Thursday, September 22, 2011

Quiz on Stacey Steers

Our guest speaker was Stacey Steers. She is an award-winning experimental animator and teaches at the University of Colorado. Her work has been exhibited widely at museums and film festivals. Her work is also referred to as "fine art" animation.

http://staceysteers.com/

She showed 3 examples of her work:

1. "Totem"- an early hand drawn work - Unfolding like a dream, Totemexplores our evolving relationship to the animal world. Music and sound byBruce Odland.

2. "Phantom Canyon" - Phantom Canyon explores a woman’s fantastical journey through memories. Meticulous collages incorporate figures from Eadweard Muybridge’sHuman and Animal Locomotion, first published in 1887. Music and sound by Bruce Odland.

3. "Night Hunter" - In this handmade film, composed of more than four thousand collages, the actressLillian Gish is seamlessly appropriated from silent-era cinema and plunged into a new and haunting role. Night Hunter evokes a disquieting dreamscape, drawn from allegory, myth, and archetype. Music and sound by Larry Polansky.

Select one of the works and describe what you saw. Also, describe your reaction to the excerpt and how the movement of the images adds to the storytelling or the expressive qualities of the filmmaker.


19 comments:

  1. 3. This was a type of animation that I have never experienced before, i was in credibly interested how these images were collaged so well together. Her use of this old images from movies and paintings created such a darker feel in her work. Though the piece is almost nightmarish, it created such a great expression and feeling. The way the images were composited was nearly flawless, all the pieces put together to create one frame worked together seamlessly. This style of taking out parts of old movies/pictures gives the piece a new feel, and really resonates with all the symbolism and just the general mood created.

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  2. Phantom Canyon was Steer's first full length animation using old Victorian clipart. She told the story of a woman who becomes trapped in a world populated by a Victorian Batman, and his insect disciples. The woman and man begin an affair, but at the end of the clip, she is struggling to escape the world. She used the images so skillfully that even costume changes of the woman (who was not always the same model) within scenes was hardly noticeable. The tone set by the color scheme and choice of "creepy" insects and animals as supporting characters did make the piece unsettling, but the story of the woman is what makes the animation captivating, despite the creepiness.

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  3. 'Phantom Canyon'

    I saw multiple shots of still photographs turned into a collage. Stacy used old still shots of people, places, things and animals to evoke memories in a highly abstract and expressive way. I really enjoyed the excerpt because while I didn't understand exactly what was going on or what it meant to the animator, I did understand that it was expressing powerful and possibly painful memories. The constant movement of the piece reminded me of memories and thoughts, how they seem to be constantly in motion and move from one to the other jarringly and at a rapid pace. The darkness of the images and imagery really set a melancholy mood and tone. Overall, I enjoyed it.

    Chloe Hill

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  4. In Stacy Steers' piece, "Night Hunter", she describes her personal experiences and past through a very dark and disturbing animation where she uses Lillian Gish as the main character. She starts to lay eggs and eventually begins to become a bird like figure. But there is also a snake that is trying to steal or eat the eggs (or something).

    I found myself extremely disturbed by this piece. Something about it made my skin crawl. I think it was a combination of the sound of the piece and the color, especially of Lillian Gish's face.

    I think the movement in this piece really added to the story. The movements were very subtle for the most part and it added to the creepy feeling you get while watching it. It was almost like you wanted something very fast to happen so you could stop having this unsettling feeling.

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  5. "Night Hunter" was put together by a number of collages from different films. The way that Steers was able to appropriate the same actress from very different roles/characters into one person without it confusing the audience was very cool. The movement of the images was much more complex than her work "Totem," in which the animals almost always moved in the same way. Working with collages gave her a greater expression and added to her storytelling in way that her first hand drawn pieces could not.

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  6. Totem was the first piece in which caught my attention during Stacy's presentation. It really struck me how much time and effort she puts into each piece. They described her as having a lot of patience before the presentation started, and i fully got it once i saw totem. In totem characters almost "peal" out of their own skin and become other creatures as the story is told. We see things such as a whale too which also adds to the piece. I think Stacy's work is so thought provoked. You can tell how much time she puts into each piece and how each little segment is made up of so many pieces of art. I personally would never be able to even do a few seconds of this, let alone minutes. Each image adds to the story telling because of the process and movement of the characters. You really get attached to the story itself through the individual movement. I also really enjoyed how she collaged in other pieces. I thought that was extremely interesting and something i had never thought about. It was so interesting to see how the characters in which were collaged moved. Overall, I really enjoyed Stacy's work.

