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This is one of my video assignments
I love puns. Anyways, the second video assignment I did this week was Charlie Chaplin’s Foley Artist, worth 4 1/2 stars. The assignment was to add sound effects for an originally silent Charlie Chaplin short. I chose one called Recreation, which was one of the few able to be accessed at this time.
I really enjoyed being able to live out my dreams of being a foley artist. When I was younger, my family and I would spend hour upon hour with this special feature disc from a Shrek DVD which allowed you to dub lines and sound effects over scenes… it was hilariously strange and a special feature I wish was in more DVDs. Doing this assignment reminded me a lot of those days of adding silly sounds to beloved film scenes.
The sounds I added were done completely by me and things around me such as a water bottle, a phone, clapping and fingers on a computer. It honestly makes me laugh so much listening back to the 2 minutes I recorded because it sounds so silly but it’s a comedy so that’s not a bad thing! The more ridiculous the sound effect the better. Watch it down below and enjoy the foley stylings of yours truly.
I did a video of a celebrity crying and me wiping their tears. This is how Joan feels about the end of world and missing her parents. The video is here
Hey, folks! This week I learned a lot about looking deeper into the visual aspects of films. I took a film studies class last semester and loved it so I was ready to roll with it. First off, I watched a video that drew me in with its scandalous title: Hitchcock Loves Bikinis. What I took away from that video was the importance of shot/reverse shot patterns. If you show a person smiling then flip to a shot of what they’re smiling at, it can change what you think about them entirely. That’s the beauty of film! Just one single shot can make or break a moment.
The second video I watched was the one-point perspective montage of Stanley Kubrick’s work. I’ve seen a few videos of this favored shot of his, as well as mixed in with Wes Anderson footage, as he’s a huge fan of it as well. One-point perspectives can make shots pleasing to the eye with their symmetry but also wildly unsettling. In 10 Cloverfield Lane, it seemed to lean towards the latter, just as it does in The Shining.
The third video I watched was the 20 Cinematic Techniques montage. This one was really interesting because it pulled from a large variety of movies and showed a wide array of techniques that can be used to portray different feelings and effects. This went will with the Ebert article, which I’ll get more into in a minute. A big focus of this video was camera movement and how that can change how the viewer ‘feels’ in a scene. Tracking and panning, as well as handicam footage can make the viewer feel like they’re “inside” the action and is a prime choice with filmmakers nowadays for that very reason.
The final video I watched was another Kubrick video, the one on zooms in The Shining. This video was overwhelming to look at and I wish it was shown in a more digestible way but I understood what they were going for with it. From what I could tell, the zooms Kubrick used mostly brought focus to specific moments, as well as making certain people feel “smaller” or “larger”. When the camera zoomed outwards, the person in the shot seemed smaller and like they were left behind. When zooming in, they seemed larger and more in control. That was my understanding from watching the video but I’d be interested to see how others felt about it.
Finally, I read the Roger Ebert article. It reminded me a lot of exercises before, I suppose because the “Cinema Interruptus” is a necessary part in learning how to dissect movie scenes. It helps me a lot to just turn off the sound completely and focus on camera movement, framing and lighting to really catch on to what’s happening. Otherwise it all flies by while I’m into the music! What I learned from the article that was really notable to me was something I’ve noticed a lot of other DS106ers have focused on: the Rule of Thirds and axis of characters/figures on screen. I can figure out what techniques were used in shots after a while but I didn’t realize there were inherent meanings and feelings that came with the composition on scenes. Now I know more than ever that each technique and design in films are consciously chosen. This “composition theory” that Ebert described is something I mentioned in regards to 10 Cloverfield Lane.
Also in the video, I talked about visual storytelling in regards to the opening scene. It doesn’t completely mesh with Ebert’s article but the idea of stopping each shot and analysing what it says fits right in with what I thought about the scene. Without any sound and with just a few shots, you learn all necessary info about Michelle before you hear her speak even once. I thought that was amazing and had to dissect the scene a little!
This assignment was cool and gave me a chance to watch the movie a little deeper. It was hard to fit all I wanted to say in while I watched the scenes so that was the main struggle. The rest was just a matter of downloading video with the 4K downloader and meshing it together in iMovie. Watch it below and let me know what you think!
I went with path one for the video assignments! The video below is a video about Bellamy’s dream life. I decided to stick with my radio show and in particular my character. In the video I picked four things that Bellamy has always dreamed of having and I also explain it and I used things that we talked about from our radio show.
Enjoy!
This is a four star assignment: Your Dream as a Movie Trailer
So the 4 short videos I watched where
They really put into action what the Ebert article was talking about on how to read movies. So while i was watching Children of Men i kept looking for anything that might resemble what i read and saw in the articles and videos but it was hard. The camera seemed low budget, it was also moving if that makes since. Well almost at exactly an hour in on the movie where they just left their hide out they come across a school and Theo, the protagonist in the film is walking down a school hall way. When i saw it i literally yelled “ONE POINT PERSPECTIVE YESSSSS!!!!” So here is the link to my youtube channel hope you like it. Also going off of Ebert I did see alot of diagonal shots done in this film because they were in the woods abd by mountains. So while they were driving a car along the road it would zoom in at a diagonal approach from behind
For anyone who knows me, knows that I am a freak when it comes to my haircut and hairstyles. In watching this video, you will be able to tell that I have had numerous over the years, though none too strange. I am an avid visitor of the barber shop or hair cuttery, though a few times made the mistake of allowing my father or friends to cut my hair. In this video assignment, I included a number of photos I have had taken or took myself over the years and combined them in iMovie. In the video, it just shows the evolution, starting off with my haircuts of me as a child and finishes off with me as a college senior. I went through my Bieber faze as well as my shaved head faze. This video describes me, always worried about how I look and if my hair is okay. In the background of the video, I imbedded the song Perfect Storm by my favorite country artist, Brad Paisley. This assignment was 4 1/2 stars, totaling my stars for the week at 9.
For this video assignment, I did the Sixteen Year Old Me assignment. I had to address a 16 year old Mikey on his life and what to be prepared for in the future. I started off by addressing his core values at the time, what was the most prevalent things to meet at 16, those were baseball, god and my family. I began by giving him ideas on how to improve at baseball and focus more, that he needs to stay after for practice and focus more, put my heart and effort into it. I then tell him to keep his focus on christ, don’t lose it, the lord is always there for you. Then, I bring up college time, how he needs to stay focused and that Mary Washington is the best choice for him and give him some pointers. I tell him, how here I am in what is technically my finals week, seeing as this course is ending soon and I am to officially graduate at the end of it. With that being said, I have been through it all, I know what he needs to do to be succesful and not doing some of the things I did, is a good step in that direction. At the end of it, I wrap it by telling him to get close to Dean Rucker earlier than I even did and to keep an eye out on my little brother, who’s a bit of a trouble maker.
This assignment certainly means a lot to me, because it’s actually a video I wish I could send to a 16-year old me. There’s a lot of things, I know now, that I wish I knew back then. My life has been great, but there is always room for improvement.
For this assignment, I created it on photo booth actually and just imbedded into Youtube. Photobooth was the easy process for me, as I sat in my basement and worked on it. It a 4 1/2 star assignment, which I contemplated what I was going to say for a while. This assignment requires a lot less work than others, seeing as its just you and a camera, talking about what you need to do.
