Jyoti's Documentation Blog

http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~tj1059/projects/video/

Our project is going to express silence through three individual videos. The five obstructions are: silence, stairs, shoot through mirrors, sync to the music, scroll only, which showed really strong contradiction between each and made us struggled. We then came up with the theme social silence, trying to shoot separated/individual scenes in the aim of presenting the same theme. That is to say, our project would not be that narrative, which was a big challenge to us. For the first scene, a boy and a girl who chatted heatedly online both felt really embarrassed when meeting with each other in reality. We shot them texting from different directions, including the detailed conversation happened in phones to show their close relationship. However, the girl’s embarrassing reflection of greeting with the boy kind of presenting the contradiction, which better interprets such social silence. For the second scene, a boy was wondering along the stairs without any sound, simply presenting silence in the real world while in a down mood. We edited it in a visually nice way, better fitting the interaction- we use scrolling to change the speed of this video, kind of showing him walking back and forth. For the third scene, what we wanted to show is the contradiction between character’s personal silence and the outside noise. He was relying on the flyover, experiencing the traffic noise, the pedestrians, the real world. Through scrolling, we can manage to turn the volume either up or down, which adds to the interaction and better fits the theme.

At first, we really struggled with meeting all the obstructions at the same time while presenting a complete project. However, after deciding not to use the narrative style, we started brainstorming. Each of us was supposed to take the responsibility of coming up with at least one specific scene, making them up in detailed plans. I took charge of the scene on stairs, edited it and shot both the stairs and escalator scenes. By the interactive day, we had nothing except for only three incomplete videos. Thanks for Elena’s main editing, we finally finished the three general videos. Then with the help of Leon and Mengting, we had an interactive page which includes three scrolling part. Then I came up with the idea that we can have a very starting page introducing the scrolling model; later using scrolling to link to such interactive home page, which separated each video as well as indicating that they are all individual ones with different interaction.

We use different kinds of interaction to fit in each video based on the scrolling. For the stairs scene, we made it scroll to change the speed, playing the video with scrolling instead of auto playing. For the bridge scene, we used scrolling to adjust the volume of the video. For the first scene on the escalator, since there are sounds of notification and keyboard tap, we were supposed to use the scrolling interaction controlling the video speed together with its audio, however it turned to be more unrealizable due to the limited time. So we chose to play the original video without interaction, putting more emphasis on its sound to better express the silence. As for the obstruction of mirror other than the webpage design, we both considered using abstract effect to edit and exact mirror to shoot. We were not quite sure at first but the finalized effect seemed to be better than we expected anyway.

Generally, I think our finalized work is not that bad considering the theme of social silence, especially compared with what we had by the interactive day. However, I do think that we should reflect more on the process of cooperating with each other, which in my opinion is lack of carefulness, clear plans, proper division of laborand effective communication. The thing I would change if having more time would be the interaction of scrolling to zoom in so as to read the messages that are shown in phones in the escalator scene. This is kind of an obvious pity of our current project. Furthermore, if possible, I might reconsider changing the current theme which is social silence, trying to present silence in a relatively more abstract and literal way. Anyway, I now still appreciate what my partners do in this project as well as this experience.

summary after interactive day

Here’s the link to the HTML about changing images of the cat:

http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~tj1059/catchanging/

 

Our constraints included Silent – Shoot Through a Mirror – Cut to the Music – Stairs – Scroll. 

Our overall theme will be exploring various moments in an average person’s life that is silent. We are going to interpret silent in literal silence and also social silence whether it be in real life or the digital world. We will shoot these different moments and compile them together on a web interface that the viewer will scroll through the different scenes. Some of the moments we have thought of include an awkward elevator silence where the people ignore one another in real life but are having very “loud” conversations over their text messages. Some of these moments will have more of a narrative arc than others. We might also include a scene of someone brushing their teeth in silence to portray the silent monotony of their daily routine. Similarly, we might include a stationary scene of someone walking up a stairwell. One of the more developed scenes will picture an angry person walking up the stairs of a traffic bridge. The person will look annoyed at all of the noise. The picture will show loud blaring traffic. The person will take out their cell phone and turn the silent switch. Then, all the background noise will be silent.

