Dog Star Man's Latest Film Endeavors.

[Dog Star Man]

I've assembled together a group of actors, musicians, painters, and a producer to engage on some film projects with me.

The idea I've been having is to test some of my ideas out using the Scientific Method to create, at first, Avant-Garde works. Then at last, if they do indeed function as I hope they will, to translate these Avant-Garde ideas into more Narrative ones at which I'm hoping a general audience can at once appreciate and understand.

The film I'm engaging with at the moment is filming the Four Elements of Nature. Not by actually filming them. But communicating them through their aesthetic mise-en-scene and editing equivalents. I want people to know the elements, without actually knowing them.

When I'm done, I'll perhaps submit them here for comment.

[wintertriangles]

Sweet. I'm interested!


and I'm a musician but w/e :(

[Dog Star Man]

So to give you some idea of how I'm going to film the elements, I'll give you an example of fire:

I took this still image for example of fire:

http://www.backgroundpictures.org/p/fire/fire_01.jpg

...and made this still image a moving image through the use of fast montage and dissolves. Again, this image you're seeing on youtube I'm doing is not a moving image at all, it's a still photograph, but it gives the illusion of moving fire:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_66jdMc6dy0

How I'm actually going to film this is again, "to communicate the elements using the modus operandi of 'knowing without knowing'." So while this is how I'm going to construct fire, this is not the fire film itself. This is the introduction/example that will lead to it.

Enjoy.

[Tyler1]

I definitely see some Stan Brakhage influences in that. ;) So the whole 1min long film comprises of only one still image? Did you rotate/crop the picture to produce the illusion of the flame?
What I like about it was how each frame appeared different from the other, highlighting the everchanging shape of the actual fire, the unpredictability of fire, how each shape is what it is for only a moment in time.
Oh, and fire can appear blue as well... so perhaps orange shouldnt be the only colour. Also, what do you mean by "knowing without knowing"?

Enlighten me cuz I'm not familiar with the experimental stuff. Anyway, I'm pretty interested in your interpretation of the other three elements.

[Dog Star Man]

I have Three Fathers, Kubrick, Kurosawa, and Brakhage. So yes I'm deeply influenced by Brakhage in this sense. The specs on the clip/example:

10 different, zoomed and cropped images from the single image.
1 second each.
5 second dissolves.

[Dog Star Man]

"Knowing without knowing," refers to the film concept I'm doing which is to film the aesthetics of the elements, and communicate these elements, without actually showing these elements at all. The mise-en-scene and the edit communicate that point, while the subject it is filming has nothing to do with the actual elements themselves.