Hero
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Friday, March 11, 2011
Reflection on the Hero/ Villain
The first Hero and Villain I critique are from James.
James’ blog: http://jameswatson14.blogspot.com/
His Hero is pretty funny—Eric. It reminds me of the superman. The character’s body figure is strong and seems powerful, although his hat is kind of dark humorous, his overall look is proper for a Hero. The Saturation of both the Hero and Villain is fair because he doesn’t use very warm colors that have strong contrast. Hue for both characters is light, I don’t know if it is because they did it using pencil and highlighter. And brightness is high, maybe they left the cloth part blank so I see that white.
The second Hero and Villain I critique are from Alex.
Alex’s blog: http://alexscreativityblog.blogspot.com/
However, he just posted his Villain but not Hero. I think his Hero’s animation is really creative. I especially love the fruit chewing part. The viewers can see the shadows very clearly by the way he’s using some simple spot lines on the Hero’s face. Facial expression is revealed by such impressive way, I like it very much. About the Villain’s animation, Symbolism is clear so viewers can easily tell this is the bad guy and he’s so big. Lighting also helped design the character’s mood, see villain’s face and reactions.
The third Hero and Villain I’m going to critique are from Andrew.
Andrew’s blog: http://awid7.blogspot.com/
His characters is similar to Star Wars. But when he put the story background related to OU, things became funnier. Hero’s shadows is obvious. Light comes from top upon the head, created a symbolism for the character that let me feel he’s so strong. Brightness let me feel he’s a good guy. Whereas the villain is so different. Look at the second picture. The hue is usually dark colors. And he has black shadows on his face. Black shadows let me have a feeling that he’s dark and evil, which characters exactly belongs to this villain.
Reflections on the Gaming presentation
We made the Gaming presentation last Friday. We planed to talk about several concepts however not all of them get covered. First of all, we didn’t explained or showed much about what the scenes like in the game. We used a picture in the presentation but to my point of view I feel like I still cannot imagine the frame in the game. The picture is like this…
Instead of using a picture, I think we should have use a trailer from other games. The scenes in the game would be like the game Assassins.
By showing the video, we don’t even have to explain much about what would the scenes be look like. Gamers could see through the trailer and kind of get the right point that we’re trying to make.
The second concept we are trying to make through but not did good enough is the Goals. I feel like my classmates were a little bit confused when I explaining the whole story. We actually talked about the story for most of the time. From my personal perspective, storyline is the key of RPG. When gamers are playing a character, the most attractive goal or say, motivation, is to find out what will happen next and carry on the plot. I am a gamer, and I’m a big fun of RPG. My experience tells me only those RPG with colorful and complex stories are able to attract me to buy. When playing the kind of game which is easy to figure out the ending, I’ll lose interest really quick, stop playing it and left the data halfway. So I made up a story like a fiction. The story is long and complicated. Protagonist has 7 lives, her goal is to find the 7 pieces of her soul and get back to her lover. I found out love is the key concept of every story. For example, the whole series of Silent Hill is about love and redemption; Father loves daughter; Husband loves wife; and the love between brothers and families. For here I finally chose to make up a love story. For our game, there is a big story for overall, and 7 pieces of individual stories talking about her 7 lives. Although we used 7 pictures to portray what her character in 7 lives, we explained not much so viewers looks confused.
The concept which I consider is most difficult to discuss with others is Rules. Our rules are something like:
•Basic human abilities apply a.k.a. you run into a tree you’ll fall down. You fall off a cliff, you die. Can get injured or die in game if attacked, your pet (computer program) is there to assist in finding items and healing you. You gain money when winning a fight, and you lose money to buy weapons.
•When you defeat the demons and get the seven items you can return to Hell. You can not get back without the items.
Our ideas varies because four of us plays different kind of game. Rules in different kind of games are certainly not exactly the same. For example, When I play The Sword, the gamed designed to meet enemies just when gamers touch the monster icons. Whereas in game Tale of Heroes, gamers can meet enemies by random time. So there are some differences between games. Apparently, different types of games are designed to be different like puzzle games and RPG games are totally not the same kind.
We really love this project, and we are enthusiastic about making stories.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Video Joke Criticism
Comparing the two videos. I’ll basically talk about the lines and movement.
