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Blog #7

This last week i focused on sound design and the specific elements that go into making harmonious sounding videos or short films. This of course includes dialogue,background or foreground music, ambient sounds, and Foley. Using old silent films from the early 20th century, in my case "Ali Baba and the forty thieves", I added music, sounds and Foley to the short film. Once again relying on cross fades to make sure that the music and Foley worked well together and were both audible individually. Finding usable and applicable Foley tracks proved to be more challenging to a greater degree than i anticipated. However, i learned to adapt and mask some of the sounds by covering them with other ambient music to blend it in better. Adding dialogue also ended up being much more challenging than i initially thought. Finding appropriate dialogue for the scenes took up quite a bit of time.

I also learned new and different transition techniques as well, and watched a lot of different video editing maneuvers for premier pro.  Aside from this, I re-watched the shining this past week with a greater attention to detail, noticing in particular the set design, sound and Foley used, and the lighting implemented in all the scenes

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Blog #6

This week i worked on video editing and learned a lot about what works and what doesn't work in that regard. I watched numerous trailers from many different genres and figured a lot about the sort of 'styles' that trailers have. Mostly the way they utilized sound was quite eye opening to me once I started paying attention to it. I implemented a lot of the same techniques to my own trailer re cut of Joker. My biggest leap forward came with how much more adept i became at editing videos on Adobe premier pro. I learned how to add key frames to video to fade videos into black or white, and to audio as well to cross fade different sounds together so they all become clearly audible. Playing around with key frames helped me learn a lot about how to transition video and sound from one clip to the next while making sure that the edit remains as obstructive as possible. I also became much more adept at editing colors in videos and masking certain parts of a video to change the mood and even lighting of a clip to convey a completely different sort of emotion.

In addition to this, I also implemented some sound and video editing techniques that I had previously seen but never gave much thought to, such as a voice over on a clip that eventually leads to synchronization of the audio and the video for the final line or sentence.  

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Blog #5

This last week I re-watched both interstellar and inception while paying closer attention to some of the finer details in both films that escaped me the first time. In particular, I noticed the sort of lighting that set the mood for a scene, as well as the various framing techniques and cuts used by the director Christopher Nolan. I also worked on a tableau vivant film project this week, and recreated similar lighting and framing as the painting Woman by Candlelight. The painting in question contains only one light source, which comes from a candle held by the woman whose portrait the painting is of. While creating the tableau vivant, I used 2 light sources, a key light coming from the right side of the camera to illuminate the subjects face and everything in her vicinity. As well as a fill light that was set just below the camera, to eliminate the shadows from the subjects face and to cast soft shadows behind the subject. The intensity of the lights were dispersed using semi opaque materials to filter some of the warm light to give the appearance that the scene was illuminated via a candle. I also made the fill light move slightly to blend it in with the appearance of the candle. The moving shadow at the back seems to be caused by the candlelight instead.The painting happens to have a portrait orientation, whereas the video is shot in landscape. However, since the painting is surrounded by darkness as it was, I was able to recreate it faithfully despite the change in orientation, by leaving the surrounding areas with lesser light. Once the scene was shot, I masked the surrounding around to lower the brightness slightly further, and then masked and brightened the face of the subject slightly as well to make it resemble the original painting.

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Blog #4

This week I finished watching a documentary style TV series called “Parks and Recreation”. The genre of the show is comedy and it was produced by the same producers as The Office. Due to this the similarities between the two shows is quite obvious. Some of the characters are bear resemblance to each other across the show. The style of parks and recreation is quite unique, exempting the office, and features a lot of fourth wall breaking throughout the duration of the series. The series also contains other cinematic and ideological themes, such as feminism, libertarianism, and polyamory.

I also learned a lot about arranging sound and music for a series of clips. Cutting the right sort of music to convey a certain tone and a certain theme is something I learned and found quite interesting. As well as writing out a script for a narration to convey the same theme and tone. For the narration I searched online for different subjects relating to the theme and idea of my short film, and once we had the recording finished, it was another challenge cutting the audio into smaller parts, and deciding which part of it when where. I attempted to fix in the audio to maximize their dramatic effect once they paired with their respective images from the short film. The theme of the short film itself is that of suspense which borders a bit on the creepy side. In addition to which it also features surrealism as a theme where one of the character has a doppelganger appear in the film.

