This American Life Audio Response

Here is a link to the Superpowers podcast, the 178th episode of This American Life from WBEZ. I listened to this radio snippet to get an idea of the realm of super powers, a large creative entity. This podcast puts the decision of your superpower into a conflicted perspective, seriously take a listen to at least the first act (first 20 minutes or so) in which John Hodgman conducts an informal survey on an age old supernatural ability decision.

Here's an mp3 of my thoughts on Flight vs. Invisibility, in it I also talk about my current favorite hero, Adrian Veidt from The Watchmen.

Adrian Veidt in the recent Watchmen feature film and in the comic series.

With a name like Adrian you can't go wrong, come on.

Hero vs Villain Animation

Here are the images of me and my partner's drawings and our animations for the Hero and Villain class assignment.

 

 And here is my animation below:

Here is James Watson's

"Tea Time Out" vs. "Trouble in the Kitchen"

This is a comparative reflection of two short videos I helped create, "Tea Time Out" and "Trouble in the Kitchen". If you haven't seen either of these videos, you should check them out in my previous blog post. Also, here are the links for Tea Time Out and Trouble in the Kitchen on Youtube.

 When we wrote up the scripts for the two videos, we had to abide by one guideline: they both had to be based from the same joke. So we had to decide on two different genres/approaches for our joke. What we came up with is two coming of age stories, one being set in the late 40's and one being modern day. We also used contrasting cinematography for each video to create a subtext for the approaches to this same joke.

The first big difference between the two videos cinematography-wise is the depth, or space, of the scenes. In "Tea Time Out", all of the shots done by Yuxi were intended to be up close and personal with Megan as the girl character to give an enclosed feel to the audience. It is supposed to make you feel like you are in this other world which Megan's mind is in when she has pretend tea parties. Also, all of the points of interest are within the boundaries of her "world" so that the audience doesn't realize they are in such a small box.

The next big difference between the videos is the element of movement. Although we were allowed no camera movements, even zoom, we were able to create dynamic movement between the two videos within the frames and sequences through object movement and point of interest. In "Trouble in the Kitchen", we even started the video with alternating points of interest in the establishing shot. The shot is divided up into four parts by the window frame, from which you focus on using the rule of thirds. Throughout the scenes, you can see how much more complex the movements are within the frames compared to "Tea Time Out". This are just two of the different focuses we had when producing these short films.

My Media 203 Video Joke Projects

I worked in a small group to complete two short videos based upon the same joke.

Tea Time Out

Trouble in the Kitchen

bon appetit!

Creative Design - Dead Space

This is my interpretation of the creative design that went into Dead Space the video game by EA games. I focus mostly on the lighting effects and the mood it sets.

Inglourious Basterds - Bar Scene

This is my interpretation of the cinematography in one of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite movies, Inglourious Basterds

Reimagining Visual Framing - Salvador Dali

You know, right before school started, during the summer of 09, someone had bought my mom a coffee table book as a gift. I can't remember the title or even what the cover looked like, but it was a large picture book containing the works of Salvador Dali. I would always flip through it when I was really bored, usually eating cereal, and thinking "What was this man smoking? How do you even start to imagine the concept of some of these paintings?" No, I didn't fall into an exploration of his paintings or even give it a second thought, but it's funny how right now, for homework, I get to spend some quality time with the main man Dali and dive, at least a smidgen, into his creative thought.

So check this out; we were given a few images from different artists as a starter log for our creative projects in my Media 203 class, and of course I've been really focusing on Dali's. I took this image from the group in particular...

What. The. Hell.

... because it's the most badass thing I've ever seen on canvas, and decided to crop out, or "Reframe" it into one particular section, (which could be a painting on its own, in my opinion) and ended up with this...

Again... wtf

... I used to think Salvador Dali was crazy, but looking at this 'reframe' we can clearly see the man's nuts. Okay but seriously, it's only a tiny portion of the insane world originally created, but it still holds some creative truths I'd like to explore.

First off, let's look at how Salvador makes use of depth cues in order to create this larger than life surreality in his paintings. From the original, we have a man in our most foreground, so we can imagine the size of the things going on around the portrait because we know how large a man should be, so we have a taste of distance judgment. We can't use the horse or elephants as reference points though, because even though we know the size of a normal horse and elephant, these aren't your average animals.

This is where Dali expresses his surreality best. If you take a close look, we can see other people deeper into the landscape. Two, maybe three other dudes freakin out waving more religious symbols. From that reference point, these elephants are just gigantic (and so awesome) and gives such a large power element to his work.

 This shot type is an extreme wide shot. He uses this wide scenario perspective to show the scale of the action and build intensity through the pure largeness of the animals.

Take another look at the rhythm of the painting, how you feel as you look from the left to the ride side of the canvas. You start small and weak, with a naked and malnourished man. Look at his arm, it's raised up at an angle towards the horse, but it's so significant his arm is raised on the right hand side, instead of mirrored, because as we read the picture from left to right, our vision steadily climbs upwards to the enormous surreal animals. A lot of power sits in the middle of the painting, where the animals touch the top of the canvas, and then slowly dies downwards towards the right side of the canvas. Wow.

Salvador Dali is not to be taken lightly, folks. Take another glance at his works and see what you can find out about this crazy man's creativity.