LINES
As you can see in the first video (Tea time out), there are actual lines everywhere like the edge of wall, table, sofa and floor. The quality of these actual lines contains both linear and curvilinear. For example, the sofa is curvilinear and wall is linear. Almost all the directions are included, the line of table is vertical, the line of floor is horizontal, and the eye contacts are diagonal. Same as the second video (Trouble in the kitchen), almost every object you can see in the frame is actual line, even tiny things like a soup also has curvilinear actual line.
There are also virtual lines you could tell. For instance, eye contacts between Megan, Barbie and teapot construct a triangle; In the second video, when mother’s talking to the two relatives, there also appears a virtual line (triangle) too. When relatives exchanging a surprise look, that’s also a virtual line between the two. The quality for those virtual lines is mostly linear, and the direction is usually diagonal. However in the second video, viewers can tell that there includes much more virtual lines than in the first video.
MOVEMENT
The movement type of the two is the same—complex moves. Camera stays still, it is basically object movement. We also developed a point of interest in both videos via rules of thirds, color and eyes. For example, in the first video, viewer’s eyes focus on Megan and Barbie’s talking head. Megan’s wearing a red color costume so that’s easy to attract viewer’s eye focus.
And in the second video, our point of interest is the toy train played by the kid. The train moves a lot, and I think people are easily attracted by those moving objects. When other things keep still in the background, the moving object becomes the center of focus. In this video we actually use a lot of rules of thirds, which you can see through the relationship between camera positions and character movements. The movement speed in Tea Time Out is medium, but the second video is faster than this one.
We are making the two video using Contract and Affinity as well as Objective and Subjective from the six binaries in week one.
CONTRAST and AFFINITY
We are aiming to make two different types of video from the same joke. We changed the characters and representing in different genres. The first video is normal, we recorded it and did a voice over. The second we decided to represent in silent comedy—black and white scenes with funny music. I like the second video better. So there are definitely contrast and affinity.
OBJECTIVE and SUBJECTIVE
I’ll say the first one is more subjective than the second one. In the first video, Megan is the only human character and other characters are all toys, she’s talking to them by her own. However in the second video, we added in some reactions between the two relatives and mom’s yelling at the kid. So personally I think the second one is more objective.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Friday, February 25, 2011
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
SILENT HILL --- GAME
From my point of view, Silent hill is the best horror game of all time. These series are master pieces. Just watch the frames and listen to the theme music. For most time the games shows the dark scenes. When I was playing it, I can hardly see the objects so I feel easy to feel more scared. The color is basically changeable, cold like green, blue and gray. Warm color like the orange, red, and the color of blood, which also want to represent a feel of killing and death. The movement is so good, if you try to touch something in the game, the objects will reacted which made game players feel so realistic.
Confession
(cannot downloaded so I use writen paragraph, I'll think of a way to change it later)
This video is from one of my favorite Japanese film Confession. Every scene of this film is extremely beautiful, like photography. In most time the color is cold.The movement of the characters in film is fantastic. You can never imagine how creative the cinematographer is. Sometimes the cinematograhper freeze the frame or make the movement slow,and that’s beautiful.The director trying to represent a tense and scary atomospher by using cloudy sky and using cold color tones.
The scence have several changeable spaces. Deep, flat, and limited. I cannot say which is good because I love every scene of this film.
The film has been selected as the Japanese entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 83rd Academy Awards.In January 2011, it made the final shortlist. It has been nominated for Best Film at the 34th Japan Academy Prize.
For the most part, the brightness of the IMAGES is very dark. The cinematograher has manipulated the scenes accordingly to the meaning and plot of film. The use of shadows in this film help to built a sence of dark and at the same time also add depth to it.. The images seems to have a high saturation and a manipulated hue to give the game the dark.
Change pictures
For Sally Mann’s picture always give people a sense of horror. I’m trying to find the beauty of it. This is the original picture. I chose this picture, a woman faced us with her back. We cannot see her face, but her body figure is good. And combined with her hairstyle made me think she’s a 17-year-old girl. A young girl who are half naked and stand in the forest by her own. I still feel scary. Maybe this is the beauty of Sally Mann’s picture, trying to create an atomosphere of scary movies. Mann is crazy about her pictures, I thought maybe only people with mental problems can do these pictures.
