Making Analogs of Reality

Two talking points:

Documentaries of emotion? He only touched on it briefly, providing a single example that I had never heard of. What does this mean? How would you go about “showing” emotion on tape besides like… facial expressions?

Do “reality” videos really count as documentaries? What message are they trying to present?

After video writing assignment.

self-reflection and assessment: now that you have gotten feedback on your exercise, how are you feeling about both the finished product and the audience response? did you get the kind of response you anticipated? were there any surprises? how can you use this input to improve your next project? what is your final assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of your video? what have you learned about brainstorming, conceptualizing, producing, and presenting your work?

So after I showed my video, I guess I got what I mostly expected. Since halfway through the editing I realized the movie wasn’t going to work with my footage, I had to adjust and shorten up the timing. That in turn ended up confusing some people, but it was a constraint I had to work with. Next time, I will definitely take into account the length it takes to communicate across a concept or idea per film clip, especially when dealing with an extremely short project. I think the end product of the video was alright overall. There were definitely many things I would have liked to change, especially the specific bug shots I had (which were limited) and the tones of other scenes. Definitely need more work on the start and ending, I thought it was alright personally, but some people felt that the end of the clip should have ended like how the clip started. One thing I definitely learned from this project was just how many things you have to take into consideration when filming a shot. I spent a lot of time capturing clips but ended up unable to use them because they were too long. While my point got across, the time constraint prohibited me from using it.

Quick write 9/29/2008

Discuss the issue of subjectivity and objectivity as it relates to photographs, videos, and documentaries.

Photographs, videos, and documentaries are fairly common media forms in the world today. However, along with the media is just the power of digital manipulation and creation in computers. It is easy to make and edit photographs, videos and other forms of media using basic commercial software. Along with that, media forms cannot capture entire moments. There is a limit to the amount it can reveal and retain. It lets the viewers fill in the gaps with assumptions and subjective opinions.

In class writing 9/29/2008

Think about a recent conversation you had with another person, or a group, in which you learned something new about a topic you were unfamiliar with. Write about your thoughts on the difference between learning through conversation with another person, versus learning by reading about a subject.

One recent conversation I had was with my roommate about renewable power and nuclear energy. I am an electrical engineering going into power (ECE concentration) and he is a nuclear engineer. Since my current research is involving Solar Energy and he worked at a nuclear plant over the summer, we had quite an interesting dialogue on how energy should be created and the trade-offs/benefits of each one. You can always learn about stuff from reading books, articles, or research papers, but it’s quite different from learning through conversation with other people. When you interact with people, you can draw from a much wider reference point. While articles are limited to the topic, you can address multiple aspects of a topic when talking with a person. For example, while comparing energy generation between nuclear power, coal power or solar, you can examine just the efficiency. While solar is abysmally inefficient, in some respects so is nuclear (a large majority of the energy is wasted in unharvested heat). This doesn’t address many other aspects of the positives or negatives involving the various systems that can be brought up in conversation.

In class writing 9/24

Discuss the process that you followed in completing this exercise. How did you identify and develop your idea? What inspired you? Did the project change as you worked on it? What questions would you like to ask an audience?

When the project was first posed, I had no clue what I was going to do my video on. My manifesto was pretty open ended and translating some portion of that into video wasn’t very simple. My idea actually occurred while someone was bugging me when I was trying to figure out what to do. It tends to happen a lot that people come over and ask questions about homework. I find it really annoying that people bother you and expect that you have time to help them at that instant, so I decided to make my video about that. It’s something I guess people don’t think about when they come asking for help, because they assume I’m free. But they always come visiting me when I’m in the middle of doing my own homework and I hate stopping in the middle to help someone else. So originally, I was going to just have random clips of annoyances in my life, but after filming a couple shots, I realized that it was really hard to interpret it the same. Taken out of context (since the video is so short), it was really hard to connect the various footage into one idea. So I decided to make it more literal as well as figuratively. I had some random videos of bugs that I spliced in there, along with other things that annoyed me, so I mixed them up. Finally, I put in the shots of the Nerf darts as little transitions. They also served the dual purpose of revealing how annoying I viewed each thing, especially at the end when the guys final comment hit the bulls-eye. A question I would like to ask the audience would be just how effectively the video communicated my intent. Was the use of Nerf darts appropriate in the video as a whole?

The Significance of Film Form

I’ve always knew there was a semblance of form or structure in films; you can’t tell a story without some organization and relationship interaction. Just how vital it is to film making surprised me. The example given throughout the chapter is a movie I’m rather familiar with; The Wizard of Oz was one of my favorite movies when I was growing up. While the simple parallelisms and contrasts were easily picked up, even by me as a child, there were many underlying plots and actions that I failed to see. Especially involving Toto, something so minor and “trivial” actually ends up being vital to the flow of plot and development of the story as a whole. Usually I focus on the main things, but in actuality it’s the many small minor things that we don’t notice that is actually more important. A lot of other things brought up is almost thought of as common sense to me. Emotions and the ambiance should reflect the events currently unfolding, motivation reflects the character or expected nature of a person, etc. But what you never take into account when watching a movie, you now have to consider carefully when analyzing and producing one yourself. It’s certainly given me a better perspective on how movie making should be processed.

