Final Blog: Reflections

My favorite parts of the class were the interactive, hands-on lab exercises. In particular, I really enjoyed going out on the Hunter campus to shoot different film shots and angles. There were 8 different required shots and, unknowingly, my partner and I took a different approach than the rest of the class. We tried to connect all of our 8 unique shots into some sort of cohesive narrative, all within 30 minutes, and it was a very fun exercise. In addition, I liked the still photography assignment. Generally, I prefer shooting on moving images on film/video and I think I have a better stylistic eye for it, but I was pretty happy with how my still photographs for this exercise turned out. I also really enjoyed the lighting exercise, especially since we were able to work in groups, which is pretty realistic for an actual film set. Lighting wasn’t something I had very much practical knowledge of beforehand, and this exercise really helped me to visualize and understand the reasoning behind why all of the lights are used and how they should be positioned. It also taught me a new way of setting up a shot stylistically. I think that exercise alone has greatly improved my lighting skills and overall knowledge and familiarity with on set production. The only other thing I would have liked to learn more about, which I know is addressed in greater depth in 160, is video production and post-production. With all of the many programs we were introduced to, I would have liked to also gotten a glimpse of perhaps editing software like Final Cut Pro or Avid. Overall, though, I definitely feel like I am leaving this class with a better understanding of various areas of digital media, which I think is very useful. Although it’s virtually impossible to gain expertise in any of the individual areas in such a short semester with so much material to cover, I am glad to have a relatively broad knowledge base of digital media and familiarity with several programs.

Design I Like: The Fashion Show

I particularly like the design on this poster and advertisement for the first season of The Fashion Show on Bravo. Of all the advertisements for series throughout the years that I see in the office on a daily basis, this has always been my favorite. I think it is aesthetically pleasing and, furthermore, it is relevant to the content of the program and therefore clever and interesting.

First of all, I think the design and layout of the poster is aesthetically pleasing because it is very well balanced. The layout employs the rule of thirds, with the two hosts prominently featured in the center and the contestants distributed on either side of them in the remaining two vertical thirds. Horizontally it is also divided into three, with the series logo and tagline in the upper third, the cast members in the middle third, and the show and network information in the bottom third.

All of the typography is easily legible. The font used in the logo is reminiscent of many high fashion magazines’ logos, such as Vogue, Elle and Harper’s Bazaar, which all use similar all capital letter typographies. Beneath the logo, the tagline is featured in a font that mimics handwriting, which is appropriate for a show that involves sketching for fashion design.

Moreover, along with this theme (and the reason why this poster is my favorite), is that the contestants are illustrated characters rather than photographs. Although theses sketches were based on original photographs, it was a deliberate decision to draw them in the poster instead because it conveys the fashion design theme of the show in the poster. The contestants are displayed much like fashion sketches that a designer would create before producing their garment. It gives the poster an artistic edge that is relevant to the concept and frequently seen throughout the series. It is also, in my opinion, more interesting to look at than photographs. Additionally, it makes the two hosts, Izaac Mizrahi and Kelly Rowland, really pop out in the image. They are in a position of power over the contestants and the image conveys that. If the contestants’ photographs were featured instead of the illustrated characters, the hosts would not be as prominent and would probably get lost in the crowd. Although I think these messages about the show are conveyed by the poster, I think they are still subtle enough that the poster remains simple, direct, easily legible and neat.

"What I See": The Eclipse

I recently attended a screening of the film The Eclipse at the Tribeca Film Festival. The Eclipse is an Irish film directed by Conor McPherson that isn’t quite classifiable by typical genres. Although it is not easily categorized, it does fuse, or at least employ, key characteristics of the drama, romance and horror genres. It is equal parts love story, ghost story and tragedy, and is as scary as it is dramatic. The film generally received positive reviews, but it was most praised for was its cinematography and acting performances rather than its fusion of the supernatural and the dramatic.

There are many technical filmic devices that helped communicate the mood and message of the storyline in The Eclipse. Much of the atmosphere of the film was created by cinematographic techniques. First of all, the takes are mostly long, so that the viewer is forced to hold their attention on the scene before them. There aren’t quick cuts that jump to other sceneries or important details. Furthermore, to emphasize the aloneness and depression that the main character, Michael Farr, a middle-aged single father overwhelmed with grief and apathy after the death of his wife, there are many extreme long shots of him in solitude in vast, open settings. I would assume many of these extreme long shots are filmed with a wide angle lens. For example, in one scene the camera follows him drudging along a deserted beach in clearly uncomfortably cool weather with his head hung low. All that the viewer sees other than Michael is the rocky beach, a few seagulls, and the seemingly endless expanse of the sea. The effect of the extreme long shot is that Michael appears very small, minute and isolated.

Many of the shots also played with lighting and exposure. For example, a few of the exterior shots, especially the extreme long shots, were overexposed. The effect of the harshly bright lights was a jarring one, especially in contrast to the very dark, almost disorienting, underexposed shots of Michael going in and out of nightmarish sleep during the night. The bright, washed out exterior shots make the environment that Michael lives in seem very bleak and unsettling.

Lastly, another aspect I found interesting was the framing of the startle shots. Last semester I took a course on horror film and neuroscience, in which we studied neurobiological phenomena in order to understand what is scientifically frightening to an audience and the tactics filmmakers utilize to exploit those fears. In The Eclipse, there are many abrupt “boo!” moments where bloodied ghouls pop out. Expectedly, these shots were framed according to the neurobiological principle about the startle shot, which asserts that since the brain is naturally accustomed to scanning an image left to right and top to bottom we are most likely to quickly perceive images that fall in the upper left-hand corner of the frame. Accordingly, we are most likely to be surprised by an image that pops out in the lower right-hand corner of the frame, because it is the last region of an image that our brain perceives. The startle shots of the ghosts in The Eclipse, wittingly or not, abided by this principle.

The Museum of the Moving Image

One of the most interesting aspects of the Museum of the Moving Image to me was the section with the optical illusion toys such as the zoetrope and the thaumatrope. During the lecture in class, I wasn’t really able to understand or visualize the short range apparent motion (or persistence of vision) phenomenon that these toys are examples of. It was hard to imagine how exactly they’d work and why they’d be so fascinating and entertaining to people. However, when I actually saw them in person, I was impressed by how realistic the motion and imagery actually seemed. In particular, while watching the tour guide spin the thaumatrope, a simple round white disc with an empty black cage and one side and a red bird on another, I thought to myself that I could make one on my own with a piece of paper and a pen. However, he helped me to understand why I wouldn’t be able to recreate it and exactly how the simple toy succeeds in essentially tricking your brain into believing that the two separate images are actually one: he said that a break is necessary between the two images, and the pause serves more or less as a mental rest for your brain so the images don’t overlap too much, only just enough to seem like one cohesive picture.

In the same section of the museum, there was a piece that spun rapidly under strobe lights and relied on similar phenomena for the brain to process as coherent motion taking place straight in front of your eye instead of spinning so quickly in a circle. For example, there was a drop that fell onto a hand, through the fingers, turned into a paper airplane and crashed into a bowl of dishes. If that description sounds like that doesn’t make any sense, then I’m describing it correctly. However, we were all pretty amazed to realize that it was a spinning wheel of unique sculptures that weren’t actually moving at all when the the bright lights came on and the strobe lights went off.

My other favorite part of the museum, coming from a background in fashion, was the wardrobe section. Not only were many of the costumes impressive in their own right, but it was interesting to hear the tour guide give a visual analysis of these costumes in relation to the context of the film, the personalities of the characters and the messages that were trying to be conveyed.