Repost MP5

The two of my action words were “knot” and “tighten”. The first word, “knot” means tie something together tightly, it can also mean something difficult. But the word “tighten” means make something more tightly. The sounds similar but there are actually a bit different, “knot” can be a noun and a verb, but “tighten” can only be a verb. These two words limit my picture need to be something tight or something we might find difficult to solve. But they also give me an opportunity by letting me use object from different shapes or even some event which don’t even have a shape.

The item I use almost a day-to-day basis that I don’t give much thought to is my calculator. It helps me a lot for doing my mathematics and solving problems. I choose this object because I bring it with me every day even I was in holiday. I pick it also because it is closely related to the two action words “knot” and “tighten”. When we saw some difficult mathematic problems, we might find it difficult and struggle with them. At this situation, a calculator could help us a lot by solving the problem with entering the complicate equation in it. Then we just simply press a single button and the result will show. It clears a lot of difficulty for us, release us form the tightness and knot of the problem.

In the video, the calculator was trying to solve some very different equations but an error had happened, which reflects while people were trying to handle a lot of things together their brain will be knotted. No matter machine or human, either one should do a large amount of works which they couldn't handle. I take pictures of the whole process and put them into a video. Then I use Photoshop to add some special effect of the error image. For example surround the calculator by different equations and made the calculator looks like being tighten by the equation. I also blur the surrounding area to highlight the error part of the image and made viewer more concern on it. For the last part in the video, I rub a piece of paper and take a picture of it. For this picture, I was trying to show the struggle I had with the problem and I gave it up by rubbing the homework into a ball. By putting these pictures together and connect them in series, it’s just like solving a complicate problem, I had to think how I should order them so that I could get a better effect I want. This process was similar as doing math homework, both of them knot my brain up and tighten my mind. But after I had done with this video, just like after doing the math problem, I feel I was free again from the knot of the problem. My brain wasn’t tightening by anything anymore. Besides, I feel success also because I had pass through such a long process and it finally comes to an end and I could see the final product I had done. This feeling is wonderful, you will feel your hard work had been proved by the final product. I like this video very much and I think it had done a great job on representing how people feel when their brain is tighten and knotted while they were facing problems, also how people feel after they get rid of the problem and being set free from them.

Final Project

Before I start working on this project, the professor told us that this project could be anything we want, it could be anything we think of. I was confused at that moment because there were too many ideas in my mind and I don’t know which one I should pick. But then, professor told me to put 2 things side by side and see if there were any inspirations. At that point, the Mac in front of me was showing a baseball game and next to it there were a piece of news talking about stress. I immediately got an idea about this project, “why don’t we add this two component into a story?” Different ideas came into my mind and I start working on this project.

At the beginning of time, I want to make a video showing the stress batter feel while they are trying to hit the ball and get points for their team. But no matter how hard I had tried, I couldn’t express the excitement of a baseball game with a video of batter hitting the ball, because the impact wasn’t large enough to show by a video. Then I decided to convert the style of this video to separate pictures. And this idea works perfectly fine! As the professor said, if we were wondering if we should try our new idea, the answer is probably yes. But after I change the video to separate pictures, the second problem had come. How could I show the feeling of the batter? No matter pictures or videos, the batter won’t speak or talk about their feeling. Then there were two choices came into my mind, either I record my own voice and paste it to the video, or express the batter’s feeling by words. I struggle between these two ideas for a while and I decided to pick the second choice. It is because I am not a baseball player, things I say might be a slightly different to a real baseball player. Besides, I think words can also leave some space for viewer to imagine, people could apply what their own definition of “stress” into my video. After I decided using words to express the batter’s feeling, I want to enlarge the feeling of stress to viewers. I tried to zoom the word every time the screen changed. So the word “stress” is getting bigger and bigger every second. This also reflects the stress the batter feeling.

