Speaking with Animation

An interesting piece of animation I found on the freerangestudios website is called Say No to Blood Diamonds by Amnesty International. This piece works for an audience because it is an informative animation that reveals the truth behind an everyday commodity (diamonds) and why we shouldn't invest in it. Although the color is flat, using three shades of grey for the background, silhouetted characters, and text it works. The only two images that has color and sticks out of the animation are the (conflict) diamond and the money that is exchanged for the diamond. This is a 2D animation with the use of mechanistic character articulation, but the story is conveyed clearly. The movement of the silhouetted characters are smooth and it doesn't look lifelike, but it still works. The artist's choice of including text to tell the story using dramatic music in the background is effective and I also enjoyed the way the artist used the "rewinding animation" effect to illustrate a linear story. Rewinding takes the audience story back to the beginning and exhibiting the actual brutal history of Sierra Leone and the development of conflict diamonds. I think that this short animation is great because it brings forth an ignored issue and what we can do to stop it in a minute and fifteen seconds. It is straight forward and the audience can easily interpret what the artist is trying to say.

Check it out below!

Reflection of Video Project

As a collaborative effort, my and Christina's goal was to simply to tell a comical story about what it is like to be new student at Hunter College specifically on the first day of classes. My vision was to produce something that my audience can relate to even if they don't attend Hunter College. I remember what it was like for me on my first day/ first week at Hunter. I was confused by the multiple buildings that were connected to each other by a bridge which had escalators and elevators leading to even more floors. It was a bit frustrating especially if I was running late for class and having trouble to find what building I should be in to begin with (HN,HE,HW, OR TH) then the correct floor, and finally the right class. In the end, we wanted it to be funny at the character's expense that after all the trouble she went through to find her class, the class was cancelled and we all can relate to that!

Our technical goal was not to have any dialogue and to let the narration speak for itself. Christina was the main cinematographer since I was the subject, but in between shots, we dicussed with one another what shots should follow and retaken while using our storyboard as a guide. When Christina and I first began editing,we had a lot of footage to work with and it was a bit intimidating considering how long the final product was expected to be, but we did our best. Christina also did a great job finding music that suited the mood as the story developed well.

In the post production process, I don't think that there were developments that changed the final product because we already knew from the story boarding to the actual filming, how we want to begin, develop, and end. We didn't receive much feedback from our peers, but the few who did comment enjoyed it. I suppose I didn't get as much of a reaction from my peers as I wanted to, but in all I believe our film did what we intended it to do and it was successful. If I had to did all over again, I would've asked someone to be the subject of our film so that I could do more camera work.

CHECK IT OUT & TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK!

Editing Analysis of "Valkyrie"

In this scene, it becomes clear that the attempt at Hitlter's life was yet again a failure and operation Valkyrie had to be terminated. I think that the editing has made a significant contribution to the story telling because it harmonized the mixture emotion of disappointment, flustration, sadness, fear in the faces of the characters who were apart of the plot. The fast pace cutting from one subject to another was representative of their racing hearts and panic for the unthinkable consequences because of the betrayl. I believe the shots were organized appropriately in terms of thier content, composition and movement because when Colonel Stauffenberg (Cruise) made eye contact with the soldier about to walk out as others have, the frame captured this awkward moment. When that soldier walked ouot of the frame, the camera panned and tilted to the female secreary in which Stauffenberg engaged in another emotional moment. Also, the camera angle establishes the relationship when the following frame tilts upward from the female's perspective as Stauffenberg looked dowm upon her. The close up shots also worked because the viewer is able to see the tears and complex emotions in Cruise's face and then cuts to the tears rolling down the feamle's eyes. At some points, I did not like the cuts because they seem a bit abrupt and were seamless. For an example, the angles in which they choose to show soldiers leave Stauffenberg in the office where they congregated, it seem as though it was missing a frame and the unconscious mind had to fill in the blanks on its own. Other than that, this scene was well edited!

