The World I Hear

It’s pretty astonishing to really stand in the middle of a city block, close your eyes, and focus wholly on the sounds being produced around you. For me the ambient sound of New York City is something that is absolutely amazing. If you were to go anywhere in the city, from Midtown Manhattan to the South Bronx, there will not only be a unique abundance of sound, but sounds that can very easily create a mood or a specific environment. For this exercise I focused on two places that I visit quite often, right out side of Hunter College and in the middle of Astoria Park.
When you really listen to what goes on outside of Hunter there are countless sounds and textures that are created. For most of the day this area produces the sounds of a bustling and energetic location. Like most places in the city, the sounds of cars, trucks, and emergency vehicles dominate over most other sounds. There is a constant ebb and flow of horns honking, engines running, trucks barreling down the street, and the occasional siren blaring. For many this might be annoying or distracting but this is the soundtrack to my education. I study, read, think, and learn in this environment and for me it is almost soothing.
In Astoria Park the prevalence of traffic sound still exists, but does so in a very different way. Running straight over the park is the RFK (or Tri Borough) Bridge. There is a very constant buzz of traffic created by the cars and trucks that cross the bridge, but unlike the area around Hunter the sound here does not vary as much. It is smooth and calming, reminding me of the sound river water makes as it flows downstream.

Reflection of MediaP 150

Overall I must say that my experiences in MediaP 150 have been, for the most part, educational, informative, and entertaining. The lab and lecture layout of the class has helped me to both understand film and media through the hands on and what I found to be real life experiences as well as the lectures, which gave me more explanation of the different aspects of what we were learning.
I would say that the only negative that I found that the class presented was the lack of time for each of the lab demos or projects. I think that if there were more than one film camera demo, more than one HTML demo, and more than one Photoshop demo the students would be able to retain more of the information. I thought that there was too much information crammed into a short amount of time.
Some things that I learned from the semester that will always stand out were the still and moving image composition rules and shots we went over near the first few weeks of the semester. Those ideas and rules were new to me and I found it very insightful and helpful to be able to try these techniques and rules out with the hands on projects.

Design I Like: There Will Be Blood Poster

One functional media design that struck me was a movie poster, probably used as a subway advertisement, for Paul Thomas Anderson’s film There Will Be Blood. The movie happens to be one of my favorite films and I think that the poster not only attracts an audience member like myself but also shares with the observer of the poster a bit of what the style of the movie is.
While the poster may lack an over the top graphic or even appear a bit dull there is a great deal of detail and expression in the limited text and graphic displayed. When examining the composition and balance of the poster it is striking how the text on the poser is both centered horizontally and positioned in size order vertically from top to bottom, with the bottom “COMING SOON” as an exception, maybe to draw attention to an approximate release date. The first phrase, ranging 3 lines, reads “WHEN AMBITION MEETS FAITH” sharing with the audience a theme of the movie with a simple sentence. The next line reads “DANIEL DAY-LEWIS” shown in a font a bit larger, which strikes the eye and grabs the attention from the first to the next line. Directly under Daniel Day-Lewis’ name is the title of the film There Will Be Blood, presented in again a much larger font but this time the font style is different. The Title is written in an Olde English style, like a font that you might find on an old book or bible. The style again relates the bible type look to the theme of the movie, which is a conflict between the rewards of the church and the rewards of capitalism.
After the Title the poster shifts downward with a striking but thin red line moving down the horizontal center of the poser to the smallest text reading, “Written for the Screen and Directed by/ PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON” giving credit where credit is obviously due to, the mind behind the wonderful film. The final color or background that the text positions itself on is an old black book cover with a worn and tattered binding, proving an overarching backdrop of religion and an historic or antique mood.

The Cinematography of Shutter Island (2010)

In Martin Scorsese’s 2010 drama, Shutter Island, the story of an ex U.S. Marshal, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, is told through the use of a very noticeable filming style. I found that the filming style and choice created not only a specific feeling for the location of the movie but also created a character that as an audience member I was able to feel. When looking at the actual location of the film, a small island inhabited by a high security mental institution, there is a very specific mood created by the way in which the island is presented. Most of the shots of the location, and specifically when DiCaprio’s character is “introduced” to the island, are done in a very wide angle are usually high angle shots which create a feeling of loneliness and an unnerving feeling of sterilized life.

The way in which DiCaprio’s character is presented also creates a specific mood or feeling. In the beginning of the film most of the shots of DiCaprio are close ups or medium close ups and are usually low angle shots. This creates an idea of strength and reasoning possessed by this character over the rest of the characters in the film. As we begin to recognize the psychological problem that DiCaprio’s character has the angles and shots begin to shift and we find more shots of DiCaprio circulating around the character and shooting him from a high angle. This creates a mood or feeling of mental unstableness and unease in the character. In these two instances, with the presentation of the location and the main character throughout the film, the Director of Photography along with the Director of the film are able to create mood or feeling through their camera work.

The Museum of the Moving Image

One of my favorite exhibits in the museum and one that I was able to participate in was the voice over and sound recording exhibit, where we were shown some of the basic aspects of how a film is created after the actual events are captured. There are sound booths in the museum that appear to be like something you would find in a studio (without, of course, the incredibly giant and scary soundboards) and we were able to enter these “studios” and explore for ourselves how dialogue, sound effects, and music are recorded, chosen, and placed in a film. As an audience member I was always very interested in the role that sound plays in a movie and I found that this aspect of post-production work in film is one that interests me. It is obvious that the music in a film is something that is added later in the film making process but I never knew how much voice over and sound effect work is really done in post-production. There seems to be a great deal of importance placed on this aspect of film making and the museum gives a general idea of how this process is done. While some of the decisions we made when experimenting with these film processes were funny and ridiculous they really showed how intricate the process of post-production sound is. The exhibit also showed me how there is a great deal of artistic freedom for the sound mixer or editor within film making. There seems to be many possibilities for an artistic style to come across in sound recording and editing and that is something I found to be appealing process in media production.