Editing Analysis

I love this video because it satirizes American films that misrepresent people of color by having characters with the general stereotypical traits of their race. But most importantly, I can totally relate to this. 

This video applies the rule of thirds, specific shots for lines to evoke the intimacy or lack thereof between characters, and sound effects to give the audience a sense of the environment.

In the first minute of this video, I noticed that the shots had the upper left and upper right intersections of the rule of thirds grid directed at heads of the characters. Plus, the vertical lines of the rule of thirds  grid were positioned upon their bodies.  When someone had a line during a moment of intimacy/closeness/self-reflection, the video would cut to a medium close-up of the character. If the character was looking and talking to someone else, it would be a medium shot. If they were taking to each other or one person was doing something to the other character, the there would be a full body shot of both characters in the room.

In the mugging scene, the editor cut alternately to shots of each person's face very quickly (each shot lasted between 1 second- 5 seconds) to show the acceleration of the quarrel between the two characters. To show that the story is focused on the protagonist, Freddie Wong, and to have the audience fill the shoes of this character, the shots of the protagonist's face were closer compared to the shots of the mugger's face, and there was use of stereophonic sound of the fly. When a Freddie was in a state of introversion, the shots were closer, but when the lines were clearly spoken for the other character to react to, the shots were wider so the audience can anticipate and see the other character's response- and whenever a character was in a state between introversion and intercession, the shots were somewhere in between. For example, the shot where Freddie is swatting the fly with his is a close-up (0:55/1:06), the shot where he's rambling about "all the -u's" he knows is a medium close-up (1:31), and the shot where he is showing off his moves to scare off the mugger is a medium long-shot (1:41).

Final Film 160

Chasing Adulthood from Yvonne Chow on Vimeo.

La Mia Prima Lezione di Nuoto

La settimana scorsa I imparato a nuotare in una piscine per la prima volta nella mia vita. Io dovuto registrarmi il lunedì, il giorno prima. Il giorno della mia primo lezione, mi sono svegliata alle otto e sono uscite della mia casa alle nove. Durante il mio viaggio sul treno F, ho bevuto una bottiglia del’acqua, ho mangiato una mela e ho mangiato qualche biscotto per il colazione. Alla sessantitreesime strada ho corso verso la scuola. A scuola, ho portato il mio costume da bagno. Ho comprato questo costume da bagno a casa mia con il mio computer. Mentre avevo il mio costume da bagno, ero molta allegra perché io e mia mamma ha sempre voluto me e mio fratello minore per imparare a come nuotare.

A la piscine, ho porto la mia nuota cappelli e la mia nuoto occhiali. La mia insegnate, Sasha, detto a me a calci I miei piedi su e giù in l’acqua. Ero non la novizia solo. mentre abbiamo dato le nostre gambe in acqua, abbiamo chiacchierato.  La insegnate detto a noi che noi stavamo imparando molto velocemente. La lezione é stata molto divertente per me. A primo, ho pensato che stavo per morire, ma io non sono morto. Dopo, ho fatto un doccia. Io detto alla mia amica nuova che io voglio registrarmi per la settimana prossima, perché mi era piaciuto molto e nuotare voglio imparare.

A casa mia ho detto mia mamma che io imparato a nuotare e lei era molto contento.

SPRING BREAK STORYBOARDING!!!

Treatment

Edited:
Yvonne, a student at Hunter College, experiences a pang of hunger. She is so hungry she might die. She envisions a hot dog stand at Central Park. The camera follows her treacherous run to Central Park. She spots a packet of ketchup and stops in her tracks to messily devour it. She coughs up ketchup into her hand and is determined to continue running, as her bloody-looking ketchup-smudged hand pressurizes her grumbling stomach. She slows down and stops to wipe off some ketchup from her mouth while leaning against a pole, wincing at the pain... of hunger. The world slo-mos as the crosswalk light counts down to zero. At the end of the crosswalk, she leaps forward and somersaults. She runs up a path in Central Park, past the hot dog guy, to dig up a box she buried in the ground a while ago. With her hands shaking, she takes out the box. In the box is a whole meal, fresh and untouched. Her watch beeps and she realizes that class is starting back at Hunter. She gets up and runs back to school.

Possible song choice: I stand alone by T.London/First Things first neon trees/intro the xx

Storyboard draft:

Storyboard of the whole thing:

Remembrace Star Audio Portrait

Flaherty NYC Program 5: Waste, and Other Forms of Management

  On St.Patrick's Day of this year, I saw the fifth program of the Flaherty Seminars at the Anthology Film Archives, called WASTE, AND OTHER FORMS OF MANAGEMENT. With the student discount, I got my ticket for $8.00.

  Because of technical difficulties, the film started about 20 minutes later than planned.

   The first film, OVERSEAS by Wichanon Somumjarn & Anocha Suwichakornpong, follows WawaKai, a Burmese immigrant worker who grades squid and dumps the undesirable ones.  In this film, there is an abundance of the use of the tracking technique. The camera follows WawaKai from behind as she walks to a seafood factory. It's as if the person watching her was a ghost who couldn't do anything about her sadness, but could only watch her from behind to see if she's alright. While she is changing into work clothes, she talks to her friend about a television series they have been watching and comments on how she's glad the two leads are finally married. I found that scene intriguing because it shows that even though WawaKai is living a very simple and modest lifestyle, she is able to step into a fantasy world of luxury and love by watching television. On her way to and in the police station, I notice close-up shots used more often and could see seriousness in the characters' faces. Later on, we find out that she WawaKai was raped and demands an abortion. I feel that her management of undesirable squid is very similar to abortion, in that she wants to get rid of the baby because it is undesirable waste to her.

