Project 4

WAR

Project 3

I did not turn this project in on time and therefore was not able to showcase it in front of the class.

Poem for Project 3

Found here:

http://www.wikilivres.info/wiki/A_throw_of_the_dice_will_never_abolish_chance

Project 2

Project 1 Critique

1.

Project Title: INVASION

Image: Don't have one on this computer.

To improve the project: I could add more photographs, higher quality ones, to boot. I had a track I originally recorded for this project that I could have put the crazy sounding one over to enhance the creepiness. I also could have added transitions, but unfortunately I didn't know how. I could brush up on how to take photos at night to avoid the blurry images, and probably should use autofocus next time. There are a number of things I could have done to make this project better, looking back.

What was successful: I think the sound certainly captures the whole unnatural aspect of the whole slide show, and I like how my final slide turned out. The picture I took of the moon worked pretty well to make a sort of "flashing lights" image reminiscent of old UFO photos. The length of the slides works to build suspense, though it probably is a bit boring.

Sound and images: The sound is the whole show, without it you would be confused as to what is going on, and it would be extremely boring. The images are mostly mundane until the final slide.

Editing: I recorded the soundtrack before I did anything else, then I went out and took the photos at 4AM, but I didn't take many because my fingers were frozen after a while.

Importance of sound: Like I said before, without the sound there might as well be no show. In this project it's the most important part.

2. I could have used a number of other things: haunting, spacey piano music; just the sound of wind; hushed voices; or, lots of noise, then everything going quiet at the explosion.

There are a lot of possibilities with ambiguous pictures like the ones I had.

For my video project I thought I would focus on a phenomenon I've noticed while searching youtube for songs recommended to me---covers. People record themselves covering songs all the time. They do it with their pianos, their guitars, ukeleles, violins, anything. People even record their BANDS in their living room. There's a wealth of these videos available for all kinds of music. I wanted to use these videos to make a montage of how people can express themselves musically to the world even if they've never played a gig.

For my first project, I decided I wanted to create a suspenseful and creepy atmosphere. I plugged the guitar into the computer, and I used it and some effects to create a track of strange noises by doing things like dragging the pick on the strings. I then took the recording into audacity and cut it and created duplicate tracks and altered the speeds.

I then went out and took some night photos and many of them didn't turn out very good because I didn't know how to work the camera, but I made do with what was useable. I decided since the noises were so bizarre and all the photos were devoid of people that I would make a slideshow that kind of led up to an alien invasion of TCNJ. I used photoshop to alter the colors of the light in the photos, and then with the last picture I used photoshop to make it look as though Loser hall was being destroyed like the White House in ID4.

I've watched commercials with no sound in the past, and it's made me hypothesize about things like how the commercials are produced. I tend to think that the commercial is viewed with no sound during production to see how effective the visuals can be alone, and I find sometimes that the commercials are more effective with no sound.

The first commercial I watched was a REMAX commercial, where people were walking by properties available to buy or rent, and then a copy of them would walk up and kick them in the rear. It was a very strange commercial to watch with no sound, and the meaning is lost without it. I imagine the meaning is in the speech overlay.

I found Papa Johns commercials are just as effective with the sound off. All they really need to do is show you those picture perfect pizzas to make you hungry.

Next commercial I saw was for a Dyson vacuum. It wasn't really a change from having the sound on, except you couldn't hear Dyson's British accent.

I saw a commcercial for the Philadelphia Lottery with a beaver or some such creature talking and going on a date with a female beaver (or whatever), interspersed with random talking by a middle-aged man, it was surreal and weird without sound, and the only reason I knew what it was about before it said so at the end was because I'd seen the character before.

Last commercial was an Allstate commercial which I recognized first because of David Haysbert and then because of the ALLSTATE INSURANCE label on one of the many black-and-white photos. I think the use of a prime-time television celebrity is effective because I didn't need to see anything else to know what the commercial was for.