7th Art Lessons

"This above all:
To thine own self be true,
for it must follow as dost the night the day,
that canst not then be false to any man. "
Polonious
in Shakespeare's Hamlet

Lesson One:
Who are you? This is perhaps the most difficult question you will ever try to answer. Moreover, this question will be asked of you over and over again. Sure, it will be disguised as "So what do you do for a living?" Or "What's new with you?" and countless other variations. As Socrates always said "Know thy self." That is rather difficult if you don't know who you are. Write three words or ideas that you associate with you. Image that if one typed those three words together in google the first result would be a page about you.
Being on stage is a little like being a musician: your voice and body are your instruments. You better practice with them a bit. Everyone held hands. Breathing together seems simple enough. Raise your arms, lower your arms, inhale and exhale, this is the first step into becoming a theater troupe.
The next exercise was of course who are we: Play 7th Art Bingo
Finally we all tried to get on to our Yahoo Group The 7th Art.

Homework: examine the layout of this site. Suggest potential links and changes.
************
Lesson Two: Let's Act
"The best actors do not let the wheels show. "
Henry Fonda
I borrowed this one from my acting class. It is a good idea to prove that everyone can act. We all have a part to play and do it well.
Acting is a little like being an opera singer: you should warm up your voice. Logically, I don't know why these silly ice breakers seem to work. Perhaps they don't. It may be since I was subjugated to them by my drama coaches in the past that I want to pass on the tradition or the abuse;-))
Mo No Lo Tho Bo Zo
There is a saying in theater that says in every production there is a little old lady or gentleman in the back rows who does not hear very well. If you want your show to succeed they better be able to understand you, hence you must enunciate well. In English consonants are very important. Often the vowel sound change in regional dialects but the consonates can convey the message. I was told a long time ago that these consonants MNLTHBZ were very important.
Therefore we spoke loudly and precisely this "word" : Mo No Lo Tho Bo Zo. And while vowels my seem less important in the English language we did not forget them so we also said with some force Mee Nee Lee Thee Bee Zee, MuNuLuTuHuBuZu, MayNayLayTHayBayZay, MahNahLahTHahBahZah, etc.
Then having the complete language we proceeded in two and threes to have a conversation in this strange tongue:
first student: "MahNahLahTHahBahZah?"
second student: "MayNayLayTHayBayZay"
first student:"MayNayLayTHayBayZay!"
and so on. Any student who did not laugh during this warm up was considered as coming from outer space.
Then on to the Breakfast Club.

Homework: watch Banana Splat. If you do not succeed in this. Go to alltheweb.com or Yahoo and select video search.
Type yukna and go watch tamago (which means Egg in Japanese).
*****************
Lesson Three: A Brief Look at Animation
"In learning the art of storytelling by animation, I have discovered that language has an anatomy. Every spoken word, whether uttered by a living person or by a cartoon character, has its facial grimace, emphasizing the meaning."
Walt Disney
While this lesson is not about using you whole body we still need to forge a group. Therefore a kinetic warm up was not out of place. I brushed off my Tai Chi lessons from long ago and summed them up in a few phrases. Tai Chi means balance so we all got up on one leg and tried to move in and out of symmetry like "the crane exercise" in the the Karaté Kid. Balance is important in many things, from public speaking to sports. There are many times when you should look graceful on one leg.
Organizations need balance or harmony as well.
One the left you see a top down hierarchy or pyramid. The boss or professor knows everything and the students or workers are to absorb his knowledge.This set up is very slow moving and not very creative, just what you need for a bank or the military in peacetime. On the right you see the bottom up organization plan were the director does all she can to insure that her managers have all they need to help their workers get the job done. Some say that this model is too chaotic but certainly allows for greater innovation from employees.

Both of these examples are extreme. If you look closely at the illustration you may understand why the left "blade" is considered masculine and the right "chalice" is thought to be feminine.
And as Dan Brown pointed out in the Da Vinci Code symbolically as in yin and yang they are only whole when they are together. See Magen David.

All of this was to illustrate that cinema and this course need different mindsets from the ordinary routine. The very ideas of self organizing, sharing, communicating via e-mails and the newsgroup are what makes this attempt unique.
First thing we did after our sojourn in philosophy was to look at a bit of very slow animation: A Letter from My Sister.
I couldn't figure out how to have a slide show on the pages so I changed each page. Using an idea from the Recipes for Tired Teachers (great book) We drew some pictures. After all, some of the best animations ever were hand drawn. Then we went to sophisticated web pages. Ken Perlin's Facedemo is an applet that displays a sort of "proto Laura Croft" animated applet. This responsive face illustrates two things:
1. The huge range of emotions that can be duplicated with very little information.
2. How much more alive the puppet was with "the noise" turned on.
Today virtual faces are everywhere. Some studies even suggest that we prefer them to real people.
Finally if you are animating and you are all alone you made need a few virtual voices. Computers reading text is still a new field but there are some promising techniques: The Nuance Vocalizer. We certainly had a lot of fun with that.
Homework: Learn how to communicate with a storyboard. Check out a site the use of storyboards in creative business.
Make your own storyboard for class alone or in pairs.