My third event I went to see Shepherd's Wind Ensemble concert. I have always been a big music fan since I played music for over ten years. This was a different type of concert where students got the chance to conduct the wind ensemble. This was a nice change to see and great for the students to gain experience.
The music selection was very interesting to see from every student. Each student got to choose a piece of music and rehearse it with the ensemble. There was a variety of songs; folk, classical, modern, fast, ballads, hymns, world music, chorales, and so on. There was at least one student from every section that conducted in front of the ensemble. I really enjoyed the whole concert and I had a few favorite pieces.
The first one I enjoyed was "On A Hymnsong of Philip Bliss" by David Holsinger. This piece is a hymn and it is one my favorites every time I hear it. It calms me down every time I hear and when the refrain comes in I always hear the words, it is well with my soul. The second was "Prelude and Fugue in g minor" by Johann Sebastian Bach. I'm always a big fan of Bach and when they first started playing this song, I thought I knew it. Then I looked at the program and saw it was by Bach and then it made sense. The third one was "Morning in Madrid" by Bill Calhoun. I never heard of this piece but the Spanish theme behind it was done really well. The conductor had spent a great time preparing the piece for the concert. I saw the way he conducted and how the ensemble responded to him, everybody enjoyed this piece. The last favorite piece from this concert was "Abram's Pursuit" by David Holsinger. Again you could tell the conductor and ensemble were playing the song at a high intensity. I was really impressed with this piece and give props to the ensemble for making this song sound awesome.
The whole concert was great and giving students the chance to conduct is an awesome step for their future. I'm definitely going to see more Wind Ensemble performances in the future.
With my second event, I went to see William Shakespeare's play "The Two Noble Kinsmen." I've been to operas, concerts, musicals and so on but never a play. This was a first for me and I was curious to see it, to be honest. It was very the program I received, it gave a little synopsis about the play and the story behind it.
I'll give the short version of it, two cousins (Palamon and Arcite) get sent to jail as prisoners of war. They both see Emilia, whose beauty is beyond what they have ever encounter in their lives. They both ended up getting out of jail, Palamon by escaping and Arcite by an exile of the kingdom. They both end up fighting for her hand in marriage and Arcite wins the fight. Palamon is about to be put to death before the news of Arcite; he has been killed by a horse that fell on him. Palamon takes Emilia's hand in marriage and the story ends as so. Emilia is the sister of the king and always has an attitude with him. Emilia doesn't want to marry either of the two cousins, but is forced to marry one. This play consists of comedy, tragedy, and of course the Renascence time.
I really enjoyed the play and it was nice to see a Shakespeare's play that I'm not familiar with. Everyone knows "Hamlet" and "Romeo and Juliet" but maybe not this one. At first it was hard to follow along with the story, because of the old English talk. After a while, I got used to it and just enjoyed the play. I might be interested to see another one. The only thing I would possibly be a critic of is the music and sound effects. I felt if they are going to use it, then they better make sure that it's really good. I know how it is to rehearse something like this and get it ready to performance status. It's not easy and it's why I admire everyone that played part in it.
The next event is something that I'm more familiar with, a concert from the Shepherd Wind Ensemble...
With my cultural events, I decided to attend different types of events and explore new things. The first one is normal to me, but I felt I could relate the film to my project. This past weekend, I went to the theaters to see the new Bond movie SKY FALL. My film is based on this character which he thinks he is a detective so I thought why not.
The Bond series has been going for so long, that it's impressive how they managed to keep it going. I really enjoyed this movie and two things stand out about it. This film seemed darker and kept me very attentive throughout the film. This is the first time where I saw Bond seem old or even vulnerable. It wasn't the Bond that we come to known over the years. Even a little more realistic in some cases, I almost thought that he could die. It didn't happen though, it would've been a short film if he did die.
A few key things I noted from the film; music, good vs bad, scenes. All the norms that come in spy/detective movies I saw in this film. It was really excited to compare my film with this one and see all the norms I put a twist on. I switched the music for the protagonist and his fellow opposite. Made a simple situation into a serious situation, but all as a perception. The use of objects to represent past events, in SKY FALL they brought back an old Bond car from the Gold finger movie.
It was definitely a different type of James Bond, but it was very well done. The next event I did was a play from the Shakespeare's time......
