Fireside Chat Reflection

For my fireside chat presentation, I decided to tell my favorite story that my grandma has told me. I’m a strong believer in telling stories to communicate a message or idea or even teach a lesson. The moral of this story was to do what you know is right no matter what others think. These were both the beliefs that I wanted to touch on, and I wanted to do so subtly. That is why I started my presentation with my Grandma using her story to teach my aunt a lesson. I more overtly hit on the second belief/lesson when I looked and gestured at the audience while telling that my grandma said to my aunt “no matter what your friends say or do, you need to do what you know is right”. Then I continued, “and then she proceeded to tell her this story”. Both beliefs are highlighted in this moment.

The first time I practiced my story, I got feedback from some people and I realized that I wasn’t including enough details. I was familiar with parts of the story, such as why the keys were important, so I didn’t feel the need to explain, but others didn’t fully understand. To really drive their significance home, I realized I needed to set up why the keys were important, so the audience could fully understand the importance of the loss. I also had to emphasize why keys would seem cool enough for a kid to want to play with them. When telling stories, especially stories familiar to the storyteller, certain elements need to be stressed and well described to get the audience on the same page.

When practicing, I kept saying “grandpa” instead of “her dad”, and I was so worried about messing his up in the performance. I was so focused on telling the story right, when I got up and began telling the story, I got so into it that I forgot to go through my slides. Once I finished and realized I was holding the clicker, my heart sank because I forgot a key part of my presentation (no pun intended). On the slide, there was a picture of a keychain hanging on a wall. The keys were supposed to disappear when they were taken in the story. This further emphasizes their absence and my great grandpa’s reaction when he notices that they are gone. This element made my media incorporation more interactive and unique then just the still photo it ended up being. With live events, the unplanned and mistakes will happen. That’s part of the experience and you have to learn to roll with it.

I liked this assignment, it helped me find out more about who I am as a storyteller as well as what truly informs my beliefs. I enjoyed seeing what others presented and had to say. I also feel this was a good end to the semester as it used elements from past assignments such as creatively using media to aid our expressions.

Extra Credit Assignment

TMA 112 Extra Credit Assignment

            One of the things I would have loved to explore more in this class is how to create meaning or how to get an idea across through media. When creating our projects, we often times were trying to communicate an idea or make a point and it would have really helped if we better understood how to create and alter meaning in our pieces.

            This assignment I have created allows students to explore how they consume and interpret messages in the media as well as how to create meaning in media.

Assignment Description: "Each student will find a piece of existing media and discern it’s meaning through what they feel it is trying to communicate. Students must then ask and record what others believe the meaning is. They will then alter the piece to significantly change its meaning in order to communicate something entirely different. The meaning can be subtle or overt. Students are encouraged to use their unique artistic voice to communicate something that they feel strongly or passionate about. After completing it, they must ask others and record how they interpret the new piece."

            This assignment could go under the "exploring and experimenting" unit because the students are exploring the ways we engage with media and interpret it, and then experimenting with creating meaning. This assignment in a lot of ways goes along with the textual poaching assignment. It could also go under the “discerning and documenting” unit because students would be discerning messages and how we interact with the media. They are also documenting how others interpret and interact with media.  I feel this assignment would be important to do early on in the semester as it lays a foundation for the student to develop their own voice and better understand how to communicate and create meaning.

LINKS: 

This is an example of a project like the one I have created, The authors of this piece noticed that the audio was key to communicating certain feelings in the film, "The Shining", so they replaced the audio to give the scene a new feel and experiment with creating new meaning. Here is the original scene.

This is a clip of the Kuleshov effect, which shows one way to create meaning by juxtaposing images:

Here is part of a book that can be used for reading selections. There are some good sections that address being consumers of media as well as different ways meaning is created.

Concerned Citizen

Concerned to Committed from Spark of Clark Productions on Vimeo.

So we might have gotten a little bit ambitious.  We knew we wanted to do something original and do it well.  Our concerned citizen: Brent Adams.  His concern: The moral decay of the entertainment industry.  Entertainment plays a huge role in all our lives.  We see images all day every day -- for the better or worse.  Brent Adams founded the animation program at BYU in order to flood the film workforce with good, moral people.

We knew we had a strong subject, however, we didn't realize that we wouldn't be able to cover our topic in the described one to three minutes.  When we originally edited our piece we ended at about seven minutes, more than double the assignment description.  Needless to say, we had to do a lot of cutting and throwing out -- which was hard because our concerned citizen gave such a great interview.  Fortunately Jason came to our rescue to make the workload at least somewhat reasonable.

Overall, our piece was a great collaborative effort.  Aubrey brought editing mastery to the table, Jason brought audio insight, and Tanner handled the cinematagraphy.  Each of these elements came together to produce a piece we can be proud of.

By,
Aubrey Clark
Jason Richey
Tanner Wilson

Protest Poster - "Breaking News"

I was in a lobby the other day and the news was on their TV. The news station was focused on the election and mudslinging candidates, while the news ticker at the bottom counted the death toll caused by hurricane Sandy. The magazines next to me all had a similar focus. They raised eyebrows and doubted the future of our country while claiming to have the latest polls inside. Political projections took the largest and boldest print on the covers of these magazines and within the folds of that day’s newspaper. The election has taken over our media. As important as the election is, it sometimes seems like the news and media are focusing more on pointing fingers at and digging dirt on candidates than important world issues or even recent events like Sandy.

Some of my friends and relatives have sworn off the news and newspaper until the election is over. I believe the media has been negatively affected and consumed by this campaign. This is what I wish to communicate with my protest poster. Its title, "Breaking News", is a play on words, emphasizing how the election has broken our news and media sources' stream of information and their purpose.  

