I really enjoy when insightful videos about the original Blair Witch Project are randomly recommended to me.
This one gets rather exhaustive on how imagery in the initial scenes reinforce the theme of the film. It honestly gets rather listy, and suggests that the film was much more controlled and intentional than was let on. Which I think is a valid insight, but not the extent of which is implied in this video. I really like what it means for themes and how it relates to author intention.
I believe the film creators when they say that it was a frantic week of filming. I don’t believe they had the time and energy to pay attention to every detail, especially when most of the camera work was handled by the actors themselves, who I do believe were kept in the dark about much of the film.
I think this shows how ingrained the base theme and backstory was, and how they were able to pass on this intention to the crew, allowing them to subliminally capture images that reinforced the themes. Like how they didn’t necessarily need to actually recommend that interviewees dress in black, because the theme of found footage already favored high contrast visuals. They likely didn’t need to choose and place specific Halloween decorations, because it’s a natural decision to set a creepy movie around Halloween and filming on location means many places already had decor set up. Not saying it was coincidence that they circled an interviewee with flying witches, or had a black cat appear on Heather’s shoulder, but I don’t think it was meticulously planned.
Having clear themes and intentions decided in the beginning of production allowed for creative supporting opportunities to naturally occur.
I’d be interested in taking an exhaustive look at one of the many films of the 2010 era that clearly had a poor time reinforcing theme, and see what can be gleamed of the clarity and intention put forth by their creators.
source: https://saturdayxiii.tumblr.com/post/647019646909841408
I’m happy to add Kvass to my collection of circulating fermented drinks. It’s bread soda. Flavoured with honey and mint.
I used the recipe from Domestic Dreamboat, but essentially it’s just soak plain, stale, toasted bread in hot water for a while. Filter out the bread, then add honey, sugar, mint, and a bit of sourdough starter (I’m sure you could use regular yeast from a package too). When it bubbles, strain and bottle. It’ll carbonate and get less sweet over time. If you make it again, you don’t need new yeast, just use the sediment from the bottles.
source: https://saturdayxiii.tumblr.com/post/646676325321605120
Here’s a week of progress. Drawing at least one quick portrait every day. I’ve gotten more used to my tool of choice. Now if only I could be a better artist.
I am feeling a little more controlled. Feeling more successful in small areas. I’ll keep it up and see what happens.
I really think I’m on to something with these small 20 minute projects. At least if I can actually get a sense of some consistency across them. Normally my art projects take 4-6 hours easily, but I think there’s too many elements in one piece for me to absorb much growth. Then I also do them a lot less often because they take so much effort. We’ll see if I can stick to this, and maybe I can even apply it to other creative areas I want to do more of.
I’ve been thinking about 3d modeling a lot lately. I decided to try and do Sickly Wizard’s awesome environment tutorial for ps1 graphics ( https://youtu.be/NcmO6Sxmq14 ). Seems very approachable. Of course the 15 minute tutorial took me 10 hours to do. Further exasperated by the fact that it took days for me to think of a scene I even wanted to model. I didn’t even technically finish the tutorial because I didn’t do any of the vertex lighting stuff. I really wanted to be done, and this is a start I guess. I’ll do something different next time… With a lot less polygons. I need to choose better textures, it’s so easy to want to focus on a feature in the texture, but those identifiable features are what kill the repeatability. I also can’t seem to stop over working my models. Way too much rounding on the boulders, yet but enough on the walls and ceiling. Hopefully I’ll have some other models to actually populate a scene with next time. Plants and rocks type stuff. Now that I’ve got some exposure to the method, hopefully I can scale back my goals a bit more.
