Planning to see and do at Cucalorus

To tell you the truth, for six years living in Wilmington, I just learned about the Cucalorus festival like three years ago the first time. So this is really my first time to go to Cucalorus festival this year. I have no idea how that works because I never been to any film festivals. I should have gone there last year, but I didn't have a chance. I might not see most of the shows because I will be busy working on my project. Here goes:

Thursday

Splinterheads (good??)

Friday

Precious (I saw it in preview, it looks interesting and might be sad) :(

Billy was a deaf kid (that's so cool! I would love to see movies about deafness!)

I am busy on Saturday so I can't see shows that day

Sunday

I might see Mississippi Damned..

I like to watch true stories movies. Have fun!

Project 3 film shoot

Being a director may be an interesting job, but it's not for me. I have enjoyed helping M out with the camera angle and shot by shot. Super 8 camera looks easy to film because it's so small and weightless. M had an idea to take stills to be a part of our music video just like the first project. So I took interesting photographs of Will doing his thing and the nature.

My crew and I went to Wallace Park one day and filmed Will, our artist, doing his DJ behind the natural background which showed great! We kept filming him around and around, him walking with his funny furry hat..how adorable! :) So I can't wait to see how it turns out.

Installation idea

I am glad to be a part of Abz's team. I like his idea on how he wants to set up the tunnel with bamboos and tv sets along with the mannequins. It's gonna be tough because there are lots of stuff we have to set up the same day as the screening. But it's going to be fun and interesting. I can't wait to see how it works and how it turns out.

I actually never have done an installation project before. When I saw the installation samples, I was like that was a lot of work with an amount of equipments. My favorite student installation is the 3D where there is a guy strapped on the chair and the other guy (killer) is watching him and then he would come outside and then inside and disappear! I totally loved it! I really do love horror movies..That would be cool if there is a horror movie about that similar style. The other thing is I liked one guy I forgot his name which he would set up a bunch of TV sets showing the person's movement and also create the symbols along with the sets. Interesting! :) Someday I would love to experiment with an installation. :)

From Art House to Microcinema

When I read this article, I didn't know a thing about art houses. I don't really follow film houses or festivals. It's interesting though that movies are made at the poorly art houses such as health clubs, churches, basements even with low budget. I like that. It's different and unique. No need for fancy stuff. But I prefer watching a film at home. Cheap and your own food and whatever you want to do at home. :) It's more comfortable than going to see a film with a bunch of strangers. The art houses remind me of Carolina Beach theater because I been there once or twice and this place is pretty old. I don't know if that counts but it has similar features as the art houses though.

I liked how the art houses accept anything different and unique such as independent, foreign, etc. The limited films that couldn't be able to provide to show nationwide. I'm not sure if here in Wilmington really has a place where they allow to show limited movies. I bet the art houses are popular to those who are interested to see unknown films. I would like to see some limited films that the big theaters wouldn't show. Ever since I took some film studies courses, I saw lots of foreign and experimental and documentary films..they were all strange, interesting, like wowie!

My ideas for my music video project

Since I'm a director, I'm new to being one with a group. But I guess I'm doing all right. I'm learning a lot. My cinematographer, M and I have decided to do a music video at the park outdoor during the day or an empty place near the street. We thought it might be nice to add nature feeling to the music (along with the trees that look spooky) and also the playground in the background. Or that would be nice to show something empty waiting. We also thought about Will from our class so we asked him to be our artist for our video, since he is a DJ and he may have some experience with music. He would be wearing a headphone and play with his DJ machine, walking around and chill out at the playground throughout the video or chilling out somewhere near the bench. For the camera angles and lighting, we will figure out how to do them when we go to the park or wherever. Since we will be outside, we think we don't need lighting, but if we could, we will establish something natural to it. I would like to have my group to share our ideas on camera angles. M and I have discussed about different ways such as 180 degrees, frontal or back, whatsoever we can. We would like to make the angles look unique or weird. Next, the sound...we will use ambient sounds and a song or any music from Will, if it's legal for us to use so that copyrights shouldn't be a problem. We'll use them for post-production. For the post-production, for the final cut, we hope to add something unique to the video. We will plan to shoot this Friday to do the video. Hopefully, it will turn out the way we want it to be. So who knows what we are doing, until we get the tape back from the transfer. Enjoy! :)

