Blog#3

I have chosen a scene from the movie, “A Chorus Line”. The story is about an audition for the Broadway show. The scene that I picked is a very beginning scene, and I think that in this scene, the editing is well-done and creates the energized and competitive moods in the audition well. This scene starts with an establishing shot of outside of the theater in which the audition is taking place. The camera first shoots the top of the theatre and moves downward, and then it shoots a long line of the dancers for the audition. This shot shows audience that how competitive this audition is by showing the long line for the audition. Then, the scene changes to the stage of the theatre and suddenly switches to a close-up shot of the choreographer who has just turned back. He is very serious and choosing dancers for the second audition. This close-up shot of the choreographer establishes the vigor mood overall. At the same time, it shows how serious his is and creates the nervous feeling of dancers. The establishing shot changes to the close-up shot all of a sudden, and the cut is obvious; however this obvious, sudden cut gives audience a strong impression and emphasizes the intensity of the audition. Thus, I thought it is successful. After the close-up shot, the camera starts moving away from the choreographer gradually, and it follows him wherever he goes on the stage, and it changes to a next shot: the camera angle changes to high-angle, so that the shot shows all dancers dancing on the entire stage. Even though the camera angle changes suddenly, this cut seems like that it is seamless because it keeps the same color feeling and creates the feeling of continuity. On the other hand, the cut from the establishing shot to the close-up of the choreographer changes the feeling of the color: the color feeling changes bright outside to darker inside of the theatre. The color difference makes the cut between these shots obvious and impressive.

The video clip of the scene:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0THRk2VYM8

Blog #1, MEDP 160

Today, a lot of websites which allow us to interact with other people are showing up continuously, and everybody's attentions keep shifting from one the next. The best example is Myspace and Facebook. Only a couple years ago everyone used to have Myspace and used to play with it all the time: decorating backgrounds of their own pages, adding music or friends, and uploading photos. I was one of those people who was addicted to Myspace. Myspace, however, has now faded away and Facebook has taken over: everyone is on Facebook all the time, and nobody goes to Myspace anymore. It is now the Facebook age. I still have a Myspace page but barely check it. I visit Facebook more often, and it is the website that I most visit today. The reason is very simple: it is to keep in touch with all my friends, especially who live apart. Since I was born and raised in Japan, I have a lot of friends there. I have many friends in California as well because I used to live there. Facebook is the best way to be in touch with them, because I do not need to keep all of their contact information. In addition, you can upload pictures on Facebook, so that I can see how they are doing. At the same time, I can show all of my friends how I am doing at once: I do not need to send photos to all of my friends. This is very convenient. Even my parents in Tokyo have just started Facebook to see how I am in the States, since I do not send them any pictures of me at all, even though they ask me often to do so. For people who have many friends in far away places, like me, Facebook is very convenient. In addition, it is easy to access to Facebook. That is why I visit Facebook often, and I think that it is the best interactive-able website now, at least to me.

Blog#4: What I Learned

What I learned.

I learned a lot throughout this semester and I enjoyed to learn so much about media and film. The most interesting I learned in this class is the computer systems. Computer is now a part of our lives and everybody knows how to use it, even 10 years old kids do know it; however only a few of them know how computer works: computers consist of many electrical switches, called bits, and they made the computers work. It was very interesting. Another interesting thing that I learned in the class is how the images are scanned onto screens: interlaced scanning and progressive scanning. I was the person who did not know the differences between analog and digital, therefore everything we discussed in the class was new to me. That is why I feel like I learned “a lot” from the class. However at the same time, this class made me realized that I have a lot more things to learn about media and film. For example, we learned how to use photoshop, but it was just beginning of it. Thereupon it made me realized that I have to study more about media, especially graphic design since this is what I am interested in.

