Class Reflection

I really liked the concept of the class, but I think that it tried to cram too many into one. It's makes sense because it's an introductory course but I think that some things were given more time than others. The lectures weren't that great. I'm not sure if it was the professors or the material, but those never really caught my interest. I also think that it would have been better to teach some of materials in the lab first before we got to the lecture, because when you teach it in the lab first you get a bit more hands on experience with it and it provides a context later in the lecture so it'll be able for some people to understand better. I could be wrong though, but that definitely applies to me. I prefer to do hands on things first, and I also need to be told something more than once to really grasp it.

The Chinatown Project:

For this project I got to work with Natalie Gergich, we decided to do a profile on Chinatown. We managed to get a lot of good shots of the neighborhood. We also ended up interviewing my boss, Matt Wang, and he talked about the people, the neighborhood and his opinions about what was going on in the community.

This was definitely a complicated project to complete. Not having a good sense of how to use Final Cut was a problem, but with one or two Youtube tutorials we were able to learn the basics and cut up a video together using footage from the Profile made through iMovie. There isn't any audio for the shorter version because we just couldn't figure out how to make it work. Another problem was time constraints, both me and Natalie's schedules were out of sync most of the time. If we had a little more time or a longer tutorial we probably would have been able to figure it out.

Chinatown Profile

Chinatown Trailer

Trip to the Museum of the Moving Image

The Sound Editing demonstration at the Museum of the Moving Image explains the techniques used in how movies mix sound, music dialogue, etc. in a cohesive manner to bring a scene together. In the demonstration the demonstrator explained that sound editors use different techniques to incorporate foley, score and dialogue. The demonstrator used James Cameron’s Titanic to explain the different sounds being incorporated in the scene by isolating those sounds and describing their individual purposes.

Dialogue does a lot for a scene as it allows characters to converse and it helps put things into context in order to let the story progress for the viewers. The actors also play an important role when it comes to the dialogue; depending on their skill they can keep the audience’s attention to the story. The score, or music, helps to set the mood of a scene. Fast-paced music could be appropriate for a scene with a lot of action, and slow mood music for a more romantic scene. The foley for a scene is basically the various sound effects that are artificially created. Foley artists use different types of props to produce sound effects that normally can’t be picked up during regular filming. They use crushing a soda can to represent the crushing of a metal ship or the breaking a piece of celery to display a bone cracking.

Something Warm?

Appropriated $1 Stamp

The 1 dollar stamp, it's doesn't actually cost a dollar because that would be ridiculous. It is instead appropriated from elements of a 1 dollar bill. It mostly consists of the back circle containing the All Seeing Eye. My original idea was created in MS paint, because I didn't know how to use Photoshop. I also thought the the assignment was due the week after it was assigned.