SOUND PROJECT (ADDED)

For this project, I have compiled sounds that you would hear in the kitchen and edited it in Adobe Premiere. The sounds include sink water, frying, frozen food package sounds, stirring of eggs, plates and the microwave. It was my first time editing something that was solely sounds, but I found it to be really fun. I tried many effects such as changing the duration, adjusting the volume, and other audio transitions. Overall, I thought the end result was pretty successful!

                     FINAL TIME PROJECT

For my final time project, I was asked to create something that incorporated the concept of linear vs. non-linear time. Since I'm really interested in typography, I wanted to do something that involved words and writing. I decided to make a video of the concept of writing in a diary and focus on the strokes of written words and having the non-linear element as going back in time. This video shows parts of a diary entry, and the entry specifically talks about the waves at a beach since I think the motion of waves perfectly suits the concept of time. As the person describes the motion of the waves as going "back and forth", every time the word "back" is written, it goes back a day. Since the entry starts on July 11, 2013,  I stopped at July 7, 2013. If I were to make this video official, I would let the video keep on going back in time, but I just decided to stop on the 7th. In the end, I wanted to show that the process of writing in a diary begins again, just like a constant cycle, so I decided to end my video with a blank page of a diary. Overall, I think this video came out really successful since I think it portrays time well, and I really enjoyed editing it!

          WILLIAM KENTRIDGE INSTALLATION

Artist: William Kentridge
Title: The Refusal of Time 
Place: Metropolitan Museum of Art 

William Kentridge is a South African artist whose works incorporates science, globalization, colonialism and memory. In this installation, "The Refusal of Time," it is a thirty minute animation that explores the various historical ideas of time with the inspiration from Albert Einstein's hypothesis of railway stations not operating exactly on schedule. 

I really enjoyed this installation and the way time and space were shown on another level, almost 4-dimensional in a way. I was instantly intrigued as I walked in the room because of the darkness and the  surrounding of screens around me that were showing something that looked like a galaxy.  The space gave off a very "industrial" like feeling which was pretty interesting and especially with the wooden machine in the middle, it really made me feel like I was in a factory of some sort.

I really liked how Kentridge focused on the theme of "colonialism and industry" which was emphasized in the beginning where a group of people "walked" slowly across the screens with old tools. The motion of the people walking slowly and the viewing of people of different ages demonstrated hard work and labor. It brought us back in time in a visual appealing way and it was almost as if we were stuck in time as people kept on "walking" across the screens. It was almost as if it was a GIF, something that kept on repeating. 

Kentridge experimented a lot with sounds which also gave us a sense of time. The sounds almost sounded as if it were being looped but at different intervals of time, such as the viewing of the metronome. There were five metronomes showing on the screens around me, but each one was ticking at a different time, which also changed the way the metronome was ticking. It was almost as if it was an optical illusion.

I enjoyed the way Kentridge took different scenarios and portrayed it in ways where it involved different motions, repetition, sequence and sounds. He almost made some scenarios comical such as the scenes where the man kept getting on and off the chair. I also found it interesting how the wooden structure in the middle conveyed a sense of "linear time" by the constant sound of ticking, while the scenes that were shown on the walls conveyed a sense of "non-linear time" because of the various sequences.  Overall, I think this exhibition showed time and space in a very unique way!

                                       FINAL PROJECT PLAN

-I wanted to demonstrate the act of writing since nowadays, everything is being typed. I think that there's something significant about each hand stroke when one writes and the time it takes to finish writing a certain letter or a certain word. The type of writing I want to focus on is script.

