Assignment Write-Up for 2/22

Last week's assignment was a little daunting. I don't think I'm alone in being unused to working on a single assignment for six hours straight, but that gets punctuated when you have to be out in the cold for six hours straight while having to wait your turn for a majority of the time. Luckily, I brought my notepad to do a couple of thumbnails in. There are a lot of aspects of the location we plan to shoot on that are just beautiful compositionally; consequently, I wasn't sure how to scale the thumbnails. Being tiny sketches, and my being averse to omitting detail, I only knocked out three on location, but I'm going to try to fill the rest of the page in with memory sketches. Of course, I didn't think to bring my little outdated digital camera, but fortunately, Aminah had her nice camera with her; she took some location photos on her own when we were downtown. As fate would have it, we realized, after we had gotten to the other location (which is indoors) and after it was dark out, that we had had the wrong Kelvin set the whole time--couldn't tell when we were shooting, looked good enough onscreen. As a result, by the suggestion of Rah, we did another set of shots at the school on Monday, with the correct white balance, to show that we understood the material and our mistake. Putting the camera together still isn't second nature either. As of yet, none of us has had opportunity to sit down and play with it a couple of hours, but it's hard to do that as a group anyway. Woe unto me that besides not being given a chance to really put parts of the camera together, because of a strong anxiety about the equipment amongst my group members, I further diminished my own credibility by narrowly escaping an accident on Monday when I didn't speak up loud enough to get assistance adjusting the tripod. It scared all of us, and by reflexive action, I protected the camera (or I did my best to). Everything was okay, but my group members were so shaken by that, and I was already discontent that day, that I took everything to personally again and completed my own humiliation by giving in to a petty emotional response. I'm still ashamed of it; and since that immature reaction was preceded by my failure to exhibit extreme caution and trust of others, my credibility is probably utterly ruined, I'll probably be brushed off more, and I'm sure I won't be trusted to do any equipment handling, even the most minor of tasks, until I get in another group later this semester--assuming that I succeed in redeeming myself and proving my competence.

Write-Up 2/15

I found this week's assignment very informative; a lot of the information covered in the post reaffirmed and buttressed the notes I took in class. It was easier to get clarification on certain concepts in the reading than it was by my asking questions in class. There's just so much to cover. The part that really excited me was about Lord Kelvin. Science is one of my interests, and when Kelvin was mentioned in class I immediately thought about the scientific measurement of temperature. Luckily, that curiosity was satisfied in the reading.

Visiting Artist Mel Chin

     Mel Chin was born in 1951, in Houston, TX. He exhibited artistic tendencies at an early age. In 1975, [he] graduated from Peabody College in Nashville, TN. (Wikipedia.org)  He has been making art professionally for over three decades now, and over his career he has accumulated numerous accolades, including: three honorary doctorates from prestigious universities; a feature in the PBS lecture series Art 21; and a feature of his design for a new "World Trade Center" building, as part of a group exhibition, in the Seventh Architectural Biennale in Venice (Wikipedia.org), to name a few. There will be a retrospective of his career, opening in 2014.
     Chin is a conceptual artist; however, due to his various working methods and media, his projects cannot be categorized in the traditional sense, and, as stated on Wikipedia' site "his work is not limited to specific venues." He collaborated with a scientist, Dr. Rufus Chaney, to create Revival Field 1989-, a three-year experiment that used certain types of plants (known as hyperaccumulators) to extract heavy metals from contaminated soil. This project was replicated at sites in Pennsylvania and Germany. It is evident in Chin's work and in his presentation that he is very interested in environmental, scientific, political, and cultural investigations. Chin states that his passions are arts, science, humanity, and poetry. One of his pieces that combines his political and cultural research is Extraction of Plenty from What Remains 1823- (1989) a sculptural piece that consists of: a) two full-scale replicas of two White House columns and b) a handmade cornucopia wedged between them, made of mahogany, banana, mud, coffee, and goat's blood. It is a statement about the implications of US foreign policy in Latin America. In formulating this project he researched the story of Capricorn, from Greek mythology, the product history of Chiquita bananas, and went to the White House in Washington, D.C. to survey and measure two columns on its portico.
    In talking about his process for this project, he said the first thing that struck me. Chin realized, while collecting the goat's blood, that he too had the capacity for cruelty and inhumanity. He said, "I'm delusional to think I'm special." Being 'special' was sometimes a conflicting idea when I was young. I realize that no one is any better than anyone else; but how I take it depends on who says it and how it is said. Within the context of Chin's lecture and the way that he stated it, it came across as an important revelation in shaping one's world view. However, if he had said it in a moralizing way or in a correcting tone, I would have been offended. Another thing he said that I managed to take down is:
     "Sometimes art can just be something that shows that you're thinking about someone else. It doesn't have to always be about yourself." This idea is related to the first in that it criticizes egocentrism. It is a beautiful thought, and he said this when he talked about Setting Sun Fan, a homage to Martin Chin (no relation), a Japanese auto executive in Michigan, who was killed by a mob in 1982 because of the racial tension created by American's fear of job loss to the Japanese auto industry. Throughout his projects and processes, Chin notes important details and gathers the most relevant research using free associative thought processes to lead him to a variety of resources.
     When making Setting Sun Fan, Mel Chin noted that Martin Chin's head had been bashed in with a baseball bat, so he used a sliced baseball bat, silk, and his own blood, pooled in a circle at the center, to evoke the Japanese flag, to create this piece. However, many of his projects involve collaboration at one stage or another, whether it's with weavers, casters, scientists, ordinary folks, and even the EPA. Once Chin has staged a project like the "Fundred Dollar Bill project" under Operation PayDirt, however, he says it is no longer his project because it moves into the realm of community involvement and community perpetuation.
     Since my evaluation ended up being so densely packed, I hope that it is evident to the reader that this lecture was very informative. Mel Chin is visibly very intelligent; he is thoughtful, serious, and scientific. He also has a great sense of humor, a genuine personality, and a musical-inclination of sorts (he's not the best singer but he did play some good guitar). The lecture went over an hour, and there is so much that I could say that I had to leave a lot out, otherwise this would turn into a dissertation. Chin shows no indication of slowing down, and he even has a graphic novella "9-11/9-11" (2002) and has collaborated with a Chilean animation team to make into his first animated film. In short, Mel Chin does everything! His goal is to "fight insignificance with action through making art," (approximate quote) and so far, he's done that and more.

