#white project

☨☨ my white project ☨☨

Spent most of yesterday trying to deliver Thanksgiving communications to various people/family, ended up extremely stressed about my dad not contacting Wendy in Finances ASAP due to holiday issues, so I had a severe panic attack, stopped breathing, the whole ordeal. 

I did manage to screencap through some editing work, some clips ended up data damaged somewhere along the line (but they’re all easy to reshoot local stuff, so that’s nice and not really a problem), and I’m gonna post it all up as I go through it all today and through the weekend, and by Tuesday I’ll have a night onslaught of work leading up to the final posted. 

I’m gonna post some inspiration etc. (trying to do things in progressional order) so that I can show what’s influencing some of my editing decisions and shooting methods etc., and I’m also trying to find an old audio test I did on my personal blog to post here as well to show the technique I’m using for some of the “narration” audio. 

I’m still on-schedule for what I expected the holiday and this weekend to be like, despite increasing personal difficulties, so at least I planned to be a fucking wreck of a human being throughout this whole ordeal, and I gave myself adequate time and means to get things done while getting over the diaphragm seizures from panic attacks, and all that stuff. 

I think it’s probably bad when you assume you’re going to just keep having panic attacks and you do, but hey, at least I called it and I’m prepared to do my best anyway. 

The financial shit is definitely a huge stressor, the most “real world” one by far. The rest is stress about my dying family and my psychological issues and all that shit. 

To be honest, the past threats pale in the face of the future ones. As dismissive and as bitter as that sounds, and a lot of past problems are tied-in with current and future ones, but I’m 23 years old and I have a life plan to consider. 

Give me liberty or give me death. London or bust. I take shit seriously. Probably far too seriously, but really, is it news that a neurotic person has a tendency to panic? Probably not. 

It’s relevant because I’m constantly fighting everything in order to get anything done in the name of everything, and it gets very tiring and confusing and yes, stressful. But I’m doing my best, and if my best still means that in the end I’m completely fucked and I have no hope for a future, then I suppose it’s inevitable. 

Failure cannot be an option, but it is also the only option, as someone that works and lives in a creative field. I have to fail to succeed, eventually, in order to continue succeeding. Everything is a contradiction, and when someone is as serious and as purely afraid as I am, that really doesn’t help bring stress down any. 

At least I’m self aware, I suppose.

I’m working. Whether or not I am judged as good enough, that’s not my call. I can only do my best, and keep doing my best, until it kills me or until whoever’s in charge kills me by sending me back to a place that doesn’t exist anymore.

It’s such a horrible thought that I gagged, typing that out.

I sound so dramatic! But I guess that’s just what these thoughts and feelings look like in text. It’s almost impossible to translate constantly tensed muscles and endless sleepless nights into someone else’s internal monologue in quite the right way, if they have never experienced the same causes. This is a unique set of issues that I have, here. Which I think is also why so many people never talk about this kind of thing. They worry about sounding overly dramatic, but it’s unavoidable. 

Everyone has thoughts and feelings and life experiences that only apply to them as individuals. There’s an art in even attempting to bridge the gap, I think, and no small amount of bravery, because it’s such a vulnerable state of honesty, to speak freely about these things. Even here, with my Honesty Policy on this blog, I just mentally block myself from ever saying certain things, because my brain is trying to protect itself. It’s not denial, but something similar that might be a necessary mechanism in human beings just to keep them going.

Unfortunately, I tend to think about everything constantly, which I guess is what being neurotic is. It’s just not having the ability to insulate yourself in any way, from anything that has ever happened or will happen. It’s constant hyperawareness, the worst-case scenario is always right there.

I’m doing a surprisingly great job of pushing on anyway, just as a personal judge of my own abilities and issues. I try. I’ve had more than a few mental breakdowns, including the one this summer which was a major ordeal, and so I’m in that “numb rebound” period where I don’t smile, but I don’t have the energy to cry, so I just try to get on with things instead. 

Beneficial for work, hopefully! 

Maybe I’m weak, maybe this all sounds overly alarmist or despair-filled, but thinking objectively, I’m here and I’m working and I’m doing all that I can 

Days are too short. Days are too stuffy and alone. But I’m working so that I can stay here with the freedom of doing what I love (making art) and making a living and making a life somewhere where I know people and I am happy and I have a hope in hell of being successful and surviving as an adult. 

Go through hell, so you can experience heaven. 

The immediate goal is to simply stay here and in doing so, stay alive and well. Work towards success. 

The end goal is the dream, and it’s a straight-forward one. Live a modest life in the best city on the planet with people I care for and work with and can experience success with, and grow with, and make a life through my trade of art.

Nothing said that achieving dreams were easy. It’s just extra-hard for some people.

So I’m gonna get my ass back in the editing booth here, generate some foley and do some audio, post all that stuff as it gets done with the progress shots, then over the weekend nail the final to the wall like christ on the cross, and then do the PDF and make it all spit-shined and ready to rock, and then start in on the essay, and somewhere in here in the immediate future get my father to call Wendy and get the shop on Society6 (or similar) up and running (after checking visa restrictions regarding things like that and checking tax info with my dad etc.) and eventually, go to sleep. 

Yes, I completely forgot it was Thanksgiving, despite the Black Friday sales everywhere. I’m a very tired person. 

The review on Tuesday was exactly what I expected, and I’m happy that Liz gave me some good equipment tips- When I went to find Dave for camera advice after the tutorial, it was busy in equipment rental, and yesterday I 

She definitely nailed my perfectionism as being a big part of my work neuroses, so it’s nice that she understands that part of my thought process. Most people mistakenly think of it as a good thing, but it was nice to hear real talk from someone that gets it. 

