[-empyre-] last tilt shift thought

[christopher sullivan]

I get these e-mails sometimes days later, and then they are buried in my past
e-mails. one very interesting thing about the tilt shift, much like motion blur
in after effects, or the squash and stretch in animation. I always explain to
my
class that animators actually have to sometime imitate the flaws of film, not
the realities of real life, when we do lip sync we realize that some words
transpire in less than a frame, so we have to condense. the image of the shift
tilt lens making everything look small, is the fast shutter speed of the
camera, which takes away motion blur, making things look stop motion like, and
the tilt focus imitates the limits of macro photography, reminding us of a
picture of a train village, or a microscope. when I shoot miniatures I use a
fog filter to create atmospheric diffusion, and shoot at F11 to make sure I
have full focus.
ahhh the simulacrum. fun stuff.

here are some miniature shots from my film consuming spirits.




Quoting Tgoodeve <tgoodeve at gmail.com>:

> Thanks Richard. I sent your note into Michael. What a fun idea to make
> February animation every year.
> 
> Re: something christopher said about empyre in general about high  
> brow/ low brow of discussion -- I wanted to add what's been so great  
> about being part of this is the variety of voices, the generosity of  
> everyone , the wealth of information and the levels of respect for  
> very different view points.
> 
> Onto the women...
> 
> )Which links to that great great question of all: animation and  
> pedagogy. Getting this  stuff out. Uding it. Other countries. How you  
> teach or where in classes -- curious re: outreach. Etc.....next year.)
> 
> Sent from my iPhone
> 
> On Mar 1, 2010, at 11:51 AM, Richard Wright ar<futurenatural at blueyonder.co.uk
> 
>  > wrote:
> 
> > Thyrza,
> > the Perpetual ZOOZ piece looks great. I will add that to my "data  
> > visualisation" list. The gallery version is real time generated then  
> > (?), but the display is still the spinning planes we see on the web  
> > site? I thought for a second that it was literally two video  
> > monitors or data projectors tied back to back and suspended. Perhaps  
> > that would be a bit too embodied.
> >
> > By the way, I wasn't talking specifically about long form or short  
> > form animation or the difference between narrative and non- 
> > narrative. The distinction was between different kinds of narrative.  
> > But I now realise I wasn't making myself clear enough.
> >
> > Are we at the end of the animation month already? Let's make  
> > February animation month every year!
> >
> > Richard
> >
> > On 27 Feb 2010, at 18:05, T Goodeve wrote:
> >
> >> Dear Simon, Chris, Suzanne:
> >>
> >> Simon! How cruel. I want to fly out there this minute (time  
> >> metaphor there we go). Please do promote such things. Sounds  
> >> fantastic. (Too good about "Chris Speed ". I went to a bank teller  
> >> the other day and the name plate said "James Bank"  I am not a “go 
> >> od eve” though.).
> >>
> >> A sense organ for time. What a lovely image. Maybe that is what  
> >> indeed we are in total. I am reading “From Eternity to Here” by  
> >> Sean Carroll and somehow it makes sense to be reading it and think 
> >> ing about animation. Animation just seems to be fundamentally abou 
> >> t time, or spacetime more so even than cinema. -- I have only just 
> >>  thought this. I think there's something there and maybe I will th 
> >> ink about it more at some point, I’d like to.  But perhaps it’s  
> >> why we seem to agree animation now has subsumed (but not  
> >> “killed” )cinema —and not just because of digital etc  or  
> >> because of  the animated feature (and anime) but because , taking  
> >> on Suzanne’s argument here which I can’t really do justice to,  
> >> animation as a metaphysical category, a way of defining the moving 
> >>  image NOW “animation studies” offers a more encompassing way of  
> >> thinking about and discussion these worlds. It’s a historical argu 
> >> menst as I see it. But.
> >>
> >>  “animation” as a mega-media ontology that cinema, as a  
> >> historical language and institution, After these three weeks anima 
> >> tion is the uber category klein bottle which houses the a four dim 
> >> ensional ZOOB modeling system (see below), for the new species of  
