◡◶▿ The one marketing task every filmmaker should do right now...
◡◶▿ The one marketing task every filmmaker should do right now...
✅ As the clickbait subject line reveals, our marketing department knows a thing or two about marketing. Plus: Jobs in algorithmic folklore. Announcing the new term's topic.
Note to new visitors & non-subscribers: this is a between-semesters admin email. And unrepresentative of our weekly offer. It does signpost some film knowledge & job opps you might appreciate. But it’s hardly a normal UPV post at all!
You might find it better to start with a more representative post. A micro-essay on mistakeism or room tone or AI filmmaking for example. Just a suggestion! Keep reading if you like. Could be good.
Dear film students,
It’s Easter break at Unfound Peoples Videotechnic (UPV). Whoopee! New term begins next week. Okay!
Last week, the UPV passed an important anniversary: one year of weekly emails on absurdist filmmaking technique. A lot of words and ideas! A lot of value.
I would like to ask you to do a big favour for me right now:
Please choose the recent UPV module that best suits your network, and share it on your social media feeds. And/or email it to that one strange colleague/student/professor.
You can use any of the four links below:
🤕 Advanced Amateury: How to be better at being worse.
https://unfoundvideo.substack.com/p/advanced-amateury
🎧 Sound Design: How to control sound, and how you can never control sound.
https://unfoundvideo.substack.com/p/sound-design
🎥 Cinematography: Rotting the Image - The odour of a movie’s look.
https://unfoundvideo.substack.com/p/cinematography
👩💻 Imaginary Software of the Filmmaking Future: How to use, confuse, or avoid your new robot crewmate.
https://unfoundvideo.substack.com/p/ai-filmmaking
That was the marketing task alluded to in the subject line of this email. Sorry if you felt it was rotten and clickbaity. It was supposed to be funny and clickbaity. It was supposed to be email humour!
The future begins NOW (next week)
One year of lessons is done. Phew! And next week, summer term begins.
What will happen with UPV after that? I do not yet know. More emails? Seems likely!
I’m always open to bits of writing, teaching, and festival work. So, if you’re working on something where I/the UPV could be a good fit, please get in touch. (You can reply to this or any UPV email.)
Advice on how to get a book on one of the above modules published is also welcome. If you know of any publishers of absurdist filmmaking manuals or magic realist film theory imprints, for example. Because I don’t know that sort of thing. I don’t know about that at all!
Please also send your feedback on this program and the school. And your hopes and dreams for future UPV programs. Remember, your enrolment in UPV is for life, regardless of your subscription status. So, please share your preferences, and I shall incorporate them. Or not! Depends.
But summer term is around the corner, eh? Better announce the syllabus.
Maps, Flaps, & Infinite Wallpaper
Set design that folds neatly away in the mind.
The movie canvas is two-dimensional. Life, as most of us experience it, has three or more dimensions. The filmmaker must work with the set designer to reconcile these differences. Thankfully, cardboard seems to do the trick.
This module introduces methods of transferring life’s inner and outer dimensions to the flat dimensions of the screen. It includes a look at the philosophy of clunkyism, and implies that cardboard occupies a dimension of its own.
Next Monday, summer term begins with a 12-part series of thoughts on the foldable, flappable, and collapsable labyrinthine potential of movie set design.
Twelve sets of interlocking but detachable micro-essays on how you, the filmmaker, might fill the space between the image surface, the characters, and the horizon.
What will we cover? We will cover these sorts of things and more:
🏗️ How to design the bottomless pit into which you'll toss your actors, and why to use plasticine.
📦 Clunkyism: the power and pathos and affordability of wretched materials.
🗺️ Set as city, city as map, map as narrative, and narrative as set design.
🚧 Open worlds, filler areas, and mirror diegetics.
And who is it for?
Rookies, drifters, and jaded masters,
directors, production designers, film set workers, rogue AIs, movie thinkers, architects, other artists, and curious souls,
curious how the plumpness of reality relates to the flatness of the screen and the interlaced fields of the infinite diegesis beyond,
and how the gulfs between may be bridged with cardboard, thought, trash, implied space, and acres and acres of lovely wallpaper.
Some of you may have attended our video lecture version of this module in 2020. I hope you will appreciate this chance to fill in the gaps in your notes. Texts from that lecture will be remastered for this series. And supplemented by previously unpublished micro-essays.
Tell your friends. Tell your painter-decorator. And subscribe to receive the emails if you haven’t already!
Algorithmic folklorist vacancies
Two paid Postdoctoral Research Fellows and two PhD Research Fellows are sought for the “Algorithmic folklore: The mutual shaping of vernacular creativity and automation” (ALGOFOLK) project at the University of Bergen’s Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies. Oh boy!
This topic, project, and work look super-fascinating and the terms are pretty decent. If you were inspired by last term’s UPV syllabus, and have a strong academic background, it could be for you. Don’t forget to write from Bergen and tell us what you’ve learned about the Crungus!
Pure learning
Sorry for this unusually admin-heavy email. I usually try to protect you from what goes on behind the blackboard. Next week, we’ll get back to pure learning. If you’re not already signed up, here’s where to do it:
Class dismissed!
~Graeme Cole.
(Principal)
📹 Unfound Peoples Videotechnic | Cloud-based filmmaking thought. ☁️