COM110-Fundamentals of Video (HCC-Fall21)

 For this final project my video includes different shots to create a feeling. The shots aren't necessarily the main idea or suppose to be the ''center of attention.'' I included a poem that I had written earlier this year to try and make the point across. With this piece it could be classified as abstraction, each shot could literally could mean anything to the viewer or nothing at all. How is it associated with transformation? The world is changing around us and I feel the need to write about it or express how I feel about this ''transformation''. I feel that the world is going through a change. I think that sometimes we are all to preoccupied with our lives to actually sit down and think how abnormal a lot of things we see in the media are or the things that are going on in our society. We have people suffering all over the world, climate change etc. I've honestly have seen a downhill in my own community. It doesn't look the same or feel t...

Through this video, I plan to portray what I have felt throughout this past year. The overall thesis for this video is the idea of being lonely, but never truly alone. The video begins with me and my girlfriend drifting apart but our relationship never ends. I wanted to portray how it felt to go through the motions over an extended period of time while the relationship continued. I decided it would be pretty interesting to have shots of me sitting alone with different outfits blending together to portray how rapidly time passes when you are in this state of mind. As for the prompt of transformation, I want this video to have two of them. I want the first transformation the viewer sees to be us growing apart, and then I want the second transformation to be us moving back together. I wanted to continue down the road of abstract because it stuck with me, I really enjoy how playful you can be whilst also telling a serious story. That being said, I also want this project to be narrative bec...

 My project is titled Blue Room . I want this piece is to focus more on atmosphere and mood than on structured narrative. I'm planning on focusing particularly on themes of isolation, depression, and loneliness through lingering, claustrophobic shots of someone by themselves in a room. The shots will have a heavy blue tint to them. As the images continue, they will begin to blend together through different visual effects. To accompany this collage of images, a voice will tell a short, first person narrative story. The story itself is not directly connected to the images on screen, but will share the themes and feelings that are evoked by them. When the story ends, the shots will switch to much longer, more static shots of the sky. I want the images to contrast with the images from the room, mainly because they are so vast and open compared to the tight, intimate shots in the last section. There will also be no visual effects, motion, or narration, further separating them.  I w...

The overall concept for my final project is to sit down with one of my close friends and have a conversation about our different childhoods and talk how it may have affected how we see our futures. Another big topic I want to talk about is how the pandemic changed our outlook on life and how it affect our generation. When you think of this project as far as editing I don't plan of doing anything too crazy. I would like the video to speak for itself and not having to use too much special affects for the editing. The intention behind this piece is to start a conversation. One thing Professor Sapphire said when I was talking to him about this project is he would like to see how our generation is handling life durning/after the pandemic and how we think it will change our outlook on things. I feel like this generation tends to keep in a lot of things in fear that the older generation won't understand how we feel. By making this video I would like to give the older generation a litt...

  For the final project I'm going to create a collage style animation using premier. Essentially I'm going to find a bunch of image files I can edit and give them all moving parts. The animation will be about American politics, specifically more current stuff like Covid and the past couple elections. The general idea is to have a person floating past all sorts of different weird abstracted imagery that I can create through photoshop. It will be kinda like a music video or a visualizer as I intend to have some form of sound track accompany it although I still haven't decided exactly what yet. I think my goal is to create sort of a caricature of America and really abstract and extenuate some of the recent hot button issues in the news. I'm not sure if there's going to be an overarching message that I'm trying to get at, I think I just want to draw attention to the absurdity of it all by making it even more over the top.  I'm making this my final project for bo...

 I currently have no ideas for the abstraction project. It seems as if it might be a challenge for me. Even though I currently feel this way, many of these different videos were very inspiring and interesting to look at. The ''Pipiliotti Rist'' interview was very intriguing to watch. Some people would consider her quite odd or crazy. But, I find her admirable about how she describes her thought process and how passionate she is. She embodies abstraction not only through her art,  but through her  aesthetics , thoughts, the way she talks, the way she walk. She herself is ABSTRACTION and she is not afraid of that or to explore that. She is not afraid of what people who think she's odd because we are all odd and she understands that. I like that even though people would look at her videos and say that they are random but in fact they are quite intentional. Her explanation of one her pieces that ended up being in times square in 2000 makes sense to me. In the i...