After my presentation on Monday, I have a better idea of what I can fix to make my film better. My director and me took some time to watch my film and talk about. I explained a few things I didn't like and wanted to change. He gave me a few ideas of different types of transitions I can use to make the film move smoother. So I'll probably take the next two weeks to edit and be really picking and nit picking. That's my plan for the next two weeks.
Now that this part is done, I'll start preparing for my presentation board. As I start brainstorming for what I want on it, I think I want to show my process in making this film. Show different steps I took for the completion of this film. Another part I would discuss about is probably my motivation for this film and why on this topic. The genre of parody and what I wanted to experiment with this film. I have a list of what I want to be tangible at my presentation; script, screen shots, film, props from film. These are just a few ideas and I'll thinking of what I want.
As I continue to edit my film, I will also finish my press kit about the film and everybody that helped me out. It has been a fun adventure seeing this movie coming to end and getting feedback from a few people already. Now back to work........
Every comic has their own unique style of framing with the story. 300 and Essex County are prime examples of using different types of framing. Each comic has their own style and keep it consistent throughout the comic.
The first one I'll talk about is 300 and how they wanted to give this big interpretation towards you. A lot of the pages would be one frame but gives this massive feeling behind too. I felt that they did this to really show the brutality and manliness of the Spartans. Down below is an example of one of these massive frames.
This isn't a fight scene but I thought it was an interesting page anyway. When you first look at it, there is a lot of dialogue between the characters throughout the page. Your eyes are moving from the top of the page towards the bottom of it. Then there is a separate frame to the left of the page that reminds me of an old comic strip. This frame gave us a reminder of how disciplined the Spartans were and how brutal they treat each other. The one thing I love about this page is that its an aerial shot and we're seeing it from an angle above them.
The next book is Essex County and this is completely different style compared to 300. I felt these frames would be more logical to use in comics. Like every frame could speak for it self and you really didn't need much dialogue, which they did on occasions. Down below is an example.
Black and white color pages and pretty straight forward with the size of frames. Every frame is rectangle and everything fits nicely together. What I really enjoyed is how a small change in a frame could effect the mood in the story. There is two times that this happens on this page. The first is at top where the old man asks the boy why is he out alone. The boy stands there for a moment and answers back to him with the same question. The old man shakes his head in agreement, which would be the second. I felt with these frames they a lot simpler than those in 300 which seem to be in your face almost. Just my quick observation on these two comics......
Tomorrow is the day. This day has been creeping up on me all week long. It definitely was a busy week and I'm glad its over and done. I can easily say that it's been a fun adventure this past month making this movie. I'm thankful for everybody that helped me out and made this possible. I hope when they see this film, they can appreciate all the work we put in.
I did have a little scare while I was editing this past week. Somehow I manage to lose some of my audio and I had to replace it. It wasn't too big of a deal because, I had the original audio of the scene so I just had to put the audio back again. I can easily say that I spent about 25-30 hours just editing and tweaking my film this past week.
The only thing I didn't get done is a short flashback, so the film will be missing that. I will probably will get that scene done in the next couple of weeks. Other than that, I'm done with the film and I can't wait to show it tomorrow. The film now has a title, "Where's Haley?" I like it, so I'll stick with it. The only thing left to do is to unveil my film and get some reaction to it. I hope my professors can see all the work I put into it. Let Monday begin.............
As this is my last week before I get to show my work to professors, I can't wait to see my film in its final stages. I have everything I need for this week, the last scene I recorded Saturday and the music for it as well. This week will consist of me of doing lots of editing. I plan to do at least four days this week of editing and six to eight hours (each day) of devoted time to finish this project. I knew that editing would take some time and I made sure that I devoted enough time to get this project done.
I found it funny that I've been doing this project for over a month now and I haven't figured out a title for the film. Some ideas have gone through my head such as: Suits, Fine Vs Holmes, Black Panther but nothing I really like yet. This will be something I will think about this week and hopefully figure out as I'm editing. I do have one last scene to film this week and then I will have all the shots I want.
Music was probably the one thing that I really enjoyed recording, because I could be creative. Whatever sound I wanted to use, I could do it. I found myself actually creating a nice little song but I'm not sure if I can use it in the film yet. The music I will use in the film will all be composed by me. There is a mixture of the Jazz sound and Classical throughout the film. Some of it might sound like another song but it won't exactly resemble it.
It's been an awesome time working on this film and I appreciate everybody that has helped me out. They have been great to work with and been pretty patience with me with the time they sacrificed for the film. Now its time to finish this movie and see the end product.......