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  7. Phantom Canyon was a very interesting piece that followed a woman through her memories, often showing a man that could turn into a bat, fish, bugs, and a trunk that at one point seemed to swallow her whole. The whole thing was done mainly with vintage images and was very stylized. The movement of the images was amazingly fluid and I wish I could have slowed down the sequence at some parts to see just how Stacy Steers did it. I think the fluidity is what made the story more believable, especially since Steers didn't always use images of the same woman. Overall, I would say the piece was disturbing but entrancing. The quality of it made me want to continue watching even though some of the symbolism was lost on me and the story seemed very dark.

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  8. 1) "Totem"

    In this piece, Stacy Steers presented a sort of abstract progression through the alphabet with animals. I thought that the animation was very playful and somewhat whimsical. Stacy hand drew each frame with ink outlines, then went over with water color. Stacy went on to say that she didn't like her hand-drawing style, but I preferred it over her more recent work. While she describes her recent collages are expressive and representative of life events, I found her hand drawn frames to be much more personal and inviting.

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  9. I found the Night Hunter film to be the most interesting, although I found it very disturbing. The film talked about a women who turning into a bird. Her house was filled with eggs and she stayed home and took care of them, never leaving the house. While at home, she was attacked by various plants (representing growth) and moths. She also began to eat worms. The women also had a very interesting relationship with a snake (Who killed another bird). I loved this film because it was made entirely out of collages of old art works and films. I found this technique to be very mature although it was dark. The symbolism throughout the piece was also very beautiful because it was so simple, i.e, the red clothing on the woman, the moths, the birds, the eggs, ect. The simplicity of the images and the realistic quality makes the story very engaging. I feel that you sympathized for the woman even though what was happening to her was unrealistic.

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  10. The work i chose to discuss is Totum. What i saw in Totum was animals emerging and "stripping" their identity as one animal to slowly become another. When the animals stripped themselves of one identity it was such a smooth transaction that i truly enjoyed watching. The transitions from drawing to drawing had such a good flow that it was really peaceful and exciting to watch.
    My reaction to the excerpt was that putting time into something really does pay off. I think that if the way the drawings merged into each other had been done differently, the effect would not have been as strong. Also, the use of the letters really made me feel like a kid again, remembering how easy it was to love every animal you saw and appreciate more things in life. The letters brought back childhood memories of doodling and although the images were cartoon like, the emotion that came with them felt so real and strong.
    Finally, the music that came along with each drawing made the piece complete. When the letters "cracked" apart the noise behind that was perfect and made you feel like you had actually cracked something. Also, the sound effects during transitioning between animals or images was so easy going and subtle, but had a really strong impact. I think it could have even been a good audio piece without the images although i may have gotten something different out of the piece then

    -Shelby Danow.

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  11. In Stacy Seers, Totem we saw hundreds of beautiful individual frames come together to make a story. There were animals peeling back their skin to reveal a new animal. The perspectives of the subject in the shot also changed and moved in such a way that was very interesting as well as captivating. In addition there was a musical aspect to the piece which added to the essence of each animal, human, or object being portrayed. It also helped set the tone of the animation. The scenes flowed together very well not only compositionally but in other fine detailed aspects; the artist should definitely be commended!

    Like mentioned above the movement and perspective seemed to rotate in a circular motion which seemed like it was meant to represent a continuous cycle between the relationship between us humans and animals. This added to the story tremendously because it really made the point more clear. Ultimately it was a very creative animation style and story line and I really enjoyed this piece!

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  12. In Stacy Steers animation “Night Hunter”, she took stills from the actress Lillian Gish’s silent movies and incorporated them into her own work. Because she took frames from different films, Steers gave Gish’s character a red collar so the viewer would understand its the same woman. I saw it as a deep story about a woman and her troubles and fears. Because Steers makes a new collage for every frame, there is an over all movement to her films that is usually avoided, but also give them a sort of energy that is usually ignored.

