6. and everywhere we looked was only the prospect of despair

i was walking back home after attending the advanced screen module lecture thinking about what i can do about this unit. let me start with limitations:

a crew not being on the same page as you. i don't know if i'm being over ambitious, but i'd prefer not to do another narrative drama. i'm already considering helping shoot one narrative drama, i really could do without another one. i must admit, i'm slightly bored of the form, but i still have a tremendous respect for anyone wanting to do one. visual storytelling is challenging, but i've reached a creative fatigue for such a form.

thus, i looked within and found myself being more drawn to what the ghost was supposed to be about. i might have said in an earlier entry about incorporating this idea for a gradeble project.

i could argue that this can be done with minimal crew, even just one person who has sound knowledge toward the limitations of camera, software and output hardware. you see, in the digital domain, it's not so labour intensive anymore. in the sense that, once you know your software and hardware, its maybe about more than 50% done. i believe i'm somewhere there, about 40%. and therin lies the challenge, and part of the learning curve, to actually learn something new. will i learn something new by doing TWO crew based productions? i can justify working as a crew in one crew-based production, but the other one.. what if i wanted to explore the concepts and workflows of the digital artist, of the moving images artist, the visual installation, surveillence, flippant documenting, you need the sort of freedom that exists from having tools at your disposal without involving other people. hence.. the ghost comes to play.

and what can the ghost be about?

when i thought of the haunting, i thought of the things i couldn't let go off. and then i thought of other people, and maybe what they couldn't let go off. i thought of beautiful images, flashes of light, bits of nature we turn a blind eye to. of candid moments and moments of passion. i don't think i could see it all, but the muse was guiding me toward this prospect. i want to see a final canvas, of everything i've pushed myself to the limit of with regards to production, from visualisation, execution and distribution.. the very verge of it all.. and maybe i might be allowed to breakthrough with something. maybe in essence it sounds like i went to be pushed throat first toward the knife's edge, and have either someone pull me back at that instance or let it stab me and find out what lies beyond the white light. perhaps i leave that final moment for the powers that be, because spiritually, i know it's haunting me, of telling me to let everything go to a God of miracles.

5. a god amongst insects

somewhere in between the darkness and the light
i wish i'd find you staring back at me
for even though you'll find the heavens singing
there's something stabbing in the dark
something that reminds me of the winter's chill
all those days that reminded me
of what it's like not to have you
by my side
next to me
warm to the touch of the sparrows' feet
and i liken it all to better days
passing through time
almost like the raindrops of yesterday
washing it all away
but i'm still caught in between
somewhere between darkness and the light.

4. pausing right before destruction

still no sign of any recording yet, and the adobe audition is sitting imaptiently in my computer.

i've been delaying this post for awhile, but it's not true, i have recorded something since then. basically it's a two chord progression that i've just been mucking around with, backed by a silly drum loop. it still needs a hell lot more work, but i broke out the acoustic slide and i'm very interested to make this one of the highlights for this so-called idea.

also, in other news, i may attempt to sell this project as a submission for one of my modules. y'see, i've been approached to help cinematograph someone's final project, and that's all dandy, the thing is for this unit i've enrolled myself in, i think it requires two narrative productions. having little patience to search for a crew or even a vaguely good idea as a second option, i'm quite inspired to bring into the foray the concept of moving images for the ghost/.

probably will be dabbling into random cutting (ie. bingo style editing? haha, nono.. it's gonna be more tedious than that), visual diarying, spontaneous breaking out of video camera, minor compositions, text animation, animation itself, overlays, and what not.. basically the idea is this: how much can one person do with the absence of a constant crew? with the tools at disposal, camera, mic, editing software, visual efx software, blah blah blah.. it'll also be a study into visual installations, real time art with a video camera and kind of discusses the space and time concerns of working with digital media, as opposed to traditional forms of productions. ie being, you pre-visualise an idea, shoot something, develop it, piece and edit together, grade it, and distribute it.

i'd like to mix and match certain steps here and there, combine it with the mixed mediums of music, sound, text, webspace. it kinda works when it's all pretty vague in my head now but as the days go by i hope to have a more concrete and solid workflow. working towards the incarnation of the ghost is key to all this.

- 28 july'06, 12:24pm

Phasing

another quality production by folkstar.

now who was walking through time
and silently raking in the leaves of yesterday?
on every turn
and every corner
there he was just crushing boarders
i've been here before, and i'll be here again
forever cursed to walk in the ghost steps of you
your shadow keeps me cool
and i hearten to keep next to you
hasten to keep up with you
you've been here before
and you know what it means
my time of self discovery or to do as you please?

3. shedding some light on the situation

the ghost has been kind of distracted lately. namely just having to be around multiple people and not have time to sort out recording gear or ideas. i have however been listening to a fair amount of progressive house, downtempo chillout, noise saturated post rock and all sorts of artsy endeavours. ive also stumbled across a great band name idea called The Make Believe which according to my friend (bless his soul) tells me that it's a lyric in the cure's letter to elise.

now we've all had our fair share of curish moments, maybe mine was pictures of you and same deep water as you, even though i love the groove from prayers for rain, and as you can tell by now, the only cure album i own is disintegration. oh wait, there's bloodflowers as well, but i seem to have outgrown that.

anyhow, we'll probably start laying down demo tracks soon, i'm really itching to see where this takes us.

2. destroying planets with the blue ark doom box

just got my dual bypass feedback loop from the blue ark, others known affectionately as the doom box of interplanetary destruction and other suggestively annihilating adjetives. it features two true bypass loops, one of them being a feedback looping channel, which means i can send and return my signal through it infinitely for pure sonic bliss. doesn't work too well with my phaser, but with a chorus and delay, its starting to sound special. gonna add an envelope filter to the signal chain soon, that's in the works, plus an overdrive pedal. but those will be surprises..

my feedback loop consists of a chorus and phaser, and the second loop houses my vintage rat distortion pedal and soon to be overdrive pedal. for bass, its going to be the mxr m-80 which im going to get tomorrow. and my lovely lovely m-102 dynacomp! wooot.. sweet.. so all you tech heads, perhaps you can visualise what i'm raving about, but for the others, i'll post some pictures of my beloved pedalboard rather soon.

1. first things first

for starters, you've found the blog and first post of a new project i've dubbed the ghost of Anna Karina.

it came to me as a burst of spontaneity as i perused the internet for pictures of 60's actress Anna Karina. the ghost part came naturally because it draws the images of things from the pasts, the things we can't let go of, or the things which we have let go of, but they haven't loosened their grip on us. this haunting was what ultimately jotlted me off my seat, to do something about it, to fuel all these things that i've been wanting to do, but was perhaps too lazy or unconfident to try out.

this blog is natural, because blogging is natural to me. i would invite you to check back here every once in awhile, to see where the creative process is taking me. the people i'm going to meet in the process of producing this work, whatever form it may take. perhaps at its most basic, the ghost will be a piece of studio work, but along the way it will be an online journal, graphic attempts, relationships, collaborations, pictures, movies, soundboards, texts and everything else in between.

i invite you, and all my future collaborators for something that will hopefully blow our minds and we can be proud and ashamed of all at the same time.