I’m slowly getting through the perfectionist trauma, though. I’m experimenting - this whole project is a huge test for me - more than I ever have before, and it feels good to be fucking up so much, in a way. My anxiety is still never going to go away, and I’m a natural pessimist, but I have been more productive thinking about and working on this than I have been in a while. 

I have to try to get ahold of people today, which is going to be hugely emotionally draining and tense and all of that, but hey, it’s an unavoidable part of holidays, and even though I’m going to be a little more sad than usual, I find that my favourite part of the year is winter. Even though I’m always so goddamn cold! 

The beauty of London when it’s holiday time is powerful enough to clear my head and make my heart hurt a little less, which I guess is the opposite of most people around this time of year, but I’ve been all over the world, and every year I am taken up entirely by how wondrous and perfect this city becomes once the fog settles in and the lights go on and the delicate rain starts to fall. 

Waxing poetic, yes, but I feel like nobody here understands just what people like me have done, how far we have gone, just to be able to experience it. 

Holding a lukewarm cheap to-go coffee in the brisk cold, by myself in the middle of ten thousand people rushing around, the busy world that makes me dizzy and sick in the summer suddenly becomes crystalline and silent, like an old movie. 

It’s like I’m spinning in place without ever moving, and the cold air breathes life back into me. The light fog, wet and heavy, guides my eyes upwards to where it obscures lights and distorts them through the atmosphere, and reminds me that above the tops of stone clock towers and brick-and-steel columns of buildings that surely house old ghosts, that God is in the rain. 

I think just the fact that it is winter, is getting me through things far better than I would be doing if it were any other time of year. 

Which reminds me, I also have to make sure my dad contacted Finances, as Wendy called again, and I passed the info onward to him immediately, but I need to follow up. So I’ll do that while trying to make contact rounds. 

After that, and some time zone battling and maybe some more waxing poetic, I’m going to get in on my editing and sound engineering, take screencaps, annotate progress as I go, and later tonight (again, time zone clashing, we’ll see what’s up and when) I should have at least a test or draft video up. 

I want to scan my project page (the one in the project three booklet) for posterity, as that was also a part of Tuesday’s review, so if Marion’s scanner works, I’ll ask and see if I can use it for a minute.

I might do some extra shooting while I can, later on, and incorporate that into tonight’s editing rounds. 

So, I’ve pulled an all-nighter.

Won’t have a final edit for tomorrow, but I will have a lot of footage from tonight that I’m going to comp together and do audio for, so it’s forming up quickly now that I can actually get my shots. 

The bunk week fucked me over, but I’m doing what I can to catch up and have all of this done as soon as possible (with progress documented) so I can hammer out the revised PDF and have everything ready to rock. 

Tomorrow I’m taking in the finished sheet from the brief that they want us to review (I will type up a copy here) and my tutorial time is 12:30 with Liz, which I am nervous about. 

I want to type up my key points now, because I know I’m going to be so goddamn tired (everything here will be elaborated on in upcoming entries here, but these are just bulletpoints for now so I remember): 

-Project three (3y3s, working title; moving image project) explores themes inspired by the Ai WeiWei exhibit 

-Title comes from it being the third brief and my personal glitch art/glitch video base art style, which continues in this piece (hence use of numbers) 

-Main themes: “White” (carried over from first project theme and is why I am filming largely at night/editing and manipulating for contrast with stylistic exceptions, although filming/editing is still in progress), surveillance, discomfort/unease, “being watched”, a sense of confinement and solitude 

-Inspiration went from animation to reflecting on my own style internally, to the Ai exhibit, to horror films and tropes (namely Japanese low budget 70s-2000s horror movies, some clips of which will be linked here and annotated/tagged for relevancy)

-Style: Video will be edited with false frozen timestamp and “bad quality” lines to imitate security camera footage, black and white as well as limited “video error” colour will be utilised 

-Final PDF will include screencaps of editing/footage/etc. in progress as well as video finals, with text from relevant project diary entries for development notes

Jesus Christ, trying to get filming done has been hell.

I plan on doing a major write-up and doing my first edit later today (Monday) regardless of what’s up today, because that has to get done. 

I was rained out for almost a complete week, and then the two days it wasn’t torrentially pissing it, it was so cold (35F!) that my equipment started to gum up. 

See, when most digital cameras (as in, all of mine) get prolonged exposure to humidity and intense cold, even the GoPro (not being used on this project due to footage file size editing issues at home, but it just goes to show that this happens to pretty much all cameras) which generates a good deal of heat when in operation starts to get the “shutter stutter” effect, as I call it. 

This means that at first, as the internal mechanisms begin to experience temperature problems, it appears as though frames are missing or slowed down, or have some kind of pixel lag. 

Then, if you continue to attempt to operate, the problem gets more severe until the camera just gives out, sometimes damaging your files and hardware together, which happened to my iPhone while trying to film outdoors the past few days, meaning I now have to actively carry my “camera bag” purse with my cable and external battery at all times, or the phone no longer holds a charge for longer than a few seconds if unplugged and all files will be lost during the switch off from a perceived empty battery, when really, it’s what detects charge which is the broken element. 

So, that sucks! That fucking sucks. 

I’ve been doing my best despite the stupid amount of shooting problems, but I’m pushing through and re-working as I go. 

Like I said, I’m going to do a write-up of what everything’s become with an accompanying (test edit?) video later, after what I hope will be a lengthy nap, as I am exhausted. 

I have a few shots left to get done, but like I said, the end product can’t be long due to editing etc. and I have some sound engineering to get through as well, so it looks like it’s going to be mostly production and updates throughout that process, with a write-up and video at the end.