I have about two weeks until I get to show my film to my professors. I did have a little setback with one my scenes got erased on my camera, so I'll have to do it again. It's not too big of a problem to deal with it. I have only a couple more scenes to get done and I should be done filming. Everything I have done has been already edited, so all I have to do is plug the rest of it in. Like I promised last time I would have a little clip from the film. It is the opening of the film, its a temporary one and I might change it.
Now my original idea was to have a quick sunset then stop and rewind to the top. I would repeat this a couple of times until the talent found something he liked. I found that when I sped the footage to the duration I intended for, it would look very jumpy and not smooth. I'll still look into it and see what I can figure out. I have figured out what the music will be like for different parts of the film and I'll start to record it this week.
I found it very amusing that as I'm looking at my footage, I want to redo it. I feel that I could of done it in a different way or said a line better. Though I might be a little hard on myself, it might be a good attribute that I have. What I already plan to do is after I finish the film, I'm going to watch it a couple of times and critique it and figure out what I want different. The positive and negative things in the film. I'll look at the transition of shots and decide whether or not it makes sense. I've noticed a few things I want to change already, so I have an idea of what I can do. I feel you have to be very hard on yourself if you want the best to come out of you. That is how I see it and will progress with my film.
It's been a busy week and I still have a few things to do yet. I'm making good progress but no stopping now though...............
It's crazy to think that five weeks have gone by, and now the deadline is starting to creep up. I've been editing as I go along and I have at least five minutes of my film done but I have a long way to go. The toughest problem I've been faced with is finding time that suits the actors and actresses. It's been tricky but this week I should be able to get a good portion of my film done.
Some of the goals I want to get done this week are: at least five or maybe ten minutes more of film, start composing music and incorporating it in the film, and recording a voice-over for different parts of the film. These are some of the bigger things I want to accomplish. It's been a fun time, but its also been long days in the lab room.
Since I've been doing this film, I'm discovering things about myself that I didn't realize before. I have to become more of a leader and direct everyone in what they have to do. The first day was probably more nerve racking then this past week. Now I know what more preparation can do before shooting scenes. It makes it easier and everybody isn't trying to take control. There's one voice but I wouldn't be against hearing opinions though. I try to be compassionate but still putting my foot down when I decide on a certain aspect in the scene. I realized something else, my love for music. I always enjoyed playing trombone and I thought it would be neat to use it for the music in my film. So, its gonna be a little tricky trying to find which type of sound I want for different parts of the film. Another task for the week but one that I really enjoy doing.
This week will be a busy one and I need to get a lot done. Hopefully I'll have a little clip I can show next week to show some progress. So back to work then..........
This past week has been another productive one for my film. I've already started filming and had a fun time as well. It was definitely a different experience and I had to be on my toes.
If a shot I originally planned for wasn't the best option, I had to think fast of what the alternative shot I could use. The actors and actress I had, also had a great time. I wanted them to be relaxed and just have some fun with it. I noticed at first when we first started shooting, everybody seemed a little nervous. After a few minutes of filming, we settled down and start having fun. I would give them an idea of what I wanted to hear from them and they did a great job too. One thing that helped make things go smooth was the pre-planning of camera shots and where to place the camera. This made the shooting go by easy and everybody did their part. I also did a voice recording for a phone call during the film. The actor I had, did a great job of giving me the voice I imagined for this character and even did more then I anticipated. This was great for me, because I could get an idea of what to expect during the showdown near the end of the film. This showdown consists of the main character and his so called "rival." While filming some of the scenes, I've been changing the script if something didn't fit right.
This week I'll continue filming and doing some of the bigger scenes. As I go along, I'll start editing while filming. The next couple of weeks will be real busy for me, so I'll have plenty to do. Now to get back to work.........
In every comic we read, there are transitions between certain moments of any story. In Scott McCloud's book Understanding Comics, he talks about six different transitions. They are; moment to moment, action to action, subject to subject, scene to scene, aspect to aspect, and non-sequitur. Here are some examples:
Moment to moment- eyes open, eyes close
Action to action- baseball flying towards player, bats hit baseball
Subject to subject- runner gets to finish line, time watch stopped
Scene to scene- the beach, the city
Aspect to aspect- cigarettes and beer on a table, couple that is holding beer and cigarettes
Non-seuitur- two different frames that have no common area
Now the ones that are used more often in comics are action, subject, and scene. In Art Spiegelman graphic novel Maus, I've found three different transitions described by McCloud. One is on page 36, where the father and son are having a conversation, and the way the frames are set out it could either a moment to moment or action to action. On page 20, the girl is grabbing the man's foot as she doesn't want him to go. Then the next frame is him shutting the door, subject to subject. On page 22, is a moment to moment where the woman is changing her face expression in every frame. A scene to scene transition can be found on page 38, where one frame is showing people leaving the city and the other frame is soldiers going to war. Art seems to be using a lot of action, moment, and subjects to me. Which is common among most comics that are produced.
