This post is long overdue from when I had initially intended, but here it is:
Had our second in-person meeting with Howie last month. The general atmosphere, I think, was still the same as the time me and Lauren had our orientation meeting. The personal, cozy and open backyard studio space, the on-pouring hot tea and just general down-to-earth–ness. Perhaps, a little bit of tension and anxiety from expecting his second-born was lifted, but in general, our interactions were still the same. I think I like this, this flow in the studio space. Talking about art, in a tiny but open studio space, surrounded by nature, makes me feel like I’m in a Ghibli movie. Apart from the general conversation, we went over the video that I initially compiled to compare shots that work and those that didn’t.
Slow – on Art practice
TLDR -To summarize the first 2 weeks of November or so:
More busy, less time for art, but also ‘no time = not a priority’ so… need to make art more of a priority
One of my goals in this course is to have a better idea of the kind of art practice I could pursue. For now, I’m still figuring out the process and time for balancing art practice and working full-time. It’s difficult at times, especially when work gets busy and fills up all my head space. As some of the work I do is more project-based, I do tend to ‘take them home with me’. I find this to gets exhausting when it accumulates, should I be limiting work to ‘work time’ or scheduling in more ‘art time’? The ‘no time = not a priority’ is a gist of a video I recently watched, a reminder for myself that I need to make time to do the things I want, instead of letting time decide for me.
Escalator edits – parallax-tracking
So far, I’ve completed the video cuts for 4 films. It’s definitely not going as fast as I hoped, 30 movies may take awhile. The most recent movies that I edited are 8-diagram pole fighter and Black Tavern. For Black Tavern, Howie had provided the time stamps but, 8-diagram pole fighter was my first attempt at finding these parallax shots on my own. Previously, I had taken ‘tracking shots’ quite literally, so in the first movie, I had tasked myself to go through each frame and identify these shots. During our second face-to-face meeting, he expressed what shots worked and what didn’t. Admittedly, there were still some that I didn’t quite visually understand at the time. The gist of it seems to be: more foreground to background parallel relations, no still tracking, more ‘flurry’ of movement, no handheld and no pans. After he clarified what he was looking for, I had a better idea of what shots to avoid. I managed to get a gist of it with only a few pans in the beginning that I mistook as tracking shots.
Lenticular printing – tokens for the Vancouver Art Gallery
Currently, I am still working on preparing files and looking into print quotes for lenticular printing. I’m trying to create a lenticular print template that Howie can reuse, while looking into lenticular printing shops in the Greater Vancouver area. Looking into imaging quotes for two print sizes at the moment. These prints are intended as a donation for an auction in the Vancouver Art gallery in May. Kind of like a souvenir from his major work, Retainers of Anarchy, I suppose. He did mention during our first meeting, how he would be working on some ‘collectibles’ after this major work. Its just my impression but, he seems not too enthused about it, but at the same time, recognizing the need of it.
On the side, I am looking more into video displays, loops, and inverse videos. Currently my idea is to simply have simple video cuts, and playing them in loop using simple mechanisms like raspberry pi. Someone suggested potentially a video streamer like VLC, which I’m not too sure about yet, but will look into. The idea is to research on an potential exhibition display for the escalator edits project.