Yaminie’s Underground blog

Mooshir made a prototype with his servo motors.It’s basically made of 2 arms with 2 servo motor joints. Wood is the base. One end remains fixed to the floor.At this point, he can send the specify the angle that each motor needs to be in by sending data through the serial….Using a mathematical equation we should be able to specify the x,y coordinates and let the program calculate the angle for each motor. The x,y coordinates can exist anywhere in this hemisphere (so actually it will also have a z coordinate)We would need to add a 3rd arm to it which mostly will have a 360 degree motion.Now, we have 2 questions for Todd1.) Which motors should we use - stepper, servos…how much torque2.) Which sensor should we use to take in data from the user - we needed something that was intuitive

BTW, that’s our group name.After discussions with Todd, we’d probably prioritise the robotic light and the flying light ideas first.I am excited!

So, Mooshir and I decided to work together….And it was nice that both of us came up with interactive light ideas….Mooshir had worked on liights for his mid-terms as well. And I have wanted to work with lights as well….We had a string of ideas by the end of it…1.) Robotic light - that takes in human-like directions to change the ligthing directions..intensity. Become a readng light..or ambient…with inputs like sound and touch…rather than switches2) Then the magical floating balloons - so remote controlled helicopters available at Toys R Us might be an option and something we could hack…Also, helium balloons. we could do something relatively simple with those.3.) A light in form of a tree that changes intensity and colour depending on the weather conditions. So it would scrape of data from the net and provide the room with a warm lighting if it was going to be a really cold day…4.) Lights that are more furnishing like than furniture-like. So a system of lights that are softer, asymmetrical and floppy like cushions than ram-rod straight like furniture. And you could throw them around, change their colours to match the decor of your interiors5.) Light pond - again a really simple idea….using 2 conductive fluids separated by a non-conductive liquid layer…and then just throw leds in the ‘pond’ to light them up….Let see how many we can get around building.

Zannah and I decided to work together due to our mutual love for frogs…

We met in the evening and kept building our story for our frog…

But when I got down to sketching the storyboard I realised i couldn’t draw the same frog over and over again!!

Hence I gave up somewhere in the beginning (yes…what I’ve put in the storyboard is probably 1/10th of the story we discussed…)

I am looking forward to Flash…(I wouldn’t have to write 200 lines of code to make my ball bounce!!)

I loved the end result. Which is not to say it’s perfect. Infact far from it. We could think of ten thing we want to change about it even while we were converting it to quicktime…

For one, the sound does nothing for the video and that is one area where we really need to work. So, definitely want to work more on this one. Also, maybe we’ll create another edit with some suggestions from the class…

Go ahead…look at it. Our first movie

I am terribly behind in updating my blog as you can see…But that just goes to day how much fun I am having doing all other things! (I just complemented Jonathan today because he is incredibly meticulour with all this…his TNo pictures were up the same night on Flicr - and on facebook! - I am in awe)

Well, to come back to our shoot. It was the most fun time I’ve ever had… I feel great behind a camera. I love holding it…

Specifically, I thought our shoot was very organised.

The set was the basement ladies restrooms in the Tisch School, 721 broadway.

We thought Saturday morning would be less traffic. Unfortunately, there was a parents meet that day and we encountered a particularly heavy flow to the women’s restroom. We had to keep switching our camera’s off and asking JongMin - the protagonist to leave so that the women to pee in peace! But, really…people were quite helpful. even offered to use the men’s loo to avoid inconvenience.

We all were playing actors, directors, camera crew, light, sound crew all at once. It was a huge learning experience. We worked improvised on our storyboards a little bit…but largely stuck to the game plan…

I think I got some opportunity to handle the camera and lights. I need to work on setting up the initial settings in the camera, playing witht the focus. And yes sound…I wasn’t involved with sound at all this time around. Maybe more in week 9 assignement…

It’s at times like this that I feel that maybe i’m completely missing the point…

I intimidated by McLuhan and would not even consider passing a judgement. But I must admit that I found myself kind of shaken up by his definition of media and content.

All this while I did think of content as the message. And earlier when I came across this hyped text - ‘ medium is the message’ (before having read the book) I thought this statement meant that the medium limited  and shaped the content to a great extent — Just like Ong mentions how in the oral culture studies were more aggregative and tended to be fixed around  the human life world whereas with the advent of the written word, scholars had the freedom to move towards analytics and abstraction - so medium was driving the ‘content’.

But this is definitely not what McLuhan is saying. Message is not content according to him. The concept of speech being the content of the writing medium and the actual ‘content’ of speech being thought- which is actually non-verbal (and hence not limited to the written medium anymore!) completely foxed me. Message according to McLuhan is simply the change in scale that a medium brings about in human affairs…I found it difficult to internalize this concept.

After reading it the second time I felt he was pushing me to expand my idea of medium altogether. That was tough. To think of electric power as medium was really difficult. I found his definition to be too broad. I’ve always looked at medium as a ‘channel’ for communication. Just something that contains your thought. And very crudely, just like a vessel, it would probably shape the content it caries as well…But medium as anything that is an ‘extension of a man’ was the new definition. Light bulb, electric power….infact McLuhan wants me to be aware of medium without a content — now that’s going to take some amount of unlearning…

I think I need time to settle into these concepts to go any further…

It’s like this anti-body in my system. Gradually my system will accept it, perhaps…but rightly now it is revolting.

Yesterday for me was the best day of the year. So, I usually spend my Saturdays partying and going overboard. That’s exactly what I did this Saturday as well. Coupled with the fact that Diwali was approaching and there was Hindi Music…we had a really late night.So after a late Saturday night, what follows is a foul Sunday morning. Cause I get up late….I fret about the work I need to get done. And by the time I get started with anything productive half the day is already gone.But yesterday was different. I got up, checked the time…and voila! the clock had reset itself. It was only 10! The daylight saving had begun. And I slept an extra hour with the clock conspiring with me to stand still!It was a magical moment!I wish they did that 4 times a year 

The set was the basement ladies restrooms in the Tisch School, 721 broadway.We thought Saturday morning would be less traffic. Unfortunately, there was a parents meet that day and we encountered a particularly heavy flow to the women’s restroom. We had to keep switching our camera’s off and asking JongMin - the protagonist to leave so that the women to pee in peace! But, really…people were quite helpful. even offered to use the men’s loo to avoid inconvenience.Shooting was a lot of fun. We all were playingactors, directors, camera crew, light, sound crew all at once. It was utter chaos. But a huge learning experience. We worked improvised on our storyboards a little bit…but largely stuck to the game plan…I think I got some opportunity to handle the camera and lights. I need to work on setting up the initial settings in the camera, playing witht the focus. And yes sound…I wasn’t involved with sound at all this time around. Maybe more in week 9 assignement…

So, this week we started out with video. I love working with video…

There was a story board reading for this week - week6. I must admit I never thought of storyboards as such am important aspect of film-making. And i realised it’s potential later when we finally got down to shooting our film.

Jong min, Sandra, Ja in, Armanda and I set out to make a small film!

The most difficult part was to come up with the story idea - the subject of the film. I remember we were at loss - couldn’t come up with any ideas. I think all of us were finding it difficult to explain our ideas which were so fluid in the first place and convince the team to go with it…

We finally settled on a toilet scene. It sounded like fun…Gave us possibilities to experiment with light and camera angles. Also, it was a tight enough script to play around with for a 2-3 minute film!

Jong min sketched out the story-board. He was great!

Here is our script/story board