The Sand Pit: Chinese whispers PT2

When asked to do the Chinese whispers exercise again me and Stephanie decided we would take the Eagle flew in the window and Micheal Jackson theme from the narrative and develop them to re-create our own narrative. We would still use a mobile phone to take photographs, but also using the other applications of the phone to record moving image and sound. We drew illustrations of the eagle, we took pictures from flickr, we took videos from various websites and recorded sound from youtube and our own voices. We decided to turn this sequence of photographs into a short film with all these elements because we felt it would give an eclectic and surreal style to the narrative. Also doing this allowed us to use the phone to its full potential and it gave us the opportunity to try out new softwares such as final cut. Which developed our understanding and introduced us to some animation techniques.
The short movie is about an Eagle who goes on a journey in search of her soul only to find Hitler has it. Due to the fact that Micheal Jackson has stolen his pants, Hitler decides that anything with wings is vermin and so their souls should be traded in for his trousers back.

The film starts off with a speech from a video on www.revver.com. we felt the speech was a good introduction to our narrative as the lady explains how she is the eagle flying. Although we felt this was an interesting way to start we werent sure our audience would understand the link between the speech and the short narrative. The images in the background are from flickr which were done by a photographer called Jonathan Haeber of Micheal Jacksons Neverland and the sound are clips from the animation Alice In Wonderland.

I think the video works really well and I think overall we achieved the result we wanted. We had a go at editing in Final cut and introduced some old fashioned animation techniques which also worked really well giving the film another dimension. The only problems we faced was that initially we was going to record the eagle moving across the images that were on the computer screen but this only created a really pixilated video. So to get round that problem we decided to print off the images for the background and make our eagles puppets. Recording them this way was still bad quality especially the sound but not half as bad. if I was to create this film again id use a different software other than a phone as it wasnt suitable for this film to have a professional finish.

Current Brief: The Sand Pit

Research, Explore and Document your relationship with Communication Technology.

The Technology I currently use:

The first thing that comes to mind is my mobile phone. Me and My mobile phone have a special relationship. I have a reputation for not 'LOVING' my mobile phone enough. It finds itself in the most annoying places, In the wash basket, In the washing machine, In someone elses pocket, (I know its dreadful).When things like this happen which has been quite alot, it really makes me appreciate how much I love my phone ( I suppose you never know what you've got till its gone).
When my phones actually with me, I can keep intouch with my favourite people, I can listen to my favourite music, I can take photographs of my favourite visions, and last and very least it wakes me up in a morning. It does everything I need it to do, and its an important part of my everyday life.

The second my Computer. I Love the fact that I can access endless amounts of information without even moving. I love the fact that I can talk to my boyfriend for free on skype. I also love the fact that I have the opportunity to use different softwares to my advantage which help me create endless amounts of work. But I hate the fact that the internet is so advanced that I dont really have to do a thing to get anything. Sometimes I might buy something online and until I look at my bank balance its like I never even bought it because its just so easy to press a button. Having to go out and buy it on a rainy day would alone put me off. Im not saying its all bad though because for someone who isnt so mobile this would be good. They could use this facility to their advantage as there are websites set up such as tesco.com that do certain offers such as shop and drop which is fantastic.

I once had a conversation about technology with this random person on the bus home, he was so passionate about his veiws he simply forced it on me. He said something along the lines of

" In my day no-one had these things (mobile phones), they are alien to us. The young ones these days are constantly on them, if they arent talking on them they are blasting out what some would call music. We dont communicate like we used to, whats wrong with a bit of respect"

By this point I stopped listening as I was slightly annoyed by his opinion of the music someone was playing on the bus (I actually liked it that time). But later on I realised he actually had a point. We are all wired up constantly and we are all so happy to isolate ourselves from doing the natural and healthy things in life, Some of us not even noticing the environment we live in.