Semester 2, Blog #5: Reflections on the Semester

This semester in "Media in a Digital Age" has been challenging for a few reasons. In some ways, the challenge was healthy, in other ways it was just frustrating. Overall, my main critiques would be that the course felt a little more disorganized than last semester, some of the assignment objectives were unclear or unreasonable, and the lectures weren't very helpful at all in learning new software.

The most important thing for me was the introduction to video editing using Final Cut. I'm a total beginner, so I'm glad we did the video assignment because it was my first fully edited video project and I learned a lot from it. However, we were given little time for the planning and filming phases, so I felt very rushed and worried we wouldn't be able to come up with a decent concept or get enough footage. Furthermore, the lecture format is not an effective way to learn how to use software that I've never used before. I can't remember all the things we were shown, and taking notes on the steps is impractical if not impossible. It was even more frustrating with the Flash animation portion. When it came time to actually edit our video or do our Flash animations, I had merely a vague idea of the layout of the software and little know-how. We had to figure it out by trial and error or by seeking out other tutorial sources. (I still don't get how to even begin to use Action script because the lectures on using Flash made zero sense to me. Didn't understand a sentence of those, honestly). What's more, some last-minute requirements were thrown at us for the animation assignment which we were not equipped to fulfill. In the end, all the students did a really impressive job on the projects, especially considering the time constraints and so forth.

I think it would be so helpful if we learned how to use the software hands-on in the computer lab using sample video clips or animations. The problem with the computer lab is that the desks are facing the wall, not the front of the room where the projector is. I may sound silly for saying this, but that really hinders the students' ability to watch what the teacher does on their computer while working on our own computers, because we have to turn around and look at the projector screen. It might be asking a lot, but the lab room should be totally reorganized to make it so the computer desks are placed in such a way that students can look up to the screen at the front of the room without turning around, while still sitting at their computers. (If that makes sense the way I'm wording it?) That way, the professor may say "Next, click on such-and-such and select this-and-that" and the students can look at the professor's screen and see right where to click while still facing their own computer screen, and can easily follow along with the directions.

Because of all the confusion, I still feel a little ill-equipped for my future film courses, but I did learn some important basic, introductory skills in editing that will hopefully help me. Perhaps Hunter's Film department should consider going back to having the course "Beginning Techniques in Film and Video" as a pre-requisite. This combined media crash course is a little too condensed. I hope I didn't sound like I was merely complaining in this post.

Semester 2, Blog #4: Speaking with Animation

Animation is one of my favorite art forms to enjoy as a consumer of media. My favorite works of animation come from the realm of hand-drawn Japanese animation, and in particular the films of Academy-Award winning director Hayao Miyazaki. His most recent film Ponyo stands out to me as an imaginative and unique piece of animation. Miyazaki intended for this movie to appeal to small children and strove to see the world through their eyes, and he achieved this through both the narrative and animation styles. The background paintings look like scenes from a spectacular children’s storybook, with bright pastel colors and energetic strokes of (presumably) watercolor and colored pencils. The texture the animators achieved with mixed mediums is quite remarkable. Rocks and buildings in the scenery are rendered with playful curvature, using almost no straight lines, so that edges of buildings appear uneven and cliffs look rounded. The characters are drawn fairly simplistically but they have charming designs, colors, and personalities that fit seamlessly into the lively background paintings.

Elements of nature in the world of Ponyo take on new magical forms, especially Ponyo herself, who morphs between her fishy form and girl form. Furthermore, Ponyo in her “goldfish” form is not drawn literally like a fish, but more like how a little child might try to draw a fish: she has a face, a little tuft of hair, and her tail fin looks like a skirt. The look is both odd and delightful. In the film’s most acclaimed scene, even the waves of the ocean erupt into the form of giant blue fish and burst as they crash against the cliffs. The magical animation evokes the childlike curiosity of the main character, Sosuke, a five-year-old boy who lives by the sea. Sosuke stumbles upon Ponyo, a goldfish who gets stuck in a jar, and the two take a liking to each other, so Ponyo wants to become a human girl through the magic that is innate in her. It’s a slight and simple story about devotional love that unfolds on Miyazaki’s own terms, using a childlike “dream logic” rather than typical Hollywood-style story structure. In my mind, Ponyo is not about plot, it’s more about the subtext and the emotional impressions we (the viewers) experience in each scene. It’s an animated film that speaks to the kid in our hearts.

Semester 2, Blog #3: Video Production Notes

When we were first presented with the video project assignment, the task of coming up with some kind of short story on the fly seemed daunting. But I've learned that to make it easier on yourself, it's best just to take your first instinct and run with it. I suggested (to my partner Ayako) the idea of a chase scene in which a person is chased by a stranger around the campus and thinks her pursuer means to harm her. Their chase increases pace as it covers various locations around the school. However, it turns out that the pursuer just picked up her metro card that she dropped back at the subway station, and wanted to return it. After much discussion, we settled on this story, realizing of course the circumstances of the story would seem unrealistic (given the fact that there are tons of people around on campus, not to mention the pursuer could simply have yelled out to her in the first place, etc...).

Since the editing was the primary purpose of the project, I thought that the chase scene would present an interesting editing challenge because it would require putting lots of pieces together from different angles and locales. However, I also knew it would be very difficult to shoot the scene in the limited time we were given. Ayako and I drew up a sketchy storyboard, scouted out some locales around campus where we wanted to film the chase, and also tried to determine ahead of time what order in which we would film these parts, all in order to make the filming process move as quickly as possible. We also needed another actor, since I would be behind the camera, and thank goodness Ayako got her friend Ken to help us out and act as the pursuer character.

The filming process was rather hectic indeed, but still enjoyable. We rushed from place to place around campus filming the shots in as few takes as possible. I did my best to direct Ayako and Ken in a way that would bring to life the "vision" of our storyboards. My lack of camera experience, along with the rushed atmosphere of our shoot caused my camerawork to be shakier than I would like. However, I did want some shots to be shaky since it evokes a frantic mood for the chase sequence. That shakiness went further than I intended, but I'm an amateur, so I shouldn't expect perfect work on my first video project. The shoot went better than I expected overall, since we managed to finish in time to get back to the lab and save our clips to the computer. Much of the credit goes to Ayako and Ken for staying on their toes and performing with both haste and style.

The editing process was challenging, but also the most interesting to me. Ayako and I had no previous experience with Final Cut, and we only had the limited exposure to it that the class lectures gave us, so neither our process nor the end result was anything too advanced. We had to figure out a lot of things on our own. And if we couldn't figure out how to make something flow better, we basically defaulted to a crossfade, whether it was video or sound. The crossfade was our trusty fallback, especially when it came to softening the audio transitions from one shot to another. That's probably an amateurish shortcut, but it worked. Everything else was a matter of clipping shots, deciding which take to use, and putting everything in a logical order that would result in a mostly continuous story with instances of montage cutting. I feel like we did a pretty good job for beginners, even if everyone else's video projects were much more impressive. In fact, I was so impressed by the other students' projects, it made me feel rather crappy about myself. Looks like I'm the only real beginner here.

Click here to view "The Chase," the completed video project by Sean (me) and Ayako.