Learning about these transitions will help me decide which ones I can use for my comics. Definitely something I will look in a different way when reading comics.......
Every week brings a new challenge to face and a solution that needs to be solved. The one problem I'm facing this week is a conflict of schedules among the members in the film. Some people are good on Thursday and some on Friday. So I'll have to find a happy medium with everybody helping out. I have finished the script and I have been revising it a lot in the last couple of days. I want to start filming this week if I feel its strong enough for it. I'll have to run it by my teacher and see if I need anything else done with the script. Some objectives I want to do this week; finalize script, actors/actresses, shot selections within scenes, and begin filming. My research has come along a lot faster this week.
When people think of parodies, it’s sometimes viewed
not as a serious film; when in fact it should be appreciated. Most genres go through four stages in their
life span; experimental, classic, refinement and finally baroque. The baroque
stage is where the style of parody comes in. It’s almost a rebirth of whatever
genre is being explored. Either the genre is; horror, science fiction,
westerns, action-adventure, and etc. The genre I will explore is the detective
movies with a splash of adventure. This
is what I’ll implicate in my film. One of the books I read, Film Parody by Dan Harris, described
different techniques for parody films. The first one is called reiteration,
where you establish the connection for a certain genre. Examples would be using
horses for a western or a held hand camera for a documentary. The second is inversion, where the use of irony is used to flip situations on its head. The third is misdirection, where an example from "Scary Movie" the man talks about how his wife can't get pregnant and neither can he. The fourth is literalization, where they actually mean what they say. The example they use is from "Robin Hood Men in Tights" when Robin yells out to the crowd "lend me you ears" then they throw their ears to him. The fifth is extraneous inclusion, where adding doorbells on a teepee or pink slippers on a gangster. The last one is exaggeration, where a situation can be taken to the extreme. An extreme bomb from a toy box or a car that rolls and rolls still it stops and explodes. I plan to use a little of every technique in the film and make the film better.
As the weeks go by, I can't wait to see this come all together and see the end product. Another week of the film to be......................................
As I continue my progress with my short film, I will begin with my research on the genre of parody. Hopefully the library will have the books I ordered so I can get more into depth of it. Once I get my books, I'll incorporate some of the ideas I'd gained from my research and exploit them in my film. That's the plan for this week, also I already started writing the script for the film and plan to be done with it this week.
I plan to watch other films that use parody in their films, as well as detective films to see what I can use for mine. One film that comes in mind is the Pink Panther with Peter Sellers. I found this film to very funny and I could easily incorporate some ideas into my film. I find myself watching a lot films and just a lot planning of what I want to in-vision. SO A LOT OF PRE-PRODUCTION IN OTHER WORDS.
I also been able to already get some actors and crew members to help me out. I just need to find some female actresses, some said they would be interested but I need to confirm. I'm really trying to find people that fits the characters I see in my film. Sometimes I notice how they act and think, "hey they would be perfect." It's a work in progress, but it'll be worth it in the end I believe..........
As I read more and more of Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, it was interesting to see how some comics are made different to others. One fact that Scott wanted to emphasize was the idea of seeing a face. Our minds is such a great tool, that when we see two dots and a line the first thing we see is a face.I find that crazy that we can think of that so fast, but Scott refers to this as a way that we are a self-centered race. We see ourselves in so many inanimate objects and sometimes we don't even know about it. One example he uses is when we drive our cars, if somebody hits a car we would say "he hit me." Not that "his car hit my car," we take the role of the car being an extended part of our own body. Even the design of the car is a face, two headlights and a bumper. This is just one example of how we see faces in everything in our life.
Another part Scott talked about is the simplistic drawing of characters compared to the background. The example I will use is from Maus by Art Spiegelman. Most of the characters are mouses and very simple with two dots for eyes, a distinguish nose and we can fill out the rest the face. The background is still very simple but has more detail in them compared to the characters. I did like one use of framing in the story, when two of the characters were going to two different places, it was very well designed. They had two frames that showed the action going in two different directions by putting the dialogue at opposite ends of each frames. These are just a few examples I found in this story.