  Another film that portrayed human's waste management was New Work From Directors by Pawel Wojtasik, Toby Lee, & Ernst Karel. In the beginning of the film all i saw were what looked like metallic confetti flying around. Then, the director used rack focus and focused on what was behind the confetti: a lot of garbage- and I figured out that the confetti was bits and scraps of metal, paper, and plastic from the garbage. Because garbage-sorting machines work very quickly and sloppily, Ernst and Pawel not only used a slower frame rate but even used 4 channels of audio at 96 kHz played back at 48 kH to capture reality and play it back in slow motion. The directors used long shots to capture the immense pile of clothes, cans, boxes, food, bags,  and other waste that Americans normally dump every day. They also started out with a shot of a worker in a garbage picker-upper truck and zoomed out of that shot to compare the size to the piles of garbage for the audience to see.

Notes From the Panel: 

Dana Levy on The Last Supper: 

"The absence of humans makes it more visual... You perceive the color and shape of the objects more... had to rush to next shot, expecting shot, dark room, force to sit for an hour... I like the challenge of evoking drama without the presence of humans, but instead with animals, architecture, and nature."

Pawel Wojtasik & Ernst Karel on New Work From Directors: 

"Apocolyptic... Buddhism: buddha on lotus, on mud, smelly, disgusting, decaying, potent... life is ending, but something new is beginning... human failing of being able to recycle our things... we spend millions making machines and fixing machines, human staff necessary, scale of how much stuff, effort in sorting it out, reality of our greed, recycling is positive  because of overwhelming amount of garbage that we have fogotten about, documentary shows afterlife of garbage in trash can... useful to refuse = burden nature+ manmade very powerful, can take over, alot about failure... Recycled cubes sent to India and China, energy wasted, but recycle aluminum is efficient, plastic is not...things happening so fast, need to slow down."

Pawel Wojtasik on Pigs: 

"Farmers take casino leftovers and feed it to the pigs...free food...pigs went wild over outdated milk...Greed that exists in nature: pigs."

Here's a creepy selfie I took with Colleen after the panel discussion. 

It looks like we're wearing the mask from Phantom of the Opera.

MOMI. NOT MOMA.

I was forced to go to a museum at least two hours away from home. This happened last Wednesday. It was at the Museum of the Moving image and everything happened so fast because I was in a hurry to get back to school.

I'm going to break down my trip into three parts:
1. THE GRAND ENTRANCE: White Walls
2. TOUR HIGHLIGHTS: Things I Learned
3. THE QUICK EXIT: Could You Please Stop Talking Now?

First of all, I'm pretty sure I paid a dollar less than I was supposed to because of my terrible but convincing math (I paid $21.00 and got $15.50 in change. The fee was actually $6.50). Win!

1. THE GRAND ENTRANCE
At the lobby, the ceilings were pretty low and everything was white! White walls, white tables, white floor, white stairs, and white people. This is a museum dedicated to movies, but I didn't encounter any mention of foreign films (at least not in the tour). Let me show you what I mean:

That's Ben Stiller. Hi Ben. So these are images of the floor above the lobby, but do you see what I mean?

2. TOUR HIGHLIGHTS: Things I Learned

OKAY PEOPLE. I learned a whole lot more from my 90-minute long tour than I do in lecture and got a lot more exercise too. Parts of the tour were funny, the history lessons were boring because it was all review, so I will have you read about some of the tour highlights that made me raise my eyebrows and nod my head slowly. 

Costume:

The first part of the tour was an exhibition of original masks and makeup that were used in famous movies.  The majority were laboriously handled and took hours to do.  

 The actual masks used in Star Trek, Star Wars, and The Mask. No, I couldn't touch them. :(

    

On the far right is a sweater worn by Bill Cosby on The Bill Cosby Show.

    

Models:

Model-making is really important when making movies. 

This model was built to better visualize the muppet's movements and muppeteers' location.

 This is a miniature movie theatre.

 This is a robot that could turn it's head 360 degrees on its neck, made because humans can't do it.

This is a miniature of a building with lots of LED lights. It's so finely detailed that you can take close-up shots and think it's a real building.

Franchising:

Movies are successful when you have a potentially great franchise, like Star Wars:

Star Wars action figures

Music:

Music is so important in movies. I saw a scene in Titanic without the music or sound effects, and you could totally tell that everything was done in a studio, not in an actual ocean. It looked so fake. On Final Cut, sound effects were added and it seemed a little more real, but even the sound effects are lies (the sound of snapping cords was a silenced sniper). Then, dramatic music was added to top it all off and the falsity of the ocean and ship got less obvious. 

3. THE QUICK EXIT: Could You Please Stop Talking Now?

Even though I was getting really impatient and bored out of my mind near the end of the tour because I was late for a cappella rehearsal back at Hunter College because the tour turned out to be 30 minutes longer than the expected 1 hour, I had to put on my best poker face and wait for my release. At the end of the tour we looked at old cameras and media players, which I would've appreciated more if I wasn't panicking.

 A TV with a circle screen. Must have been annoying to watch shows on a circle.

 That's my tour guide. He was really sweet.

Old furniture looking new.