>> images and the films are only what the train itself presents within
>> the glass. The camera, a digital still camera operating under its
>> movie functionality, records in what is considered to be low-quality,
>> a type typically found in cellular phones. The camera allows minor
>> adjustments to be made to either exposure or focal length but only
>> before the recording begins. Each shot can last a maximum of three
>> minutes, similar to a roll of movie film and enough time to travel to
>> most stations. Video, both digital and tape, is hardly considered a
>> medium for artistic cinematography, but it is in this category that I
>> concentrate concerning the framing and the selection of the exhibited
>> takes.
>> This project is a tribute to cinema and the dying medium of
>> celluloid motion picture film. The influences come from different
>> eras
>> of filmmaking. Early cinema and the first one-shot movies take
>> precedence. These films, typically made with a stationary camera,
>> were
>> of a particular moment in time—a train arrives into a station,
>> workers leave the factory, etc. Also, the impressionistic
>> documentaries of cities made in the 1920s and 1930s blended creative
>> stylization with contemporary significance--two factors that also
>> play
>> a role in how I am regularly working on the project. Finally, but
>> equally as important, the amateur medium of 8mm color home movies
>> plays an important role as model for the look and quality of the
>> shots.
>> __________________________________________________________________
>> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at .
>>
>>
>>
>> Links:
>> ------
>> [1] http://www.vimeo.com/3383756
>>
>>
>
>
> __________________________________________________________________
> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.