After reading the comic from Scott McCloud, I definitely will look at comics in a different way. Most likely I will read more comics just to get a better idea of what I want to do for my comic that I'll make So let's see what happens.....
As this being my last semester in school, I definitely wanted to do something fun for my capstone. I've been back and forth about if I wanted a short film or a graphic novel. I finally decided that I'm going to do a short film about this young guy who acts like he's a spy/detective. The film is going to be a comedy/spoof kind of deal. This main character always acts like this spy/detective on the weekends and his friend is always in the middle of it. The main character's name is Jimmy and somehow always takes situations to the max. In this film, he gets news that one of his friends has been missing. He believes that his friend is in great danger, but his best friend, Joe, tells him its probably not that serious. It starts from there and Jimmy's spy/detective mode turns on for the weekend. I'm still in the early stages of the film, but I have a good feeling that I can make it work.
Some things I'm going to research is other detective/spy movies and see what I can use for my movie. What norms are used in most of these movies and what are realistic for me to use? This will be an important question for me pushing forward. Pretty much a lot of movie watching and reading articles on this topic. I've seen some consistent actions in these movies, I'll put a little twist on my film to make a change.
This will be an interesting semester for me. I have a lot of things to plan out and people to help me out with this film. I know that I have a few people that can help me out already, so the only thing I need to do is keep creating the story. Let the fun begin........................
In our studio production class, our
group did the program 1 about conservations and how the guests viewed
them. The program itself flowed very
smoothly from one person speaking to the next guest speaking. All three guests
seemed to connect with each other about the topic and could respond very easy
to each question asked. There were a few
things that I noticed that were great during the shoot and some that weren’t.
A few examples of what I thought
were excellent during the program. The first were the guests we had for the
topic of the day. We had two park rangers and the last guest had great
experience in this field of work. This to me was great because everybody had
their own view of it, but felt the same about conservations in general. It
wasn’t a monotone program, where everybody said the same thing with a twist on
it. Everybody contributed their input and made the program great. Another thing
I enjoyed was the extra use of a camera. We had our two main cameras, but also
another camera for close-ups on each guest. This was a great tool in our
arsenal for editing, if we want the picture focused on the guest who is
speaking. The last thing that went well was our group in general. We planned out everything that needed to be
done before the day of shooting. Who the guests were? Who is doing what role in
the studio? Who the host will be? and so on. The program itself was great and
the end project should be a very professional looking program.
Also there are the things that I
didn’t like from the program itself, not many though. The main thing that
bugged me was that the chairs were on wheels so the guests would be rocking
back and forth a good portion of the time. I knew that this would happen
because; people will get uncomfortable so they find anyway to feel more at home
in this situation. That is something that I will remember for future references
either in the studio or when making short films. The topic itself wasn’t
something I’m familiar with, so it would be nice to do a program, which I’m
more familiar with. I know that in the future this will happen so I will have
to make the best of it. Other than that
not much things I didn’t enjoy from doing this program.
This program was a very fun and
different from topics that I’m familiar with. I did enjoy doing camera work and
also some editing for practice that I will gladly accept anytime I get a
chance. This studio production class has been great this semester and I will
take all the knowledge from this class for my future career.
With our final production, our group decided on the topic of conservations. We had five people in our group, with one of us playing the role as the host, three of us on cameras, and last one as the technical director. My part in the production was to operate one of the cameras. Before we started shooting, we set up the cameras to give us the best shots possible. Some of the things included, white balance, focal length, and the fixation in the background. (so our talent does not look like they are floating into space) When we finish those steps, I would test some the shots to see how they look and get an idea of what to expect. Examples would be, a two shot right, or three shot right, and even an establishing shot that shows all four people. Once we finished with that, then our director decided on which shot she wanted to use first. The first shot would be an establishing shot on my camera. As the show begins, I did find myself to get better with the camera.
As the show proceeded, for the most part all the directions from the technical director were straight forward and made my job a little easier. Only a few times where I had to get the shot more quickly because the camera that was being recorded had no one speaking. I did enjoy the environment though, the feeling to be alert and ready when my camera needed a different shot. On set we had one host and three guests, so most of my shots were two shots and three shots. Not as many closeups I thought I would be needed for. Otherwise I felt more confident as the show progress and got different types of shots. Mainly this was my job while we produced the show.