> >> animated, computation, cinematic moving image objects that are now 
> >>  breeding out there. Until this discussion I never thought about “ 
> >> animation” as an uber category, I think new media was given the ha 
> >> t c/o Lev manovich, but “animation”  with its associations has  
> >> more open ness to time, less constriction to media (anything can b 
> >> e animated)—it is movement that animates and time via the repetiti 
> >> on and the result is action based in time. Or something like this. 
> >>  Others can follow. These are really ideas that are getting ahead  
> >> of me. I haven’t had coffee yet. This will take me to answering Su 
> >> zanne's request re: Michael Joaquin Grey's work.
> >>
> >> But first to Christopher, (and hardy har har by the way!!!) you  
> >> were the one who posted the
> >> shift tilt you tube that is so interesting and disturbing but  
> >> relevant:
> >>
> >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_1zzPCnyOI&feature=related
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> The stop motion time lapse transforms the world into an animated  
> >> child's world. Someone somewhere in all these posts discussed the  
> >> world becoming animated, now here it is all pee wee’s  
> >> great”big” adventure but it's more complex than that. The shift/ 
> >> tilt format is a form of animated time and it fore shortens real t 
> >> ime – even documentary time because the news program leads in sayi 
> >> ng the artist is making a document about heir city right? It is fa 
> >> miliar but toy storied. Pixar uncanny. Unhomey Shift-tilt time. Th 
> >> e incredibly miniaturized hyper manic shrinking man
> >>
> >>
> >> Re: Richard and animation and narrative and animation. It’s why an 
> >> imation is so essential isn’t it. It is the place with no laws. Al 
> >> tthough one works within vertical and horizontal axes of Cartesian 
> >>  space ,  no physical laws need be followed. My love of film and l 
> >> iterature in my youth was the avant garde and modernism – anything 
> >>  to bresk from classical models/ anything  that played with time a 
> >> nd narrative—the more non linear the better. Why Because I wanted  
> >> to believe time was up for grabs, that it was purely subjective, t 
> >> hat it’s all about social construts and things like that—Proust,  
> >> Renais, Robbe Grillet , parallel time, black holes etc…but Sean Ca 
> >> rroll makes the obvious point time has only one direction, even if 
> >>  we can make it go backwards and sideways in avant garde films, li 
> >> fe isn’t an avant garde film  Time has one direction: forward. You 
> >>  can't reverse a burned house. This is why Martin Amis's “Time's A 
> >> rrow” is so brilliant – because he writes the actions reversed  
> >> so the SS officers actions in the death camps, as he lives them be 
> >> come acts of reversals into life. It’s amazing. But Amis is unusua 
> >> l. “Memento” did not work. Everything had to go forward as it  
> >> went backward so it never went backward. Cinema is so dependent on 
> >>  narrative.
> >>
> >>
> >> I just read Richard’s post. I thought he had said the opposite!— 
> >> why has animation been so free of non-narrative. But he said the o 
> >> pposite because he was referring to feature animation! I guess I w 
> >> as thinking of smaller and probably more experimental hand drawn a 
> >> nimation.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Animation and Time: Is this an old saw: La Jetee? The ultimate film  
> >> about time. But can we bring it into a discussion of time and  
> >> animation perhaps only because of the amount of time between frames  
> >> -- 24 frames per second for each length of the shot that equals a  
> >> still photograph, except for the one moment of "movement" when the  
> >> woman blinks and looks at us.  But just for purposes of us here in  
> >> this discussion, can it be included as a kind of cine animation? Is  
> >> this interesting re: defining animation vs. cinema re: time.? A  
> >> much bigger discussion but just curious. Are there two such times?   
> >> In researching animation relevant to the Quays I found an animated  
> >> film Chris Marker made with the animator Borowczyk. [By the way  
> >> Christopher: I’m kind of in a pickle as to referring to the Quays. 
> >>  It’s why I was asked to participate and Suzanne ‘s written a  
