makingmusic

Associations

 Filmmaking  Silence  Philosophy of time??  The occult (unseen, like music)  Intervals  Gramophone (make one??)  Radio  Mental  Timing  Home  Folklore  Meditations  Spirituality  Seasons (autumn/ winter)  Albums  Concerts (will be attending a few in October/ November)  The lighting at the concerts I’ve already been to!!  Culture  Story-telling  Baking/ cooking (sound+time) experience

 I also watched a couple of videos on music theory. It was a waste of time to do this now, as I don’t play any instruments yet. I took notes, still all of the information went right over my head.
 When I tried to find any sources on baking in art, I only got results for why baking is an art. This was interesting to read about, but not necessarily what I was looking for. Need to do a bit more research on this.

Goals (or rather: what I am most interested in now from the things above)

This term I want to pay a lot more attention to source-based research than last year, when I mostly blindly experimented with my own ideas and techniques. I am not really sure yet how I end up physically incorporating this into the project this term. It might just result in a filled notebook.
 Documentary of the months ahead (my favourite of the year), including the changing weather, sounds, displays of life. I am not sure about the exact storyline of this film yet (as of now I am interested in folklore), but I specifically want to start out with visual references (and not find them during the process when I am stuck, as usual) to find a mood to refer back to.
o Learning about video editing
 Cooking/ baking. In my family, or culture in general, cooking is not necessarily valued (as in, no recipes are getting passed down, etc). I want to see if I can start a new tradition with my younger sister where we cook, bake, talk, etc. Excerpts from this might end up in the documentary from above, or I might find another way to document and visualise.
 Learn the basics of playing the guitar. I don’t expect to be good enough to play anything major by the end of the term, so this will likely be a side project with minor updates throughout the term. Last year I found that I enjoy writing stories, and my intuition tells me that learning to play the guitar will help me during this process somehow.

This week I wanted to dedicate to finding out as much about the topics above to decide on which one to continue with.

After watching the video on Heidegger and his ideas on time and being, I thought it would be interesting to learn more about philosophical ideas in general. This week I started a one-month free trial of skillshare (which is a platform I now love), so I searched for some courses on basic philosophy. I found one which covered principal terminology, as well as ideas of last few millennia in Asia and Europe (Philosophy for Beginners by Matt K.). I'd never taken a class on philosophy before, so I learned a lot. (15 pages of notes)
Another class went over the pre-production, production, and editing phases of documentary-making (Creating a Modern, Cinematic Documentary Film with Soul by Dandan Liu). (3 pages of notes)
The final one I followed this week demonstrated basic guitar chords Guitar Fundamentals by Mike Boyd).

 References
Two references that have to do with “food” (in a very loose way) and with storytelling / language / archiving

 Feedback
1) to open up to external influences beyond your intuition as main engine
2) and connected with this first point, I think it is also a good idea if you decide on one thing to do next, one specific one, and do it for a bit. Wether that’s baking, playing guitar (check powerchords, they are quite an easy way to get into sounding like a guitar player haha, and then check some open chords. And don’t dispair! It takes a lot of time, yes), telling stories, documenting other people’s stories, bringing one or more of these elements to an audience (whomever that may be), I think you can do yourself a big favour by choosing one thing, taking it from there and seeing where it can lead you

look into references on 10-9!!!

I think most of all I am interested in the process of telling a story (autumn/folklore/some philosophical influences, but specific story still to be determined/written) through video-making.

This week I continued research, but on the more specific subject of Autumn and its lore

I wasn't feeling great this week, so didn't do as much as I would have liked

group talk (Can, Mari, and Marie)

First, I looked at paintings that specifically included autumn as a setting. The ones with a star caught my attention initially and the ones marked with a heart as well are ones I'd like to reference in the video doc.
Then I tried to find/ think of the reasons Autumn would be references (passing of time, celebration of work, sadness, etc.)
In poems, an Autumnal setting tends to be used to evoke a gloomy, nostalgic feeling.

The colours, way of storytelling, and dream-like setting in this video interest me a lot. I was already thinking of experimenting with blurring and cuts, so this is a good example to refer back to

This week the weather was still too much like summer weather to start photographing and filming (too good, so not what I am interested in for this project). I am thinking of visiting the centre / the east of the country to film. Next week would be good to see if I can find any nice spots (that look like the ones in the paintings and/ or are interesting in another way)

The weather ended up not being that Autumnal after all, so instead of taking a lot of time to visit the east of the country, I looked for places closer to home to find interesting compositions. The story still isn't clear at all, so I was looking more at the aesthetics than the concept.

small reference to my project for Paul's class

While taking these photos (this is of course a small selection), I was trying to imagine what the scene would look like with grey skies and colourful leaves and bare(r) trees. Still, these are only scenes from nature in daylight, and I would also like to include autumnal scenes from the village or city, in the evening.

