Arts 1601 - Fall 2007

When I first started coming up with my ideas for a stop motion movie, I wanted to do something that was creative, unique, weird, and funny, and after a long time of brainstorming, I came up with a strange idea based on the old children's joke, "Why is 6 afraid of 7? Because 7 ate 9." I then came up with the story of a land of magic numbers where the number 7 hunts down the number 9, and eats him. The number 6 becomes afraid, and he calls me to come kill the number 7. I decided I would tell the story in the form of a musical-esque song that I would write and record. I first wanted to use cardboard cutouts for the numbers, but then decided it would be easier with using a white board and markers. I recorded the song, filmed the animation, and then filmed my part in the movie. I moved in slow increments and inserted the shots into the movie in order to create stop motion for my parts, as well. I then filmed me singing the song in the same way. I put the telling of the joke at the beginning of the movie, so that people would understand the concept, and then ended it with credits and the bizarre song "Revolution 9" by The Beatles, which I thought was a fitting and weird ending to the already strange movie. In the end, I like the way the movie came together, and I feel it is something that is pretty different. It was a fun and enjoyable process, overall.

Posted by Christopher Jensen at 8:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | 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)