In the post production stage, we will be editing our footage from the studio as well as footage from a third and fourth camera from our group. We decided to put all the footage on my external hard drive so it will be easy to edit everything at once. All next week we will be doing this so we will be done by finals week. This production group worked really well with each other and made the environment relaxed. This class has been a great learning experience for being the guinea pigs of the studio. I'm still learning about the studio world but I feel that I'm on the right track.
In our studio production class,
we’ve just finished recording our writing center shoot. We did two days of
shooting and the second day has better footage to choose from. I feel that I
gained more experience and the class is getting more comfortable with every day
we are in the studio.
My role
that I played in was setting up the camera, lighting, and recording. The camera
we did alternative shots to see which angle we liked the best. We did decide to
use one camera only and focus right on the talent. While working with the
camera, the lights were being tested as well. We notice there were some shadows
on some of the talents faces, so we adjusted the fill light and back light to
get the look we wanted. I was the test subject while changing the light; I just
helped out by sitting where the talent would be. The last part I helped out in
was the recording in the control room. We had to adjust the volume to zero out
the footage to be recorded on the normal and HD, which we recorded in HD. After
that I put in the tape in to record and hit record. We just let the tape
rolling so we wouldn’t have to worry about timing issues.
When we
were shooting for the real, I notice that the talent would raise their voice
and sounded completely different. I felt that their practice with the script
was a lot calmer and relax. That is another reason why we just let the tape
rolling. One point that was a major difference between day one and two was the
body position of each talent. The first day the talents were looking away from
the camera and it wasn’t the best. We set up a board with the script on it so
they can read it; we changed that the second day. We had another person sit
next to the camera and give the talent the lines of the script. The shots were
better when we switched to this view instead of the first day. Sometimes the
talent would not look into the camera directly, but it was still good work for
not being professionals.
This class
for studio production has gone really well and everybody gets along with each
other pretty smoothly. I feel if we continue to work hard in this class we will
produce some great work. I believe we can give a genre of shows from topics, to
game shows, and even some SNL. We have the people and everybody really enjoys
this class. This is probably one of my favorite classes since being here at
Shepherd. Let’s continue on this path…
When I watched the video on persuaders, I had this thought
that stuck with me the most, are we the REAL persuaders? Not the people that
sell us our vehicles, clothing, food, and so on. I mean the average person that
buy products on a daily basis.
The more I watch the video, the more this question came back
to my thoughts. We get bombarded with advertisement everyday, while at work,
school, social life, or whatever you’re doing in a daily basis. The real
question comes in and it is, do we persuade ourselves into buying products we
own? How many times have we gone out shopping for a new pair of shoes and say,
“well, I don’t need it but I want it.” The end process of that is to buy the
pair of shoes and wear it maybe fives times in a month. This is just an example
but think to your own lives and think of something you bought, that you really
didn’t need. I feel that our society is more materialized then it needs to be.
We want the best car, house, pet, job, and whatever else there is. We persuade
ourselves into those things, even though we don’t need all the things we buy.
Advertisements have influence in our lives since there is so
much of it. Though there is one person who does the majority of the persuading,
and that is our self….
If I were doing the shoot, I would use the idea we have now
but tweak it. The advertisement would consist of two people talking about the
writing center. Both of them would be college age kids, one playing the role
that has been to the writing center and other one that is new to this school.
The camera shots I would use would be the upper portion of
the body, meaning the arms, chest, and head will be seen. The easiest way to do
it is for the talent to memorize the lines, if not we can take two different
shots for each person. Both cameras would be used; each one would be focused on
one person. The scene would look like one person would be talking to the right
and then the other person would be facing the left. I want to show the body emotion
for each person to get the fullness of how the writing center feels for him or
her. The ideal finish project would be a conversation between the two people
back and forth. Other things I would want to include is live footage of the
writing center, where it is and tutors at work with students. I feel if people
see students working with their tutors, they will feel a connection. The
biggest thing is to show that the writing center is a great place to be and a
fun environment to learn.
This is my basic idea for the writing shoot and maybe we can
adapt it to the one we will do. Let’s see what happens…
While experiencing the studio life for the first time is a
great experience. We had the opportunity to try different roles such as:
director, camera, audio, talent and the list continues. The one role that I
personally enjoyed the most was working with the camera.
