A Most Difficult Predicament

This was a very exciting project that took approximately four days with a lot of surprise challenges and bumps a long the way. The first step to making this film possible was capturing the footage. Steps 2 to the end was editing. Editing took up the majority of the time in making this film.

Day 1
Samantha Putri was able to get her friend to be our actor, and he is very good at his job. We would pass the camera around the three of us to each have a chance in shooting some footage. Because Samantha had a large part in creating the script, I pretty much gave her the job of director everytime I had the camera in my hand. This meant that I looked at her script at what she wanted to do, she had instructions for what kind of shot she thought was good for that situattion, and then asked for her confirmation before filming. She was calling 'action' and 'cut' too; it was quite amusing. Several times we had to make practice shots to make things flow more smoothly or know that we were capturing the right thing. This mostly had to be done for action shots where people were moving into the frame and leaving it. Now, I'm not criticizing Samantha's work, but unfortunately, we recorded very little footage because she did not take the editing process into account and we (me and Gisselle) did not realize this either until it was too late. Our video was very linear to the point that if I played all our raw footage, we had our story.

Capturing the footage presented had some initial difficulties. First of all was the crowd! They were constantly getting in the way! It was very annoying to say the least. We also had to buy out the Snickers, so everytime someone would go up to the machine we had to ask them to not purchase it for the sake of our project. I'm glad we had no grumpy people that had to have it no matter what!

After finishing, we had our second challenge of the day: recording the sound. Remember when I said our video was recorded in a fashion where we didn't have to edit to get the story accross? Well, this came back to bite us on the back the day of editing through Final Cut Pro. We had the actor watch his footage and as he was watching it, he would read the script to match the duration of the footage. There were a few problems to this: the footage was too long being one case; but once again we didn't realize that this would be a problem for editing. Because the footage was so long, the actor had to do a lot of improvising. Going further, due to the duration of the footage, we actually recorded each sound file with the same length. Each footage was about half a minute long if not longer causing us to capture the noise of the slamming door of a moderately quite staircase. We really couldn't find any quiet place due to our time limitations.

Day 2
Editing would have been a nightmare had Martyna not been there to guide us a long the way. Me and the rest agreed to do our own editing. This meant creating three different films with the same footage. My first goal that day was to finish the assembly edditing and make some rough cuts. Which entailed making and taking clips from the raw footage and putting them into their general order. This took longer than it should have due to my inexperience with Mac computers and with the program overall. It took the entire class for me to do so with unfavorable results at the end: it was absolutely unexciting. Finally, we all discovered we had a problem with sound that day. Our sound files wouldn't work with what we edited. The sound files were too long and would've sounded chopped up had we made them shorter.

Day 3
More rough cuts were due today to be followed by final cuts and then rendering it all together. Editing started to become fun now that I got the hang of the program. I was able to execute what I wanted with few difficulties. Though...after speaking to Martyna about it, it turned out I had a few editing problems such as needing to extend or create an establishing shot (which we didn't have much footage of) and needing to create a rhythm for the film to make it flow more smoothly. This rhythm entailed increasing the length of a lot of my shots. It did not produce favorable results so I had to cut the long shots shorter and move more footage (about 3/4 of it) around to their new timeslot. Martyna also didn't want us using any effects to make artificial flow and to try to imitate the editting method of the films we saw in the lecture. This too also required a lot of cutting and rearrangements.
Day 4
It was presentation day! I was sad to see that my other partners were not present; without them I couldn't see how they managed with the editing. I also sadly had not solved the problem of sound and the film had to be in silence. I was even thinking of some catchy tunes to go along but, alas, I didn't have the class time to add it in. I didn't even know how to edit it in so...shame on me for not doing research on my own time.

Museum of the Moving Image

I remember going to the Museum of the Moving Image when I was a child in elementary school. It was quite very boring because, if my memory is correct, it looked very drabby inside and honestly, I didn't care about the moving image or flip books of myself saying "hello" to the camera (which we got to make at the end). All I wanted to do was go home and watch some cartoons. Now, over a decade later, this place is amazing. This renovated building is so cool with its modern, space age design with eyecatching LED lights placed throughout. Furthermore, it has some very interesting exibitions.

One memorable exhibition for me was the "Behind the Screen" exhibition. This exhibition featured some of the most fascinating equipment ever used to creat films, it also has interactive exhibits to explain the process of film making. One of the demonstrations that I really enjoyed was the demonstration on sound design for the movie Titanic. We learned of the many layers required into creating a soundtrack which included the dialogue, music and sound effects. It was especially interesting when he started presenting the dialogue or rather...people screaming. Not much emotion was present when all you can hear are panting screamers. But if you add in more layers of sound effects and music (all recorded independently from one another)you will have something completely believable.

Here's the kicker. These sounds were recorded independently from one another. You would think that they actually broke a ship, or threw people around to get the sounds they needed, right? Wrong. The methods these sound engineers employed are ingenious and definitely not something someone would think of immediately as a means to achieve their desired sound. For example, when Rose fell, she did not make any of the sound that you hear; it was made seperately by throwing a chair to the floor. It was absolutely mind blowing when I learned this and it really made me wonder what other 'shortcuts and techniques' the crew of a movie would employ to achieve their goal.

Beyond the demonstrations, what I really loved was being able to get so close to the props and costumes used in famous movies. I couldn't peel my eyes off of them. The level of skill, time and dedication it must have taken someone to complete these works of art is truly admirable and laudable.

