What I Hear

Walking in my neighborhood of Washington Heights located on the upper west side of Manhattan the term noise pollution comes to mind as you are constantly bombarded with the most dissonant of sounds. Everything from cabs honking their horns to get people or other cars out of their way--which you never hear in any other parts of the city. Somebody blasting god awful music inside of their apartment or car with the bass cranked up to such levels that you can barely decipher whether they re listening to a song or a live recording of a jet engine being crushed. And to accompany all of that you have the beautiful sound of passing traffic through the countless highways and bridges that sandwich the area on each side. One bridge leading to the Bronx, the other to New Jersey. Street merchants hustling their products, everything from bootleg shoes to blenders. On special occasions you can hear the bums arguing over nothingness around the corner or in between the buildings. Oh how I love it! Once a year . . . probably on your birthday or something like that you can actually hear birds chirping, trees aplenty, don't get me wrong its a beautiful area to live in visually, but if you are someone looking for piece and quite, run, run as fast as you can! Layer upon layer of noise to the point that when you get a chance at some silence you are unable to enjoy it because your ears are ringing as if you were front row at a the worlds longest death metal concert. It has gone to the point that it is impossible for any certain sound to phase you as you slowly learn to tune the world out via mp3 player or cell phone chatter.

Simplicity is key! The easily navigable buttons, smooth layout, light weight media storage device has grown to such popularity it has become a part of people's everyday "life equipment". Remember when leaving your house without your watch made you feel naked? Well move over Casio and in comes Apple's iPod. It doesn't have nearly as many buttons as an old CD player once had, yet does twice as many tasks. The flawless design allows for any user to easily go from listening to every song they ever owned to watching last nights episode of their favorite television program, to reading a book. both my parents who are in their 50's both own iPods and can navigate them easily from the day they brought them out of the packages. The screen is bright enough to see, the text is not too small, perfect for anyone to plug in and play. You don't need to be technologically savvy to work this device. A good design is simple, not too much going on, but just enough to let you know that this means something and its not just laying somewhere in the deepest darkest parts of your pocket along with pennies and gum wrappers. The iPod is something for everyone, no age discrimination on this end!

Frank the Bunny

By far one of the darkest movies in recent times Donnie Darko. The cinematographer of this movie is Steven B. Poster, he does a fine job in keeping the main theme of a really dark and twisted film. He does this by making scenes with low light and for the most part the main parts of the movie take place either at dusk or night time, with very intimate settings with minimal action. Often going between very wide angle shots in order for the viewer to get a grasp of the seemingly dismal and bleak settings that the main character was in, then into a closeup shot of the subject, in this is where most dialog is made and with low key lights even the most angelic of expressions (smiles) come of as sadistic and dark. By using the low key light it gives a very deep expression by creating very deep shadows on the actor's faces.
In one specific scene Donnie is in the movie theater and he gets into a conversation with Frank the Bunny, a character from Donnie's imagination/alternate universe, it is in this scene they constantly shift between a wide shot of the entire theater in which you realize that it is only Donnie, a female companion, and Frank. This helps show how very lonely and dramatic the setting is, being all alone. They then go into close ups of Donnie's and Frank's face, by doing so this creates a very scary and awkward feeling to the point you kind of want to look away as the expressions on both actors faces seem extremely defined, this is done with the low key light creating one of the darkest scenes in the movie in my opinion.

Museum of the Moving Image

Stop motion film is one of the most creative things in the realm of media I think I ever participated in. At the Museum of the Moving Image I participated in a demo in which I sat beneath a camera which shot one frame at a time, and by using a few simple buttons, a back ground and a cut out frog I was able to create a Monty Python-like six second short. Another cool activity at the museum was the virtual flipbook. You stood in front of a digital still camera that took consecutive photos one after another creating a life-like flipbook.

This is probably the easiest and most fun I have had thus far in creating media. I never could’ve thought something as simple as moving pictures and capturing them in consecutive still pictures would amount to something so artistic ad creative. Whether it was the live flipbook or the stop-motion short. This form of media is something any person can do and I encourage those to try. The frame-by-frame demo showed a very fun way to create movement and give life to everyday objects

The whole process was done by sitting at a desk with a suspended camera above the desk that was focused on the background or backdrop of the short we made. We then placed our paper cut outs onto the desk and moved them in whichever way we wanted but moved it in small increments to help create life like motion, but you could take less frame with bigger motions to depict a more animated approach or as if segments were missing. Fun and simple with a very intricate aspect.

Welcome

Aboard an old pirate ship made of wet souls,
we plundered and pillaged from North to South Poles.
We only steal metals like guns, tanks, and toasters.
We melt it all down and we make roller coasters.