While working as the cameraman, my role was to create shots
for the director to choose and use for the program. Some of the things I had to
do before the show started was to do white balance on the camera and focal
length as well. With white balance, we have to set the camera to let it know
what the color white is in the room. After the lights are set up, we would use
a white sheet of paper for the camera to zoom in on and go to our menu screen
on the camera to find the white balance function. Set the white balance and
then move onto the focal length, which we pick an individual and zoom in all
the way. Then adjust the focus with the knob near the front of the camera till
the picture is clear.
While we were shooting the show, the director will tell us
what shot they would like to see. Some examples would be shots of two people, a
three shot of everybody and a one shot of the host. I really enjoyed the
ability to create shots and watch everything progress well and then watch in
postproduction the finished project. That to me is an awesome feeling of
accomplishment. I notice some things I can learn from too, one is the position
of the camera. I felt the camera was too close to the talent and kept me
restricted from all the shots I was capable of doing. Now I know for next time
to bring back the camera to make the shots look better. Another thing I can do
better is practice some shots before we start recording, so I can get a sense
of what shots I can provide for the director. These are a few things I can work
on next we do some recording.
The more I’m in the studio; I enjoy it more every time I’m
in there. Other roles were also good experiences but I enjoyed the camera role
the most. I don’t know what’s about it, but I love the freedom to create shots
and produce great material.
One of my favorite commercials from this past Super Bowl has
to be the Doritos ad of the cat-killing dog. It used different styles to catch
your attention. The ad used humor, animals, and music.
A man is seen working outside in his yard and notices a dog
burying something. He notices a tag that belonged to his cat, but the dog is
right there to bribe him with the note saying, “you didn’t see nuthin.” I found
it funny that the guy goes along with it, even when the wife asks if he’s seen
the cat he still denies it. The music for me sets the mood of something devious
that is happening. The cover up of the cat’s body by the dog and the guy denying
what he saw. I felt the ad is memorable
and kept the Doritos product visible in most of the commercial.
This commercial I will remember for a while, will I buy
Doritos though. Probably not, but they still get their name out to the public.
When reading a short article about The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life by Erving Goffman, I felt
there was some similarity towards the Codes on Gender video we watched. One
piece that stood out was the roles for characters vs people in the everyday
life.
One example is the military man; he is supposed to be the
strong and show no weakness towards others. Then in another case a veteran can
be diagnosed with chronic disease and shows emotions and a sense of
hopelessness. The first example is something we expect that the young man is strong and independent but the veteran is a different manner with more emotions. What if we switched the situation and made the young man weak and veteran strong. Would we put them in different groups and be harsh on them saying they are not living the role they should be. In the theaters, the actors portray what everyday life is, our
roles for different people either male or female or age. I get a sense that
sometimes we can relate to actors or actresses, thinking that could be us in
that situation. I wonder if we try to push these roles on society too much or
we just accept them.
This article does show resemblance to the Codes of Gender,
but I feel that the times are changing. The old phrase of “sex sells” is still working, but I feel that
we trying to move away slowly from it. Even this past weekend in the Super
Bowl, I watched the commercials and a majority of them had more humor. There
were a few sex appeals commercials but not many. I feel that a change is coming
and coming soon….
Watching Hamilton Hamish working on multi-camera events and actually working on a show are different. Watching Hamish you can see the passion he has for his work and enjoys doing it. In reality, you never know what something feels like until you experience it. When we started to produce shows in the studio, I enjoyed the environment I was in. Everybody wanted to be part of it, even though we are still in the testing stages of the show. Every time we have more practice it becomes a little more easy, though I still want to do more in the studio, so hopefully I can. Hamish made it look easy but I feel it can be the same with us, once we have more practice with the studio. I hope we can produce some great shows and I can learn as much as possible while we are working on our shows. Now all there is left to do is start working hard, let's go.
We see ads every day in our lives, either through TV, billboards, magazines, clothes, and the list goes on. In the past, there has been a major separation between women in ads and men being in them. Is this an effect from our society and how we treat the other sex? Maybe we are so used to it, that we try to avoid it all together. Do the ads we see every day have an effect on us and how we live? To a degree we can say yes.
Most of the ads we see are with the ideal people we want to be. The women are young, fit, great eyes, beautiful glowing hair, and etc. The men are young, very well fit, six pack abs with every guy, and etc. As we see, these people are the standards for what our society is. When I watched two videos on advertising with Sut Jhaly on The Codes on Gender and Jean Kilbourne on Killing Us Softly 4, I found myself more informed about how advertising is really portrayed.