 Abstraction art is something I find interesting because it’s not the traditional way of making art. Instead it kind of goes against the norm and forms it’s own category. Abstraction art focuses on how the consumer feels compared to how aesthetically pleasing it catches the eye. The Pipilotti Rist interview gives an amazing insight in how we should experience art by not only looking at it but interacting with it. I thought it was interesting how she chose to place her art. For example when she’s talking about one piece of art that is being projected on the floor. She says you have no choice but to walk over it, the piece is showing how watching and digesting what you see is linked together. Frames and Containers was an interesting way to how film makers used fit to there advantage. The video talked about how having the black spaces around the film makes you wonder what your missing out on. But film makers have managed to still use barriers by using physical barriers like doorways, ...

  Abstraction is such a wild and unpredictable mode of media and that’s why it has intrigued me so much. The idea of not having a set story but rather a set of emotions is really powerful and it feels more like art in the traditional sense. I enjoy how it focuses on the viewer’s emotion rather than their critical thinking. Having this allows the viewer to sit and gaze and most importantly feel. In the Pipolotti Rist interview, she explains how everyone is allowed to perceive things differently because there isn’t one way to interpret things. Rist experiments with how laying down and looking up at the art and being able to walk right through the art changes how individuals interpret the art. It is evident that abstraction can be heavily dependent on symbolism and this is a point that I think Rist nails. The segment of the imagery ingesting the view rather than the viewer ingesting the imagery really stuck out to me. The idea of having different frame sizes inside the “container” all...

      The  Pipilotti Rist interview was a fun watch, in particular I liked when she spoke about how the camera can provide a perspective of animals, children, and even rocks. It was interesting thinking about how if the camera was zoomed in on her hand it would seem like it was a kilometer long but if you zoom out and shoot her whole body from far away she would only be a little dot on the screen. It seems like Rist really enjoys breaking away from the conventional way of thinking when it comes to setting up her shots and creating her films. I also found the video of the girl trapped behind the screen really interesting, it's not super uncommon to see a filmmaker play with the frame of the scene their shooting, but having the actor press up against the screen like they're trying to escape the frame was a really cool concept that I haven't really seen that often, it definitely is creepy looking and implicates a breaking of the 4th wall as it directly addresses the con...

  I’m so excited for this project. I’m really fascinated by abstract and experimental film / video / multimedia work. Personally, I find myself more drawn to images and feelings than I am to narrative stories. I feel like traditional narratives don’t convey the real complexities and indescribable feelings and emotions of life. I really like the kind of technique used in both Camera, No Camera and Dog Star Man . Taking numerous different clips and images and combining them in a way that makes them start to blend together makes all of the images displayed take on a kind of combined meaning. They create a feeling that each individual image wouldn’t by themselves. I really like that most of the projects in this screening don’t really tell us how to feel or what to think of what we’re seeing. It’s so easy to just expect that from film or television because most things really do tell you what you’re supposed to be feeling in each scene. In that sense I think many films and TV shows are ...

When I was kid, I was a part of the "Big Brother/Big Sister Program" and I recall a weekend when my "Big Brother" took me to a renaissance fair that introduced me to many archaic games. The one that stuck out to me the most was a circular ring made of wood that you hit receptively with a stick to keep rolling. The first and last thing that came to my mind while watching this film was that one particular game. As cliche as it would be to mention the circle of life, I feel like this film represents just with an emphasis of a third world country in particular. The fact that only children are seen rolling the reel, represents a lifestyle being repetitively inherited by the next generation.  The use of film reel was crossing the bridge leading into music implied the segregation which was further emphasized in the time stamp more than half way through the clip.  The coloratura of sound between the natural background and the rolling of the reel implied the focus of the sto...

I noticed Alÿs choice in using a bunch of different shots to give a feel for what the kids see and the people around them. I think one shot that was interesting is when the camera is set up kind of in an alley looking out at the street. You see the first kid walk with the first roll of film then the second kid, then all kids that are running behind and last the man with all the balloons. I think it was a smart choice to keep the camera rolling instead of cutting because it’s something you don’t expect. I also found it interesting in the beginning of the film to not show the kid in the back because it tricked me into thinking this kid had a really long piece of never ending film.  I like the choice of not overlaying music and leaving the original sound. Something I noticed as the reel went on is that it is kinda showing the area in a unique way. We are seeing everything from the children's point of view. They make something that seems so small to us seem like so fun and enjoyable to...

