Path Differences

The difference between knowing the pass and walking the pass.
A weeklycreate about analysing movies.

It is always so annoying to me to analyse artwork, especially when being given a set of rules. I thought about skipping this, but then my "Facebook Oracle" told me to learn the rules to know the path, while you can always forget them later to go the path without knowing it.
("Facebook Oracle" means I look at the newest facebook posts and maybe take them as advice. This time there has been a post about learning the rules and forgetting them again. Picasso said so.)

This way I got my pencil and took notes about a scene from "The Matrix".

First, like advised, I turned down the sound and scanned camera work and cuts. Because this is an action scene the cuts are fast and numerous, about 70 in 3.29 minutes. The scene displays flying, hanging on ropes and falling, so that the camera angles are mostly very dynamic like looking down into the streets of a city from high above  or looking up to the helicopter or following people hanging on a rope which again is fixed on the helicopter. You can imagine the uncertain way a camera has to go here.
The cuts are often following the point of view of the protagonists: The female pilot looks down, cut, her two friends hanging on the rope one holding the hand of the other, cut, the man holding the friends hand looking down onto his friend, lets go and sees him falling, cut back to a view an imagined audience might have (man landing on the roof). This pattern repeats later when the pilot has to leave the helicopter.
Later there are cuts according to the dialogue, showing the person who talks.

Following the second step of the assignment, I switched off my monitor and just was attentive to the sound. This starts with loud music, which suggests action. The music plus the sound of the helicopter are dominant for a while. You also can hear noises which I presumed the action from, like boots on a roof and shattering glass. In addition there are a kind of synthetic "energy sounds". I mean sounds which  evoke that lots of energy is going around, hear yourself.
Later you can hear dialogue while the music becomes barely noticeable or is off at all.

I did watch the clip a third time to see if I've missed something or to see how audio and video are working together. Most of the interplay of video and sound I have already understood when listening to the clip's sound, for I already knew the pictures. Still, there was a piece of action I did not understand earlier: I asked myself, why the man does not let go of the rope when the helicopter is dragging him by this to the edge of the roof. The answer was, that his pilot friend saves herself with the rope from the diving helicopter. If he would have let go of the rope, she had fallen down into the streets.

Then I applied some of Ebert's rules and I've found out that the main character (and hero of the movie) in dialogue scenes appears always on the right. I also detect that whenever one of the men fall they have a smaller or greater drift to the right, which Ebert interprets as falling into their future or at least making a positive moving, because right means mostly positive. The woman on the other hand appears mostly in the centre of the screen. Ebert did not say anything about this, but I consider this as one of the projections to a female being and here means feminine and maybe glorification of femininity, which here includes helplessness and vulnerability. Strangely enough she survives the fall, any crash and the explosion of the helicopter.
Earlier, when she was in charge as a pilot she often appears in the left upper corner. She manages to save her friends in this position and like this I don't think this means something negative, which Ebert suggest for left. Still the picture gives the audience a feeling of being under high pressure in a situation with few chances to save the situation.

I am aware that the above is just a rough description of what is going on in the clip concerning camera, cut and position of film elements on the screen. In addition it is possible to analyse many more design issues like color and light. Both have not been dominant in this clip. The colors were mostly skin/ dark clothes against a light, white city. People living in a virtual, sterile world.

Imagine 3,29 minutes of film and a not really a short blog post about this and it is just a summary of what happens in the clip. How much can be written about the whole movie?

The Dream of Travelling Fast

Imag[in]ing the Streets with Google Street View

With the help of Google Maps I now will try to reconstruct a weird experience I had some time ago. If you do not know about the passages, just believe me. You also have to believe me that it was not a passage which brought me to the first place below. This is the real secret of my story and I will not rest until I have found out.

At first I did not know where I was, really, I just became aware that I must have left Moscow. I can not remember how I got here.

  

With no idea how to proceed I went up to the light, the end of the tunnel. After some while I got stuck, didn't know which way to take.



  

I made the right way and finally discover a place I could rest a bit. They sent me away because I had no money for buying anything to drink. Later I found a water fountain where I could lighten me from my thirst.

 

 



 



I moved around wildly and then I knew, this it is. This will bring me back home to Moscow.

 

I could feel the intensity of the place, the energy, which told me it is one of the passages. Eyes closed I stretched out my arms and contacted the powers, that will transport me across time and space. I felt the energy filling me and then a short weird emotion. I appeared right next to this beautiful cathedral were I will now enter and will meet brother Nikolei, who may be able to tell me what brought me to that strange place I have been.

THE END

Ds106 Sweeties looking for Adoptive Parents

Storytelling Within the Web.

Creating this page was fun (:

 

If you do not know them look here.

 

Since I have started using the internet and came up to lists of photographs supplied with names, I had the idea of making some design of this. While looking at these lists I always get the feeling of lost individuals in a crowded world, maybe looking for other individuals.

