Final Project: Photos

For my final project, I knew I wanted to shoot a photo essay since I really enjoyed doing it the first time around. I settled on centering my project around Thanksgiving since all nine of my cousins would be there as well as numerous aunts and uncles. This would give me a lot to work with.

Our Thanksgiving feast took place at night, so the lack of sunlight coming into the house didn’t do any favors for some of my photos. Some of the images came out too dark with the flash on, but when the flash was off it looked very washed out. The better images ended up being the ones in the dining room where there was more artificial lighting and I kept the flash on.

I began my photo set with a photo of my younger cousin, Marina, in the bathroom prepping for the dinner. Because the bathroom was very small, my best bet was to photograph her reflection from the mirror. You can still see her back, though, which I think turned out pretty cool. The photo has a sort of orange tint to it because of the low lighting and the color of the walls. I didn’t alter the photo in any way.

I tried to get as many photos of the food preparations as possible, but it was tricky since there was so much activity taking place in the kitchen! When I ended up taking a photo of the chicken being fried, my finger accidentally was over the flash so the image came out looking a little funky. I liked it, though, so with a few touch-ups (overlay layer), I included it in the set. Also, if you view the full sized image, you can see the oil in the pan boiling.

There are also a few more photos of my cousins playing with their Barbie toys and a portrait of another cousin. She was watching TV and didn’t know I was behind her so I took advantage of the opportunity and snapped a side view of her face. I also had to manipulate this photo, however, because the flash was turned off and the lighting was very soft. I did some contrast adjustment to her portrait. I also changed perspective with my younger cousins who were playing and shot they from above.

Overall, snapping some of these photos proved to be pretty tricky. I managed to avoid posed shots since I wanted a more candid and natural feel to the photos. However, everything was happening very fast. For example: the turkey being cut, the food being cooked, the food being served, and my cousin grabbing cookies from the tray. I made sure to tell everyone to ignore me and continue doing whatever they were doing!

The Street : Painting to Video Project

CLICK ME!! THE STREET : PAINTING TO FILM from Stephanie J on Vimeo.

The painting we chose to focus on is a piece of work by Balthus that visually illustrates a busy street in 1933. Our group chose to take elements of the painting and transform it into a modern day film. Focusing on the red ball that can be seen in the painting, our group developed a storyline according to the ball’s journey throughout Washington, D.C. in 2009.

Beginning on AU’s campus, the ball is being played with by a female student and suddenly develops a mind of its own. Bouncing away from the young girl, the ball hitches a ride on the AU bus, enters the Tenleytown metro station, and ends up in a park in Dupont Circle. The film follows the student’s adventure in catching the spunky red ball. As to illustrate the ball’s development of its own persona, we slowly but surely added human elements to the ball personifying it.

The student catches up to the ball in Dupont Circle where he is seen reading a newspaper and drinking a Starbucks coffee. As the girl goes to grab the ball, the ball jumps off the bench and listens to the trumpet player in the park. Quickly the ball jumps into the trumpet player’s instrument case where money has been collected; hiding from the student and successfully evading her attempts to find him. The student, frustrated, walks off while the red ball was right under her nose.

In an attempt to take various elements from the original painting, our group focused on the red ball, the scene of a busy street and overall an urban environment. The ball as the protagonist is given a personality and puts a light-hearted twist on the painting itself. Taking a small visual element from the painting and turning it into a larger story for our film. In an attempt to make our film maintain the themes within the original painting, we incorporated a religious passer-by, a young child in a stroller, and people engaging in an urban setting.

The music that backdrops the film is a song by Republica titled “Ready to Go” which was chosen due to its upbeat rhythm and fitting lyrics. We chose to fade out the music when the student arrives in front of the trumpet player to capture the essence of the street scene with a real-life soundtrack. We also thought the song being played by the trumpeter was of a fitting manner as well due to the melancholy nature of the song being played as the girl fades off into the distance.

