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.

                                      DOCUMENTARY IN PROGRESS 

                                               with partner, Rhea

                                            STORYBOARD

                                            DOCUMENTARY

                                                             Title: NAKED

1)Theme: There is a virus that is in the fabric material of clothes that actually eats up the clothes that can suddenly make a person go naked and can also make all the clothes in his or her closet disappear. This particular situation is called the "Naked Epidemic."
Perspective of theme:
Vision: Have clips of actual incidents happening, news reporters, witnesses, scientists and ultimately show that there's a way to kill the "Naked Epidemic."

2) Opening- Record a normal morning routine of a girl, then showing her opening up the closet and seeing that all her clothes are missing.
            -Have a news reporter talking about this virus
            -Have an actual incident where a person's clothes vanishes while walking on the street
            -Have a witness that saw the incident
            -Have a scientist telling the details of this virus and what they're working on to cure this.
     Ending- Have flashes of newspapers that talks about the "Naked Epidemic"

3) -Establishing shot of the city in the morning, the apartment and the room
    -Girl getting ready in the morning (shooting her bottom half only)
    -Girl calling her friend to tell her that her clothes are missing from her closet (shooting from the
     back)
    -Friend tells her about the virus and tells her to watch the news on tv
    -Close-up on tv
    -News reporter reporting live from the scene where a person't clothes disappeared while walking
    on the street (focus on face)
    -Show the clip of the incident as something from the surveillance camera
    -Shooting different angles as the news reporter and witness talks
    -Shooting different angles as the scientist talks.

                                Banksy's "Exit Through the Gift Shop"
 
Even though I'm not a big fan of watching documentaries, I thought that this documentary was actually very interesting because of the way it was filmed and how it almost had a suspenseful aspect to it. This documentary was made up of various short clips which I thought worked well together as a whole. In my opinion, I thought that a majority of the things which were shown in the video were pretty believable because of all the raw footages that Thierry Guetta filmed himself with his camcorder. There were a lot of personal videos included such as playing with his children and filming his wife talking about his work. The "shakiness" of the clips almost made me feel as if I was traveling with him through all the moments he filmed and I think that contributed to the fact it was believable. There were also clips of Theirry speaking in another language which makes the audience almost feel intimate in a way and letting them see how he lives. There were clips of interviews with other street artists such as Invader and Shepard but beyond that, there were actual films where Thierry filmed himself following the artists and traveling with them to see how they went about with their street art. Some of the clips almost looked as if it was part of a crime show where police actually showed up and also told Thierry to stop filming which made the documentary very realistic.

Although I thought that this documentary was very realistic, there were also some aspects that made it not too believable. The fact that Banksy's face wasn't shown and his voice was altered made it kind of unrealistic. Some of the music also didn't quite fit in with the clips because the genre would change and didn't go along to what the clip was trying trying to portray. It would switch from lively music to techno music which didn't match. Also, towards the end when the documentary fast forwarded 6 months, I found it not believable because it was very sudden and it seemed as if it was a random page that said "6 months later" was just put in between the clips.

I think the purpose of this video is to demonstrate the beauty of street art and show the extent that people will go to display their artworks. Even though street art is considered to be illegal, the only reason why people still do it is to get their work shown to the public and to inspire others. Like in the documentary, Shepard started to post his work that later became part of an iconic Obey icon. I feel that by watching this documentary, street art can incorporate very expressive work that portrays a side of the artist's personality.

                          SEQUENTIAL MOVEMENT (STOP MOTION)

                                                                                   Original Pictures

I was asked to choose a subject to study its movements and create an animation (stop motion) based on the subject using Adobe Premiere. Drawing is something that I'm not confident at all about so at first, I was very stressed out about this project. I wanted to choose a very simple movement and decided to draw the motions of a butterfly flying to a flower. Although in my head, I thought that this was going to be a fairly easy progress to draw a butterfly, but boy was I wrong. My teacher wanted the class to have 80-100 pictures of the movement and I was trying to see if I could figure out a way that wouldn't allow me to redraw a butterfly 80 times but I had no way out. The process was quite hard. Setting up the tripod was very time consuming, taking into consideration that it had to fit the drawing paper in the frame. This was a project that I had to do in one sitting, since it would be hard for me to do it on several sittings because the tripod couldn't be moved, and it would be hard to reposition it the same exact way it was before. I ended up having 60 pictures which I wished I had more but it just took up a lot of my time. In the end, I was very happy with the way the video came out because I played around with the effects in Adobe Premiere and decided to invert the colors to give it a cooler effect. I also learned how to put a title page and an ending page which added a nice touch to the final video!

