Final Project

This is my final video project. For this I went through a couple interesting ideas before setting on a "day in the life" video with a bit of a twist. I decided to see how often water makes its way through my life. Turns out it comes up a lot more often than I thought.

I edited the clips together in a quick style, with a few water related filters thrown in. I didn't use a lot of transitions because I liked the random cut style to show the different situations water was being used.

For the sound, I took the natural sound from the footage and boosted it and edited it within Soundtrack Pro. Using the Reverb effect and various other pitch effects I was able to make some really cool noises.

There are certain parts with no noise, I did this on purpose because I really wanted the water noise to tie with the visual of water being used. So where theres no water, there's no noise.

Waafa Bilal

Waafa Bilal

Waafa Bilal is an Iraqi artist who is also an art professor. I had previously seen some of his work in other classes, but was really intrigued by his Shoot an Iraqi exhibition. This interactive exhibit involved him locking himself in an apartment with a remote controlled paintball gun that can be fired over the internet.

                

          The concept of this work is very interesting, and I think it shows a few things about our current society and culture. This is a person who is of the same ethnicity of those our country is at war with right now. This obviously gives it a very strange aspect where you’re allowed to shoot at someone. Also this shows our culture and making decisions to shoot someone and actually cause them pain remotely from the safety of your home.

               

      I thought he spoke about a lot of interesting points regarding war, racism and stereotypes. His work can obviously be seen as controversial but I think it actually has some real quality and merit to whats behind it. 

Morgan McAuslan Exhibit

Morgan McAuslan

This thing was cool. This exhibition by Morgan McAuslan had his windmills set up in the center of the room, and a wall sculpture with motorized hammers that spun to hit various metal objects to create some cool noises and stuff.

It was cool that the artist was there and kind of discussed his thought process. I enjoyed this because so often I wonder how these people possibly come up with some of these ideas. Finding out first hand from the artist how his inspiration happens was pretty cool.

I liked his style of using found objects to create instruments (and the different noises being put at random making new music) and his use of various sizes and shapes which made the sound really have a variety of styles, pitches and tones. He also did a great job of actually putting some artistic style into the sculptures making them pretty cool to look at.

I enjoyed this because I always like seeing things used for something different than their original intended use, and this was an awesome example of taking something and using it in a completely different way.

Miss Representation

Miss Representation

            Going into this documentary, I was pretty skeptical, mainly because of my views on this type of feminism. I’ve always been very defensive of the media, and as a business, portraying things that are responded to well, especially females. However the opening parts when young girls are talking about what it is like to be a girl and one of the girls talked about her sister cutting herself because people make fun of her body was sad. One of the quotes that stuck out to me is that you can’t be what you can’t see. When you are deciding what you want to be when you grow up its true that girls don’t think of being political leaders or CEOs. However, the media shouldn’t be blamed as such a large influence. I mean look at me, as a man growing up, the media shows athletes, action heroes, firemen, etc. Does that automatically mean I want to grow up to be that? If so, is it truly the media’s fault? Furthermore, look at men in the media, every role model type man in the media has a square chin, expensive clothes, a nice car, and a six pack (one exception, the “sitcom” star who is usually overweight and funny, with a hot wife). Yet, I’m not complaining about how the media portrays men. I’m not blaming the media for my potential low self esteem.

            One of my favorite quotes in this film came from Michael Eisner, Disney’s CEO, who says: "We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make a statement. We are here to make money."  Being in the media industry, I agree with this. Television, advertising, entertainment, is a business. Sex sells, attractiveness sells, and that’s what most people want. That’s why everyone will talk about a sex scene starring Brad Pitt instead of one starring Danny DeVito. At the end of the day, it’s a business, and that’s the motivation.

            On the female political note I found it disgusting what some of the talk show hosts and other media figures had to say, the quote about Hilary Clinton was only being a runner in the Democratic Party because her husband messed around. That is just ridiculous. She has contributed way more than that and then for her status to be dwindled done to nothing but that statement is completely invalid.

            Overall I thought that the documentary was better than I first anticipated, however I feel like the movement and arguments need to get more concise. They throw a lot of statistics out there about how women are so influenced in a negative way, such as how something like 75% of girls hate their body by their teenage years, yet the argument seems to be more about the fight for equality and rights as opposed to strictly image. I agree with this in the political and business aspect, but the appearance and sexualized aspect I have a harder time siding with. 

Audio

Random Audio

Random by Elliott S


Edited Audio

Assignment 1 by Elliott S