Final Project

Brandon Lee and Tiara Patterson's Final Project link:

https://vimeo.com/149716820

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. 

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

Audio Portrait

Soundcloud link: https://soundcloud.com/brandon-lee-651060512/brandonlee-audioportrait

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 33^rd street and continued on 33^rd until I found a nice place to sit for the next hour.  The spot I chose was in between 4^th and 5^th 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.  5^th Avenue is a busy avenue, and Penn Station is on 7^th 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.       

Define a Space Assignment

Below is the link to my Define a Space Assignment:

Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/141569853

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.