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. :)