We used a Panasonic Mini DV camera to film our project. While we would have changed a few elements that impaired our film, we are satisfied with its outcome. Lighting in the metro could have been better. Less camera shakiness could have been fixed with a tripod. Special effects like making the ball jump on its own would have been helpful. But we tried to work with our disadvantages through precise editing with iMovie.

As a whole, our film follows the storyline of a ball leaving its owner and the owner’s journey trying to get it back. We tried to do a light-hearted twist on the painting itself and incorporate various visual techniques to illustrate visually a literal story. Minor changes would have been made with better equipment, but overall we believe that our film tells a story from Point A to Point B successfully and entertainingly. We hope you enjoy!!!

Scavenger Hunt

To film our six shots, we worked in a space behind Kogod. We chose this space because of its versatility: there were steps, a garden, and a hill for high shots. So if we needed a simple background, we were covered and the same went for if we wanted something a bit more visually stimulating. We tried to vary the environment in each scene to the best of our ability using this space.

Commercial Review: Tiger Woods for Nike

It’s no secret that Tiger Woods is a pro golf player. In this commercial for Nike, he shows off his tricks a little more though.

The commercial is essentially 30 seconds of Tiger bouncing a golf ball on his club. It’s a little strange at first because with some funny-sounding music playing in the background. But the background is very vibrant and almost artificial to the point I want to say it was probably done on green screen. And no matter how much he’s moving the club around with the golf ball, Woods always manages to stay somewhat in the center of the screen.

As a commercial for Nike’s golf line, it works. It sends out a message to consumers that their products are used by Tiger Woods and he can do cool bouncing tricks and make great shots with one of their golf clubs.

Video: Lumiere Film Project

For this project, we decided to go with the simple concept of a girl walking out of class and finding a flower lying on the steps. She decides to do a traditional “He loves me, he loves me not” test with the flower petals. Satisfied with the result, she then leaves. Our first take was on one of the pathways near the Quad, however we decided to move since it was very busy and the space was pretty confined. So we moved to the side of Kogod where it was much more spacious and far less busy. Because there are no flowers near Kogod, we decided to pick the flowers before filming. This is also where the decision to leave the flower on the step came from. It also works to let the viewer use their imagination and pretend that someone left the flower there purposefully for the girl to find.

Music Video Review: All Around the World by ATC

The premise of this video isn’t quite clear. It’s a techno song, so there’s a lot of dancing taking place on a platform in a blue room, but there also seems to be a racing theme. Maybe to represent the “all around the world” theme of the song? In the blue-tinted room, the group is wearing red clothes so they can stick out more. The race car is also a bright yellow against a darker background.

The editing for this video is very fast and keeps up with the beat of the music. So while the group is dancing, we get different shots of their arms, torso, head, etc. Some zoomed in, some zoomed way out. It’s a pretty neat effect. There’s a lot of zooming in and out, and sometimes we see a race car speeding around a track. Once we zoom out, though, we see it’s only a toy car being controlled by the group.

Assignment: Self-Portraits

EYES
I decided to focus on just my eyes because they’re considered a rarity in my family (everyone else has brown eyes).
First, I did a bit of a color balance to clear up my skin and not have it look so yellowish. Then I duplicated the image and converted it to black and white with the ‘lighter’ preset. This allowed me to cut out my eyes with the magic wand and have the blue appear. I then did a Brightness/Contrast and Hue/Saturation filters on the bottom layer (which was still in color) so that my eyes could pop out a little more.

Necklace
I received this necklace a few years ago from my Great Aunt in Italy. The circular pendant is supposed to represent “Our Lady of Pompeii.” And the “S” is (obviously) my initial and comes from Venice, thanks to another Aunt. It’s extremely rare that I take this necklace off, hence why I consider it to be a self-portrait!
The first thing I did with this photo was to duplicate the layer. With this duplicated layer, I used the Artistic filter (texture/patchwork) which created some cool little squares. I set the opacity on this duplicated layer to Hard Light so the squares wouldn’t overtake the image. Then I changed the levels on the original, bottom layer.