 

Recently I came across a page of the London Zoo, which asks for Adoptive Parents for some of their animals. I have made the link between lists of people, and lists of zoo animals and because this assignment is for ds106, I used a list of ds106 people.

 

NO DEEPER REASON TO USE ANY OF YOU!

 

It is meant to be the weekly create assignment 'Storytelling Within the Web'

 

I used the tool X-Ray-Googles, which was mentioned by Alan Levine on his Week 9: Stories in/of the Web page.

This tool is really easy to use. I have clicked on the images of the animals and just changed the image URL. The little images of people who are in some way involved to ds106 I got, while using the hash tag ds106 on twitter and by choosing the option 'People'.

Thunder & Hail

Here I've made some weather on my desk. I took a cardboard box and put some toy pieces in it and moved all around. This became a thunder. Then I took some paper clips and dropped them into the cardboard box.




I guess you don't believe this thunder sound can be the result of cardboard and pieces ...
This is right. The original thunder lacked of bass and the typical reverberation. Hear yourself.





I edited the thunder original in audacity by adding some bass and gverb to get the above result.

The idea I got from the audio assignment of ds106 'Imitate some Weather' and it is meant to be an assignment concerning week 7 and 8 of the regular course requirements for ds106 students.

Lion Cage

Here I got some live into a piece of the silent  movie "The Circus" with Charly Chaplin. First I thought it will be impossible to add any foley sound here, because you have to know in advance were to add sound of steps or noises of the clothes, but after I've watched the clip over and over I knew where to produce the sound. I really was impressed by the result after I've added the sound to the clip.

 

 

 

I thought about producing the sound in one take, yet in some descriptions of how to make foley, I felt advised to record one take for any sound: moves, feets, specifics. It would also have been difficult to produce the steps of Charly and the steps of the Pony (or is it a Donkey?) together, so I recorded them separately, too.

Unfortunately I don't have a video editing software in which you can save just the sound without the video. This way I had to combine the tracks in the sound editing software audacity.  I started the video by saying "start" and recorded the corresponding foley. The word start became the start point of any track, so that I could combine all to one track. I exported the audio as mp4.  For a test I combined the foley and the clip in the video editing software "Movie Maker", which worked well.

 

So how I've produced the sound? I did not make it very complicated. I put on a jacket which made a good fabric sound and I used my feet for the steps. I actually dared something for the steps, which was scattering some sand to my floor. This is a strange thing for anyone who tries to keep their floor clean. Afterwards I found my worries of making some dirt a kind of irrational.

For the hoofed animal I used some beakers and for the noise of a falling bolt I used a ruler from metal on a piece of pipe. I tried to add the small clap of the door, too, but this has somehow declined.

I imagined the lion making sleeping noises and produced these imagined sounds with my noise. That it was.

 

I've thought a lot of foley artists. If I would be one it were difficult for me to take my work serious. I would like taking me serious, yet it may be difficult. At least I may not be observed while working (:

After War Spring Poetry

This post is meant to be both, the first scene of my radio show and a weekly audio assignment. The assignment demands reciting a poem, recording it and make it a part of a story. I have chosen a German poem by Eichendorf, which I have translated. Any admirer of poetry may forgive me any roughness in the translation.
For my audio piece I recorded both versions, the German and the English. I also added a lovely piece of sound where you can hear spring noise and a short piano recording. In the end I was in love with this creation. Here it is:





For my radio show the above audio displays the first scene. A little girl plays around and sings in a garden, when something is going to happen. First the story of how she gets to the garden will start and second her foster mum is approaching with news, which will be revealed at the end of the story. The growing spring and piano sound are meant to hint to the following action.

WinterCity Design

For the designblitz assignment of week 6 the suggestion was to carry around a camera during the week and to take photographs of designed examples around. I tried and succeeded on two days of this week. Though I felt somewhat limited in my skills to take photographs while carrying bags or having a cloudy day or not being able to carry around my good camera which is too heavy. I like eleven of the pictures I was able to take.

 With these photographs I tried to catch some of the following elements of design:

color

typography

metaphors/symbols

minimalism & use of space

form/function/message

balance

rhythm

proportion

dominance

unity

I mainly were attentive to rhythm:

Part of a poster on a column.

Stones arranged into a sidewalk.

 

A sculpture.

A streetcar station.

Other pictures for different design elements are:

minimalism:

Here someone imagines Europe in the future and adds symbols for presumed agrees, constitutions and peace treaties.

A sad Graffiti on a staircase.

color:

Colored Houses.

Colorful lights bhind glass and snowflakes.

typography:

Design of a Subway station.

secret messages:

Maybe this contains a message which I can not decipher because I have not enough information.

These messages you can find all over the city, who knows what they mean.

