I found one member of class particularly critical of the movie. It was an excercise. I think the music works perfectly; I don’t think it’s too dramatic for the action. I think we definitely could of used some close-ups of Alex in the beginning, but we didn’t have them so we worked with what we had. So in the end, I’m happy with the finished product and learned a lot in the whole process.
The group sat down and viewed all our footage in the lab, which was a good way to just see what we could use and remind ourselves of what exactly we had. We had trouble with the Log & Capture function and in the end, just had to Capture. This worked well for us and we labled each clip to use in the editing process.
We found we definitely needed more close-ups of Alex, from different angles, and kept searching all our clips looking for that footage. We also found that as we began to insert clips and play the sequence, we were laughing hysterically. This humor was welcomed in the process, and we were actually all quite pleased with this outcome.
I found Final Cut Pro pretty easy to work with, once we spent a few hours getting to know the environment and the commands. Editing, again was a long process, but very interesting for me at least, in working with this new way (for me) of telling a story. I have for so many years worked primarily with text, editing, paragraphs, cutting out lines, changing words, etc. So I found the whole process of editing visual media new and exciting. The only challenge was, I couldn’t conjure up some image of Alex to insert where we wanted, as I would be able to with words. And so we found Marianne was right, you can never have too much footage.
here’s the movie!
First of all, a huge thank you to Alex Kowal for so graciously accepting direction from 4 women in my kitchen for 5 hours on a Saturday.
Whew, I think I’m still recovering from the shoot! It was indeed, a lot of work and rather exhausting to be director, actress, and part of the production crew. Reflections:
Lighting: We used one tota (? is this what it’s called??) with a reflector and one small spot. For the initial shot, we also had some natural lighting from my kitchen window. It was difficult to adjust the lighting once it got dark. In some shots Alex was getting to washed out or would have disagreeable shadows cast upon his face.
Camera: Hye Jung and Yingxian mostly controlled the camera angles, with Cynthia and I making suggestions throughout the day. While I have a pretty good sized kitchen, it was sometimes hard to find the right place to fit the camera, in regards to the actors, the lights, and the windows, etc. We used the tripod the whole day–but I finally took it off to shoot some clips of the rose at the end.
Direction: For the most part, the group trusted me with direction; although, we had to work through some storyline issues at the start and decide to just start shooting. As we walked through each scene, both with Alex, and with the camera, everyone became more invested in the action and could offer directional tips.
Acting: Alex was fantastic! I have some experience in acting, but it was a very different feeling, after directing the shoot for hours, to change clothes and try to become Nancy. I found I was analyzing every movement I made and trying to remember when to put the keys down, when to look at Alex, should I sort the mail, all these questions kept coming up.
Overview: This was certainly a long process but it was a great way to become more familiar with the equipment and the set up of each shot. It would have been nice to have been able to take some breaks, as everyone felt the tediousness of it, the difficulty in 4 people trying to make decisions, and the time passing rapidly. I would definitely like to try again with a different subject.
Cynthia, Yingxian, and I met to decide upon a story for which we would then create storyboards, film, and edit. We all arrived with various ideas and discussed these at length. For some reason I really wanted to do some research and find a bee keeper who would let us set up a shoot in their bee garden. Cynthia really took to this idea and we discussed possible shots, etc. In the end, we thought this might be a bit much for this kind of excercise. We talked through Yingxian’s princess story and flipped through some storybooks which Cynthia brought to share. Cynthia thought we might take another look at some of our classmate’s 55-word stories, as well as our own. After reading through many of them, we decided to go with the one I wrote, thinking it was simple enough to make into a short film but had enough in it to play with the camera, angles of the shoot, composition, etc.
We met again, this time with Hye Jung to discuss each frame, close ups, medium shots, wide angles… and then compiled our small sketches for Hye Jung to work with. Here is the final product:
The Best Group Ever
Response to Reading: “Film Directing Shot by Shot” by Stephen Krantz, Chapter on storyboards
I don’t know if we needed to respond on our blog to this reading, but I found it to be a very intersting read. I never really thought about how storyboards are used for different films and how some directors stand by them throughout the filming.
This has been helpful as we begin to think of not only our storyboards, but what we’ll do when it comes to filming, how to move the plot along, and what helps define the overall mood of the film.
I wanted to upload the Quicktime file to YouTube and then post a link to our animation but I found the file is too big! I will post some stills later. Michaela and I worked together on this project and we made small figures out Play-Doh. We decided to use my digital camera for shooting, as the lab was closed at the time (Monday morning). This also allowed us to set up our scene on the large white box in the front lobby. I took the shots and “directed” the clay figures while Michaela set up each pose. We took multiple shots of each position. While it was nice to be in the lobby (as opposed the computer lab) for so many hours, we had a bit of trouble with the changing of light, which is evident in the balloon sequence. However the shadows and lighting in our last sequence proved to work well as the light falls dramatically on our main character, emphasizing that tragic sense of losing the balloon!
Lost Baloon: http://itp.nyu.edu/~kes363/CommLab/LOSTBALLOON.mov
Response to Reading: Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud
The wonderful thing about McCloud’s work is that he presents all these complex thoughts and ideas about how we perceive images–through the format of a comic, which in turn, demonstrates part of his objective here: to shed light on the effectiveness of a comic. We, the reader, become engrossed in cartoon Scott’s world and listen and see what he means in each point he makes. I found myself suddenly thinking in so many different ways of how to tell a story. And for me, this was invigorating, as I am in constant motion of developing my own writing and story-telling techniques. I’m not sure why I hadn’t looked to the comic before, as I often experiment with telling a story in “frames” or looking at both literal frames (like a doorframe) or figurative frames (like how one event might shape–frame–another). But now! With Scott (I think Scott is more appropriate here–he seems like a new friend) opening all these doors (here we are again at frames) now I’m thinking about different ways of using images as opposed to text to tell a story—or both!
“In an incomplete world, we must depend on closure for our very survival.” (p. 63)
Scott’s expressions of needing closure in each story are also important to examine. It seems there is little way around this: we must get from beginning, middle, and end–in each story, in each frame. We don’t necessarily need to know how we get there, just getting there feels like an accomplishment. I used to work with a girl who used to act as this unnecessary filler or “gutter” (p.66) of information. She seemed to think people couldn’t make those (what become, natural) leaps and was very happy to explain herself. This became terribly annoying and monotonous as the mind would leap ahead seamlessly, followed by this particular person verbalizing this excess information. It seems comic artists really have to consider when to jump ahead and trust the reader.
I can remember, as a kid, watching Japanese animated films and of course enjoying them, but at times feeling like I was missing something. The jump in frames didn’t always make sense. There was some sort of disconnect in the story–or so it felt. It’s interesting to see Scott’s review of differences in Western and Eastern comics and see that there indeed may be something “fundamental” (p. 80) in the differences in the way they are both conceived and perceived. This is fascinating to me, as I consider how Eastern readers might view Western comics. However, I’m sure there are many overlaps in style and as in literature, a sort of dance with form and style.
Thanks Marianne for this great read!
Here’s the comic which Sandra and I worked on together!
