Week 6 - Chion Article

Sound in film is an interesting phenomenon. I always found how you can take an any moment wether it be serious or comedic and change the effectiveness and meaning just by adding certain sounds. When I edit films, I enjoy placing sound effects during certain parts to add comedy to certain moments. Sound effects aren’t the only thing that matter though. The score of a movie to me is just as important as the rest of the film. If the score is bad it is noticeably bad. Now a good score is one that isn’t noticed at all but, it carries the movie in the subconscious. But, a great score is well noticed and predominant throughout a great film. Whenever I hear a great score I immediately find the sound track the next day. I love collecting score music because it is the essence of film. Chion makes good points in his articles about sound. I think sound matters more than what the image shows us because depending on what the sound is at a certain moment it can change the perception of what is actually on screen. There is one thing for sure, sound is a powerful device.

Week 5 - Pes Blog

I found the Pes videos to be very interesting. I had seen the Constar one before on television. What is amazing to me is the time it takes to accomplish things like that. Everything has to be perfect to make it look like it is actually moving. Then on Monday we got to make are stop animation films which were a lot of fun. Even though we made ours fairly simple using only play-dough and tissue paper, I think it came out great and I’m really excited to see the final product when it is completed. Stop animation has always intrigued me. I’ve been watching Claymation films since I was little, which is probably why I wanted to use play-dough. They look relatively simple until you realize that each image is taken one at a time and everything is slowly done by hand. After this class I have a new respect for those who do stop animation.

Week 4 - Class Response Blog

I have only been in this class for two weeks since I wasn’t apart of it the first week of school. I am enjoying the class thus far. On the first day all I could think about was arts and crafts time during elementary school which I love. I have always been a hands on person so having a class that is 90% hands on makes me happy. A lot of what we are learning is kind of confusing mainly because we are getting hit with a lot just for two days of class. If this class was more than one day a week it wouldn’t seem like so much information, but seeing how we need all of that time to accomplish one thing I understand why it is one day a week. I can’t wait to work with more 16mm film because I have worked with 35mm for a while and I love film. The switch to digital is upsetting, but with this class I can see how other film works as well. I just find it hard to believe that I’m getting a grade for playing with film and paint.

Week 4 - Animation Blog

I read the Well’s article on animation and I found it relatively interesting. Animation is one thing that I have been passionate about lately. Recently all Disney and other films that have been coming out of Hollywood have all been made with CGI. No one is truly animating their films anymore. They just use computers. In my opinion CGI is neat and everything but, it looks too fake and I miss the look and feel of old animation. Now I’m not saying they should give up on CGI all together, but they should have a mix of animation and computer animation. Enchanted was a breath of fresh air, The whole first ten minutes of the movie was completely animated and it felt good to see that on the big screen again. Every time I go to see the new Disney or Pixar film they always feel the same, like that don’t have any depth to them. They have come a long way with computer animation and it does look amazing but, nothing beats good old 2D animation. The article spoke of Looney Toons cartoons and how each character had there own voice and style, with CGI every character looks and acts the same. They don’t even show old animated cartoons on television anymore. I think they should bring make old school animation.