Motifs in the film

There were a number of motifs that were in throughout the film, but the one that stuck out predominantly was the vast amount of people. Just the fact that there were so many people, and that life in general was viewed apathetically. When they listed the statistics of deaths, they also mentioned how no one cared about it. Everyone only minded their own business, it didn’t matter what happened as long as it didn’t involve them. People were even somewhat apathetic about their own lives. At the railroad crossing, despite the gates being down, everyone just walked up next to the railroad waiting, somewhat impatiently, for the train to pass by and would rush across before the next train came. Along with the overcrowded population, the traffic infrastructure was affected by how numerous the people were. Traffic was at basically a standstill due to the number of vehicles on the road. A more subtle motif was the contrast between the modernization of the country and the socially downtrodden. While there were all these businessmen rushing to get on the train, at the same time there were people with little marketable skill hawking trinkets and petty services like shoe shining. It was also exhibited with the broken down slums right next to an airport runway. There were whole families living in very close proximity to a landing strip, which would never even be considered as a residential area in the US.

Inspiration Box

Do you suppose that abuses are eliminated by destroying the object which is abused? Men can go wrong with wine and women. Shall we then prohibit and abolish women? – Martin Luther

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” – C.S. Lewis

“I’m kind of jealous of the life I’m supposedly leading.”

“Play: work that you enjoy doing for nothing.”

Too close for missiles, switching to guns. :-D (Top Gun!!!)

“My most recent faith struggle is not one of intellect. I don’t really do that anymore. Sooner or later you just figure out there are some guys who don’t believe in God and they can prove He doesn’t exist, and some other guys who do believe in God and they can prove He does exist, and the arguement stopped being about God a long time ago and now it’s about who is smarter, and honestly I don’t care.” – Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz

“God judges them by their moral choices…. [So when an emotionally troubled person] who has a pathological horror of cats forces himself to pick up a cat for some good reason, it is quite possible that in God’s eyes he has shown more courage than a healthy man…. Some of us who seem quite nice people may, in fact, have made so little use of a good heredity and a good upbringing that we’re really worse than those whom we regard as fiends.
That is why Christians are told not to judge. We see only the results which a man’s choices make out of his raw material. But God does not judge him on the raw material at all, but on what he has done with it.” – C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“… the gospel of Jesus was not primarily a political platform. The issues that confront Christians in a secular society must be faced and addressed and legislated, and a democracy gives Christians every right to express themselves. But we dare not invest so much in the kingdom of this world that we neglect our main task of introducing people to a different kind of kingdom, one based soley on God’s grace and forgiveness. Passing laws to enforce morality serves a necessary function, to dam up evil, but it never solves human problems. If a century from now all that historians can say about evangelicals in the 1990s is that they stood for family values, then we will have failed the mission Jesus gave us to accomplish: to communicate God’s reconciling love to sinners.” – Philip Yancy, The Jesus I Never Knew

“Each of us pays a heavy price for our fear of falling flat on our faces. It assures the progressive narrowing of our personalities and prevents exploration and experimentation. As we get older we do only the things we do well. There is no growth in Christ Jesus without some difficulty and fumbling. If we are going to keep on growing, we must keep on risking failure throughout our lives. When Max Planck was awarded the Nobel Prize for his discovery of quantum theory, he said, ‘Looking back over the long and labyrinthine path which finally led to the discovery, I am vividly reminded of Goethe’s saying that men will always be making mistakes as long as they are striving after something.'”- Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel

“The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.” – Matthew Henry

“It would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what it’s meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” – C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

“Our parents were the only ones required to take care of us. Some did, some didn’t. If they failed, it’s up to you – not your wife, girlfriend, boss, minister, children, whoever – to do something about it. Remember: You’ve got one Daddy, and as you get a handle on fear, you’ll increasingly see and know that he’s all for you, looking out for you. No one on this earth is accountable to bring you what you need or want. It’s not up to your wife or girlfriend to fill your emotional holes. That work is yours. Your boss isn’t on the hook to provide a living for you. That’s your job. It’s not your minister’s role to maintain your relationship with God. That’s up to you. Your kids are yours to nurture, not yours to nurture you. This is how real men live – not in a codependent vacuum, but in a vital state of healthy connection and interaction with others.” – Paul Coughlin, No More Christian Nice Guy

“In Luke 18, a rich young man comes to Jesus, asking what he must do to inherit eternal life. He wants to be in the spotlight. It is no coincidence that Luke juxtaposes the passage of Jesus and the children immediately preceding the verses on the young aristocrat. Children contrast with the rich man simply because there is no question of their having yet been able to merit anything…. Children are our model because they have no claim on heaven. If they are close to God, it is because they are incompetent, not because they are innocent. If they receive anything, it can only be as a gift.” – Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel

