Just another manic Monday

After watching a selection of work from the stills excercise and taking some quick notes describing first impressions, composition of the piece and what I thought of the pace I have come to a general conclusion about the quality of some of the pieces. There were a few that stood out, but I will admit that it takes something quite unique to make me sit up and take real notice. There was certainly a pattern that emerged from reading back my notes, especially the first impressions of the pieces becuase I personally considor these most important, and you only ever get one first impression of anything. It seemed that alot of the pieces made me think, that was incredibly abstract and equally as hard to understand the plot, certainly on some occasions I think people tend to try and be overlly confusing and illusive about their plot to try and make something seem really different and abstract, but sometimes dont realise the boundries between something that makes you think, and soemthing that is just plain odd. Another strong opinion that i noticed was the pattern of monotonous, very common storylines, which as far as I could tell, didnt really follow the guidelines of the task. It became apparent that some people had possibly lost sight of the main task which was to produce a piece which conveyed 'illusion or a flash back or forward'. This didnt really seem to apply to some which appeared to just tell any story or any daily routine, if the pieces im thinking of did genuinely apply this criteria then i struggled to see it. One thing i noticed about the majority of the pieces was that the music, consistently, was chosen very well, an example was the acid trip video which used music that was, for want of a better word, quite trippy. Definately with most of the pieces the music set the pace and the mood for alot of the pieces so much, a good example of this was right at the begining of the seminar, we watched a piece with a guy walking and some shots of an empty desolate garden, without any sound due to technical problems. I immediately imagined the sound track to include piano, against a synthesised beat, i imagined it very hip hop, which for me would have kept the whole piece very urban and very dark, when listened to later on with the sound it turned out to be some kind of heavy metal track which changed the pace, and the entire way i imagined the story. It was to me, very confusing with both bits of music but each time in its own very different way. I enjoyed watching the pieces today, there were a few which really impressed me, that people had come up with such a solid story line that was very easy to make it look good. a few of the others i feel could have had more depth.