Archives for March 2024

Lockdown Released? 

Jean Zhang

 

Concept

The memory that I picked is the certain day that we were lifted from lockdown for the pandemic. On that day, I was taking online courses and doing my final review for my college entrance exams as usual in a fretful mood, but countless notifications from the phone of the neighborhood group chat let me know the excellent news. I took off my masks and threw them in the trash bin, opened the door, and ran out to breathe the fresh outdoor air we hadn’t encountered in a long time. I walked through the neighborhood with no destination in mind, perhaps just wanting to take a walk in this world of regained freedom. I heard children laughing and playing basketball, grannies gossiping in Shanghainese, bikes and cars driving out, and my feet stepping over fallen leaves on the side of the road, just letting go of my mind and enjoying the moment. Suddenly someone let out a cough and all the beautiful sounds came to a screeching halt again. Everyone seemed to hold their breath, looked to the same place, walked or ran back to their homes, and shut their doors again.

I aimed to show the different moods in that memory before and after the release of the lockdown and use a narrative way to explain the story by sound. I wanted to show the whole atmosphere by creating a mix of sound in certain environments.

 

Process

I prepared the checklist for the sounds that I would like to collect. I recorded some environmental sounds such as the sounds in the park (representing the sounds in the neighborhood) and on the road with stereo mode to make the surrounding sounds and give an immersive feeling to the audience. Also, I got the recordings of specific subtle sounds like yawning, breathing, typing, writing, and so on, mostly with shotgun and mono mode. I used the Tascam and the shotgun to record the sounds in mono and stereo modes. I found that the days that I tried to complete the recordings were really windy and there was a lot of noise in the recordings. Therefore, I borrowed the windshield and remade the recordings to make the sound clearer. Also, some sounds like walking on the leaf-covered road are hard to record in the outside environment. So I replaced the sound of walking with the sound of holding cups in hand and smashing them on scraps of paper.

For the editing part, I mix the different sounds together to create the whole atmosphere and transfer the feeling of the memory. For the first part, I used the clock sound to give a fretful and anxious feeling and used the panning effect to make the sound more interesting. Also, I used panning in the part of running from home to the outside world. With the editing of left and right, I wanted to create different spaces in the sound and show the difference between the two periods. For the second part, I used a combination of different sounds on the road to create an environment. I used the sound of footsteps and the sounds coming from different directions to give the audience a feeling of walking through different scenes. Also, I used quite a lot of effects to make the sound combination more interesting. I did some filters and reverbs for certain soundtracks to make them fit with the whole audio better. I found that most of my recordings had noise included, so I did the noise reduction a lot. Also, I tried a lot of different effects of panning, filters, and mastering in the editing process to make the work sound more balanced.

 

Conclusion

I got valuable feedback to further develop the project on the presentation day from my classmates and professors. Firstly I’d like to revise some of the sound recordings and develop some more interesting and experimental ways of creating sounds. Also, how the sound represents the story should be more reasonable. For example, the final part that the person should run from outside back to the home should be a more complete process and it would make more sense if the sounds running from one environment to another could be included.

 

Image of Audition

Film Response—Five Obstruction

In the film Five Obstructions by Jorgen Leth & Lars von Trier, they designed five obstructions with rules including 1. no single edit may be longer than 12 frames, 2. shooting the film in a miserable place, 3. having complete freedom, 4. creating a cartoon, and 5. having Lars make the film crediting Jorgen and having him read the narration.

Jorgen copes with each obstruction by embracing the challenge and finding creative ways to overcome the limitations.

For the first obstruction, he used short clips within 12 frames and completed the imitation in the form of a cutout way. He produced the film with “flickering” short clips and combined them into a short film. But as an audience, I felt really wired when I saw the picture changing so quickly. There is a word in China called 鬼畜, which represents the crazy feeling and the short clips repeating.

For the second obstruction of shooting in the miserable place. Jorgan followed the instructions and acted as the man himself. He went to Bombay to shoot the film and had a lot of actors to be included as the background. I have the same feeling that the people are too clear to be seen in the film, which goes against the requirement of people not being seen.

For the third obstruction, he used the producing strategy of cutting the picture into two and having relative contents in the two blocks.

