Cody Healey-Conelly
US videomaker
Interview: 10 questions
1. Tell me something about your life and the educational background
I enrolled in Emerson College in Boston, MA in 2001 to study New Media and Film. I graduated in 2005 and after a few years drifting, ended up in NYC where I continue to live and work in the film and video mediums.
2. When, how and why started you filming?
I first became interested in making video work through skateboarding. I began recording and editing myself and friends skating in high school, which eventually led me to film school. While enrolled at Emerson, I became increasingly interested in animation as it allowed me to create entire productions without relying on a cast and crew.
3. What kinds of topics have your films?
My works tend to focus on humans, technology, the environment and how the three of these interact. I am also interested in the glitches and the failures of technology and the aesthetics I use tend to reflect this.
4. Concerning your included video: please tell me more about the aims and the contents.
. Glitch Noir was created in 2015, over a decade into the Iraq and Afghanistan wars with Syrian and Libyan conflicts in relatively nascent stages. I found myself thinking about the meaning of war, why it has always been a part of human civilizations. It became clear to me that in every single conflict there is always a winner, namely those profiting off selling weapons and munitions. At the same, face-recognition and machine learning technology became increasingly available, particularly in weapons systems. Glitch Noir is an attempt to understand these dark forces and perhaps serve as a warning of what lies ahead.
5. How do you develop your films, do you follow certain principles, styles etc?
. Generally my films start with a kernel of an idea or theme. In the case of Glitch Noir, the idea was perpetual warfare and weapons contractors. Glitch Noir is a bit unique for my work in that it is more narrative than most things I make. While developing the short, I watched many classic science-fiction and film noir movies in order to understand their story structures, characters, etc. I then wrote a script which was more of a series of scenes that I then edited to make as short as possible (due to the time consuming nature of animation) while still maintaining an understandable narrative.
6. Tell me more about the technical equipment you use.
As far as video techniques, I use a pretty standard mix of equipment. I shoot on a DSLR and do post-production in After Effects and Cinema 4D. I often make use of a green screen to isolate subjects and place them in other environments. In Glitch Noir, all of the characters are images from Italian comic books from the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s. This process involved finding characters that fit the roles I needed them to “play,†then cutting up, cloning, and editing the images so I was able to animate and move them. The “glitches†in Glitch Noir involve a mix of techniques. Some of the glitches were created using Processing scripts created by Philip Stern, other glitches were created by incorrectly interpreting Photoshop RAW files, and other glitches still were made using a Javascript application called Vectordrift.
7. How do you finance your films?
My films are almost entirely self-financed. In the past few years, I have begun to receive stipends from certain organizations such as the New York Transit Museum or Wageningen University and Research.
8. Do you work individually as a video artist/film maker or do you work in a team?
if you have experience in both, what is the difference, what do you prefer?
Although I would like to collaborate, I work almost entirely independently all the time.
9. Who or what has a lasting influence on your film/video making?
I’m constantly influenced by current cinema. Some past recent favorites include Children of Men, Donnie Darko, and Enter the Void. I also am frequently influenced by aesthetic trends on the internet such as glitch art. Glitch Noir makes use of many glitch techniques that I discovered through Tumblr, Instagram, or Reddit.
10. What are your future plans or dreams as a film/video maker?
I have become relatively disinterested in film and video as a 2D format. I find the medium a bit limiting, especially in the context of a gallery or museum. I am moving towards making installation or experiential art, mainly through a technique called projection mapping which is essentially a hybrid of video and sculpture. In the future, I hope to continue to push the bounds of narrative film making, telling a story both through images as well as through a physical structure these images are projected onto. I hope to continue to create public works that are displayed outside of traditional museum or gallery formats. I think art should be accessible and available to people from all ranges of life, not just those inclined to visit museums or art house theaters.
http://www.syntheticlives.com
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