I made changes to this picture using iphoto. I adjust the color balance and add a lens flare to it. The lens flare is dark, make the protagonist more pop up, so that audience are more easy to focus on the center part. The color is more like purple, which make this frame feel colder. According to the Picture Plane about color, cooler colors recede, warmer colors advance. I consider this picture as deep space. After I changed this picture, I feel the background if far away because I make the color colder. Line and Shape is the same because I didn’t take any part of the original picture. And Shot types remains unchanged, it is still a medium shot.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
The original and covered songs
I have to say I hate remakes, however, sometimes I have to admit that there are successful remakes exist,like SLEUTH, which was made in 2007,and starred by Jude Law. The original one was made in 1972. There is no doubt that the remake one made this film a shining star and known by everyone in the world. But there are still bad remakes you have to see--The covered songs. Some singers became famous by singing covered songs（although they are not as good as the original one, I have to maintain). Indeed, there is a need for those singers to sing covered songs. Here is the reason that a multitude of really great songs are limited in their language, then it’s hard to let foreigners to understand and sing the song as well. Some smart singers grab the chance, sing the beloved song and shoot into flame just in one night. Today’s case which I mentioned here, could be a failure case of covered song.
The first song is from the famous Japanese singer Mika Nakashima, called Find the Way. Find the Way is the theme song of the popular TBS animation GUNDAM SEED season 4. I’m a big comic fan and I love this animation and the song very much. Later on when Find the Way became popular, the Chinese TV star Xue Han song this song again in Chinese. I have nothing against her but I have to point out why I think this covered song is a failure.
Firstly, we can compare these two songs from Lyrics. This is perhaps the most obvious difference that everybody can tell. The original song is in Japanese and the covered one is in Chinese. I have to say Find the Way is born to be song in Japanese, because the Rhyme of the two is different even the covered one changed some of the lyrics’ meaning. When I sing the song again in Chinese I sort of lost the passion because the pronunciation cannot relieve the feeling of this exciting animation.
Intensity is also different. The original one’s intensity is loud and the singer is emotional. Whereas the covered one is soft. Speed might be different in some part of the song because Janpanese speaks so fast.
The same thing between the two is Melody, Organization, and Rhythm. Both songs have high qualities. Audience are easy to tell this is the song when they first heard, and not hard for them to remember and sing along. The covered one has Low Pitch also because of the difference in pronunciation.
The two songs use Contrast and Affinity to show the similarities and differences. And both of them are Subjective, use their own language, spin out similar emotions even some part of the lyrics have different meanings. Audience are easily be reflected by the song.
Find the Way’s Melody is so good that the covered song make Xue Han even more popular. But in a word, I still love the original song. Audience will have resonance with Find the Way when they hear it. Making them emotional and impressive about the song.
Read Brainwashed
http://changethis.com/
Brainwashed by Godin
Brainwashed by Godin
I red the part MAKE ART. Art is not all about a picture, a poem, or dance. True art is creativity, and MAKE ART is the creating process. We need to be creative. MAKE ART also has risks, but we should not be afraid to MAKE ART, in that way we can get reward of our work.
The paragraph Acknowledge the Lizard talked about what shuts down our art. The lizard’s brain is the part of our brain that worries bout safety and dishes out anger. If you feel not like to do something and still being forced to do that, you may have a feeling of against doing the thing. Or, sometimes you think you’ve made some credible achievements and then were being laugh at. That resistance arouse in your body.
From my personal perspective, I think these exercise really helped me to be a creative person. If one wants to have creativity, the number one thing he need to know is to understand the essence of creativity and how creative progress suits himself. I pretty much agree with Godin’s opinions. The way he mentioned about creativity makes me understand more. Being creative does have risks, but we should never be afraid of being a creative person, because we need to make correct choice and do the right thing. To be creative is definitely the right choice and will equip one for life.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Friday, January 21, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
The way I see WAYS TO GET IDEAS
http://changethis.com/
Mitch Ditkoff’s “14 Ways to get Breakthrough Ideas
Mitch Ditkoff’s “14 Ways to get Breakthrough Ideas
This book is about how people have to learn how to expand their creativity to think of original great ideas. Great ideas can make good things happen. By the process of creating new ideas, people should learn to select the good and abandon the bad. One of the points that Mitch Ditkoff mentions is that just because your idea does not work doesn’t mean it is bad, It just means switch it up and try something similar but change it. I read this article and have a deep feeling about this. This article basically tells you how to explore every idea you receive.
