Brandon Lee and Tiara Patterson's Final Project link:
https://vimeo.com/149716820
FILMP 160
Wednesday, December 23, 2015
Monday, December 7, 2015
Museum of Moving Image Reflection
The core of the Museum of
Moving Image is the Behind the Screen exhibition. It occupies the second and third floor and
shows visitors the creative and technical processes of producing, promoting,
and presenting films, television shows, and digital entertainment. On our tour, we saw multiple parts of the
exhibit. I wish we walked through the
whole exhibit as a class, but time was a factor. We recorded our movements as a sequence of
still photographs, essentially making a gif or flipbook. We recorded our voices over dialogue from
certain films. We added different pieces
of music to scenes from movies to experience how music affects mood and
tone. Overall, it was a fun trip that I
would definitely take again.
My favorite part of the trip
was recording our voices to dub over scenes in the ADR (Audio Dialogue
Replacement) room. We, as in about
twenty people, crammed into a soundproof room with a shotgun microphone coming
down from the ceiling and a huge screen situated in the front of the room. Our tour guide started the demonstration by
asking for volunteers to sit in front of a computer and put on headphones. These volunteers were going to use their
voices for the lines. We recorded over
actors like Eddie Murphy and Jack Black.
It was funny to see the end product, but I did learn that ADR is a very
difficult part of post-production. It
was hard to match the lines with your character’s lips on the screen and have the
right intonation in your voice.
The ADR part of the exhibit
made me think about how important it is to film today. Sound is not easily edited, and if it does
not come out right during filming, that’s a problem. Instead of going back to shoot, which at
times and depending on the circumstances is impossible, actors can just go into
the ADR room and say their lines there.
This is a huge advancement in filmmaking. The possibilities and applications are
endless.
Monday, November 16, 2015
Pen Versus Knife scene in the Bourne Identity
Here is the link
to the Pen Versus Knife scene in the
Bourne Identity (2002): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFnmq5PPScA
For the purpose
of the assignment, I will examine the clip from 0:35 to 1:50
In this clip
from the Bourne Identity, Jason
Bourne engages in hand-to-hand combat with a highly trained assassin. The entire scene is shot from a handheld
camera, and the editing fit about sixty shots within one minute and fifteen
seconds. This “rapid-fire” editing of
hand-held shots creates a frantic, chaotic and exciting feel—almost as if the
viewer is present taking part in the fight. This feeling is reinforced by the use of many
close-up shots. More than half the shots
are close-up shots, extreme close-ups and medium close-ups, while the rest
being medium shots and two wide shots.
The scene is always fast moving; the longest shot isn’t more than a few
seconds. And those slightly longer shots
create a brief break in the action, so there isn’t too much confusion. The fight also utilizes intentional shots in
which the fighters are out of focus. As
a result of the quick, smooth transitioning of shots and the occasional
out-of-focus shots, viewing the fight is not clean or clear. I like this stylistic choice because fights
are not suppose to be clean. They’re
chaotic like the way the scene was organized and done. Point of view shots are also introduced to
further the feeling of being present during the fight. For example, at around forty-five seconds,
the camera is looking up at Jason Bourne, as if the viewer is the assassin and
Jason Bourne is trying to stomp on the viewer’s head. To sum up, everything is always moving fast in
the clip, and it is not always clear what is going on. The camera work and editing in the Bourne Identity creates a sense of
realism—as if you are right there with the characters
Monday, November 9, 2015
Monday, October 26, 2015
What I Hear - The Soundwalk
It was a Friday
afternoon after class, around 4 o’clock, the perfect time for my
soundwalk. I got out of the 6 subway
station at 33rd street and continued on 33rd until I
found a nice place to sit for the next hour.
The spot I chose was in between 4th and 5th
avenue, a bench outside of a coffee shop, that’s name is escaping my mind. Naturally, there was a sign that said “Customers
Only,” so I went inside and bought one cup of coffee along with a sizable
blueberry muffin. I sat down after a
long day of school, and the most prominent keynote was the traffic coming from
the avenues, loud honks and beeps that would drive someone from the quiet
Midwest mad. The sound of traffic
doesn’t irritate me however; I actually find it kind of tranquil and
relaxing. For me, it’s proof that I’m
never truly alone. Yes, I came to the
bench alone to think about sound, but the honking and the beeping immediately
reminded me that I’m among people living their own individual lives, lives that
they wish to keep on this Friday afternoon so they honk to avoid
collision. It’s truly a beautiful
thought. I then focused on more specific
sounds, particularly sound signals. I
stumbled upon this coupling arguing. It
might not have been their intention to draw attention, but people were giving
them looks and I heard them from across the street. It was happening outside of a deli, and the
argument was apparently about food. The
woman was not hungry and didn’t want any food, but the man bought her a salad
anyway. She walked out saying that he
doesn’t listen to her and/or doesn’t respect her choices. The man argued that he was just trying to be
nice and that he just wanted to share a meal with her. Crazy stuff.
Besides that, another keynote was the sound of walking and lots of it,
more than usual. It was rush hour. People were trying to get home, wherever that
may be. The walking could even be
considered a soundmark. 5th
Avenue is a busy avenue, and Penn Station is on 7th Avenue. It makes sense that a lot of people would be
walking west. That certainly was the
reason as to why I was walking west from the 6 train. The remaining time was filled with the same
sounds along with birds and occasional passing phone calls. Overall, I had a great time on my
soundwalk. It was a relaxing way to end
my stressful week full of midterms. I
may just do a soundwalk every Friday.
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
Thursday, September 10, 2015
Artist Statement
My name is
Brandon Lee, and one day, you will see my name in the credits of some
film. I kind of always knew I would go
into the entertainment industry. I grew
up watching countless movies and TV shows, and playing hours of video
games. Entertainment from works of media
has and always will be a big part of my life, my guilty pleasure. When I’m not watching anything, I create
art. I feed my creative genius by
drawing in my sketchbooks and painting on traditional canvases. With hard work, I earned my place in the
National Art Honor Society, and my art has been featured twice in the All
County Art Exhibit at Adelphi University.
The thing I love about creating art is that other people see it and are
affected in some way. It makes
everything, from the time put in to the actual process, worth it. The same applies to the art of motion
pictures. One movie that really inspired
me to “get the ball rolling” on my film career is Wreck-It Ralph, an animation
film. After watching it, I knew for sure
that I wanted to make movies for a living and for the rest of my life. At the time, I was going through a rough patch in my life, and the movie helped me overcome sadness and adversity. The story it told moved me, and I started to
understand the power of storytelling. Stories
affirm our existence, affirming the belief that our lives have meaning. They teach invaluable lessons in an enjoyable
way. Filmmaker Andrew Stanton says
something remarkable about stories, and it’s that a story “can cross the
barriers of time, past, present and future, and allow us to experience the
similarities between ourselves and through others, real and imagined.” This is
what I want to do: tell stories that transcend time and inspire for generations. Someone somewhere may need me one day to help them through life, and I may not be there. But the stories I leave behind will be there, just like Wreck-It Ralph was there for me.
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