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  13. Totem, by Stacy Steers is an animation that shows a sort of evolution of animals. The piece shows beautifully hand drawn images of creatures, mostly falling, and morphing into other types of animals. What struck me the most is the orientation of the film. Most of the frames seemed to be on a diagonal. As the piece continued her animals began to evolve from the mouthes of their original forms. It gave me a sense of being consumed and reborn to then evolve over and over again.

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  14. I really enjoyed her work "Totem". It was interesting how she got her inspiration from her experience in North America. It seemed to represent the animal world very well. Her work seemed to be very tedious and labor intensive to draw all the single frames. However, putting all those frames together created a very smooth transition and an interesting animation. I felt that with all the soft toned colors with shapes that were not too defined, represented her emotion and her evolving relationship to the natural world very well. The movement of all the images went accord with the sound as well. Every little droplet of water and the sound of all the movements of the animals were apparent. I enjoyed the way she played with these images as it seems to separate from the norm of film making. In one way, it felt as if someone was reading me a book and it also felt as if I was watching an animation which was a new experience.

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  15. I really enjoyed watching Phantom Canyon. It was very dark, but had a very strong surreal/dreamlike quality. When she said that she was going to have the made transform into a bat, I was wondering how well that could look in a stop motion, I just figured It would be really hard, (which I'm sure it was) but it looked great! The movements were so smooth, but the flickery quality that was gained through using different women/different images/different poses, really added to that memory-like feeling. It's sort of like when you are watching an old TV and the screen is kind of fuzzy, so the picture is hard to make out. All the objects that were used in piece could be interpreted in many ways, or used as symbols for many different things, so each viewer will see the piece in a slightly different light, which I really appreciate. I like things much better when they are left open ended like that- you are able to keep thinking over it, and come up with your own new ideas about the message of the piece, and no one can really say you're wrong--it's just one way of interpretation.

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  16. Stacey Steer's in Phantom Canyon is a story between a woman (main character) and a man, the tale of their relaitonship, told through stop motion collage photography. The photos from the collage are figures from Eadward Muybridges Human and Animal locomotion. The story is about a woman and a man, and how their relationship is crumbling. Though it may look like the man/bat is chasing after the woman, which he is, she also keeps going back in forth in their relationship. Through the imagery used in this story, stacey was much more expressive in how her characters were being expressed. In addition the dreamlike reality in the story, was read easily as her own reality a long time ago.

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  17. In Phantom Canyon, a troubled woman meets a man with bat wings, and they connect romantically but she can never bear to be with him for very long. there are also beetles and fish running around that seem to be representative of her inner demons. there is also a lot of bed imagery. the sound is primarily ominous strings, clicking, and moaning.
    I found this piece very amazing, not only was it incredibly well crafted, displayed interesting textures and elements of composition, it also had a very powerful yet subtle narrative. the darkness of it was captivating and seemed to hold a lot of personal imagery. Her technical process was also amazing, I have never seen anything quite like her work, and knowing her process makes it all the more impressive.
    the jerkiness of the stop-motion added to tension of the story, but was still able to appear very fluid at times.

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  18. In the work "Totem" by Stacy Steers, I saw many different animals that is drawn to a rectangular page. It was amazing to see how one animal changes to the other animal. Like the snake cast off its skin, every animal that is drawn molted and turned into different animal. After she showed her movie, she said after making this film, she felt she should change her drawing style to express more depth but I felt that the first film came out the most successfully. I cannot believe that she drew all the slides by her hand. Although it was a stop animation, the movie flowed very smoothly. I loved it. It was very delicate piece

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  19. Though I was not able to be present at her presentation on Wednesday the 21st, I was lucky enough to be part of a small group that she presented to in my Animation for Broadcast class. Her technique is extraordinary, and so meticulous. She told us about how it was not uncommon for a single project to take her four years or more to complete. She showed us numerous examples of her work, and even brought in her collage cards for us to experience as well. The time she spends creating each collage over and over again seems inefficient to me, but she then explained why it worked for her. She pointed out that she could always go back and add more slides/images anywhere she wanted to, which isn't always possible with a stop-motion piece. Though I don't think I could ever have the patience to work as she does, I really respect her technique and commitment to her art.
    I was also very intrigued by her use of video clips from older silent movies, and layering her own work on top of it. She even said she had to be very careful with editing those shots because often the silent film actors or actresses were too over the top. They were the feel for her work though. To me she seems very innovative in her work, and truly goes for what she wants with her techniques, and doesn't take the easier way out.

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