Learning about design was interesting to me, because I could add to my knowledge I have collected as a fine artist and story illustrator. Design items seem to be more neatly put together and are more often signs and symbols and letters, which may be a naïve view to design. It is just a quality I realized concerning design this week. I may be able to express this more accurately in some time.

Four Icon Movie

When I read about the week 6 assignments I thought this is a good opportunity to not just work with the computer but also try to outline on real paper with real tools.
This way I have made the he assignment One Story / Four Icons an example of sketching.

So can you guess which movie is meant here?

Good News from DS106

DS106 Propaganda Posters

When I read about this assignment which was proposed in the week 6 weekly stuff to do, I was confused, because I thought just Germans used propaganda in World War II. I immediately looked up if Google provides examples of US propaganda posters and found one which was appropriate for changing it into a DS106 propaganda poster. I am indeed very pleased with the result.

 

Compare this to the original poster, which you can also find here.

 

 

 

I used the usual tool of a photo editing software: selection tool and stamp tool (naturally you also need to transform, copy and paste). I thought about using the link proposed by Alan Levine's tweet

Cool tool for #ds106 design projects, esp poster remakes - Use myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/ to identify fonts used in images
— Alan Levine (@cogdog) February 19, 2013

Here you can analyse which font is used on the poster and just working with the text tool to change the meaning of the poster. Yet, the letters of the poster have a kind of texture. The nuances of red in the red letters varies. I did not know a better tool than the stamp tool to simulate this texture and make the letters fit to the rest of the poster.

Creating Life

How would you tell your life’s story if you could only use six words?
This is the question which was asked in the ds106 assignment "Six-Word memoir".

Yesterday I came back home right from a talk with a German official and they directly told me to rather give up hope to ever have a job in the creative professions. They want me to sell things or to work in a warehouse or maybe clean up other peoples dirt. I would die. I was just sad about this talk.
However, this was the right moment to create what is deeply true for my life.

This illustration is made just partly with a computer.  I took a good watercolour paper (140 lbs) and divided it up into 6 areas. Then I colored the areas. It may be good to plan which color is used in any area, by computer or on an extra piece of paper.

Then I wrote with any text editing tool the appropriate text and arranged the words. I copied this text to my painting via tracing paper. I took a picture of the illustration and in an editing software I added an edge to give it the touch of a sign.

I am fine with the result but finally I think the painting on its own or the words on their own are more beautiful. Maybe another approach is to separate them on the page, one area for the letters and another for the colors.

so much to learn about photography

How to Be a Better Photographer. This was the title of one of the paragraphs of the week 5 instructions by Alan Levine.
Years ago (twenty maybe) I took an evening course in photography. I was still trying to get a foothold in the engineering profession and did this just for fun. I want to enjoy photography and was very angry when they told me my photos are good but I should be able to tell others what I have done, concerning the settings of my camera. I did not take this challenge at that time. Yet I took it some time ago when I started to work as a media assistant. I now know a lot about aperture and depth of focus for example, but I learned this knowledge is just part of what you need to make good photographs. Like that I found many good tips in the slideshow (located about  the middle of the page) which was presented for this assignment.
Of one of the guides I took a screenshot which you find below.

According to this guide I set my camera to the focal length of the eye and took photographs of part of my breakfast. Here they are:

 

 

 

It was interesting how close you have to go to an object when you have no zoom. During the shots I felt far more active than usual because you do not just stand on one spot and change the focal length or use the zoom. For these photographs it even meant to smell the food which creates an atmosphere of intimacy. Maybe this will become visible on the photographs when ever you will go close to an object.

 

The second guidance for me this week was a website about compositing. I chose trying to multiply myself on one photograph. This was a great piece of work. I had to gear, too, which is ever troubling to me. The result picture:

 

 

 

 

 

I like it.

Some difficulties were to overcome. The light must not change, otherwise you would see it on the composed image.  All items except the person must not be changed, too. The reason I can not explain shortly because this was purely practice and trying out for me. Yet I may make a tutorial and soon this will be available here. However, I can tell that using masks and layers in an editing software is necessary.

 

The third photography guidance was a slideshow with advice in it, which I found interesting. Yet I tried to catch up with these advice but did not succeed. I then decided to take to heart one particular piece which says; be patient. I may proceed following the given guidance until I take good photgoraphs which are caused by this guidance.

 

Great Moments in Time

I created a set of my photos I like most on flickr and posted this to my blogger account, as it was recommended for a 5th week task, although I am not sure if this was, what was required. It is also possible to create a slideshow on my blog, but I like when visitors of my blog have an overview rather than one picture after the other.

 

Rose Color

When I read about this assignment and looked at the postcards provided I thought creating one of these might turn out as a joke. I wont sent any of the people I love a postcard like this. Yet, I found one somehow neutral and tried to be as unspecific as possible, which is not easy when communicating love. In the end I was fine with it and I realised I like the rose color.

