Soujuu 操縦

Sonnet Number One


purple ink squiggles the strip
concentration of the mind
forming imagination undefined
millisecond the hour of the tip
rhythms side brush the paint drip
imprinting the paper-clip find
straw needles rigid lines
oxidation blurs, the image rip
the red light exposed my fingers
the white light flashed
the film grain embossed
shapes now forever linger
though nothing ever lasts
frightening, the art that is lost


Response

It came natural for me, nothing pre-planned in my mind, I had an idea and I executed.  Did I make mistakes along the way?  Of course.  Like what you ask?  Like drawing my animation too big and then splicing the film strip upside down.  I also have found that my strength in film manipulation is the inking and texturing part, my partner Jon has a great strength in animation.


This is no easy job, film manipulation, even though I had nothing planned, it still takes major brain power to get the job done and also major patience.  For example, when we were left in the class room to ink the clear liter from 7:00 pm to 8:45 pm, I only achieved to ink fifty frames of nine feet of film.  I find that I am not satisfied with one layer, one color, one texture, I have my mother's philosophy to fill the page, leave no white, or in this case leave no film exposed.  And one would think that it would be easy to fill the space on such a small area....WRONG!  It takes some time, not something I can sit down and BS my way through, even in splicing, taking us about two hours to get everything together and then returning the splicer to only find out the we have the end upside down, going back to get the splicer and fixing more than one area.

The thing that I would have done differently is changing how I would have done the animation, I drew in with a thin sharpie and I drew the images as minute as possible, but the end result when it played on screen was far too big.  All in all I enjoyed this experience, it gets me to open my mind to other possibilities in film, almost like a mediation on the art while working on the art, but it helps me zoom in also on my documentary in process right now and I think of the aesthetics of my project.