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GALLERY CONTINUED

PAGE THIRTY-ONE

It is almost a year and a few months since I made this short animation of about 100 seconds, and I have synchronistically attended a collection of Rene Magritte's paintings, found out how to bones-animate (possible?), and dwelled on the implications of the elements. The viewer asks "What is machine-like about you?" "How are you better than faces?" "Am I being told that I am a car-maniac?" "I know what a car should say, but what is a train engine going to say?" "You don't communicate as much, do you?" And these and similar questions are planted in dialogue if they are not obvious, along with characters focussing on stimulating themselves in the face of mentally challenging puzzles. Is stimulation stirring oneself up, or re-optimizing? The push-pull of negotiating audience self-talk is probably over-rated .

The 500 ten-second scene method may work with it, but who is being rescued? To paraphrase Aristotle and Viki King, character is plot, and the plot needs to deal with the specialness of the characters. Something Magritte was spared?

There is no "throwing together" an animated feature, but decent work has a chance. The other day I did a little experiment, positing what sort of "quickie" features I might dash-off in a few weeks. What I came up with was mostly crap. But my agendas are always with me. Parody "Toy Story?" You're a TOY, a puppet of the imperialist dog, I am made in China! As a downtrodden puppet I have integrity, which you sorely lack! Parody Christmas classics by being consistently OUT THERE, but addressing key issues, like subjective perception? Base the "quickie" on a film student/student loan victim transparently lifting "Twilight Zone" story elements in a vain attempt to replace a soundtrack and sell a project without sound: "sort of "What Dreams May Come" meets "8 1/2"?" If you can address the needs of a victimized group -- the Chinese worker, the earnest Christian, the defrauded student -- the story has a chance. (Operators are standing by!...)

500 ten second scenes?! A movie can be broken up a lot of different ways, but the better material seems to have a lot of ideas. A visual joke can be told in two seconds. VCR's have rewind buttons. Will movies ever be the same?

Jotting 500 ideas will take a number of days to do, and the ideas should come from personal quests to save the world or a particular suffering group. If there is a reasonable rescue premise, they should emerge. Anyway, that is a method some recommend experimenting with.

The predominant writing structure for features seems to be the western civilization paradigm of the Golden Rule parable expounded by Jesus Christ in Matthew 5-7, which dictates that good will come back, no matter what. This premise refutes the evidence of the senses, which means the precondition of "suspension of disbelief" for audiences is destruction of the story's essence unless it is "based on a true story." This is worth mentioning because it is one of the dozen or so things one should include in one's story somehow -- that story structure based on fraud cheats the viewer -- ignore the personality, look for the principle.

Finally, a 500 idea movie is just about right for 3D CGI animation if the 3D aesthetic is a thoughtful aesthetic. Although we resist thinking that settings and people are more colorful when we are in a grateful or charitable mood, the confluence of ideation seems to put the richest ideas at moments of the richest thinking with the richest accompanying form. We enjoy the color of moments that are deserving, of a high mental tone. Is this what Garry Winogrand meant when he shared that art occurs when form and content are on the verge of overwhelming one another. If art is life. The chicken starts coming before the egg when we place crisis moments of action during sunset, as dark approaches. Trying to conform the correlative approach to random applications; flower arrangers group bud, blossom and fruit in contrasting color shape and dimension -- time and spacejuxtaposed in harmonic and seemingly meaningful values. Color arrangements can have a mathematical relationship, and also a relationship that vibrates synchronously with spatial relationships. Is it any wonder Moses despised image-making? Spatial dissonance enhances space by contrast. The metaphysical cinemtographer has long lenses and impossibly orthographic perspective for the angry driver on his cel phone on the freeway; the non-metaphysical CG lighting technician trying to "perk-up" a flat moment begins with two strikes against them. Having uplifting ideas present supports the process.

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