I made some aesthetic choices to further my argument. The stickers are covering the real news story. The corner of the TV is over exposed, just like the electoral coverage. I chose to use black and white for the TV and the covered image, because then the political stickers are really able to pop.

The stickers are bright, colorful, and appealing. They make what they are covering up and the surrounding world seem dull and less important as they take less of the media’s attention. That is the message I get from the media lately; the election is of dominant importance. Looking at my piece, I could have also emphasized the more negative aspects of the heavy election coverage on the media. I could have tried to also emphasize just how ridiculous and ugly this election has gotten at times because of the influence of the media and public perception.

I posted my first draft of this image to Facebook to get feedback. When I first posted this, all I got were some “cools!”, “I agree!” as well as a few likes. I was afraid I wouldn’t get much constructive feedback. As time went on, a few friends gave some great suggestions. I wasn’t able to incorporate all their ideas, but all the ideas contributed in some change or consideration in my final piece.

I had a friend share it and say, “This really makes me contemplative. What really mattes here folks?” With this being a ‘protest poster’ I felt it had served its purpose. I was able to bring a message across, raise questions, and even have it begin to spread.

Webspinna Reflection

This was one of our most experimental and entertaining assignments yet. I had never thought of using the Internet in this way. I often forget the title of this major is “Media Arts Studies” and not just “Film Studies”. I think it is great that we are given such opportunities to branch out and experiment with different mediums to see what they are capable of.

Reflecting on my experience, at first I had trouble mixing sounds I wanted to go together. Instead of flowing, it sounded like a layered mess. I was finally able to achieve a nicer sound by layering and experimenting with simpler sounds.

I had rehearsed my creation several times before, and was able to do it the same way a few times in a row and was very pleased. When I got up there to perform, I clicked on the wrong sound on one of my websites. At first I thought my planned piece was ruined, but it actually really worked. I decided to really take a chance and experiment with more sounds on the spot. I think it ended up sounding a lot better than my rehearsed composition, and it was a lot more fun and in the moment. I actually didn’t end up using one of my planned websites because I got into using and exploring those tabs I already had up.

I was second to last, and I heard a lot of the sounds I wanted to use being used. I at first saw it as disappointing, because mine wouldn’t be as unique or innovative, but we all used the sounds in such different ways. Those few unifying threads brought interesting contrast. I also really liked how we kept it as one continual piece.

For my Webspinna, I wanted to have a constant beat, and layer sound bites and effects. I started with the sound of a spinning vinyl to contrast this modern representation and bring sound back to its roots.  I then contrasted this at the end with a voice telling how technological our society has become. This clip discussed the progression of our technological society on top of our shedding of old ideology. Early in my piece, I included a sound clip from Brecht’s communist hearing. In that time period, many experimental arts (and even mainstream arts) were seen as communist informed and influenced. The government recognized the power and influence the media can have, so they cracked down. We have come a long way technologically and ideologically since. These Webspinna are such an abstract and advanced means of sound creation. (We have come from vinyls to the internet and from guitars to screaming animated beans).
Each Webspinna probably meant something to its creator. There is probably a good reason they chose the sounds they did, but we each had a different experience listening and interpreting the individual works. I think the last line of the sound clip I included helps us understand this piece and many others worked on in this class. It says “this is not about what I produce, it is all about what others receive”. This was a process of experimenting, creating, and interpreting for both viewer and listener. 

Webspinna Links

Here are the links I used:

http://www.incredibox.com/en/#/application
http://archive.org/details/rain039
http://archive.org/details/ASimulationOfAnOldEmptyVinylRecordforCd

http://soundcloud.com/acfm24/brecht-huac-hearing-1947-10-30
http://www.inbflat.net/

Medium Specificity - Frames of Light

Frames of Light

             Artist’s Statement:             

The key to film is the movement and flow of images. Without fast movement or sometimes the addition of sound, film is simply still photography. Often times we forget that film is just that, images. In most cases we see 24 or 30 still images per second. But due to the phenomenon known as persistence of vision, our eyes and brain interpret the fast succession of images as fluid movement.            

I deconstructed a film and reduced it to just an array of the still images that once made the complete moving image. I then arranged all these stills into one complete and still photograph to represent the whole film. Viewing the same images this way gives the viewer a new experience. These stills are what make up the movie clip, but are presented in a way that allows the viewer to progress through the images at their own pace and not a pre-determined or industry standard rate or speed. This breaks the illusion of continuity.Viewing images like this also tears down movement to its core. Although this clip is only just over 2.5 seconds, the flame moves a great deal and produced 84 images. It helps make actions look more significant and illustrates just how much action and how many details and images make up a few seconds of any film.               

Creating a still piece from the frames of a moving image was my main goal, but I made other aesthetic choices based on this medium. When deciding on what event to film, I decided to capture a match being lit and going out. I focused on this because another basic element of film is lighting. Film is in essence, capturing light. So, in my film I also depict different levels of light.            

I arranged the photos in the way I did so they could still tell the story. A film’s story is produced by putting all the still images together in a certain progression and order. Most films today follow a linear narrative structure. I wanted to emphasize this throughout the pictures to show they were still telling the same story. The progression of the intensity of the light represents the progression of a story. It starts of with an inciting moment (the match being lit), builds to a bright climax, and then whittles down to a resolution. You can visually see the plot arc represented by the light intensity when looking at this photo.            

A lot of work goes into films, and I think this photograph I have made helps to illustrate that. It deconstructs film structure and gives a new perspective on what we are really seeing when we watch a film.