--please note that because some of the information was stated so fast that I had to go to Wikipedia to make confirmations where my notes were insufficient--
   

Assignment Write-Up for 2/8

Finally, I've gone through the readings; I found them very helpful, very enlightening. It made the concepts easy to understand, without oversimplifying them. I also found them entertaining to a certain degree, but then again I have a sometimes simple sense of humor. Over the past week, our group has met a few times to discuss the plot, the character, and the premise. We settled on a plot, but in the process Rah and Yubu shot out a couple of different possibilities and an alternative backstory element. We discussed how we might be able to show certain aspects of the backstory and made some decisions about our main character's character. Our meeting went up to over an hour because we all had something to say and questions to ask. As a group, we've been preoccupied with the presentation of the pitch and which idea we should present. It's advisable that we stick with the more-developed backstory since we already know its relation to the plot, but I do like the alternative backstory element, and I think it should be kept in the rosters for further development. I don't want an idea that excludes all other possibilities before we even get to the scriptwriting part.

Write-Up for 2/1

The hardest aspect of this assignment for me was narrowing my thoughts. I have a bad habit of not doing something until an inconvenient hour because I spend too much time thinking about how to do it. For instance, how hard is it to create a personal goal? I could conceive in my understanding what my goals were, but it was difficult for me to decide how to word them. Of course, that's my own fault for writing on a mental blackboard instead of setting pencil to paper. But I finally did it, and it was satisfying and anti-climactic at the same time. I guess I just felt that I had to have an impressive list or some grand manifesto, but simplifying things was the best means to this end after all.

Making the group goal wasn't easy either. We all have it worded a little differently, or at least I do because 1) I didn't want to use the exact language that everyone else did and 2) I tried to make the goal sound more specific and accurate. I have my written language hang-ups. Anyway, we had to decide what would be a most appropriate goal, since we had so many ideas, and we had to play around with phrasing. At first the goals were too specific, but I think we've managed to broaden it enough without being too broad. Since we're still a little indecisive about what to pursue first, we'll likely be adding goals to that list.

I agonized over talking about the movie too, because there was so much I wanted to say, but I didn't want to say too much and I wanted what I said to be relevant to the question. You know, that feeling when your thoughts bubble up like foaming water and you can't see the bottom of the pot.

Goals for Digital Cinema

Statement of Group Goal(s)

• To show people several perspectives of an argument (issue, problem), in a way that leaves the viewers to draw their own conclusions or make their own decisions about it.

My Personal Goals

• The gain proficiency in visual story-telling using cinematic techniques and to develop skills as a director.
• To improve my character-development and plot-development skills through peer-evaluation and constructive criticisms.

A Movie that has Impacted Me

I choose Dreamworks' The Prince of Egypt. I hope that still counts because it is an animated movie, but it has had a huge impact on me, and it is outstanding. The Prince of Egypt is an adaptation of the story of Moses in the book of "Genesis" and the exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt. The Prince of Egypt came out in '98 or '99; I was seven or eight years old at the time, but I love that movie to this day (I just watched it recently, during the break).

Anyway, this is how it impacted me: it reinforced and strengthened my personal faith and beliefs and it inspired me musically and rendered me contemplative of the existence of long-suffering and the reward of patience and hope in adversity (as contemplative as an eight-year-old can be, anyhow). But it stuck with me. Why? Because I think this movie successfully relayed a powerful story and a powerful message. Of course, it is the formal elements of the movie and, what, for this intent and purpose, I'll call the cinematography, that performed such a powerful delivery. The musical score and the lyrics were deeply affective to me, even though I didn't understand all of the lyrics when I was younger. The juxtaposition of the background music and the songs with their respective scenes and sequences underscored the mood and communicated the atmosphere of the settings in a way that evokes the history of them. It feels as if I can be there; the locations have a presence, an emotion, a history that a written description alone could not invoke. Add this to the palette, the 'camera angles' and perspectives, and, of course, the timing and character design and it just comes to life, and I could go on and on. But, The Prince of Egypt shows a sense of humanness --deep faith, love and loss, and personal interactions-- that one cannot get from a dry reading of the Old Testament depiction. In short, the movie makes the Old Testament story relatable and indentifiable to anyone who views it.