In his suggestion #1, Follow Your Fascination. He explains to us how the fascination work in people’s mind. We should be will to let fascination grow in our head so we can be more easily to capture new ideas. When I walk down street, ideas may be built simply because I see or hear something that have resonance with my mind. Things that can capture my attention must be those I am interested in. In order not to loose this inspiration, I used to take a note in my phone. There is once I wrote a film story, the protagonist is a romantic woman with fantastic ideas, when she happen to think of something new, she will text to her passed boyfriend. That’s the beauty of texting. So I think I’ll write my ideas down as soon as possible, before I loose it. Fascination could never be wrong. May be some of the ideas seems subconscious and has no logic, it is still your original idea, so why give them a judgment? I used to write dream diary when I was in High school. I write those absurd dream stories down because I think they can give me more inspiration to create new stories. In a word, there is no right or wrong ideas, ideas are precious, and like what Mitch Ditkoff said, “Out of the thousands of ideas with the power to capture our imagination, the fascination felt for one of them is a clue that there’s something worthy of our engagement. Don’t dismiss it as trivial. Give it room. Give it time to breathe. Honor it.”
“Fascination, quite simply, is nature’s way of getting our attention.”
In his suggestion #4, Make New Connections. I think this part is exactly what I have the same voice with him. People won’t get creative if they always relies on solos. If there are no idea of combining wheels and containers together, there won’t be cars. Why don’t we make connections? There are more things that can be connected together than we can ever imagine. Think of doing your math question, how many ways can you combine these characters? Making new connections is probably the same thing.
Make three parallel lists of ten words. The first list? Nouns. The second list? Verbs. The third list? Adjectives. Then look for intriguing new connections between them.
First list: seed, grass, farm, cow, milk, bottle, Vitamin, baby, money.-----seed can be money.
Second list: move, transport, jump, act, build, live, call, marry, study, travel.----have a house and live a life.
Third: Small, ugly, cold, big, beautiful, wonderful, excellent, happy, entertaining, available---getting more happy life
Different words can combine different meanings. Ideas can jump from the same to contrast, ideas varies, making connection never ends.
What other thing I’m interested about is his suggestion #10, Hang Out With Diverse Groups Of People. I think this suggestion is really helpful to get new ideas. Sometimes the power of a single man is not enough. We need to meet friends, and different groups of friend can give us different suggestions. You can never know which type of suggestion is proper until you really listen to them. That’s why we should hang out with different group of people. Friends may have bias on your opinion, but that’s fine, nobody will think exactly the same, just don’t be afraid to ask for suggestions. People can never be too intelligent to learn from others.
Here I’ll make a list of ten groups of people outside of my traditional “posse” who I can spend time with.
1. The CSSA members. Since I work as the Vice president of Ad. Department, we usually have a lot of meetings to discuss what are the plans. And I can always get something new because we are different kind of people who think in different patterns.
2. My video production collegues. Although we study the same thing. People’s idea varies. Just like there won’t be a same shooting style between directors.
3. Cosplayers. We post our artworks online, make comments and communicate with each other.
4. My teachers. Teachers can always teach you those things you don’t know.
5. Families. There are never be more connections between family members.
6. Roommate. She’s the one knows how you look like when you sleep…O.O
7. Classmates. If you don’t know the homework for today, call and ask them.
8. Boyfriend/Girlfriend. I don’t really know if it is a constant relationship to you, but mine... = =|||
9. Boss. He is the person who can give you suggestions on work. Maybe sometimes too strict, but it is always good to listen to him.
10Those famous people online. Spend time on Facebook or sina blog will sometimes teach you how the world around you really looks.