“Jesus said whatever you do to the least of these my brothers you’ve done it to me. And this is what I’ve come to think. That if I want to identify fully with Jesus Christ, who I claim to be my savior and Lord, the best way that I can do that is to identify with the poor. This I know will go against the teachings of all the popular evangelical preachers. But they’re just wrong. They’re not bad, they’re just wrong. Christianity is not about building an absolutely secure little niche in the world where you can live with your perfect little wife and your perfect little children in a beautiful little house where you have no gays or minority groups anywhere near you. Christianity is about learning to love like Jesus loved and Jesus loved the poor and Jesus loved the broken.” – Rich Mullins, Musician

“Optimism is an antidote to one of the seven deadly sins, or what were originally referred to as the “eight bad thoughts.” There used to be eight, anyway, until some Christian monks, seventeen centuries ago, rolled the sin of acedia into the sin of sloth, which isn’t accurate. Acedia, from a Greek word meaning ‘without care,’ denotes the indifference to one’s life and to the surrounding world. Sloth describes a general laziness and a specific aversion to work; Christian Nice Guys aren’t lazy but they are primarily indifferent. This is where deep-seated fear and passionless living lead: a lukewarm existence that pretends it’s somehow virtuous to sit on the sidelines.” – Paul Coughlin, No More Christian Nice Guy

“Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. You find out the strength of an army by going against it, not by giving in. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They always give in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us unitl we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means.” – C.S. Lewis

“Here’s what I know. If you don’t think you’re valuable, others won’t either. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani calls this the ‘broken window’ theory. He noticed that when broken windows go unrepaired in parts of the city, people assume no one really cares for the building; as a result, more people feel comfortable breaking more windows, and eventually criminals take over, all because no one valued it. This happns to people as well, writes Rabbi Shmuley Boteach: ‘Holiness has leaked out of our lives, and we, like abandoned buildings, are broadcasting our lack of self-esteem far and wide’ (Face Your Fears, 183)” – Paul Coughlin, No More Christian Nice Guy

“For what we need to know, of course, is not just that God exists, not just that beyond the steely brightness of the stars there is a cosmic intelligence of some kind that keeps the whole show going, but that there is a God right here in the think of our day-by-day lives who may not be writing messages about himself in the stars but in one way or another is trying to get messages through our blindness as we move around down here knee-deep in the fragrant muck and misery and marvel of the world. It is not objective proof of God’s existence that we want but the experience of God’s presence. That is the miracle we are really after, and that is also, I think, the miracle that we really get.” Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat

This was from the beginning of a chapter of a book that was talking about logical fallacies (I think)

Why firetrucks are red:
Firetrucks have 4 wheels and 8 men.
4 plus 8 equals 12.
There are 12 inches in a foot.
Rulers are a foot long.
Queen Elizabeth II is a ruler.
Queen Elizabeth II sails the Seven Seas.
Seas have fish.
Fish have Fins.
The Finns hate the Russians.
Russians are red.
Firetrucks are always Russian; therefore firetrucks are red.

Websites I visit:
Google.com (and assorted things related to google like calendar and gmail)
Facebook.com
Digg.com
postsecret.blogspot.com
xkcd.com

Man with the Movie Camera

What are some of the ideas, messages, and/or themes that you find in Vertov’s film? In what ways do you see the film mirroring his manifest? What are some of the motifs, both visual and conceptual, that you see being developed and/or repeated in the film?

One thing that really comes to mind is the simplicity of the movie. Rather than trying to tell a traditional story, the movie splices in various footage of everyday life activities. It doesn’t explain why the footage is there, or present an antagonist/protagonist. Rather, the movie plays out and it is left up to us to interpret what it means. This work is definitely reflective of Vertov’s manifesto as he stays true to his intended parameters set forth in the beginning of the movie. It really did present itself as an experiment in cinematic communication. In that regard, it was definitely a success. While the movie was filmed in the Soviet Union, I could still identify and relate with the various activities shown throughout the movie. It created an international language with which to communicate about the joys and dredges of everyday life. The shots he showed of everyday people working, alongside their machinery, tended to meld the two into one. The people existed for their equipment, while the machinery was there for the people to work. Contrasted with that was the way people lived and enjoyed life while they were relaxing. Playing sports, going to the beach, etc. was drastically different from their work.

In Class Writing 9/17/2008

What were some of my rituals while working on the Noun, Verb, Adjective project?

The process of my noun, verb, adjective project was eclectic for most of them time. I mainly collected footage of random things without giving much thought for the assignment as a whole. If I saw something that I liked, I would film it. Despite this however, I managed to come up with several decent videos that had a connecting theme. Looking back, I definitely would have spent more time thinking about my sentence rather than just shooting footage randomly.

What phases did the work go through in your mind and in the process of making?

I guess there was only 2 main phases that I went through. The first was just digesting my footage in my mind, trying to see similarities in various clips. The second was then choosing one of those motifs and playing around with the clips in a way that would reveal it to the viewer.

Did it change from initial inspiration to finished product?

I don’t really think so. But since I never really had a concrete idea in the beginning, it’s very hard to compare it. I know that if I knew what my finished product would look like before I started working on it, I would have been surprised with the finished result. I guess I wouldn’t have expected it to turn out the way they did.