Since Leth failed to finish the second obstruction perfectly, von Trier offered him two choices as the punishment – to rework on the second obstruction or to remake the film in any way he liked. Leth chose the second option, using the technique of split-screen effects. When talking about methods, Leth mentioned that he isolated places and things that he wanted to examine precisely and waited for the right moment. He preferred the uncontrolled frames and moments, which partly explained why this version of film seemed a little disorganized but still expressed the theme of perfect human.

Compared with other obstructions, this one seems more unique because it has no exact constraint on what techniques to use, which is quite similar to the original one. However, based on the experience and understanding of the previous two obstructions, the work is surely different from the original one either stylistically or formally. Personally, I prefer to do art works with certain constraints on the main direction and meanwhile leaving free space to exert personal creativity to express understanding. Though having constraints means decreasing possibilities, it depends on the creator to initiate the general direction of the work, which seems much harder than make creations in the established frame.

The Five Obstructions is not so much a film as a documentary. Under different constraints given by von Trier, not only this obstruction but also all the rest shape the perfect woman with certain techniques, thus making it less directly to perceive the sense of perfectness. Nonetheless, what is clear is that we can see how creativity and imagination can be inspired in certain limited conditions, as well as the constant pursuits of film art and expressiveness of both Leth and von Trier. Instead of the sense of perfect human, I actually see more about the process of becoming a perfect filmmaker in the whole movie.

http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~tj1059/projects/audio/

The birth of the original idea of our project was quite easy. Jennifer and I were sitting in the café, discussing which place we should choose and present. Suddenly I saw the glasses put in the café counter, causally saying that probably we can choose the bar, which includes the similar counter, customers, etc. Yet after analyzing the exact sounds and the sense of space, we found that it was realizable and was more novel compared with the restaurant or natural environment that we had considered before (and it was proved that other groups indeed chose that 🙂

A bar includes a variety of sounds: the background music, the murmuring among crowds, the musical instruments and the song; sounds of ice cubes, pouring liquid, cheers, opening beer bottles, etc. We first used the microphone as well as other equipment borrowed from the studio to record certain small single sounds. Besides, we downloaded the background music and some single sounds of musical instruments from the Internet. Later we used the recommended software, Audacity, to do the editing work. For example, we edited several audios of pouring liquid and ice cubes, splicing some of them together to fulfill an audio of making drinks. We re-made the audio of crowd chatting, making it go up when walking towards the crowd and go down as users left the crowd and headed to the band, in order to change the scenes and emphasize the sense of space. Through the process of scrolling and exploring the bar, there exist instructions/hints on the top of the background image, which if users click, the background audio would change a little bit to better reflect on the real scene. Also, in the end, we designed to switch off the light and leave. The page would turn black and all the sounds would disappear.

The way we decided how to present the bar was kind of zigzag. Initially we supposed to separate every single sound and make each a clickable button. However, it seemed a little boring and me and my partner did have divisions of opinion. After discussing with Leon, a new idea was come up: we used an all-black layer on top of the background image, except for a hole following the mouse all the time in order to explore the bar, thus creating a sense of “mysterious” space. It was not easy to realize the hole following mouse all the time. With the help of Leon, the instant position of mouse was captured, then the middle of the “hole” layer was set to follow the mouse position all the time. Besides, in order to solve the problem of moving “hole” layer while scrolling, I separated the mouse position into two variables, currentMouse and previousMouse, and then used the IF conditions to apply to either first scrolling then moving mouse or moving mouse without scrolling. What’s more, we created several images of the items in bar, making them become bigger when the mouse is over and also clickable to play different audios. This made our project more interactive, better improving the user experience.

In conclusion, I think we did a good job on this project, especially if compared with the“dilemma” we suffered at the very first beginning. My partner took the main responsibility of audio editing while I did the coding thing, which I think was a quite clear and efficient way for us to work together. However, if we have another chance, I’d like to engage more in both parts of the project to gain more experience and practice on different skills. Also, we would add more detailed single sounds and further polish them, connecting with each more fluently and naturally if we have extra time. Anyway, I sincerely appreciate my partner, Jennifer and our finalized work as well.

