Framed

Our first assignment in Experimental Cinema was to create a project where the majority of the editing was completed in production. Through class discussions we found that many of our definitions of what "experimental" meant were related to wild effects most of which are added in postproduction. So the challenge was to draw influence from the avant-garde artists we had been studying and think outside our realm of understanding. 

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I chose to create a project that mimicked the frame-by-frame minutia of analog film while using a digital camera. In my college dorm room I had covered my walls with memorabilia: postcards from friends, disposable photos, art from coffee shops–anything and everything. To capture the color and abstraction that I had seen created by experimental filmmakers on celluloid film through scratching, painting, and more, I took a series of photos of these different art pieces. I would adjust the framing and focus of each shot, altering the perspective of the original images that had adorned my walls. After I had captured more than 300 photos of about 100 pieces of media in my room, I then took to editing it all together. 

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The editing process was random. I simply imported the photos and then added them all into my timeline into whatever order they happened to appear. Then I adjusted the length of each to a mere fraction of a second so that when played all at once it would appear that each image was flicking by. This was meant to mimic a "frame-by-frame" effect. I reorderedd some of the photos to create variation in the color and depth of each image, but otherwise I let them lie in the timeline as they originally intended to. 

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The piece earned the title framed as an ode to the informal art gallery (distinctly without any frames) on my bedroom walls. 

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This video was created using a Canon T5i and edited in Adobe Premiere Pro.