Reflections

This class was a pretty basic general media class.  I don't mean that in a bad way.  There were things I've already done, experienced, or knew about.  The most recent thing that comes to mind is the fact that even though your HTML codes may seem to work in the preview it doesn't necessarily mean that it will be smooth sailing.  This lab courses was a great experience.  I'm usually the type of person who likes to experience things as opposed to just hearing a lecture about it.  However, I wish I had the time this semester to do better work.  When we dealt with the camera exercises, some of the topics were a challenge, but that's the great thing about it.  We had to be creative in overcoming those challenges.  This creativity is what helps one to become a better artist or whatever you want to call it.  Although, I did know beforehand that I have the worst hands for camcorders.  Good thing we had partners.

After much frustration

http://fmundergrad.hunter.cuny.edu/~tsaib

MoMI

While I've been to the MoMI before, I haven't gone since its renovation.  I see that a few things have changed, but a few of my favorite things are still there.  With that being said, I took part in doing a voice-over.  First you're given how it looks in the movie, then you're given one rehearsal chance, and finally the actual voice-over.  It wasn't the easiest thing to do, but I'd imagine it's a little easier for the actor that was playing the voice since they have been rehearsing it, did it, and can relive their given circumstances and such.  I'm not trying to say t is easy for them to do it in one take, but it would be easier than someone who had no hand in the production.  Something that would require this process would be if there were interference in the recording of sound, the actor's were too low, a mic was not able to be used for some reason, animals talking in human voices, or foreign films/video games.

What  found interesting was the news cameras that they had back in the day.  We were shown basically a 3-in-1 lens.  All the news reporter had to do was turn it to get a different type of lens.  I thought that was a pretty good idea and wondered why it isn't used today.  I was also reminded of a piece of technology similar to a kinetoscope.  This invention was called the mutoscope created by William Dickson.  How this works is that you look into a box and crank the crank on the side.  What this does is flip a series of pages to show us a seemingly moving image.   I would say it's a demonstration of persistence of vision, but we were told that scientists are currently unsure if that's what's going on when we view movies.  However, it is similar to how we see movies.  Similar subject images that have continuity are seen in a rapid succession. 

Traffic

Traffic video

Poorly designed movie

Speaking of bad designs, The Last Airbender is one of the most poorly designed featured film I have ever seen.  Being a person who watched the television series, I thought that this movie would have been at least decent.  However, it did not turn out the way I expected.  I tried detaching myself from the television series thinking I was just expecting too much.  That actually made it worse.  The only reason why I remotely enjoyed (I'm using this term very loosely.) is because it had something to do with the television series.

Moving to the reasons why this movie was so poorly designed is it's pacing.  This movie had a horrible pace and barely any exposition.  Who are these characters?  I'm not even too sure even though I had background knowledge.  People who I've asked who watched this movie without watching the television series were confused throughout the movie with questions unanswered.  Furthermore, there were no attachments to any of the characters.  None of the characters were loveable, hated, nothing to make us sympathetic to them.  It was a whole cluster fest of who's who, what's going on, why is this happening, and what reasons are things happening?

In my opinion, the main selling point for this was the special effects and 3-D.  The 3-D capabilities weren't even that apparent.  3-D is such a novelty gimmick, but if you're going to use it, use it to it's full potential.  The special effects were decent, but not great and the martial arts were not even correct from what I've heard.  There was so much delay in between the motion of the martial arts and the movement of the elements, that you'll might as well pull out a gun and shoot the person before they even perform their great feat.  You could even just pull out a sword and run to them before the elements were manipulated.  It could not be taken seriously especially with the poor acting skills.  Let's not even get started in the obvious fake emotions being portrayed in this movie.  In addition to that, were the horrible costumes.  They looked almost as fake as the acting in some characters.  One of the characters was obviously wearing a bad wig, and couldn't get it on correctly.  I was able to see her real hair at some points.  How could you even let that get in your movie with such a bad blooper?  The costume looks cheaply made.  Here is an example:

Comparing these costumes is like comparing the costumes I'm about to provide below.

The top is the concept art, the middle is the amateur fan-made costume that looks cheaply put together, and the bottom is the better fan-made costume.  The middle is what makes me think of The Last Airbender's costume and the bottom represents what it should have looked like.  Overall, The Last Airbender, was a poorly designed movie in many aspects.

President-fears-pretzel stamp

I kept changing my mind from what I wanted to do.  Originally, I thought of something that could have been something that might upset a few people.  Thus, I changed my idea over and over again.  This didn't come out as perfectly as I wanted, but due to the short amount of time I had because of my indecisiveness, this became my end result.  I thought it'd be fun to have an American stamp that satirizes an American president.  If  you recall the first few months of Bush's presidency, he choked on a pretzel.  This is what this stamp is referring to.

Nom nom head

Here's a little girl veggie head

On my way home...

Here's a picture of the 7 train coming from Queens into Grand Central.

Empty

 Here's a close up of a seemingly empty trashcan and an empty hallway.  This picture has deep depth.

 This second picture is of an empty staircase with lots of line.

 A close-picture of a locker.

Here's another empty hallway.

Smile or else the baby will get you

For this week's assignment, I've chosen a picture of a baby making some silly face asking if you smiled today.  What draws me to this pictures and why I like it points to one reason.  That reason is because it's funny.  It gave me a chuckle.  Anything that can put a smirk to my face makes me automatically like it. 

Artistic Statement

Ideas, thoughts, emotions, energy, understanding, cohesive, repairing, arranging, planning, and making things flow and in sync all of these seem sort of random when you throw them together.  All of these are what inspires me, and all of these can hit someone randomly.  To me those are the best inspirations are the random ones.  It’s funny because random doesn’t always work well with cohesive or making things flow and be in sync, and it definitely doesn’t align with planning, yet somehow the random ideas or thoughts inspire me to make things flow.  Ideas and thoughts are what get my excited about something and want to test it out to see how it works.

I’ve studied media and theatre arts on stage and off.  Other than being on stage or camera, I haven’t found much else that is expressive, fulfilling, exciting, or inspiring enough for me besides editing.  With editing, you can change the pace of things and express certain things.  A certain speed and sense of urgency can be created through editing.  Rearranging things to make sense and linear is another thing that is great about editing.  Editing involves a thought process, planning, and understanding of what scene is supposed to be where and what shots will make the scenes better and in what order.  It’s like solving a puzzle by arranging things so that the audience can keep up and understand what’s going on.  Solving a puzzle for others to display for others, how can that not be exciting?  The process of choosing what shots would look best in the scene and comparing the different shots is always fun to me.  Though it may be tedious at times, but when you find the perfect shot to make the scene at its best, it’s very exciting and fulfilling.