Thoughts On, Week Off

Even though last week's class was (in Andre's words) "low key", I had a good time with the viewings and thought they were really interesting. Starting with Monster Road, I really was inspired by Bruce Bickford's claymation creations. Its amazing to see an older fellow with a childlike imagination and also fascination with his creatures. After seeing our group animation, it was hard for me to imagine the planning and time consumed making an animation as elaborate as Bickford's. What really struck me was the fact he stated that he didn't plan them out, instead just made up the plot as he went along. I admit, during the animation project we did the same thing, it just wasn't as elaborate and polished.
The second viewing, Fridays at the Farm, was also extremely cool as it was all still photos and had to do with self-farming. I thought Hoffmann's whole still documentary was very inspiring, both film-wise and nutritionally. As a vegetarian myself, I really dug the whole veggie farm and how it was run naturally. The techniques used in the community farm were very cool and it was good to see his children growing up healthy in modern day America. Cinematicly, It was almost hard to believe that the entire project was completely stills, around twenty thousand to be exact. At times, it seemed like the stills were creating movement and that must've been hard to accomplish. Taking 201 at UNCW made me really appreciate anyone who can accomplish movement with nothing but still photos. I also thought that the still photography was appropriate for the film because it gave it a very scrapbook feel to it with dialogue included. Many of the photos were perfect and in ultra high quality which definitely helped. The use of timelapse several times also demonstrated the time and effort both the project and the farm must've took to make a good final product.