                                                     GRAPHIC NOVEL

                                            Back Cover                                                       Front Cover

Inside Pages

                  

I particularly really enjoyed this project because it gave me a lot of freedom to do what I wanted to do such as the way I wanted to express my story and the positioning of everything on the pages. To be honest, Adobe InDesign is my least favorite program to use because I feel that it's very limited on the things you can do, but this project allowed me to appreciate InDesign a little more. For this novel, I wanted my concept to be dreams, and I wanted to portray them in a series of photographs. Also, there are sayings where bad dreams occur because it's a way of letting the brain release tension and fears. I wanted to represent that by showing pictures of the fear of becoming someone who I wasn't. The pictures include me sleeping in the beginning, dreaming of loneliness, suicide, depression and me waking up in the end. I chose the beginning and end pictures to be in color because it represented reality while the others were all in black and white. In some of the "dream" pictures, I overlapped pictures of me tossing and turning to show that I was dreaming. I wanted to let the pictures speak for itself which explains why there isn't any text and I chose for them to be displayed in fragments because it really accentuates the pieces of my dream. 

                                                   TIME LAPSE VIDEO

I was asked to capture something that involved a change in it through a series of continuous photos and make it into a video in Adobe Premiere, similar to a stop motion video. I decided to go to Rockefeller Center to capture people ice-skating a little before the sun set, and then after the sun sets. I arrived at around 4:30pm and stayed until about 6pm. It was extremely cold that day so it was really hard to stand and wait for the sun to set since I was basically almost frozen. (lol) In order to take these photos, I had a tripod, but something went wrong while I was trying to set it up because it didn't allow me to have the camera in one place and not let it move. That explains why the position of the photos are all kind of shifted in different ways. But other than that, I was quite happy with the result since it was interesting to see the various movements of the people and the transition from light to dark.

                                     SHORT TIME vs. LONG TIME

Materials: Bristol paper, Picture Frame, Leaves, Branches

For this project, I was supposed to juxtapose two elements that represented "long-term" and "short term." I was interested in typography so I decided to do something that was related to the change of language. I chose a slang word which was "rad," and that was considered something that was short term since it's a word that is rarely used now. I chose to use leaves and branches as my long term elements since they grow over a long period of time. I cut out a stencil of "rad" and decided to place the leaves and branches in a collage-like way. I found it interesting how I juxtaposed nature and language since branches/sticks were actually used to communicate back in the old times. At first, I wanted to put this in a picture frame because I thought it was aesthetically pleasing to the eye, but now, I think the frame gives off a nostalgic feeling since it's "capturing" a word that was once used quite often. I thought that this project was quite challenging at first because I was having trouble thinking about how to incorporate two different elements together, but in the long run, I thought that this turned out pretty successful. 

                                              TIME MAP

Materials: String, Foam Core, Tea Bags, Pictures

For this project, I was asked to take 20 digital photos of an action and use those photos to create something that shows time. I chose the action of making tea and I wanted to create something that was three-dimensional. To me, making tea is such a delicate act that I decided to portray time in a form of a wind chime. I decided to use actual teabags as chimes and put the photos on them.  I put the teabags in descending order so the highest teabag would be the first action and the eyes would follow from there all the way to the last teabag which would be the final action. Since the teabags are so light, they move in such a gentle way that relates to the action of making tea. Also, because tea is so oriental, I can imagine this "wind chime" to be hung in a quite place such as a tea ceremony place or maybe even a temple.