For the fourth obstruction, he found Bob Sabiston and conducted the cartoon from his drawing. I was impressed that they used different colors and conveyed different questions.

For the fifth one, Lars probably intended to create a story about Jorgen and asked him to do the narration reading and the credit. Jorgen followed his instruction an nd 

Hito Steyerl
The Uncertainty of Documentarism

Steyerl’s discussion about the “unbroken belief” of the documentary form being challenged refers to the traditional assumption that documentary images represent reality. In our usual perception, documentaries are produced objectively and truthfully. However, the author claimed that this belief is no longer trusted. Due to the technology of editing and manipulation, the information is not necessarily true now. People may now be skeptical about the authenticity of the contents of the documentaries in this digital age.

We usually claim that the arts come from real life and these inspirations can develop into some authenticity felt in the fictions. As movies may be based on a true story, they leverage truth to inform the fiction by incorporating real events, characters, or settings into the narrative. These factors of reality can enhance the authenticity, emotional resonance, and credibility of the fiction.

On the other hand, fiction can also inform the truth by exploring hypothetical scenarios and perspectives, or foreseeing futures. Through imaginative storytelling in fiction, social issues, real dilemmas, and human experiences can be involved.

The significance of authenticity and representation of truth in the media has a great influence on daily lives as they can shape perceptions, beliefs, and understandings of the world for people in the real world. Authenticity fosters trust and credibility, influencing how individuals interpret and engage with information presented to them.

Live broadcasts give people real-time information and events to audiences. They provide in-time information and a sense of connection. It is usually considered an authentic way of information communication, showing the real world without manipulation. But nowadays, there is even AI cloning technology for live broadcasts, which could be shocking that this real-time communication is not authentic or even humanlike.

The memory picked is the certain day that we were lifted from lockdown for the pandemic. On that day, I was doing my final revision for my college entrance exams as usual, but countless notifications from the phone of the neighborhood group chat let me know the excellent news.
I watched the clock closely with my parents to see the minutes and seconds turn slowly until the moment when the lockdown was completely lifted. We took off our masks and threw them in the trash bin, opened the door, and walked out to breathe the fresh outdoor air we hadn’t encountered in a long time. I walked through the neighborhood with no destination in mind, perhaps just wanting to take a walk in this world of regained freedom. I heard children laughing and playing basketball, grannies gossiping in Shanghainese, bikes and cars driving out, and my feet stepping over fallen leaves on the side of the road, just letting go of my mind and enjoying the moment.
Suddenly someone let out a cough and all the beautiful sounds came to a screeching halt again. Everyone seemed to hold their breath, looked to the same place, walked or ran back to their homes, and shut their doors again.

To be honest, I have two ideas on the topic of memory soundscape, and up to now, I am still exploring and experimenting with sound collections to see which one could be more practical for this sound project.

I have an alternative topic to record a common memory of my childhood. When I was a kid and everyone was learning to sing and dance and play sports, the extracurricular hobby I was learning was calligraphy, which was a quiet activity.
Days as a child, I sat in my room, hearing the sounds of children playing outside, facing my ink and paper. With the background music of my teacher’s favorite guzheng with the sound of some Buddhist meditative singing bowls, I began to grind my inkstick, listening to the sound of the ink grinding over the ink stone, and then proceeded to wash the brush, lay out the paper, press the paper with a paperweight, dip the ink, and write. I slowly calmed down with my breathing, practicing writing to this rhythm, listening to the sound of the wind blowing out of the old electric fan, and just getting more and more meditative about these writings. The end of the story is just uneventful, our teacher’s wife cooked lunch in the inner kitchen and called us to get in and eat, and we put down our pens and ran in. What I want to show is that a quiet art form like calligraphy has its own subtle voice, and also the soul that we have when writing

Masks

Jean Zhang

Starring: Jackie Chen (Adulthood) & Yihong Zhou (Childhood)

 

Concept

For the Photo Diptych concept, I wanted to talk about the different selves or the masks we wear in our lives due to the great pressure society and work life give us.
The work can represent the complete story of a person who already entered the workforce. It could be a typical workday for him walking on the street with all his masks on, on a rainy day, in a bad and depressed mood. After getting back home, with all the masks taken off and hung on the hat rack, the workman looked at himself in the mirror. He would somehow recall his memory of his childhood, without these masks, so uninhibited and joyful. I would like to convey to the audience that we can take off the masks that we have in life and release the pressure these masks bring to us, back to the original freedom that we had in childhood.