My Relationship with Media Today

Today, my relationship with the media is more frequent than it has ever been. For instance, I am a Facebook and MySpace user, but as of recently, I use Facebook more often because of the User Centered Design. The reason why I prefer to use one social network more frequently than the other is because I realized that Facebook is a lot easier to use than Myspace. Now that I am thinking about it, it is ironic because I used to feel exactly the opposite when I made my account on both networks a little over three years ago. I was one of the very first people in my high school graduating class to have a Myspace and I began to tell everyone about it because the idea of being "friends" with one's favorite celebrities and having the ability to customize my profile/ page with background graphics, my pictures, and my music. When I became more familiar with Facebook, I began to like it more than Myspace because it is more straightforward and generally easier to use. From a first time user's perspective, MySpace isn't much of a user-centered design compared to Facebook and I think that is possibly because it is frustrating to learn how to "customize" one's profile without the help of an advent Myspace user. In my opinion, young people have more patients with and leisure time to make their "page" just the way they like it and adults doesn't share the same capacity of patience or time. At least that is how I feel personally because I no longer have the same patience or free time to sit down at a computer to figure out how to revamp my profile with a new background, music, and etc every week/month. I don't have to care about those things with Facebook and that is what I like about it aside from the other things that I don't like about it such as constant advertisement and annoying applications i.e. Mafia Wars.
Another website I am a bit embarrassed to admit that I visit often is an urban gossip site called MediaTakeOut (MTO). Other than the obvious reasons why I visit this website is because of the interacivity. The images that the sever uploads with the story makes it more appealing to read because I don't have to use my own imagination to match up with the story. The image is right there and sometimes speaks for itself. This website allows its readers to comment on their stories and I read these comments because it feels as though I am having a conversation with them about the topic. Comments posted by readers throughout the country either make me laugh or furious by their ignorance like on any other gossip or blog page, but I still read them to find out how other people interpret the ridiculous stories/ pictures.
There aren't many websites or kinds of media that I view regularly because my lack of interest or simply not knowing of them because there are so many! As a media major I think that I need to broaden my familiarity with more of them, but it is not easy "keeping up with the times!"

Reflection of MEDP 150

There was a lot of material to learn in this class and I just feel as though time just flew by and I didn't really grasp it all as I wanted to. It was really frustrating to memorize terminologies and knowing how to articulate them on paper during examinations. From the beginning I knew that we were going to touch upon various aspects of media and I was excited because it just gave me more areas to be interested in. I suppose it may have been a bit difficult for me due to my lack of experience and feeling inadequate compared to my classmates and even though it was an introductory course, it was a bit intense. I wish that we did more hands on learning and I believe that would have made it easier for me to understand some the material. For an example, I still do not know how to identify cables even though Dylan brought them to the lab and showed them to the class. Maybe if we had more time to play with them to know which cable goes where and is for "what" as opposed to memorizing images on a sheet of paper. When we began to use Photoshop, I was excited because I always wanted to learn the program and even that I felt was rushed because I remember using it only three times during lab which was when it was introduced, starting my stamp, and finishing it by a deadline. I just wish that we had a little more time to become comfortable using the program, but it did not permit.

Designs I like

School Daze

In the last scene of School Daze
I noticed that there were various types of technical choices that the director, Spike Lee and the cinematographer made than were shot in the previous scenes. I believe that wide lenses were used when the character ran towards the camera, everything was in focus such as the building behind him, the trees on both sides (giving balanced composition) and the subject himself. However, when the distance between the subject and the camera changed, there was no longer a deep depth of field and the focus had to be changed. The change in the focus became a close up to his face as he shouted "Wake up!" I believe that there was also a switch from a wide lense to a long lense, zooming, and tracking backing causing the background to become compressed. I am still curious to now what device or method was used that caused theh subject to appear to rise and closer to the sky... Tracking from left to right was also an effective technique that the director used because it gave brief insight of the emotions of confusion, enlightenment, shame, etc on the students' faces. I also noticed that the lighting changed in which I believe more hard lighting was used, casting shadows on the characters' faces. Before, especially for the musical scenes, soft lights were used to make the actors and actresses look appealing as possible, indicating fantasy and ignorance.