 

 

For the heart on the card I used stamp tool, color picker, text tool and rectangle tool, which you can find in almost any photo editing software. The heart on the card I realised while stamping part of the pullover to the white space. For the text I picked up the rose color of the pullover and set the text color to it. I used the rectangle tool and put a rectangle behind the text. I also made it partly transparent while setting the transparency of the layer. The color of the rectangle again I chose from the colors of the image.

Winter Kids

A week 5 weeklycreate

I often go to the parks of my city and take photographs. Strangely enough while the streets are crowded the park is nearly empty. For one of the visual creates of ds106 I used three photos taken at a winter day. The suggestion in the assignment is to use one photograph and to shop it up in comic book style. I slightly changed this. I used three photos and combined them to on. Then I made slices and put these together without any clear edge. For the slices in Photoshop you can use the slice tool, for gimp look this up: http://gimp4you.wordpress.com/2008/05/14/guillotine-the-gimp-way-to-slice-images/.

 

 

When I chose the assignment I thought this may be easy to fulfil, yet it was not. The difficult part was to find parts and to combine them in a convincing way. I needed at least 2 hours for this.

 

The result I associate with kids in winter, who still can enjoy snow, while I am often angry about it. However I envy these children somehow. If I would start running around and enjoying the snow in the park people may thing I have gone mad, unfortunately.

Photo Factory

Photoblitzing Assignment

For this week five assignment we were supposed to go to a place and and to shoot photos after a given general description:


Make an ordinary object look more interesting, almost supernatural.
Take a photo that makes use of converging lines.
Take a photo dominated by a single color
Take a photo of something at an unusual angle
Take a photo of two things that do not belong together.
Take a photo that represents the idea of “openness”
Take a photo that expresses a human emotion
Take a photo emphasizes mostly dark tones or mostly light ones.
Make a photo that is abstract, that would make someone ask, “Is that a photograph?”
Take a photo of an interesting shadow.
Take a photo that represents a metaphor for complexity.
Take a photo of someone else’s hand (or paw)

There was also a time window of 20 minutes given.

I chose my place to take the photographs, because it is pretty cold outside and a cloudy day. It was interesting how the time pressure made me do surprising decisions. Yet, I did not feel good with it, but somehow confused and hurt. Something inside me needs to have time for any creation, otherwise I get uneasy. I actually could not resist to work on any photograph as if the time which was taken from me by following instructions has to be added again. This way I like the result of the photoblitzing assignment.

You can find my photoblitzing series on flickr.

It was rewarding to look through the work of fellow ds106 students. I choosed three of them to display here for my appreciation. Yet, there were many more good images. For this go to flickr and search for ds106photoblitz.

I don't know if this photograph means complexity to me as to the artist who shoot this, but I like the wave in it, which gives the image a touch of motion

 

 

 

 

I like the relaxed look of this picture. I suppose it is meant as converging lines. Most people would try to make it very accurately, as I did, but here the lines are arranged more interesting in the given space. 

 

 

 

Here I like the colors and the way the three round shapes are arranged in the picture. In summary it appears somehow playful.

Magical Nature

 

Animated gifs summarizing the movie Spiderwick.

 

 

Some time ago I read a book titled Spiderwick (wiki). Naturally I was curious to also watch the movie (wiki). I enjoy comparing movies to the corresponding book in general, and I also compare it with the images the book evokes in me.

 

I like the Spiderwick movie, yet it is not as rich as the book is, especially because the book has magnificent illustrations which are difficult to put into moving pictures.

 

 

The first gif shows how Arthur Spiderwick, a scientist, takes a fairy he has just caught out of a box and he starts making a drawing of the fairy.

Like this Spiderwick has written a complete book about magical creatures around his house. He then get caught by fairies, for they fear the dark creature Mulgarath might use Spiderwicks knowledge to rule their world. The book however remains hidden in Spiderwicks house.

 

 

 

 

 

 

80 years later his great-nephew Jared finds it and reads through it in one night.

 

 

 



What Jared has read about he soon watches in the world around him. There are the fairies ...

 

 

 

and there are goblins, who abduct his twin brother Simon.

 

 

 

Jared follows the goblins and finds his brother caught in a cage. An old man talks to him and finally set him free, but ... 

 

 

The old man is Mulgarath, who is able to change his appearance. Mulgarath send the goblins to follow Simon and Jared.

 

 

 

Finally Mulgarath attacks Jared to get the book, yet when he changes to the shape of a bird a so called hobgoblin, who loves eating birds, catches and eats him. The magical world again is save and not in danger any more to be ruled by the wicked Mulgarath.

 

 

 

For creating the above gifs I used the same technique as I used in Old Man Complaining, a gif I produced earlier in the course.