The first thing that has to be noticed is that sex and gender are two different things. Sex deals with biological differences, while gender deals with cultural and physical differences. As Erving Goffman's explains in his book about gender, that there are really two different sides, masculinity and femininity. With these two sides of masculinity and femininity, these two determines who is male and female in the cultural aspect. It is expected that we know our roles as men and women, this is known as gender display. The men are strong, confident, not shy, attackers, while the women are emotional, sensitive, sexual (innocent though) and fragile. These few examples determines who is masculine and feminine in the culture.
With Jean Kilbourne's video, I felt that it wasn't about how we are portrayed in the ads, but how we look. The women in the examples she showed were very skinny, and for me some were too skinny like to the bone almost. I understand if women and men want to stay in shape, but I feel there is a limitation to that. When you are under the weight your body should be, then there is a problem. I feel that sometimes we as a society judge ourselves to harshly. "If you're not skinny, then you're not beautiful." I find this a load of garbage in my opinion. Everybody will have their own unique features on their bodies, that makes us different. For me, I could care less what ads want me to be. I'm not going to be like, "oh look this guy has a beautiful girl in his arms, I need to look like him." No, I don't. One reason is that in the video Killing Us Softly 4, Kilbourne showed that ads are usually photo shop to get the ideal person. When I saw that, now I really don't care about the ads, because they're fake. Ads will still have an effect on people, sometimes good or bad.
The ad of the woman who is dirty and the sign wash me on her stomach is an example of what our society is. This is an ad for Axe body wash. I see examples from both videos, that supports their concepts. With Kilbourne, she states that many times the ads will show parts of a woman's body. Here we can see the head is not in the ad, just the body. Jhaly states that many times the woman is not in a vertical position, always twisted. Here we see the woman is bending her body at the hip, the knee is bent, the arms are twisted as well. In this ad, even though we can't see her face we probably can still say that she is young, fit, and beautiful most likely.
I chose another ad because I thought it was a little different, but still similar though. This ad shows a woman's body but we do see a part of her face. The ad is for Ralph Lauren polo t-shirts. The woman has a little more power with her hands in the pockets. This is different, we usually see this with men in ads. Her body is twisted like the previous ad is, so that's why I said it was similar. Again even though we can't see her face fully, we can assume that she is young, fit and etc.
The ads we see now are slowly breaking away from the norm, but not by much. Ads are going to be an influential force in our lives, until we do something to change it then it will only continue its same course. When we look at ads do we see people who we want to be, or do we realize that they don't really look like that in real life? Just in the ads.....
For my analysis of the Doritos Ad breaks down into three parts.
1-the basic idea of it
2-the Advertisement purpose towards the audience
3-cultural purpose
The basic idea of the commercial is one man's mission to get Doritos, while the other man didn't get his promotion. Very easy to read. The Advertiser's purpose might be towards the working class men. We see an office with working men and everybody is dressed in suits. We don't see any women, so maybe this ad isn't towards women but other commercials from Doritos might be. Another aspect could be to show how much easier it is to get Doritos then a promotion. The cultural side would be the middle class working men. Showing how life is easy in some aspects and harder in others. Men is the dominant force in this commercial, as they are no women at all. Just a short analysis of this commercial.
One of the commercials from Super Bowl XLIII was the Free Doritos Ad. I felt that this was very funny and short and to the point. I've seen many commercials for Doritos, and can I say that they lack interest compared to this one.
In this commercial two co-workers are talking amongst each other and one of them has a magic globe. He asks his globe if there will be free Doritos today, and then turns around throws the ball to the snack machine and breaks the glass. The man then says, “I think that's a yes.” Towards the end, the other co-worker tries the same thing for a promotion, but he hits somebody in the groin instead. The man that gets hit is supposedly the boss, so that wasn't good at all. The first co-worker comes back in and says, “I don't think that will happen now.” These aren't exactly what he said, but they are pretty close though.
I think to myself that it can be easy to get some things in life (to a degree) like food, clothes, books, or whatever interests people. In the work life, a promotion is harder to get, you have to put in the time to receive such a reward. That stuck to me the most, not like the Doritos how he got it for free but how work is not easy and you can't just wish for things to happen. We have to work hard and show ambition to what we want. This could apply to anything in life; school, work, family, and friends. Anything we want in life we have to work for it and not just wish for it.
Hey this is just one man's opinion about a commercial for Doritos. Even though I don't eat Doritos that much, but I can still enjoy the commercial.