> >> book on them and we’re lucky to have her input and there’s only  
> >> a few more days so hold on, soon empire will be onto other things. 
> >>  I’ve learned a lot about other animators in the meantime , you am 
> >> ong them.]
> >>
> >> Finally, thank you Suzanne for your response a few posts ago to the  
> >> sound question -- your book will fill in so much for us all and  
> >> there is so much to look into.
> >>
> >> Re: Michael Joaquin Grey
> >>
> >> http://citroid.com/citroid_orange/video.html
> >>
> >> oi vey
> >>
> >> His website is not up to date and his work is very varied and hard  
> >> to summarize but what is relevant here are what he calls his  
> >> computational films  or "dream anatomies." I'll describe the one  
> >> that was at P.S. 1 this summer with his exhibition and also showed  
> >> along with other works of his at the premier of Sundance a few  
> >> weeks ago.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Here is his press release.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Playing with a unifying metaphysics of the micro, macro and media  
> >> worlds,
> >>
> >> Michael Joaquin Grey presents new computational cinema works that  
> >> re-envision
> >>
> >> critical moments in culture and phenomena.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Grey creates software to break down film into its basic primitives  
> >> -- the building blocks
> >>
> >> of media. He captures body signals and sound to reanimate and  
> >> dematerialize existing media
> >>
> >> and create 'film objects', 'cellular films' and ‘dream  
> >> anatomies’ of our familiar media body.
> >>
> >> The computational works are not recorded but are dynamic systems  
> >> performed in real time.
> >>
> >> Often there are relationships that can be created between sound and  
> >> image in time and space
> >>
> >> that could not exist with recorded video or film. The works may  
> >> synchronize with your own body
> >>
> >> to create new synesthetic and proprioceptive cinema experiences.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> In ‘Perpetual ZOOZ’ the artist and his mother’s heartbeat  
> >> (biological signals) are used to
> >>
> >> reanimate the "Wizard of OZ" into a 'film object'  (Madonna and  
> >> Child). The film is transformed into a 3D object
> >>
> >> through the union of 2 films playing simultaneously in space and  
> >> revolving back to back on their own axis;
> >>
> >> one film moves forward in time while one moves backward, each  
> >> conducted by their respective heartbeats.
> >>
> >> The two films meet only at one point in time, the moment in the  
> >> film Dorothy opens the door to enter ‘OZ’ as the film
> >>
> >> transitions from black & white into color.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> This is on his website but it is not the real thing at all because
> >> it must be shown as a live action object because that's what it is  
> >> i.e. the visual data is of the wizard of oz and the algorythm of  
> >> his mohter's and his own heartbeat is run through a super computer  
> >> so it is A LIVING OBJECT. It is literally animated then. Yet it  
> >> works with film and on the computer in real time. The visual  
> >> information of The Wizard of Oz is projected going forward in one  
> >> direction, and backward in the other. At only one point they meet.  
> >> You become an "embodier" rather than a viewer-- the frequency  
> >> begins to affect your own body rhythm. It is a very uncanny  
> >> experience both visually and physically. There is the added effect  
> >> of the film as a cultural memory on top of the knowledge of the  
> >> heartbeat of a mother and son. It is all about animation in terms  
> >> of the body, cinema, technology, etc... he calls it a "dream  
> >> anatomy."
> >>
> >>
> >> I think I’ve said enough for this pot.
> >>
> >> Cheers everyone.
> >>
> >>
> >> Thyrza
> >>
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > empyre forum
> > empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> > http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> 


Christopher Sullivan
Dept. of Film/Video/New Media
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
112 so michigan
Chicago Ill 60603
csulli at saic.edu
312-345-3802
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