Hand/Computer
This photo of my hand laying on the mouse and the computer in the background is representative of being a self-portrait because I write a lot and manage websites.
To get the photo to look this way, I used the brush strokes filter with accented edges and then did a Sepia Photo filter. This gave the photo a much more neutral color-style and almost looks like it was drawn and not photographed.

Movie Review: In Cold Blood

One of the things which makes In Cold Blood so effective as a movie are the parallels made between the Clutter family (victims) and Dick and Perry (murderers).

There are several instances throughout the movie when similar actions between these parties “overlap.” For example, when we see Nancy Clutter talking on the phone, the scene transitions to Perry making a phone call of his own. More parallels include:
- Mr. Clutter washing his face and cuts to Perry in a public restroom doing the same thing.
- When the maid asks about the whereabouts of a radio which used to be in Kenyon’s bedroom, the scene transitions to Perry listening to a news broadcast about the Clutter murder… on Kenyon’s radio.

Flashbacks are also used very effectively to give the viewer an understanding of Perry’s history. One of the first flashbacks is to explain how Perry became crippled – this was during a motorcycle accident. The flashback happens while Perry is in the car with Dick and is blinded by the lights from the other cars. It triggers a memory in his mind and the director brings the viewers into Perry’s mind. Perry also has a memory of his alcoholic mother, but this flashback is a little different because the shot is set up so Perry is observing the memory himself. He sees it from a third person point-of-view.

The full story of how the Clutters were murdered by Dick and Perry is also relived by Perry in flashback form to the police officers. It’s interesting that it’s done in this style because it is essentially what the whole story revolves around, and yet we don’t know everything until nearly the end of the movie.

Sounds and music also play an important role in In Cold Blood. Whenever the Clutter family is on screen, there is perfect little dainty music playing in the background to represent their “perfect” family status.
The screams from Nancy’s friend after she discovers the dead Clutters is then blended into other very loud noises: a train whizzing by through the town and sirens rushing to the Clutter house. It adds a real sense of urgency to the movie.

And lastly, for a bit of comedic irony, when in Vegas Dick tells Perry: “I feel real lucky tonight.” Then wouldn’t you know, right after he says that a cop car pulls up next to them and arrests Dick and Perry. Lucky, indeed.

Title Sequence: Hell’s Kitchen

I always thought this season’s opener for Hell’s Kitchen was pretty cool! It is a lot like a cartoon – everything in the video is animated except for the contestants. All the action in the sequence is also very continual. For example, we see one contestant (Tek) throwing tomatoes in one frame. In the next frame, the tomatoes are still mid-air and both knock down the standing displays where we are introduced to the next contestant (Dave). This continual method is used throughout the entire opening sequence.

Hell’s Kitchen received this title because apparently working for the mean Chef Ramsey is like being in hell. So the title sequence does its best to reflect such a nightmarish situation. The theme song is “Fire” by the Ohio Players and flames are used to frame the contestants names and ‘burn’ them out. There is also a strong presence of reds, blues, and gold used in the background animations and they are all also on the darker side.

Movie Poster Review: A Serious Man

A Serious Man is the latest film by the Coen brothers and will be released this Friday.

Without having looked at what the film was about, I think the poster represents the title of the film well because it is simple and “serious.” The colors are very subdued and almost has a tint of black and white to it (except for the sky).

The fact that the man is on the roof, though, with that particular pose is definitely a little strange, maybe even funny. Now looking the film up on IMDb, I see it is described as a “dark comedy” about a man searching for advice from three different rabbis because his life has recently been turned upside down by a bunch of different factors (wife leaves him, his brother moves in with him, a troubled son, the usual…).

There isn’t anything very funny about this poster, however, except for what I have mentioned above. The man’s pose on the roof could be symbolic: it may be representative of him observing everything that is going on in his life and the roof is the only place he can go to escape everybody and figure out what to do next.

Other interesting visual things to note is that the only clouds in the sky are directly behind the man, giving him a sort of frame. Also, the antenna on the roof is pointing directly at him, so it leads our eyes to the man since he is not featured prominently in the center of the poster.