After I had done all the works with this video, I review it again and I think it had shown what I want to express with it. The ending might seem unexpectedly to a lot of people but this is what I want to show in this video. In a real baseball game, anything could happened, you might be winning in the first half of the game, but in the second half, the score could be totally different. No one can predict the flow of a baseball game, this is also why baseball is so exciting to watch and to play. For the process of making this video, since I was still learning how to make a video, there may be still some feature lacking in my video, but I really learn a lot from it. Such as the how important the background music is. Through the process, I had changed the background music a few times. Every time I change the music, the feeling of the whole video changed. For example, if we use a soft background music, the phase of the video will slow down, similarly, if use a fast background, the phase of the video will become too fast, which won’t be able to show the mood of a baseball game. Last but not least, by comparing this video to the video I had done in MP5, I feel the improvement of my skills on editing the video, which I really appreciated because I could continue aiming a higher level when I make my next video!

Re-post MP1 10 Photos

Final Project: Brainstorm and 50% Critique

I love watching baseball since I was a little kid. Baseball game was so exciting and it always amuse with different types of tactics and skills. So I had an idea to make this blog with the main theme as baseball.

While I was watching a baseball game, the most exciting thing to see is when there are full people on base with two out and the batter is on two strike three ball. The batter will feel a lot of stress because he is carrying the whole team’s fate. Taking this situation as my initial idea, my final project will be mainly concern on focusing the emotion of the batter. By showing what he feels and how other people feel when they are in the same situation or seeing the same situation.

First of all, I am going to do this project by a video with pictures only. It is very hard to express people’s feeling with a video of the batter hitting the ball, so I will use separate pictures with words instead. By inserting words between pictures, the video could show things normally you cannot see such as thinking process of a person.

The video will begin with a pitcher pitching the ball and shows how the batter will hit the ball. The batter may success but he might fail. I am at the same situation as the batter because I didn’t decide if he is going to fail or not. I don’t want to decide the ending now because I think there is more things I could do if I leave the ending blank for now. I will decide the ending through the process while I am editing the video, so that I can have more idea about how this video should end.

50% Critique:

I had found some pictures related to baseball and I was trying to make them into a narrative describing how a batter hit the ball when he is under stress. There were possibility he could success and probability he could failed, the batter struggle under this kind of stress and I am going to express them with a video contain pictures and words. I am now working on connecting those pictures together and adding sound effect.

Failure Paper

In this semester, I had learned a lot of things from this class, such as how to define art, how to create an art, and how to view an art. There was some success through the process but also some failure. The biggest failure in this semester was MP5. While I was working on this project, I had a lot of ideas wanted to add onto it, such as made it as a video instead of a jpeg file. Because there will be much more effects and ideas to play with in the form of video. But due to the lack of time, I could only finish this micro project as a jpeg file. From this failure, I learn that time management is a very important role while we working on the project. No matter how many idea you have, if you don’t have enough time, you cannot apply them to your work. You have to know when your project due is and what percentage you’re at so that you can handle the project without panic when it is due.

The biggest success in this semester was MP4. It was the video project and I think I have a lot of fun when I was working on it. When I was working on editing the video, I tried different sound effects provided by iMovie and I found some of them works perfectly for my video! Some of them did much better than I expect and they made the video more entertaining than it was. From this experience, I understand that sometimes pop-up ideas work even better than ideas you looking for. It is because you don’t have to look for specific thing in your brain but you just need to use what you’ve just thought of.

If I could redo one project, I would probably redo MP5. This time I will made it as a video or PowerPoint instead of a jpeg file. I would also add some sound effects and animations to it, so that it could do more interaction with viewer. I want to make these changes because the original MP5 I had made was too boring and it couldn’t express what I really want to express.

MP5

The item I use almost a day-to-day basis that I don’t give much thought to is my calculator. It helps me a lot for doing my mathematics and solving problems. I choose this object because I bring it with me every day even I was in holiday. I pick it also because it is closely related to the two action words “knot” and “tighten”. The calculator can solve problem which makes our brain tight. When we solve a problem, we can feel the freedom and my brain is not knot and tightens.
In this picture, the calculator was trying to solve different equations together but it got an error, which reflect while people were trying to handle a lot of things together their brain will be knotted. No matter machine or human, either one should do a large amount of works which they couldn't handle. I think this picture had did a grate job on representing how people feel when their brain is tighten and knotted.