Blog #03

Coffee shop is a place where people can have a peaceful and relaxing time. Starbucks is one of the most popular and worldwide coffee shops. For customers to relax and enjoy their own time, the designs at all stores are very important, such as interior designs or the designs of the menus. Logo is also a necessary element for this theme as it gives us an idea of what kind of place a coffee store is. In Starbucks, only 3 colors are used in the logo; white, black, and moss-green. The logo shape is a circle and outer background color is moss green. The letters are white with its famous name: ‘STARBUCKS COFFEE'. Even though any outstanding colors are not used in the logo, this white colored letters are noticeable . Green is the color that makes people relaxed and calmed, therefore the use of the moss-green gives us a sense of being calmed and restful. The color scheme is suitable for the idea of coffee shops: they are providing us a relaxing and peaceful atmosphere. The outer circle part in the logo says 'STARBUCKS COFFEE'. The letters of 'STARBUCKS' are on the top, and ‘COFFEE' is on the bottom. This composition highlights 'STARBUCKS' more than ‘COFFEE' on the bottom; therefore, this composition gets more people's attentions to 'STARBUCKS' than 'COFFEE' since every one unconsciously looks at the top more carefully than the bottom. Thereupon the colors and composition of the logo gets people's attention slightly, and it also gives us the idea of what kind of place Starbucks is; it gives people a peaceful, relaxing time with a cup of joe.

Blog #2

I have watched a documentary film, “Food, Inc.”, for this assignment. This film examines large-scale agricultural food production in the United States, concluding that the meat and vegetables produced by this type of economic enterprise leads to inexpensive but unhealthy and environmentally harmful food. The most harmful scene was that one showing how the food industry produce inexpensive chickens. They design chickens to grow twice as big than regular chickens and let the chickens have bigger breasts, so that they can produce more white meat since people like to eat that. However, some of the chickens die during the growing process since their organs cannot keep up with the heaviness. There is a scene of a chicken dying in the chicken house. The chicken overturns and is hardly breathing: its heaviness is choking the chicken. This is a very harmful and difficult scene to view for me. To show this pain of the chicken, a shallow depth of focus is used to emphasize this dying chicken. This is a close-up shot of the chicken dying on the center foreground and it is on focus. The other alive chickens are moving around on the background and on off-focus. Lighting contrasts the alive and dying chickens: this dying chicken is on the shade and it emphasize the end of this chicken's life, however the alive chickens are in sunshine and looks fine. The chickens house is very dusty, dirty place and it makes us even scared if we think that chickens we eat in our everyday life is growing there. Therefore, this nasty chicken house is suitable for mise-en-scene to show the chicken suffering from the death. This scene make us doubt that what the industry is doing for producing inexpensive food is right by showing how they treat chickens, such as showing the nasty chicken house where they grow or showing the dying chicken. The lighting, mise-en-scene, focusing helps create this harmful, painful scene to achieve the producer's objective, which is showing the reality of the food industry.

Blog Assignment #1

I saw a lot of interesting things at the museum, such as the history of moving images, the process of film devices, and so on. The most interesting thing that I saw is televisions from 1950’s. They were almost 60 years old, so therefore they were huge and looked like a box as well as the other old TVs. However, the biggest difference between the 1950’s TVs and the other old TVs were their design and decoration, and I loved it. According to the lady who was working in the museum, in 1950’s women were always staying at home and doing house works. They did not work outside of a house at all; therefore, these married women were the people who mostly watched TVs often. Regarding to it, the decorations on the 1950’s TVs were very feminine: surface of the TVs were pink or gold. Not only the color, but also the shapes of these 1950’s TVs were also feminine. The 50’s TVs were shaped into electrical machines which women often use for house working, such as a washing machine or stoves. The 1950's TVs reflected characteristics of the year, and it was very interesting to me. Another interesting thing I saw at the museum was the pictures of the historical movie stars. All of the pictures were on the wall so that I could see the differences among the movie stars. For example, there were two famous actresses' picture next to each other and the two actresses were very contrasting: one of them was a sexy woman who looked like she was on one of the Film Noir movies. The other actress looked very innocent and pure. The movie stars' pictures were on the same wall, therefore I could see the differences among them and it was very interesting.

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