Those people who influenced me to be a creative person
PART 1:
PART 2:
The second people who inspires me was the most creative director in China, Xiaogang Feng. His original narrative filmmaking style inspires me so much. Compare to other directors, his film has a common touch with the public. People call him “The father of HeSuiPian”, which means "New Year's Celebration Films" in Chinese cinema. He probably achieved his full fame as the director of the movie Dream Factory (1997). Having achieved success in the face of competition from Hollywood within mainland China, University of Minnesota professor, Jason McGrath, believes "The entertainment cinema of Feng Xiaogang represents a new model of a Chinese national cinema that positions itself vis-à-vis Hollywood." There are never a constant model for Feng’s film, he’s so creative in scripts that his film stories varies from comedy to ancient tragedy.
Feng is also excellent of making his scene very creative using tension and release. The scene is before the shock begins, the music suggested a big disaster is coming, and he uses reverse chronological order gimmick to give the audience a full tension before the disaster breaks out. One reason I love his film so much is because when watching his films, people can always feel a thing deep inside their heart. Feng knows the thoughts among the audience, what do they really want, and shoot the dream of his audience.
PART 3:
Yimou Zhang, he’s the most famous director in China. I love his filmmaking styles, usually conflict stories with extremely beautiful scenes. He inspires me so much not only because he is a great director, but also he involves in many fields of directing and make full use of his incredibly talent. I always follow him as my model of struggle for success. We born at the same place, and have the same hobby, photography, painting and writing scripts. In his early career, Zhang was sent to work for the Guangxi Film Studio as a cinematographer. Though originally intended to work as director's assistants, the graduates soon discovered there was a dearth of directors so soon after the Cultural Revolution, and gained permission to start making their own films.
Usually his films have wonderful cinematography, I guess it’s own to he’s a photographer.
His film uses the Objective and Subjective pattern. Most of his films have been colored by the character or writer. They often has a basis in reality, but reflects the perspective through with the speaker views reality. It cannot be verified using concrete facts and figures. And at the same time, his characters are more rational than the normal people, which give audience more space to spread their feelings.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Why do I choose video production
This is probably the same thing as my personal statement. The media world is all around us and tied closely to people’s daily lives. I’m always in admiration, and at the same time, curious about how media professionals make such visually stunning videos. Studying video production techniques is like learning the process and tricks behind the scenes.
I want to be a director in the future, hopefully I can be an actress for my film at the same time. I’ve engaged in animation, game and film activities since high school has shaped me into a person best suited for a media career. I have always had a blueprint in my mind about what I want to do, and my blueprint has helped me build my imagination, and my imagination will help me make beautiful and meaningful videos.
I used to be a Cosplayer in China. Being a Cosplayer, what I love to do is to direct stage plays, design costumes, make-up, acting, shooting photos and photoshop. Most of my interests are closely related to animations and films. Within my college life in the past year, I have participated in some photography and animation activities. In 2009, my friend and I shot a set of photography for NETEASE website, and recently we are working on a project for Google Fashion. I love to watch films on the weekend and write film analyses because that helps me gather the style, idea and aesthetic expressions that I might want to create and expand while making them my own. Besides, I love reading fiction and writing Chinese poems. After so much reading as the foundation of my literary knowledge, I started to write scripts. Some scripts come from my dreams, and some scripts are recomposed from real stories that come from the people around me. One can feel that being listened to by others is a really interesting thing to do. I enjoy the lifestyle called “recording”. If the little things from life are valuable to me, then I just record them and write them down, storing them for future use in my scripts. I’m trying to get in touch with all the areas that I am engaged in to make my media career a better prospect.
I’m working as Vice president of the Chinese Scholar Student Association, Publicity Department, and my work makes the best use of my ability. I’m working on designing posters and flyers, shooting politics videos of CSSA, and doing the editing and Photoshop work. In the past, I learned Editing and Photoshop all by myself, and now I really feel I need to learn more.
I consider myself to be a responsible, patient, and creative person. I have well-planed what I’m going to do when I graduate. I will try to learn my major techniques as well as possible, and hopefully pursue a film minor. I will also use my video production techniques to shoot some short films on my own using a 5D Mark II Camera. In addition, I will apply for some valuable internships in NY and LA. Those are my ideal cities and places to release my thoughts.
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