Blog Post #4: Museum of the Moving Image

Museum of the Moving Image: ADR

 Visiting the Museum of the Moving Image with my classmates was truly a great experience. Although I felt the tour was quick, I was able to discover new things (that are actually very old and have been in the media/film business for a very long time) that I never knew about. I saw the different types of projectors that were created in the late 1800s all the way to the present time (a timeline from past-present), and I saw how video flip-books are processed (which I truly enjoyed making and learning about them. But overall my favorite part of the museum that made me laugh and really want to understand more about that I didn't know about was ... the ADR Interactive in Behind the Screen section of the museum. 

 ADR stands for "Automated" "Automatic" Dialog Replacement also known as "looping". ADR is a process of re-recording dialogue in the studio in synchronization with the picture being projected on a screen. There are three roles in the ADR process: the actor, the recording engineer, and the sound editor. The actor has to recreate his/her performance and perfectly match up his/her speech to that of the film. The recording engineer has to recreate acoustic spaces so that it doesn't sound like an actor is in a recording studio. The sound editor has to pick and choose the best parts of multiple takes, combine them into one composite clop, and keep everything synchronized to the picture. Inside the booth in which a couple of my classmates and I were in has a microphone, preamp/interface, headphones, sound proof foam, and a video monitor. There usually is a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) but the booth really only showed a bit to understand the process and behind the scenes in a ADR station.

Every time I would watch my favorite animated movies or shows, I would look up to see people project their voices behind the scenes speaking into their microphone and act while they were recording their voices. I would love to be the actress for a character's voice one day, it definitely seems pretty tedious but something I would enjoy doing. 

The question how have the changes in the moving image technology changed the way moving images are created, how they look, and how we experience them? Well to begin with after seeing how things were projected, animated, produced etc etc, it was very much complicated and a lot of work back then. As time passed, from films looking grainy, black, white, and grey to having color and looking crystal clear is a major change! The history of technology has advanced to an era known as the digital world.  The new equipment and narrative techniques are motion pictures that are undergoing a revolution that is transforming how we look at movies and what movies look like. Technologies progressiveness has hopped, skipped, and jumped to watching movies on an iPad.  It makes it easier for everyone to capture films and feel a part of them to a whole new level.  Overall the moving image in technology may be positive to some and to others a negative change. To be honest I enjoy the moving images past creativity. But it really depends on what makes everyone's life easier and faster.

  

2015 Media 160/ Lab 1 : I will never forget the memories I created with such brilliant and talented personalities. 

Blog Post #3: Relationships Between Shots

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQWSh7Db-_E

The movie clip I picked as a linear media clip would be the film recognized as The Wizard of Oz (1939). The scene I felt that the editing has made a significant contribution to the storytelling and the feel of the piece is the Tornado Scene.

In the beginning of the film Dorothy is very uneasy and fearful by just seeing her body langue and facial expressions. The animals are panicking and running around, people from the farm yelling and panicking as they see the tornado approaching closer. Everything is being blown away, such as, the haystacks, trees; the objects around the farm and house are starting to break apart. Dorothy knocks out for a while after a window hits her in the back of her head. The house is lifted by the tornado and the music begins to get cheerful, some parts of clips show some comedy: you see an old women in a wheel chair whose knitting and is calm and cheerful just as the mans on the boat rowing smile and wave, a women bike riding in the tornado then turns into a witch.  All of this contributes together making this scene very thrilling.

The shots in this film are organized through their content, composition, color, and movement. In The Wizard of Oz the camera shots were mostly wide shots, medium shots, close up shot, point of view shots, and two shots. The camera angels in this film were in some parts high angle shots and track shots. The cameras movements were in some cases tilt shot (bottom to top), pan shots (left to right), track shots, dolly shots, and probably stedicam shots. The Wizard of Oz composition through the scene had deep composition and a balance such as asymmetry and the rule of thirds in the film (the aligning of Dorothy and the scenery creates more tension, energy, and interest in the composition than simply centering Dorothy). The film’s color is black and white. The relationship of the sounds to the images allows the viewers to feel terrified, urgency, panicky, very suspenseful, anxious, nervous, and tense. The sounds in the film are perfectly structured, some scenes you hear the leaf’s rustling through the wind and then the wind begins howling and continues to get louder as the tornado approaches the house and farm. What determines how long the shots are and what order they are placed in by selecting the use of other transitions, creating a tone and mood. The shot transitions throughout the film are fade in/out cuts, straight cuts, contrast cuts, parallel editing cuts, and jump cuts. The question “is there a ‘right’ place to cut or not to cut?” Yes there is a ‘right’ place. The cuts taken place is used as an artistic way to transition between subjects. The cuts are not seamless they are very obvious. The reason why the cuts are obvious is because you can tell by the shots throughout the film are being focused on something/someone and the change of scenery goes from one shot to the next.

Overall, The Wizard of Oz (1939) is a classic film. The film producers knew exactly what to do to create such an intense film that makes you stay engaged. For this assignment I felt the Tornado scene was a perfect section of linear media to examine the way it is constructed.