Plan:
-Make a video and edit on Adobe Premiere
-The concept is going to be writing in a diary
-It's going to be black and white

Shots taken:
-In the beginning, someone's going to start writing the date on a blank page
         -going to be filmed from a side angle/ closeup of pen and paper

-Someone writing "Dear Diary" in script
-Someone writing "Dear Diary" backwards to compare the time it takes and the different strokes
         -overlay of both shots 
         -words create an illusion

-Have super close up shots of the pen tip and shots of the person writing it from behind overlaying 
-Since a diary is personal, I don't want to capture everything that the person is writing in the diary so I plan to blur some of the writing and then focus on some words.
         -overlay this with the backwards writing shot
-Have no sounds in the video besides the pen sound 
-End it with all the scenes going backward in fast motion and end it with a blank page to give it a feeling of starting the process over

                                             MOMENTO

This film was extremely intriguing to watch due to its suspense and the way the sequences of the film was were set up in a confusing, but effective way. The film was almost played “backwards” in a way because in order to find out what exactly happened in the beginning, you have to watch until the end to figure it out. In the beginning, it showed the scene where we catch a quick glimpse of Leonard shooting “Teddy” which makes us believe that he was the actual killer of his wife but in the end, Leonard was the actual killer of his own wife. The whole mystery of Leonard losing his memory, trying to remember things and trying to find out who killed his wife was a maze within itself. The way the film was set up was that it would show a scene, and then right after it, it would show the parts leading up to the past scene almost like a cause and effect format, except it was effect and then the cause.It was interesting how the film almost made it seem as if time was actually going backwards instead of forward. 

I found it pretty ironic in this one scene where Leonardo was talking to “Teddy” in a diner-like place and telling him that memories can be distorted and it was all about the facts when in the end, the facts were all lies. In the ending, when Leonard found out about the truth, he forced himself to lie to himself and ended up writing lies on the polaroids so that when he forgot again, he would think that what he had written were all truths.

I found it interesting how the film varied between black and white and colored scenes. The black and white scenes were the parts where Leonardo was in his room and talking on the phone about Sammy Jenkins. I thought that those were actually the most important parts because Leonardo was basically telling a story about himself. These scenes actually confused me because I wasn’t quite sure why Sammy Jenkins was so important until the end and the film had a lot of close-ups on his “remember Sammy Jenkins” tattoo. It seemed that whenever the black and white scenes would play, it was during the time where Leonardo was trying to piece everything together. It was also a mystery when it came to the question, who was he exactly talking to on the phone? Was he actually talking to a police officer or was it “Teddy?”

I felt like this film was a giant circle of events, where it was almost like an illusion. I really appreciate the fact that the film started from the “end” and then ended with the “beginning” because it added to the suspense.I thought that it really played the concept of memory really well because it makes me question about reality and time. 

   Jorge Luis Borges - "Circular Ruins" & "The Library of Babel"

Circular Ruins

This talked about a man known as the “the taciturn man” who landed in a place of an abandoned temple. He had a purpose in which he wanted “to dream a man” and make him real. Labyrinthine was portrayed in his dreams where it was chaotic. It was also shown in the part where restlessness came upon him and started having problems with his dreams. It was a complicated process of dreaming and witnessing a man that he was dreaming where in the end, someone was actually dreaming of him. 

The Library of Babel

This talked about a library that is was labyrinthine in itself since it was made up various paths and rooms. There were thirty-two matching books on five shelves in each wall and the title of each book had nothing to do with what the book was about. It seemed that none of the books made any sense but people believed that there was at least something that explained the origin of the Library and the “human race.” This mission was a failure but the narrator seemed to think that there was a “total book” where that book explained all of the other books.

                           FINAL DOCUMENTARY (NAKED)

In this "fake documentary," my partner, Rhea and I decided to do it on the "Naked Epidemic" which is a virus that is inside the material of your clothes which can make your clothes disappear. We wanted the video to start off by documenting a person's daily routine in which later, finds her clothes missing in her closet. Then, we wanted film the point of view from the television in which we added clips of a surveillance camera video and the news report to make it seem as if it's playing on the television screen. We also added a clip of a fake scientist talking about this virus to add a realistic touch to the documentary. Overall, I think the final product came out pretty successful and I think all the hours spent on filming and editing definitely payed off. At first, I was really NOT looking forward to editing all the clips we had in two days, but I actually learned a lot of effects such as making the surveillance camera clip, doing the transitions and adding still pictures on to the screen. The final result was a combination of using Adobe Premiere and iMovie.