My self-portrait project

Whew..Let's see...I really have no idea about what I should make for my project. I know it's all about my passion, about my life, or whatsoever. I have seen some examples. It's tough for me to make decisions about me. I am not sure where I'm heading at, but there are open to any suggestions. I'm thinking to use some of my old home videos like when I was a kid playing sports or swimming in the pool or a part of my baby dog who passed away a few years ago or my grandma who passed away a few years ago as well or some parts of me cueing (Cued Speech, that's not sign language) as a kid or family and kids. I don't really want to make a video that's too personal, but I want to find something interesting and fun and weird. I am also thinking that I can try to add some of my beautiful or weird or old photographs, animate them like the first project in class. I would like to experiment on some magazine transfers to it. Perhaps draw or paint something to it like Harry Smith..add animals because I love them especially dogs. Add my deafness, Cued Speech to show how I became deaf and how I learned how to talk and all that. I don't think I need to add sound but if I could, I could add some voiceovers explaining how I became deaf and whatsoever. But who knows what I'm going to do...........

Suggestions:

*Home videos footages such as family, kids....

*Animals

*Magazine Transfers, painting/drawing

*Old photographs that can be animated, colored or b&w or whatever

*My deafness, Cued Speech

*Sports

My completed Light project

A lot of students seemed to like those photos of my dog and they created them into something narrative or interesting or creepy. So that is really cool. Thanks! :)

For my project, I had to do it by myself. It was tough. It didn't turn out the way I wanted it to be. It would be nice if I had a partner to work with so that we can teach each other how to manipulate photographs. I didn't use sound, which doesn't matter because I believe that when you watch a video of a bunch of photographs, you just have to relax your eyes and pretend to hear your own way. I have to admit, other students in my class did amazing projects.

The point about my project was basically on sleeping. Some images that are matched to my topic like circles or a tree with sun rays coming through and I learned how to make some of them shake as if the alarm went off. Other ones that looked like dreaming while sleeping. I did add some colors in some images because I liked black and white with some additonal colors. In fact, I had a hard time figuring out how to combine two photographs like fading in one clip. I wanted to create a picture that is faded out through another picture while animating. That would be cool. I actually never used to manipulate images through final cut pro before so that was why I had a hard time figuring out. I just wished that I should have worked on the images in Photoshop and Aftereffects more first and then to final cut pro. That would be cool too. The project was very interesting. I would love to work more on manipulating pictures. This is something I want to do for a career. Making posters or signs or something with photographs..:)

Some photos that inspire me...

While I was growing up, I had no clue about graphic design until I got a bit older and started to check out cool creative posters and began to love those kinds of stuff. I even have some graphic design posters, for example, the cat and the dog singing...Some photos are the examples that inspire me to do graphic design. Seeing those photos and many other manipulation photos showed a lot of interesting ways to show and the way they are structured, the light affecting on them, the colors in them...

I would like to mess up the photos and be creative with them. I definitely want to make the most funniest posters ever. I mean I really love funny posters..I would like to make people laugh and make them want to buy them and cheer them up when they are down or whatsoever. :)

Truth

I have seen the poster of three little kids when I was a kid somewhere. I couldn't stop staring at it for a while. When I see it, I wonder why this boy chose the girl over the adorable girl. But anyways, it struck me to what the truth is like. Love hurts sometimes just like this photo.

I have a poster of this one below at home. I just fell in love with it so much. I learned that the moment they heard the war was over, the sailor would grab a nurse and kissed her as the photo was taken. I thought it was beautiful. The photo looked like it just happened right away! Just like the truth, like the everyday thing.

Those photos are like the real thing. They just happened to be taken that way. No manipulations the way I see them. I don't think lighting is involved. Good compositions of them. And as you can see, I have a thing for photos with kissing involved. :)

My flowers..

I took this with the 35mm Pentax camera. I thought this photograph is one of the best ones I ever taken. :)

Introduction to Avant-Garde Film By Scott MacDonald

I don't know which movie was my first avant-garde film. Before I chose film studies major, I had no clue what avant-garde film looks like until now. I had to research what movies are really avant-garde. I found out that Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was one of the avant-garde films and I never thought of it as something like this. I guess Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was my first avant-garde when I was young. When I took film study course or world cinema course, I saw weird films like un chien andalou or ballet mechanique. I realized that they must be avant-garde films or experimental films.