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Blog #3

This week I took upwards of 250 photographs and learned how to use different techniques to get different types of results in my photographs. Primarily, I learned how to deal with excessive light bleeding into the image as well as how to balance the shadows and the contrast created by them.  In addition to which I learned the utility of different camera lenses. All the photographs were shot in monochrome, and included variations such as close ups, mid shots, wide shots, and point of view shots. The photographs also required some elements of cinematographic direction as they were, as a whole, relaying a narrative. So out of the 250 or so photographs, we selected around 30 photographs that would, when played in a sequence, relay a story without text or audio.  While editing the final video, we were able to induce motion into still images by zooming and panning, thereby giving the illusion of camera movement.

Besides this I watched another movie and finished another book this week as well. The movie in question was “Everlasting moments”, and the book was “The wise man’s fear”. Both forms of media held up and provided excellent narratives, once again in different ways. While the film managed to captivate the audience via imagery and subtle screen elements, the book stayed exciting because of how it managed to continuously introduce new exciting characters and how it kept changing the pace of the action from slow and un-excitable to fast and unexpected.

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Blog #2

This week, I watched a couple of movies in class in COMD 282 and COMD 207. The movies in question were “La Jetee” and “The Ghost writer”. In addition to these movies I also finished reading a novel called “The Name of the Wind” this week. All three stories belong to a completely different genre, not to mention the fact that the way the stories are told are also completely different. I ended up drawing comparisons despite this, to see what aspect worked well for which story and how the medium of each story impacted the way it was told or received. One of the most glaring difference between the mediums of film and the book to me, was that the movie Ghost Writer could easily slip subtleties into the background to be noticed at a later time. This would set up the movie well, thematically speaking. With Name of the Wind, small details were more likely to catch my attention and would make me wonder about their presence there. In this regard, it would sometimes be easier to anticipate the significance of certain things in the book, rather than in the film. From an entertainment perspective I did still enjoy Name of the Wind more than La Jetee or The Ghost Writer. As far as stories go, it was told in a very captivating and clever manner such that while I could maybe predict the end result of certain parts of the book, the when and how of it would still elude me. La Jetee while being interesting as a spectacle, wasn’t particularly entertaining. Despite being shorter than Both Name of the Wind and the Ghost Writer, the pace of the story and narration was quite slow. In a way, it lacked the energy and ability to keep me engaged consistently like the other two did. Either because of the fact that it relied on still images, or the narration.  

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Blog #1

While watching the music video for “Fatboy Slim – Praise You” directed by Spike Jonze multiple times this week, numerous subtle nuances and details within the video itself point towards the coveted artist’s statement or message and intentions of the director. The group of dancers in the video orchestrate a flash mob in a cinema and end up performing very terribly and drawing the attention of everyone around them. In a sense, the video could possibly be about the idea of freedom of sorts, and letting people do what they want in their life without interference. The dancers express their freedom by organizing a flash mob on public property and do so in a bizarre fashion. Since flash mobs were not common at the time of the release of the video, the video does point out all the attention that the dancers are garnering, an occurrence which perhaps would not be so prevalent today. The motion and style of their dancing too, may be considered an expression of freedom, seeing at they have very few restrictions with their movements. The attires of the dancers also seem out of place for the location they are in, reinforcing this idea of freedom and nonchalant attitude. Furthermore, the style of the video and the camera work once again possess very little rigidity. In fact the video appears quite amateurish and unprofessional adding to which is the fact that the dance itself appears to have very little choreography and more freestyle involved, the idea of freedom is reinforced via numerous elements of the music video. The lyrics of the song are celebratory and while they are sparse, they perhaps refer to some deeper societal message relating to the breaking of social shackles and obtaining a kind of freedom, which in turn is deserving of praise.

https://youtu.be/ruAi4VBoBSM