       Movement is so central in this piece. There's constant movement. I think the continuity here relies on the fact Movement is so central in this piece. There's constant movement. I think the continuity here relies on the fact that there are two boys, connected by this roll of film between these two film reels. No matter where the boy in the front runs to, we know the other is not far behind. This lets Alys show the reel moving through various different environments without confusing us about where either of the boys are at that moment. Another aspect of the continuity is how when, for example, one boy is shown running along the screen to the right, the other boy is also filmed moving from that same direction. Whenever there's a switch in the direction or whenever they move down a different path, there's a shot showing this. Despite the crazy amount of different movements through a maze of alleyways, streets and crowds, we never feel lost. Alys also cho...

 Reel-Unreal was very interesting to watch. There were a variety of shots used, I noticed several wide shots showing both the kids playing with the reels, but also showing large portions of the landscapes and buildings surrounding them. There were also a couple first person handheld shots, one was through a dark building that the kids ran through, another was from the perspective of one of the children chasing behind them. There was also the occasional close up, like the first few shots of the film reels, or of the kids faces as they roll them. All of these shots seemed to serve as a way for the viewer to learn about the environment they are in, seeing it from these wide landscapes as an outsider, but also seeing it from the perspective of the people who live there (like the kids). I also noticed some tracking shots following along with the kids rolling the reels that are cut in between all of these shots to keep things moving. I think the continuity was also pretty consistent, all...

 Throughout the video, I see a lot of wide shots being used. The illusion of continuity is caused by the usage of  shots that are similar. I also, noticed that a lot of the shots have people moving in the same direction which is creating the effect that these are going on and on or are continuous. The usage of color is very natural, kind of bland. And only in a few shots you have something that has some sort of color that pops out for example there is a part where there is a man carrying balloons. When I seen this it made me think about how even in their circumstances there is ocasional ''brightness'' in the video that could symbolize the joy these people experience regardless of the chaos that is going around them. Even the joy of the children playing their simple game, running in the grimy, clay looking colored streets filled with trash shows how happiness can be found in even the worse condition or simplicity. In this video we get access to these kids everyday life a...

  Francis Alÿs uses many different shot types in his short film. He begins with wide shots to provide the setting for the viewer. He then moves to closeups, tracking, tilt, etc. Having these many types of shots gives the watcher different viewpoints and allows them to see more specific detail throughout the film. The illusion of continuity is conveyed through visuals but it is also conveyed through audio. The amount of daylight also helps aid the illusion of continuity, the span of the film is approximately 17 minutes and the sunlight does not change so the idea of the children running around for 17 minutes is not outlandish. Every shot throughout the film sounds basically the same so the use of parallel editing is not distracting. Because of the asynchronous sound, the viewer can easily recognize that every action is happening very close to each other. This effect allows the viewer to believe that even though the children are not on-screen rolling the film, they are still somewher...

Continuity is important because it makes the story linear and keeps the audience grounded. Dialogue is important because it helps gives the audience the background information about characters and what's going on in the story. With these two aspects of filmmaking it helps the filmmaker to make the viewer stay engaged and become encaptured in the filmmakers depiction of the world they are trying to create. In the video from Radiohead you can see this happening. It shows how impactful film is because you don't necessarily have to use dialogue in order to get your message across. I think what makes a good filmmaker is a person who is able to take that feeling of ''knowing '' or familiarity and expressing it in there shots. If you look at the Radiohead video, it feels as if things are intentional and not out of place just like some of the other clips. Good films and videos express a organized story. And with dialogue and continuity these are things that help a story...

I never realized how much the camera was narrating with the selection of shots and angles. Furthermore, I've just come to realize how desensitized I am to it. I've come to rely on the script and action sequences and now realize how much I'm taking for granted. It's cool to learn about all these camera effects and see clips from movies I've seen before in a different light now. I like the consistency in framing that the Coen brothers used. I never noticed what the angle of a shot could do for the audience and how it could make you feel more present during a dialog. It's also very interesting how you can give information about a character whether they are the main character or a small role, based on what you see around them. Blocking was what I found the most fascinating. The subliminal messages with blocking is genius in my opinion. That whole scene was extremely boring to me until I finished watching the whole video explaining what blocking was. In the diner sce...

Attention to continuity in a film or video project is crucial in keeping the audience engaged. It keeps things moving and turns what would otherwise be just a collection of shots into a fluid sequence. When this is done well, the audience shouldn’t even think about it or notice it, they just focus on what’s happening on screen. After discussing some of the elements of continuity, it’s really hard not to notice them in everything now. Despite the unique styles of many different filmmakers, many of these rules of continuity are found in everything, at least in some form.  Something I noticed in some of the clips we watched was how many dialogue based scenes were cut to show the emotions of both people. Instead of just relying on what each person is saying to each other, we also see how each person reacts to what’s currently being said. While someone is talking, there is often a reaction shot of the person listening. This was particularly evident in The Royal Tenenbaums scene (althou...

