An animation I like

One of my favorite animations that is on television right now is The Venture Brother, which is played on Adult Swim. The show has to do with a parody version of what a Johnny Quest character might be like if he grew up to fall short of emulating his super scientist father, and how he lives his life as a sham scientist with his two strangley naïve boys and body guard. There are many great things regarding the animation of this show. For one, there use of space is great, they really take into account how a camera might be able to film these characters if they were real and a lot of times it gives a good 360 degree feel of a space, capture all sides of a room and a character. Another thing that I like about the show is the realistic way they make their characters move. Not that I don’t like animation that allows their characters to move in unnatural ways, but it fits the style more to have them move as real people would, especially because the show parodies the style of sixties Hanna Barbara cartoons, which were very still and bulky with limited movement.
Another aspect of the show that I like is their attention to detail when it comes to backgrounds. As I mentioned before, this a show that parodies shows like Johnny Quest, a program that would reuse their backgrounds and not pay too much attention to continuity details. In the Venture Brothers, this does not seem to be the case, most likely because the show is made with Flash and it becomes a lot easier to manipulate backgrounds and allow for greater detail.

What I learned from editing

I really enjoyed doing this editing project, I thought that it was a lot of fun. As far as my planning and experience doing this project I would have to say that I feel I wouldn’t redo the way I went about editing just because since this wasn’t my first time using final cut, I felt I had a good sense of what needed to be to make a decent video. If anything I wished I had more time to do the production part of it because there were a couple of shots that I felt I was missing and if I could have gone back and reshot some things I think I would have been happier with the finished product. However, although this was not my first time editing videos, it was my first time editing a narrative piece and I would have to say I did learn some things from that aspect of the experience. The most important thing I came to realize was the importance of continuity and I feel that doing this project gave me a good sense of how to link up shots so that they appear to be seemless. Another thing I learned was that to make continuity work, and to make a video look good in general, the cuts always need to be on the action.
Like I said, I am pretty happy with the outcome of my project, I think I did a good job doing my preproduction work which made things go a lot smother than if I had just tried to wing it.

Editing Analysis

One piece of media that I really like the editing for is the music video from the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ song Scartissue. What I really like about the editing in this video is how simply it tells the story of all the scars that the band has gotten from the life in the desert. One thing I really like about it is how it keeps continuity with the time of the day, especially at the end of the video when they have all of their magic hour shots. I also like the pacing that the video has as a result of the editing. Seeing as how the video is supposed to have a depressing, reflective feel, I think that the slow pacing and extended shots work really well with trying to achieve these aesthetics. I also feel like the extended shots and slow cuts go along with the scenery. Taking place in the desert, it seems to represent a place where time stand still and the longer shots and slow cuts match that by slowing down the time frame of the video. Another aspect that is interesting about the video is the order of the shots. I like how they have a good balance between them driving and then taking pit stops in the desert. I think that by doing this, the shot sequence again adds to the idea of slowing down time because it shows their disregard for a time frame for which they must end their journey.

What media I like

As someone who aspires to be a media artist, I try to expose myself to many different types of media. I find the Internet to be a great place to find different articles, television shows and works of art that people have created and posted. Of all the websites, the two that I visit most often are facebook.com and boingboing.net. The thing that is great about facebook is it allows you to keep in touch with all the people that you do not get to see in your everyday routine. I feel that I have made a lot of friends over the years and facebook allows me to keep in touch with all of them because its newsfeed thingy reminds me that they exist. I like boing boing because it gives me access to lots of cool and interesting articles about different projects going in the political, science, and art world.
For the kinds of media that I like to view, I think that my favorite kinds are movies and animation. As far as movies go, I still really enjoy the event aspect of having to go to the theater to watch them, and sitting in the big dark room and experience peoples stories on the big screen. And as my education in media increases, I find myself enjoying people’s work more and more and I feel that I have been gaining a good critical eye for understanding the way that movies are made. I also really enjoy animation, especially stop motion and classical drawn, I hope to be more involved with animation as I progress in my career and I feel that learning flash will definitely increase my abilities to pursue these aspirations.

What I learned in class

I have to say I feel like I learned a lot from this class. It was my intention to specifically learn how to use both final cut and flash, and though I kind of accomplished the basics of both of these programs in other classes, I feel that the assignments given provided good practice for the skills I had learned. As far as 150 went, I also found that class to be very helpful as far as learning not only how to use other programs, such as Photoshop, but it gave a good basic understanding of how to use cameras and lighting equipment. I think this class is really well put together in the sense that it gives the students a taste of so many different aspects of media making, and it gave me a good idea of what I wanted to narrow my focus down to. However, I felt I was in an interesting position because I was forced to take these classes after I had already completed the now obsolete media 151, and had a lot of basics in this field accomplished from taking other classes, however, the hands on aspect of the class was definitely an improvement from the way things were done in the past. All and all, I thought this class was a great experience, and I find myself wanted to continue in a postproduction direction. I feel that I still have a lot to learn and it is unfortunate that I only have one semester left at Hunter and am only one analytical class away from finishing the media major, but I feel prepared to increase my skills by using the foundational skills gained from this class along with what I have learned in other classes and through outside experience in the media world.

What I Hear

I sat on the stoop of my apartment in Williamsburg in Brooklyn and listened for the sounds of my street. At first it was pretty quiet and all I could really hear was the wind blowing. It picked up and I could hear the branches rustling in the tree that was on the street. Then I saw some people walking by on the street talking in Spanish. Next I saw this guy walking down the street with this mannequin and his dog. I heard parts of the mannequin fall and the dog became a little scared and he told the dog not to be afraid. I sat there for a little longer and not much happened but I did hear some cars drive by and I could hear what music the people driving them were playing. I also heard an ice cream truck go by, but there weren’t any kids around so it didn’t stop. While I was sitting there, I also hear the front door to my apartment building squeek open and then slam shut and heard my neighbor’s footsteps as he went down the stoop. Some more people went by and were having conversation but not about anything too important. I also thought I might be able to hear the J train going over the Williamsburg bridge but I think I was only imagining it. After I sat out there I kind of realized that my block is pretty quiet, especially during the day.

Here's the album

I meant to post the album with the post