The Direct Current #2: Cine-Excess Conference & Dark Academia

 

Hello my lovely underlings,

I have just returned from a trip overseas, where I perused England's finest gallows, gothic architecture, greasy spoons and Wetherspoons. If you hear any rumors about a new plague going around, just know that it was already there when I arrived, and I had nothing to do with it. 

The occasion for the trip was to attend this year's Cine-Excess Film Festival and Conference in Birmingham, England. The theme of this year's conference was "Re-Animated: Reviving Cult Film’s Dead Objects" and I was invited to present at the in-person symposium, on the panel "Multimedia Excess: Animation, Television and Theatre". 

I presented a 20 minute paper entitled “Ghosts of Televisions Past: Horror Hosting and Nostalgia in the Internet Age” where I discussed the tradition of horror hosting, its characteristics and the ways that it is being adopted by modern-day creators, who use nostalgia and retro media practices as a means of resisting or counteracting the effects of streaming and the internet on media.

A Brief History of Horror Hosting with Mausolena: Video

Hello All!

Today I present you with a video I made explaining the history of horror hosting in under 5 minutes. I made this video for a few reasons, the most basic being to test cameras against each other. I filmed the video twice with the same setup but different cameras (Lumix GH5 vs Canon T7i) to decide what would work best for me. I found that the T7i was better in its audio recording capabilities, being able to monitor sound while you film is definitely a plus. It also has 4k quality, multiple lenses, and a lot of fancy settings. Those fancy settings are probably useful if you know a lot about cameras. But I don't, so it just made setting things up a lot more confusing. The T7i is much more familiar to me as I've used it in multiple projects in the past. It's pretty user friendly, but it doesn't have live sound monitoring, only films in HD, and is less customizable. 

What next? Semester wrap-up reflections

First, please update us on your Proof of Concept project. How are things coming along? Have you created it already, and if so, how do you feel about what you've created? If not, what are your plans and are you on track to achieve this project successfully? 

 Unfortunately, I have not yet gotten to film my proof of concept project and wasn’t able to check out equipment before break (which is entirely my fault for not prioritizing it above other assignments). At this point, I am hoping that I can put together some archival footage, voiceover etc. over break, and film the interview on the Monday we get back from break to edit and turn it in by its final due date on Tuesday. If I am not able to film new content before Tuesday, my backup plan is to put together the interview that I made for my initial media with archival footage, voiceover and maybe some animations or other fun content. This would give me the chance to practice correcting some issues I had with my initial footage, and combining elements, which are useful skills too. If I have to take this path, I will still check out my equipment later and practice the skills I was planning to practice for this assignment. It would not be ideal (and can be blamed on poor planning on my part), but I think my backup plan would still contribute to the skills I need for my project.