PROJECTOR!!!!

Sooooo one of my family's favorite pastimes: flea marketing! Meet the Lumina 12, a fully-functional 8mm project from the 50's. My grandparents stumbled upon it a couple weeks ago at a flea market in coastal Virginia, but it wasn't until my parents went to visit that we could find out a way to get it to Winston-Salem without costing an arm and a leg (this thing is portable, but too heavy to mail). After thinking about the diagram from my earlier post, I think I have a pretty good idea of how everything will come together...

Mein Translations

This past weekend, I finished the last film of my UNCSA career, "The Watch." Another example of "translation."

First, a screenwriter writes a script. A Producer thinks it's a good enough (or marketable enough) idea to risk boatloads of money on with little hope of a return. The Producer hires the Key Crew, made up of the Director, Cinematographer, and Production Designer. They pour over the script for hours and hours hashing out the practical execution of every detail, from the color of the tablecloth to the stunt where the car jumps through the front of the building, creating a visual translation from the words on the page to actual images. After the practical details are worked out, and they have a plan that's somewhat feasible, it's time to get to work. Searching, building, renting, borrowing, bargaining, or whatever it takes to get the job done. Once they've assembled all the necessary ingredients (set, props, lights, camera, actors) they create a complete alternate reality just long enough to capture it on camera. What was once only words, translated to actual photographs.

I love Juxtapoz magazine!

New issue came in the mail yesterday... :)

http://www.juxtapoz.com/

Translation

Alrighty! Time to get caught up on these blog entries! Translation: the conversion of something from one form or medium into another. I thought this was a pretty vague concept when we first decided on it. There are SOOOOOO many different seemingly unrelated things that could fall under the moniker of "translation." The act of talking, as well as hearing, as well as perceiving any sort of stimulus could apply to that definition. Thoughts translate into words in the mind, then the brain turns them into impulses that make the diaphragm contract and push air through a couple of little flaps of cartilage, the mouth and throat shapes the noises and PRESTO! Thoughts translated into speech. As I've been working on the UNCSA student film, The Watch, I've been thinking about how scripts translate into the multi-million dollar box office hits that explode across our cinema screens. Every step of the way is about trying to translate what was once a written medium, into a stunning visual masterpiece, but it's not as simple as putting pen to paper or brush to canvas. In filmmaking, half of the battle is just getting all of the right ingredients in the same place at the same time! I've been toying around with a graphic "translation" of what a single shot in a film looks like (above). It starts at the left with all of these different tangled colored lines, gradually, they start to align and straighten. Even the outliers start to fall in line eventually. Everything funnels into one singular white line representing a 2-minute-long take. CUT! Then everything falls apart again, but for that one moment, what was once words on a page translate to reality...hopefully it was in focus...