Blog #5

I came a long way to finish this course since last semester when I took MEDP 150. what I had learned in MEDP 150 was basics, and 160 was more advanced based on that. MEDP160 was more interesting and I had more fun than in 150. However what I though is that we did not have enough time to work on every assignment: I was always running out of time to finish all projects, and I wish we had more time. But taking this course was now one of my good experiences in college. The most memorable thing in the class is the short film assignment. I never expected that this assignment would be so fun and interesting. What I learned from this assignment is planing everything before we actually start filming is important. My partner, Shawn, and I discussed a lot in class and planed everything out before we went to filming, so that everything went smooth in the filming. Just what I should have cared more was to hold a camera more stably, because we cannot do anything with shaky shots in editing. That is what I realized in the editing process. It was my first time to edit and use final cut. Once I got used to using final cut, it was easy. However, editing itself was very difficult and took a lot more time than I imagined. It was because that there are so many things that we should think about in terms of "continuity". If I cut a shot even a second earlier than it's supposed to be, the "continuity" will be gone, and it creates totally different feelings on the shot. It was interesting, but tiring at the same time. If we had more time to edit, I would edit sounds and put some music as well as putting a title in the beginning. It was the toughest assignment throughout this course, but I had so much fun overall.

Hopefully, I will extend what I learned in this course and continue studying it further.

Blog #4

Animation is always what children like, and I used to watch it a lot when I was a kid.

As people grown up, everybody stops watching it. What I concern is that it is because animation is lack of reality: characters look mechanical, anything does not look real. However, 3D animation

broke these issues. 3D is a animation style that has been popular more and more today, and many animation movies are 3D. What I like about 3D animation is that it is more realistic than other types of animation. That is why I think that characters in 3D animations are liveliness.

My favorite 3D animation production company is Disney- Pixar. Their works are always my favorite, such as Monsters Inc.,Mr. Incredible, etc. All characters in Pixar's animations are lovable and liveness. The best work of them is Toy Story as I concern.

When the fist Toy Story came out, I was very amazed because all characters which are toys look like real.

For example, the main character, Woody. Woody is a cow boy doll, whose face made of wood, body is cotton, and cloth is a piece of cloth. His face is coated, so it is luster. Audience can know that because they can see how light is reflected on the surface of his face. Unlike it, his costume is made of a piece of cloth, and it does not reflect light, but we see the texture of it, and it looks like it is made of cotton. Like this, we see the details of texture of any objects in 3D animation that we do not see in other types of animation.

Another thing that attract me is the movements of the characters. Most of characters are toys, and they, of course, are not supposed to move by itself when humans are around: toys are supposed to be moved by them. Therefore, they are lifeless when humans are around. But whenever humans are gone, the toys are totally different from how they were before: they talk. run, dance, etc, like humans. Difference is that since they are toy, some of the toys can remove parts of their bodies, like Potato Head. These toys' movements, even human characters', in the animation look very similar to our movements in real life. These characters' movements make them very lifelike and made me think them as humans, not toys.

Like these, Pixar succeeded to use 3D, which enable to show details, to make the animation more believable. They also give these toy characters realistic movements. Including of all these, Toy Story is one of the significant 3D animations, and it is one of my favorites all the time.

Toy Story3 Video Clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_FfHA5whXc

Blog #3: A Filmmaker, Teresa Almada.

Teresa Almada's films made me realized that color and brightness affect feeling of film a lot. The first film that we saw at the workshop, All Water Has a Perfect Memory, gave me a feeling of something special. I thought that it was because the color of the film was whitish and bright overall. The story was about a tragedy that happened to Teresa's personal life: the loss of her family member, and the overall color in the film created a memorable feeling, and it made me feel like that what I saw in the film was something special. That is also Teresa's feeling toward this tragedy. Another effect of the use of this whitish, bright color is that it made me feel like that this story of the film is fading away, and it created a concept of film that is seeing a part of somebody's memory/flashback. That is why the use of this color gave me a feeling of memorableness, and it made audience feel like that the story featured in the film is something special. Unlike All Water Has a Perfect Memory, the other films of Teresa that we saw at her presentation had different type of color. In both films, the color looked sharper than All Water Has a Perfect Memory, and the color was just like what we usually see in everyday life. The color made me think that what is happening in the films are real and it is about today, not about past. Also, it gave me a feeling of that the happenings in the films are something actually happening in my life. These different type of colors in Teresa's films made me realized that color affects a lot on what kind of feelings film gives the audience, and messages/themes of the film is also influenced dynamically depending on the use of color. It was very interesting.