 

Process

For the first part of taking the original photo, I first tried taking the photo in the studio setting with a clear background. With the caps placed on the character’s head, it represents the masks that he is wearing. During the in-progress work peer review, I got useful advice on using a different background to make the composition more interesting and not seem like fashion magazines. Also, I found more hats of different types to represent the different masks that people wear.

I tried again and kept the use of the hats representing the masks. I placed the character in the road view to suit the story in a real scene of a fast-paced city with high buildings. With the rainy weather, the depressed emotions and the cold feeling can be shown in the work. Also, adding the sense of movement as the man is walking on the sidewalks makes the whole image more vivid. According to my initial sketch, I picked the one with the best position and angle that I had. I also made the cold tones of the piece more pronounced to bring out the somber atmosphere.

(Initial Sketch)

(Picked Work with Color Edition)

 

For the second picture, I initially wanted to find a sunny day and get another picture with a similar background and use Photoshop to edit the positions of the hats and use color contrast to show that the guy takes off his hats and gets the freedom. I also did close-ups for the hats to key them easier in edition. However, I thought afterward that this would be a bit too simple and lacking in storytelling, while I didn’t come across a free perfectly sunny day, so I gave it up. 

 

Fun dorm photography studio experience (though the photos didn’t come in handy in the end)

I came up with the idea of the man looking at the mirror and the hats hanging up, and I tried different elements to complete the story. I took the picture of the man looking at the mirrors and the hats are placed on the side. I went back to home in countryside and with the pictures taken with my father, my grandfather, and my nephew, acting as the same person as the character in the image, I thought about how to connect the story reasonably.

(Original photographic work of pic 2)

(Interesting working progress documentation. Love u Grandpa!)

Finally, with Photoshop masking and filters and other editions, I got the second work of the person looking at himself and recalling the memory of his carefree childhood. Also, I made the color of the second image warmer to use the contrast to show the different emotions in the diptych.

(Final Edited Work)

Conclusion

I actually spent a lot of time working on connecting the photos of the man in childhood and also elderhood with the present to have a more complete story. I’m not sure if it is a better idea than keeping the space of imagination as the work has now to give the audience more free thoughts, but probably I can give it a try.

Also, I would like to retake the first picture to include more in the background, such as higher buildings, to make it interesting. And I would spend time to figure out a clearer and more direct connection between the concept of masks and the use of hats.

 

Photo Diptych

 

(Contact Sheet)

Credits to

Starring: Jackie Chen(adulthood), Yihong Zhou(childhood)

Prof. Yunmi Her and my dear classmates
My dear grandpa, dad, and nephew
Tina Liu
Yanran Deng
Chris He
Jerry Cao
Tommy Wang
George Chen
Lareina Chen
Rachel Li
Lisa Huang
Freddie Yang
Xiangyi Zhong

💜 Great gratitude and love to all my family and friends offering great support and valuable advice during the work process!!!

For the Photo Diptych concept, I wanted to talk about the different selves deep inside our hearts or the masks that we are wearing in our lives due to the great pressure society and work life give us. I would like to convey that we can take off these masks and chase our freedom by releasing these kinds of pressure. I would like to create a contrast between the different emotions and atmosphere of the people having their masks on or taking them off. I would like to show the feeling of releasing and reaching freedom.

For the first picture, I would like to take a photo of a person wearing a lot of hats walking on the road soullessly. The hats here represent the different sides of our inside hearts and the masks that we are wearing. For the second picture, I imagine the person getting rid of all of the hats by throwing them off. With Photoshop edition, I can make hats seem to be like they are floating in the sky and the moment of the throwing is captured. Probably the background can also be different for the two situations to show we can get different feelings in different environments.

I would also arrange the whole color and light effects of the photos, the first piece would be in a depressed and low feeling, which can be shown with the cold and dark colors. And the other piece would be in bright colors and colorful arrangements. In this way, the contrast in the emotions can be delivered to the audience.

I also get a simple sketch for the work ⬇️