Arts 1601 - Fall 2007

Okay, so my idea is a little weird, and I came up with it after laying in my bed brainstorming for a while about ideas that could be funny, visually interesting, and a little weird and clever all at the same time. What I have come up with is making a pseudo-musical piece, of an original mostly acapella song that I will use to narrate the short movie. The premise will be based off of the following joke:

"Why is 6 afraid of 7?"
"I don't know, why?"
"Because 7 ate 9."

The musical/video will tell the tale of the number 7 hunting down and eating the number 9, striking fear in the number 6, who will in turn call me (playing a hitman of some some kind), who will gun down the number 7 to avenge number 9 and seek justice for number 7's crime. I will also play the narrator/singer of the acapella song.

The action on the screen will follow the story of the song, and there will also be cuts to me, the narrator/singer, throughout. This will all, of course, be done in stop motion. I have already thought of some ways to film the singing parts, such as filming different expressions on different beats of the song's measures, that will show me in frozen moments of singing, and also have ideas for the chasing around scenes of the various numbers, as well as my involvement in the course of the story. I will probably create the numbers out of paper and cardboard, and will be utilizing photoshop to remove my hand from stills when it will be present. I still have to storyboard things out and write all the details of the song, but the basic ideas are in my head. But, yes, this is my proposal.

Posted by Christopher Jensen at 1:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For my project, I am thinking of showing how to go about making a "generic rock pop song." By “generic pop rock song,� this is a blanketed term for the kind of music some bands in the current music scene are creating. One band of this particular style, Hinder, makes music that one critic said is “so egregiously dull, [it] appeal[s] not to fans of music, but fans of high fives.�

I plan to utilize my friends (and most likely a guitar), a computer and recording equipment, and possibly some other recordings of "generic rock pop songs" to illustrate examples to the audience. The video will be humorous in tone, so the intended audience could be anyone who finds humor in satirizing much of the popular rock music of today, or, ironically, people who can’t pick up on the subtle nuances of satire, and who actually want a good idea of how to make music that is, as one critic said, “the kind of stuff that's happily ignorant of common courtesy or trying much of anything new musically.�

Certain ideas as far as technique go, would be doing a lot of cuts to title cards and possibly pictures with the Final Cut Pro program, during the instructional process, to help illustrate the points of instruction. I would probably use both tripod steady shots, as well as freehand filming with someone holding the camera, whichever one fits the scene better. I haven’t decided what I want to do with lighting yet, but it will probably remain fairly simple, as I don’t necessarily think the piece will call for that many dynamic lighting elements.

This idea interests me because it is something my friends and I have worked on doing before (making competently done, yet intentionally ironically lame songs, through to completion), and I think it could work out well. I would break down the steps from writing the lyrics, coming upon a vocal styling, and finding a riff, to actually performing the piece for an audience. These things would probably take place mostly inside of a recording room (a bedroom with equipment, basically), and the performance may utilize some kind of stage. Beyond that, I have to kind of see how it shapes up, but those are the basic points. In a nutshell, the video I think could be described as an introspective and informative look at the creative process of writing competently unoriginal and mundane music to aim at the pop charts.

Posted by Christopher Jensen at 12:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)