Initially it’ll be the sound of the doorknob being turned and the wind bell hitting on the door, together with an aside saying that “you’ve entered a space”. Then we’ll separate the space (which is actually a bar) into two parts, the bar counter and the crowd. For the bar counter, we will some many single sounds of pouring liquid, adding ice cubes, hitting between glasses, etc. For the crowd part, we’ll offer sounds including moving chairs, putting glasses on table, “cheers”, background music, whispering, etc. In the end, we may also offer the general sounds of the bar, including every single sound to let users experience the difference between the separated one and the natural one, in order to emphasize the sense of space.

The audio was actually a “document” of an interview, talking about the Homecoming Transitional Support Center things. Though no images shown in front of me, what I’ve felt from the audio was really rich and vivid. What impressed me most was the swooshes used in this episode. They actually represented the use of flashback, which were often ignored in visual episodes but were particularly obvious in such audios. The time and settings were changed by the swooshes, separating the audio into different tiny stories. What’s more, the background music also transformed with the change of scenery, which effectively influenced listeners’ perceptions on the audio.

This is actually the first time for me to carefully pay attention to the specific techniques used in an audio. I think it’s a totally different way of expressing and conveying compared with the visual stuff, and I do look forward to the next episode.

http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~tj1059/projects/comic_project

 

Our project is actually an adventure game, mainly made up of three small games. Me and my partner both like online games, so we planned to design a game similar to the one -BLIZZARD- that we both enjoy in life. However, after deep consideration, the original idea which includes lots of interaction as well as algorithm seemed too complicated to realize. Therefore, we finally turned it into three small easier ones: dice game, math calculation and rock, paper, scissors. Users who win dice game and rock, paper, scissors for more than 3 times and solve more than 5 calculations in one minute can finally win the whole game. Furthermore, for the comics part, we designed two cartoon characters, allowing users to choose from and attempting to add a theme of adventure comics to the whole project. Anyway, our project uses a lot of interactions and comics, aiming to let users have much fun while playing.

 

For the coding part, we used a lot of techniques we learned in class. Take the dice game as an example. In order to make the dice roll fluently, we actually used IF condition to quickly change the image of dice number, making it a trick as if the dice is really rolled. Also, we used the random function to get the result, making it possible to compare between two dices. What’s more, to establish rules of how users can win this game, we came up with the check function, enabling users to pass the game whenever they win more than 3 rounds. The algorithm of rock, paper, scissors game is actually similar to the dice one, which to some degree relieve our stress of coding. The math calculation is much harder, however, which includes the random function, timer, etc. The coding process is anyway the most difficult part of our whole project. We have to put what we understand in class into practice and try to solve the problems whatever occur on our own.

 

Unavoidably, we did run into troublesome problems. For the dice game, I used INDEX to in IF condition to make the dice roll, while using NUM to actually get the result of the random function. However, when pressing the stop button, it showed the INDEX first, then the alert occurred. The result only changed into NUM after we confirmed the alert. I was pretty confused and thus searching plenty of information about it. Finally, I learned that it was probably because changing image takes more time to execute, compared with simply comparing the numbers. Therefore, I set a TIMESETOUT for the comparison function, making the result show milliseconds later. What’s more, the div problem always confused me. Sometimes two elements showed in the same horizontal line as we expected, while sometimes they just emerged in a vertical line. Therefore, we turned to CSS-TRICKS, which is full of flex-box guides and was introduced in class. It did help us a lot.

 

In conclusion, I think we did a good job in our project. My partner and I both devoted quite much into this project, communicating and discussing a lot, listening to and respecting each other’s ideas as well as making determinations together. By last Thursday, we actually finished only two games and there was no comics. We then absorbed the suggestions we received on the interaction day, making a lot of improvements in our project. Though it might not be as perfect as we imagined at the very first beginning, we try maximally what we can based on our understanding and analysis of every html/css/javascript. If we have more time, I suppose that we can add a background music to make it more adventurous. Also, we will try some more difficult games such as card games. Anyway, as our first group project, I think this finalized work is much better than I expected and I sincerely appreciate my partner.

http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~tj1059/js-exercise-conditionals/