  The looping of the running in the Monty Python scene adds a very comedic tone to the scene. It makes the viewer feel as if the character has such a far distance to travel and he will never make it to the guards. The Radiohead music video shows a very clear example of what continuity in film really is. At no point in the video does it feel awkward or forced, it feels like every door he walks in leads to the exact room he is entering. It was so well done that when he entered the hospital through one of the doors I double-took and thought how the hell did he end up here. The whole video kinda feels like a bad dream; like when will this end and when are things going to go back to normal. In the film Tenenbaums, your eyes are immediately drawn to the characters because the environment leads you straight towards them. The bridge’s railings act as barriers from the rest of the chaos that is going on in the streets. The blocking of the scene creates an easy atmosphere for the viewer to g...

After watching the videos it gave me more of a clear vision on what we are supposed to be doing with this assignment. Something I find super fascinating in films is how every little thing counts as symbolism. In the video 'The Royal Tenenbaums Bridge Scene Analysis' the commentator brings up how the distance shown between Eli and Margot in how far they are standing from each other and the small gap in the railing show the distance in their relationship. This video/scene is a good example of showing continuity with the camera angle switching from Margot walking onto the bridge and then Eli walking towards her. There was also a good example of the 180 degree axis, when the two characters coming together in the Fram it's closer to Margot showing Eli. In class we talked about the Monty Python video and how it uses continuity as a comedic expression. I think it was clever because the whole time you're waiting for the person to get closer and right when you get used to the id...

      I found all the the clips very insightful to watch. This wasn't my first time viewing Storming the Castle as I'm a fairly avid fan of Monty Python, however, I feel like I appreciate this gag a little bit more now. Cutting back to the calm reactions of the guards while John Cleese seemingly isn't getting any closer built some comedic suspense which is immediately released when he just teleports up to them in the final shot.  Daydreaming was fun to watch, one thing in particular I noticed was how often two different shots are used to complete an action that Thom starts. So like if he reaches to open a door, the shot stops half way into that action and a new shot beings where he is opening a different door from the other side, completing the action of opening the door but also putting him in a new location. Usually, I've seen this type of shot used simply to enter one new location that makes sense for the character to have travelled to, so...

    I find it very interesting how many different styles of photography there are. I was completely oblivious to this not going to lie, I just kinda figured photography was photography. I didn't realize that there were so many different "movements" such as painting has had. Another new piece of information I encountered was how early cameras had a hard time capturing people because the shutter had to remain open for a longer period of time and people move too quickly to be captured. The image at the forefront of  Le Voyage dans la Lune intrigues me a lot and has gotten me interested in watching the film. In films, current and past, they have the power to fight for justice. In the notes, it is listed that films are activist tools. Creating culturally relevant films allows viewers to relate to the film and feel the film. It is clear to me that as technology evolves, films and their subject matter also evolve.

 Hi

Adam Torres Jr is 18 years old, loves his family, and wants to get into the film industry. Adam is unsure on what he wants to do in the film industry whether it’s being a director or producer, but he definitely wants to do something in that field. Other things he's interested in are video games and music. While Adam is in college majoring in Communication, Media & Theater Arts, he wants to also do something on the side like starting a YouTube channel. Just know that Adam can achieve anything he puts his mind to, and hopefully he knows that as well.

Hi everyone,  My name is Jack Liptak. I'm a Communications major going into my last semester here at HCC. I'm really passionate about all forms of media production, but especially video. I enjoy working on short video projects, as well as writing screenplays and short stories. I'm excited to see what kind of projects we'll be working on this semester. I do not have a tripod at the moment, so I'm going to be looking for one in the next few days. I will have one on Monday though!

 Hey, my name is Austin. This is my first time taking a course relating to videography/editing. I do have some experience editing, but it hasn't been with Adobe; when I edit I use Final Cut Pro. My hope for this class is to gain new skills that I can utilize in my life outside of the classroom. 

Welcome to our course blog! Let's start by testing it out. Please create a new post, title it in the "Title" section, say hello (hopes, fears, whatever you wish), and click "Publish" when you're finished. A thorough "Technical Information" document with procedures will be posted to Moodle as the semester begins. I'm excited to get started with you all!