Propping the Produciton

A quick look at some of the props in MAN IN A CARDBOARD BOX(specifically telephone, TV, and refrigerator) and a set-lighting mock up.  Shooting begins on Monday, April 2. 

Into the Pixie's Den...

This piece started as a joke in creative writing class, which then turned into an in-class production for a different class.  Uses Noir-style lighting.  However, the sound is the important part of this piece.  I created all of the background ambiance by editing the sounds of appliances.  For example, the cicada sounds are actually delayed power drills pitch shifted up.  The sounds accompanying Stalker were crafted by slowing and flanging a washing machine.  The craziness at the end is the inside of a refrigerator running through a ring modulator plugin.

I'll be using natural sound distortion to augment the score in Cardboard Box.

About "Man in a Cardboard Box"... Status Update 3-14

Storyboard 1

Man in a Cardboard Box will be an 8-10 minute short film critiquing the isolation and personal degradation wrought by social media, commercial television, and mass production.  It will take place in a set constructed mostly of cardboard.  The principal character, The Man, never leaves his cardboard house. He works filling out book (later, TV) reviews which fall through his ceiling.  His refrigerator acts as a two-way portal device: he deposits empty plates, he removes full meals.

Right now, the script is complete, pending casting.  It's seven pages, mostly action.  The storyboards are also largely complete.  I may piece together another one, but I have sufficient material to guide my shoot.

Storyboard 2

I will soon begin building the set.  I've acquired the cardboard for the walls, just need wood to frame the flats and more duck tape to piece the furniture together.  I've posted an ad to Craigslist about casting, and I've got some responses. I'll be having auditions over the weekend.

I will be teaming up with a long time friend and music collaborator, Adam Kime, to craft the score for the piece, which will be built around modified loops.  Distorted ambient sound will compete with music to tell the story as well.

Dissecting "The Walrus", Eviscerating "The Prairie Dog"

Following "Chuck the Cucumber," I began working on a more elaborate project merging surrealist and psychedelic elements with political metaphor.  This project became the silent film, music video for "The Walrus and The Prairie Dog."  In the film, the Walrus (and his domain Polarkreis) represent an ideal Socialist society.  Public harmony, true-self-governance, absolute freedom of expression, and pleasant living/working conditions.  The Prairie Dog (and his domain, "Factoryville") is a critique on cut-throat capitalism, the SOPA & PIPA censorship bills, and corporate greed.  The Praire Dog carries out genocide against his gingerbread men after catching one looking up videos of Polarkreis on the internet.  The Walrus, unable to let this atrocity slide, battles the Prairie Dog.  At the end of the video, the curtain splitting the "Arctic Circle" in half (Blue for the Walrus, Black for the Prairie Dog) pulls away.  This is symbolic of the Soviet Iron Curtain during the Cold War.

Black Curtain, Iron Curtain

This film was my first attempt at set construction.  For this, I teamed up with two accomplished cakestresses to bake, assemble, and ice the town.  Building a set like this allowed me to created a very specific atmosphere and environment where my characters could interact.  The puppets and gingerbread gave it a surreal vibe, and added some shock value.

Expressionist Experiments... Toying
with the shadows, di-chromatic gels. 

Around the time I began planning this video, I started watching old expressionist and surrealist films, like Un Chien Andalou, Dr. Caligari, and the shorts of Jan Svankmajer for inspiration with dreamscaping and the art of making a film and using film as means to protest or express philosophical/political ideas.  Film could be so much more than simple character drama and plot lines.  I aim to expand this style with my work.  

As for the music-visual relationship in this film, both are separate entities that augment each other.  The visuals do not represent the music verbatim, but expand on themes present in the note structure and lyrics.  For example, the song describes a battle between a manager and rebellious employee that takes place inside a Freezer at a futuristic, dystopian grocery store.

Propaganda in Factoryville

After completing this video, I went out on a limb and submitted it to the Vimeo Film Festival under the Music Video category.  It's a long shot, but it's my first attempt to get my work noticed outside of twitter circles.

"The Walrus" is the second step towards my senior seminar project.  This project let me test the waters with set building on a puppet-sized microcosm.  For the final, I'll be crafting a Man-sized set out of cardboard to dissect the idea of isolation caused by consumer culture.  

The Birth of "Chuck The Cucumber"

The trail to Senior Seminar begins with this video, my first experiment in Psychedelic editing.  I used a video I shot at work on my cell phone as the base layer.  Next, I ran the video through Final Cut 7's vector, fisheye, and implosion plugins.  I then painstakingly assembled, masked, and layered the clips using the Linux NLE Cinelerra... Which was a bitter-sweet experience.

Cinelerra's Masking Tool.

Cinelerra has a great color corrector, intuitive masking, a strong assortment of plugins and features, and will "eat" almost any format you throw at it (precisely how compatible it is is another story...).  BUT - the UI is vomitously ugly and occasionally bug-prone.  I attribute this to it's relatively minimal amount of funding and development.

I layered images I edited with GIMP, an open source Photoshop-type program, and ran more distorted footage through another Linux NLE, OpenShot.  Think Windows Movie Maker with actual functionality and very strong plugins.  I then pieced everything together in Cinelerra.

"Running Chucks" in Openshot. 

This project showed me how different editors and work flows can influence your project.  For example, Apple has a very specific picture of how one should edit and this reflects in their program.  The Cinelerra community has the same thing in different form.  By using all of these different NLE's and plugin sets, you can craft a truly unique work- an amalgam of proprietary and community-driven genius.  

*I recorded and edited the audio for "Chuck" in Ardour2, a Linux DAW.  I'll go over Ardour in a separate post.