Write-Up for January 25th

The most challenging aspect of this assignment for me was part A: Have confidence in your vision of the world. It's difficult for me to talk about myself on a somewhat personal level to a group of people, even if I know most of those people. The difficulty laid in deciding what to present about myself that I don't think is too personal; I don't want to feel vulnerable. Though, in a sense, that vulnerability is a prime example of the inner struggles I will make mention of; untangling my self-perception from how I think others perceive me. The first two prompts were the ones I was more weary of, since I couldn't think of anything off hand. I spent a couple of days thinking about it. For one thing, I feel that I've lived a blessed enough life that I never experienced a significant amount of conflict, but again, that's my perception of my life. A family member may think of several instances I wouldn't have as formative conflicts. The first one was just hard because although I can easily think of personal peculiarities, I couldn't readily imagine anything that stood out any more than anybody else's. For the first two, I had to get suggestions/evaluations from my mom because I felt I needed that sort of outside viewpoint to guide my 'self-searching'. Equally difficult, was that once I got my information, I had trouble summarizing it satisfactorily; I don't want to leave anything out, but I have a tendency to talk too much plus stage jitters, which make that tendency worse.
          Part B was interesting because I was excited about watching a clip in order to evaluate its structure in relation to the theme of the piece. However, I was unsure of how to evaluate them without a proscribed temple, but I began to enjoy that liberty, since I should know how to evaluate. "Meshes in the Afternoon" confused me, and at first I took issue with that because I'm linear plot-oriented, until an exchange with a peer made me realize that maybe it's supposed to confuse me. She suggested that it's experimental, and that made it clear to me. The way "Meshes in the Afternoon" is shot intrigues me the most, of the four, particularly because of the sound effects, occasional non-traditional background music, and the choice of what to leave out of the frame, selection of extreme and medium close-ups and the disorienting camera angles in a couple of parts in the sequence.