#projectlog

So, that's where we're at.

In honor of the last full day of Vine, I want to talk more about what Vine has meant to me for the last four years, and further explain my fascination with this medium of creative expression. I have several friends with whom I would regularly create Vines when the application first emerged. On one level, making Vine videos was a hobby. It changed my perspective on things when I used it as a tool for documentation; I began to see humor and wonder in moments in terms of the potential that they might have to come to life with the ability to record. I often secretly grappled with the idea that creating a Vine perhaps could "pull me out of the moment," and sometimes felt self-conscious filming small vignettes at concerts or while hanging out with my friends. It has been interesting for me in recent weeks and months to look back at my old Vines, because the reality is that 6 seconds is plenty of time to transport someone's memory to a time and place. I realized looking back that most of the moments I have captured on Vine come from days and moments that I would never think about anymore if I didn't have the ability to see it replayed. I'm thinking about what Vine means then, in terms of memory. When I recorded Vines in the past, they were moments that I wanted to capture. Does that make these memories more important than all of my other ones because of the decision that I made to capture them, or are only they important to me now because I recorded them? Where is the value; in the creation of a video, or in its replay? Does the value of a Vine increase with the more effort that was put into its creation, or does it increase the more often it is replayed and repurposed? I have no idea how it feels to create Vines in order to cultivate a following; there are obviously many different ways to use Vine, and people have different desires when it comes to content curation. In recent years, I have used my Vine account to curate the works of others with the revine function. I now primarily use Vine more for comedic relief than a creative outlet or as a way to curate memories, as Snapchat and Instagram have evolved to fulfill creative and curatorial desires. I am fascinated with Vine as a comedic platform for many reasons, one being the vastly wide range of content available. There is so much content on Vine it's kind of overwhelming; one of the reasons why I can't use Vine too often is because it has a "black-hole" effect, as does much of the media that we use today that involves scrolling down a feed. Vine's black-hole-like tendencies to suck my attention in for long periods of time also stem from the unseen potential that every post has. Although I don't find every single post that I scroll past funny or stimulating, the possibility that the next one might have me in stitches keeps me attentive for hour-long periods of time where I am fully immersed in Vine's strange, virtual world full of tiny little realities and unrealities.

How does film as “frame” relate to formalist and constructivist film theory? For many years, there was a fundamental distinction within film theory between formalism and constructivism, and realism and mimeticism. Formalism and constructivism refers to film-making that relies on the “alteration and manipulation of filmic perception, distinct from everyday perception by means such as montage, framing, or the absence of color and language” (16). In other words, filmmakers who engage with cinema as frame tend to distort reality for artistic purposes rather than creating a piece of work that functions as a “window” into reality. How does film as “window” relate to realist and phenomenological theory? On the other hand, film as “window” theories prevail among those who believe that the essence of filmmaking lies in “its ability to record and reproduce reality and its phenomena, including aspects which are invisible to the naked human eye” (16). In films that emphasize realism and mimeticism, the medium (filmmaking) is hidden, as opposed to the frame which “exhibits the medium in material specificity” (16). What is the distinction between “open” and “closed” forms of cinema? The term ‘closed’ in terms of cinema refers to films “in which the universe depicted in the film (its diegesis) closes in on itself, in the sense that it contains only elements which are necessary because internally motivated” (17). These films are set in a world that has been “carefully constructed...in which everything seems to have its predetermined place following the dictates of some invisible but omnipresent hand or elaborate master plan” (17-18). While watching these films, the viewer must suspend their own perception of reality in order to understand what is going on. By contrast, ‘open’ films “offer a segment, a snapshot, or a fragment from a constantly flowing and evolving reality” (18). The closed form is oriented inwardly, whereas the open form turns outward. “The difference may be the difference between finding a world and creating one” (18). What is the value of montage in film-making? Sergei Eisenstein was a director and film theorist who is mainly associated with the development of the concept of montage. He projected the theory that “[w]hat the camera lens must capture is the complex totality of the world, which cannot be caught in the long takes of, say, the Lumiere films, but only as a collision of shots extrapolated from this totality” (26). The role of the director lies in the task of selecting shots that they wish to include, and sequencing them. Eisenstein’s montage theory also includes the idea that a change in the shots’ sequence also changes the meaning within the individual shots.

This is my first post on my senior thesis Tumblr page. Here, I'll be compiling observations, external research, and case studies all in one location so that I can keep track of the work I'm doing, and so that my fellow classmates can follow along with my thought process as I work on my creative production. Not going to lie--I'm pretty nervous. I've spent a great deal of time thinking about this project, and now it is finally time to execute, which has never been my strongest suit. Hopefully, by creating this project log, I will be able to hold myself accountable for keeping up with my work. I have been creating Tumblr pages since I was in high school, which I think speaks to a lot of elements to my work ethic and the way that I process information. Even pre-dating my Tumblr days, I was always obsessed with the idea of compilation. When I was a child, I used to make scrapbooks and photo albums to preserve things that I thought were important, such as photos, drawings, and even small objects that I still have to this day. I have kept every single letter, birthday card, holiday greeting, little kid drawing, prize ribbon, that I have ever acquired since I was a baby (there are several shoeboxes full of these paper relics in my closet at my parents' house). As a teenager, I began using tumblr which satisfied the curatorial desires that have defined my sense of self-expression since I was a kid. I compiled images, audio files, gifs, videos, and text posts onto Tumblr pages, endlessly inspired by the diverse and seemingly infinite content that I had to peruse, and by my own ability to curate content to my taste to create online collections that I was proud of, simply by pressing 'reblog.' Another thing that fascinated me about Tumblr was the strange sense of community that I always felt while I was using this site. Similar to Twitter and Instagram, Tumblr is organized around a constantly updating follower-based feed. The inherent parasocial aspects of tumblr contributed heavily to specific social codes that tumblr users tended to follow, and many joke formats (many of which rely on self-deprecation and personal over-sharing) that are now widespread across the Internet orignated from Tumblr culture. I have also been a user of Vine since it was launched by Twitter in 2013. In its early days, before Vine had acquired the cultural image that it holds today, the application was seen as a strange medium that no one really knew what to do with; six second looping videos seemed like a redundant medium of expression that would never transition into a mainstream platform. In the videos that I myself made, the confusion is clear. I didn't really know what I was doing! Sometimes, I created videos using quick cuts of sound and imagery that somewhat distort reality. Other videos that I recorded on the app captured comical or memorable moments that appear in the video exactly as they had in real life; 6 seconds of reality, frozen in time, then looped on repeat. Just for kicks, I wanted to post some of my own Vines that I made in the app's weird, early days. I just downloaded my Vine archive from vine.co, and I've been reminiscing a ton. They're killing the app on the 17th. Two more days.