Traffic Haiku

For this video haiku challenge, me and Samantha Putri could not verbally communicate each other with what we were doing. Seeing how she went first, I observed what she was doing and simply did the opposite.

Design Analysis

 This is a classic example of a k-pop band poster. It features all the members, their band name (U-Kiss), the name of the album it's promoting (contiUkiss), how it's their third mini album, all the companies involved with the creation of this album way on the bottom, and of course each of their respective names and role over the top. 

When listening to the song this poster promotes (Man Man Ha Ni which roughly translates into someone looking down at someone, that they're insignificant and easily defeated. Yup, that's a lot of meaning for a simple phrase ^_~) , we hear them lamenting how their lover had, in a nutshell, betrayed them and treated them like dirt; and now they're sick of being the nice guy and not taking any of it anymore.

 

The composition of  this photo is definitely relaying the message that these guys are dangerous in order to deliver the message and keep with the theme of their song. None of the members look particularly happy but rather miffed and dangerous. The bullet holes definitely help emphasize their dangerous nature. When analyzing the photo taken of them, we can see that it is a group shot rather than a close up of all their faces even though over half of the image is black. The members are standing in front of the backdrop as though falling into the darkness with the clever use of shadows. The angle of light further emphasizes their nascent to the shadows since over half of their bodies are covered in darkness. Some of their eyes are also covered in darkness. Usually we say eyes are the window to the soul, in this case, the darkness over their eyes definitely gives a foreboding sense that nothing good lies within them.

While the use of shadows portrays the meaning of the song, it also functions as a device used to lure in new fan girls and get them to buy the CD. It's a picture of a group of dark and mysterious guys who all portray the current standards of male beauty in Korea. The darkness of the photo also emphasizes their deviant hair colors, and what teenage girl doesn't think delinquents are dangerous yet exhilarating at the same time? Their clothes with the bondage-like straps also emphasize this notion of a beast held back. It definitely plays on the emotions of a girl's fantasy where a dark and dangerous man is 'sexy'.

Stamp

The creation of this stamp was quite very time consuming as a first time user of photoshop where the majority of the time invested was used to search for tutorials. Photoshop is so amazingly complicated that simply doing basic things was a journey in itself. This stamp has over twelve layers where each layer was created for the purpose of utilizing different tools: magic wand, healing brush tool, effects such as Inner Glow and Stroke, hue/saturation manipulation, color balance manipulation, size adjustments, rasterizing, paint brush, grid and well...I can probably go on till you fall asleep.

She's in Love!

A study of PhotoShop

To whom, I wonder...

Semi Fresh

A look at the carelessness and indifference the youth of Hunter College have towards their facilities.

     This was probably the most grotesque scavenger hunt I've ever participated in my life. Finding chewed gum isn't as easy as it seems. We scouted for locations defiled by gum early in the week and by the time it was to take pictures towards the end of the week, all of the gum we found earlier disappeared! It turns out that Hunter College's cleaning facilities do clean and scrape gum off of whatever it is attached to. We discovered that in some cases people really go out of their way to hide their chewed gum, while in other cases the gum is just spat out or stuck on in plain site. After spending the entire time alloted, we had over ten speciments photographed. Sadly, most of these images did not make it due to the technical limitations of the camera provided. The camera had a very fine focus (and difficult to use) mechanism, furthermore, the screen was so small that it defeated the purpose of the focusing option thus rendering many of the images of gum blurry and detailedless. Regardless of the difficulties I had with the camera, it was very fun upturning chairs and tables, crawling over the ground, and holding cramp inducing poses just to get the best picture I possibly could.

     The pictures that did make the cut were horrifyingly, disgustingly beatiful as they portrayed the delicate and subtle curves and ripples formed by a person's mouth, teeth or shoe prints. The dirt etched into the gum further eccentuated the gum's detail as they caught and preserved the patterns of dirt and grime. We normally don't observe gum discarded, it is disgusting, but it really is a site worth seeing and maybe appreciating what our mouths can create at least once.

Who I am and What I do...

I am an artist, an artist with a goal to capture and express the beauty of all things around me through photography. What fascinates and intrigues me the most are things deemed 'uncanny', especially things that bear an uncanny resemblance to humans. Things that literally trick the ordinary person to believe that the item is a real human being at first glance. These things are dolls, specifically asian ball jointed dolls. Consider them as an adult and more sophisticated version of a child's 'Barbie doll'.

  Make up and photography by me. 

Owner: "RacerGT"

These dolls are much more lifelike and detailed. Such is their nature due to their high level of customizability. Because they are so lifelike, they bear an uncanny resemblance to human beings. This usually carries a stigma. A stigma where they are automatically deemed as 'creepy', 'scary', and just plain 'weird'. And my question is why? Why are they called such? Why do they instill such fear into people? I want to understand where along the path to adulthood did a doll become creepy.

As children, dolls are an everyday asset to a girl's toy chest (action figures for boys), they are objects that bring us countless hours of fun. I know my childhood was like that. I would run my doll across my entire house, taking her on a journey through my imagination, dress her, pose her, cut her hair,  give her a bath, and last but not least, love her.

So how did we lose all these memories of fun with our dolls to the point where all we have left as adults are 'That thing is so creepy'? To discover the answer, I will utilize photography to capture these dolls in all aspects of life and take them away from the negativity generated.