I remember watching some avant-garde films and I had no idea what they were talking about. Scott MacDonald was talking about the first response from viewers, like "this isn't a movie or you call this a movie!" I believe that I was one of the viewers who would think like that to the avant-garde films. I didn't really understand what MacDonald really meant by describing about certain feelings or thoughts about viewers toward the avant-garde films. But I understood the later parts about the history and Muybridge and the Lumiere brothers.

I have enjoyed reading the histories of European countries creating early avant-gardes and then Muybridge's invention of the Zoopraxiscope and early motion studies. I have seen his Zoopraxiscope on a racing horse. I also saw "The Horse in Motion" that were taken multiple photographs from the multiple cameras on the grid (like a set of lines) and showed the hooves off the ground and on and back and forth. I'm glad he did this so that it would lead people to creating motion picture movies.

And I remember watching Lumiere brothers' films such as a train arriving or the parents feeding a baby or an interesting part about an older guy watering the garden while a young boy makes fun of him. It was amazing how the brothers created a single shot of people or anything back then with an old camera. Anybody can do that of course. :)

What I learned....

What I learned was: I learned how to use a 35mm Pentax camera and also a sekonic light meter, which I never used before. I had been taught a few times how to use it. I messed up two films and had to start over. I wasn't used to the old camera. It's a tough camera. I looked around objects and people and animals and nature. My ideas came flowing into my mind when I see each one of them. So I took a lot of amazing photographs and I hope people enjoy what I have took. Most of the pictures I took are mostly based on art, nature, patterns..lots of repetitions..I just like to take pictures of beautiful patterns..I used three rolls of films with 1/60th shutter speed and used three different f-stops from one same shot to another (bracketing). The fourth roll was created with any shutter speed. I have tried to use double exposure with a few pictures on the fourth roll and some of them got messed up. But one of them turned out to be cool. Most of the pictures turned out to be very well. Enjoy!

Film as an Original Art Form by Hans Richter

Hans Richter states questions to what one considers film as an original art form. So he used Pudovkin’s quote, “What is a work of art before it comes in front of the camera, such as acting, staging, or the novel is not a work of art on the screen.” I would say that Pudovkin means that a film is not a part of a work of art, only theater or novels are. I just think any films even Hollywood films (entertainment films) can express art in a way the same as theater and novels.

D.W. Griffith was one of the people who actually showed what a film was like. It seemed to me that his films were almost art because he used different angles. Also, he used interesting close-ups shots and crosscutting parts that matched to other people’s reactions. That was enjoyable even in a silent film.

Also, I thought Frank Capra was one of the people who would show interesting things. I watched Mr. Smith Goes to Washington the first time like last week and I loved it. Even though it was an entertainment film, I thought the movie showed art too because of different angles, different crosscutting, and reactions of different people. Even showed politics and history. But that's just me. :)

As I was reading through pages of 16-17, Hans Richter has been questioning 'whether film is essentially theatrical, literary, or fine arts with the doubt in the minds of film historians and film critics to what they think of film as an original art form.' I believe a film can be all of the above. But then I read the part about the film in two styles: documentary and experimental. They are described as original art forms. I guess I would say that they are because to me they are more like independent. The artists can make them freely and they can do what they want them to do. After all, film entertainment and film art can be the same.

Manifesto

Hi y'all. I'm a senior here at UNC-Wilmington, hoping to graduate this December. I'm hearing impaired and I can talk and lipread most of the time. I am from Springfield, Virginia, about 20 miles away from D.C.. I just moved to Wilmington in 2003 and I fell in love with Wilmington and the beach and all the history here.

I didn't know what I really wanted to be until I found out that film is the right one for me when I was about to be a junior here because it is exactly what I am looking for. I mean, I am so interested in taking photographs and put them into a computer and make them into something magical and also in learning how to edit something awesome. I didn't know that it's more than just any film. So I decided to study film and I kept looking into more technical ones. And I found ones that I really wanted to learn more about how film works with the technology. It's so amazing how a film can work with such the technology! And I'm learning a lot of new ways this semester.

I fell in love with editing and some animation and taking photographs. I hope to work with creating DVDs, edit pictures and movies for people to enjoy. I also hope to make cute, weird, and funny animation :)