Museum Visit

At the Museum of the Moving Image, our class had the opportunity of getting to see props face to face as well as some interactive demos that helped us get hands on experience with different aspects of media production. Two parts of this museum that really stuck out for me were the examples of prosthetic and makeup pieces used on the set of film productions that I have grown up watching as well as the stop-motion animation section where we created our own flip book. Being an Emerging Media Studies Major, I am taking classes specifically for 2D animation where I have done stop-motion animation as well as created flip books, this particular setup showed me a new way of going through the process. This process has progressed over the years as technology has progressed which makes simple tasks of getting a 30 second clip that normally would take hours to produce and cut that time in half. This alone helps the fluidity of creativity and also allows artists to express themselves in a more productive amount of time. The other part of the exhibit that caught my attention was the makeup and prosthetic pieces. Along with Emerging Media, I also study theater specifically Costume Design and Stage Makeup. I have learned how to create latex prosthetics as well as costume pieces that change the shape of the normal everyday body figure. The prosthetic faces were really fascinating to see because they showed them in the steps needed to create the final product. I was surprised by the technology that they had when the movie “Mrs. Doubtfire” was produced. Technology has even come a long way since then as well as the materials that are available. This changes the way that characters and images are designed and allows the imagination to truly come to life. These technological developments open the door for theater, movies, and photography.

Blog Post #3: Relationships Between Shots

I picked to write about a scene from the movie called Being John Malkovich where John Malkovich discovers this hole in a wall that leads to a portal that drops directly into the brain of John Malkovich that has become a source of income for two friends who discovered it. The clip starts with a point of view from behind John Malkovich as he travels through the tunnel to the portal into his brain. The point of view jumps back and forth between what John Malkovich is seeing and his reaction to the tunnel itself. The sound creates an existential atmosphere that lets the audience know that an important event is about to pick up its pace. When the door slams shut and the sound of wind pushes the character to the final stage of the tunnel; we are propelled into a new reality where the audience is John Malkovich, looking through the point of view of John Malkovich. The atmosphere shifts to an upscale restaurant with the sound of chatter in the room, it is made clear that the audience is now peering through the eyes of John Malkovich with the illusion of goggle vision by creating a tight border of black in an oval shape. The camera begins at a slow movement pattern to create a steady starting pace to give the illusion of a calm and “normal” projection of space. As the nightmarish hallucinations continue to become more absurd, Malkovich realizes everyone and everything is him, he becomes more frantic and exasperated by the situation. This is shown through the progression of layers of audio, new layers of conversation can be heard that get layered over the previous conversations. The camera becomes less stable and more shaky as the pace of movement rapidly speeds up. The tone of voice also changes and the volume slowly gets higher even though the only word spoken is Malkovich. The images become more crowded and cramped with the amount of people and objects within the frame until Malkovich is thrown back out into reality where he literally hits the ground on the side of the highway.

 

Project 2- Audio Interview

The concept behind this interview was that in a room full of random people from every walk of life, each person has a story to tell from a different perspective. We had the opportunity to interview our classmates and use the tools of editing to create an audio story of them. I used the tools I had to create a window into the life of my classmate, Natalia.
MEDP 160 Project 2-Audio Interview from Eva Senatore on Vimeo.