This workshop will start with sound as the foundation of moving images. Using paintings, found footage, photographs and other media students are asked to bring to this project some bit of live or recorded sound. From this, we will construct motion pictures using both film and video equipment. Martha will begin the workshop with a detailed presentation of her work’s development and process as a way to introduce collage animation techniques.

Some ideas in this project: how we can juxtapose disparate media? can sound support or destroy images? how can we combine our personal statements/passions with more popular ideas? (and play with this) this workshop encourages those with no or little film or video experience to join.


Report on the workshop



To start, after a short introduction to technique, we all brought in a selection of magazines and books, ranging from Chinese painting to underwear ads, to tabloids, and so on. The room became a hurricane of paper scraps and scissors snapping. We arranged our collage pieces into individual piles and discussed each students intentions with what they had cut/ painted. I wrote an abbreviated list of this material and we arranged it into a script. Some of our scripted sections were as follows: Nanjing Spring Festival, Fashion of today and yesterday, Norwegian crime scene, Peruvian Frog-Male-Potency Ritual, Hitler in Summer Forest, Chinese fashion monsters, and so on. After some discussion we came to an agreement that the work would be called ‘Drunken Globalization’. As we were filming this in sequential order, it was nessesary to arrive at a title before begining the film. This also helped us to think about weaving a kind of theme throughout the film.

We filmed this work on video and had no lights the first 2 days so we worked only by daylight at peak hours. We had only a tiny, weak tripod. As we were using an exercise gym as our ‘film studio’ I had some students help me to move the exercise bicycle to where we were filming and to tape the tripod to it for stability. We had no table, we used the gymnastic mats piled up. These technical disabilities and struggles did not hinder our progress. When you watch the work, you do not see the exercise bicycle taped to the camera, just as you do not see our hands moving the paint and cut-up paper. Prioirity #1 was to get moving on the work, because animation is a very time consuming process.

By allowing for a certain level of chaos or freedom in our project, it found it’s own sense of order. We made a collage soundtrack of international clips and cuts and sounds to match the length of our animation (8 minutes). When we viewed the sound with the video there was a surprising synchronicity happening. When a bird flies, there’s the sound of wind, when a woman smiles and dances there’s the sound of laughing, when scenes change,music changes, and so on. This kind of development in a film means that the maker/makers are completely tuned-into the work. Reaching the level of involvement and concentration which this class did, has resulted in a wonderful piece of animated history...

‘Drunken Globalization’.
8 minutes.

It will screen in Amsterdam at DIATOOM Cinema (Overtoom 301) on april 23rd and will be submitted to International Student Animation Festivals.

DAI students participating in this workshop contributed their patience and inspiration, and hopefully gained some insight into the working/thinking practices of our new-found friends and collaborators at NAI.
DAI students were: Teresa Borasino, Lin Shih Ying, Tracey Prehay, Ajla Steinvag, Paul Segers.

The Nanjing Arts Institute students participating did a wonderful job of dedicating their attention and energy to this project.
NAI students were: Song Fong Yuan, Zhu Yu Zhou, Bian Ronprong, Ding Kai, Zhang Kui, Wanghui, Wu Quinghui, and a few others (whose names will be added to this list soon hopefully).
Many thanks to our beautiful translator: Liu Xiao. (MC)


Paper Huricane.



Chinese Tabloids Scene.



Drunken Medicine Scene.



Exercise Bicycle Tripod.



Working.



Paint Animation Chinese Politician.



Martha Colburn making Soundtrack.



World Politicians in Nanjing.