(small comment on the process so far) At the beginning of the year, I decided to challenge myself by actively changing up the process by which I create. Instead of starting out with something I want to make and then finding references, I start with finding references on the topic I am interested in and then decide what it is I want to make. So far this has not gone as smoothly as I would have liked. I feel like I'm walking in a maze aimlessly, hoping to somehow stumble across the exit. I understand in theory that this is part of changing up the process, but it has been kind of discouraging if I'm being honest, which is also the reason that I am having difficulty finding the motivation to keep working on it.

Unrelated, but I feel the need to mention that I have taken on the challenge of knitting Weasley style sweaters (like in the Harry Potter books/ films) for all my sisters and cousins before Christmas (6 total, R.I.P. my wrists). Again, not part of this project (even though it fits the season), just an update on what's going on.

It seems like summer is extending well beyond the point it used to, so I'll have to postpone making the first sketches of the actual video further. To fill the time until then, I decided to read/ watch some pieces of media that I associate with autumn for research purposes. Right now I am reading The Hobbit and I have already found a lot of reasons for which I think this is such an Autumn story.

For Paul's class I am researching the recently released album Unreal Unearth by Hozier, and I am thinking of combining the two separate projects into one in order to create the story. The album is a beautiful (according to me) narration of a journey through the circles of Hell, as depicted in Dante's Inferno, and talks a lot about the descent into, time spent in, and subsequent ascent out of, darkness. I think this topic is very compatible with the short film/ documentary about Autumn, a season where we almost literally descend into darkness, but which, at least for me, is not at all a hellish experience.

During the group meetings we had in class, a tip I received was to make it explicitly clear for myself what about Autumn and the album interested me so much, and to continue from there.

During class: decide on a reasonable goal for the week and keep the weather in mind

My goals for this week were (1) to finish reading The Hobbit and (2) to start thinking about making a moodboard for the film.
I'm not a fan of reading multiple books at the same time, so the first goal was really to make space for reading the Divine Comedy, but specifically Inferno. The moodboard was something I had thought about making from the first week on, but I hadn't gotten to it.
Previous weeks I have been kind of getting frustrated with how slowly things were going, but this week I realised that this was probably a positive thing. This way I could reflect on and familiarise with the topics I was working on. Also, writing about things I haven't had the time to think about does not really work for me.

While reading I underlined some sentences or passages that I thought fit either the idea for story I still have to write or the visuals of the film

I am planning on mentally creating an outline of whatever I want to tell with the story and film during the Autumn break.
After the break there is an elective week, but I signed up for an elective at Hogeschool Rotterdam, which takes place later in the year. I am dedicating that week to writing the story, as well as visiting the places I'd like to film (which I would have probably done anyway).

Key themes for the moodboard

 Emptiness  B/W imagery  Oranges, Browns, Yellows, Reds  Nature  Representations of sin (sins of passion (outer circles) and / or intentional sins (inner circles)??? decide -> probably both)  Representations of the punishments for sins; being thrown around by a storm, lying just below the surface of a lake, ice, lying in mud and rain, etc  Night (flashlights?), the idea of "in the dark, you can't see where things start and end, so everyone is part of everything"?  "infinitely suffering, but fighting off, like all creation, the absence of itself"  The idea that "nothing is forever" is a heretic thought  "All that we intend is built on sand", i.e. intentions have an unstable foundation and will be erased  A lake (the song: to someone from a warm climate (Uiscefhuaraithe))  "There's a part of me, I'm afraid will always be, trapped within an abstract from a moment of my life" relatable  Ending with a bright image, like the final song on the album is a step back into light ("Could this be how every day begins?")

I think the music video for De Selby (Part 2) (one of the songs on the Hozier album) is very interesting and fits the mood I'm going for with the film

 Moody weather  Letters at the beginning  Upside down / tilted shots  Empty-looking scenes of large stretches of land  Small town bar
 Nonsensical actions (shoveling water out of a lake)  distortions  Red-toned flashes when a new alternate reality starts  and then there is the chaos of multiple versions of the character having it in for each other  The video being in black and white makes the landscape and weather more rugged somehow, dark shadows, more contrast