Author: tlb394

I had such a fun time creating and working with Justin and Julia on this assignment. I firstly want to commend Justin on his incredible coding abilities and Julia on her expertise and professionalism with Premier Pro. I felt we had such a strong group of different skills that when we all worked together we created a project that we are truly proud of. 

Description of the project.

The Project was inspired by a short story that Julia really liked. It’s called “Carnation Lily, Lily Rose” and essentially follows a recently deceased husband writing letters to the wife he cheated on. What we wanted to do was to adapt three of the letters into a screenplay and this formed the  premise of the project. The stories are quite abstract, philosophical, existential and at times nihilistic. We wanted to create something memorable by using voice over to accompany a silent video that conveys to the best of our ability to intensity of the emotions and feelings in the story. 

A working link

http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~jc8017/VideoWebsite/index.html

Discussion of your process and how the project works.

The process for this project was very involved. The short story is 20 pages so the first thing we all did was read the story and work out what would be the best way to adapt it to a screenplay. We selected three scenes that we thought would be the strongest and more easily adaptable to screen. We chose the opening, a middle scene, and the ending scene. 

The monologues are really abstract in themselves so we definitely had our work cut out for us when we were trying to adapt them. We changed and condensed some of them to make it more realistic for us to adapt into a screenplay. We took away abstract mentioning of a plane crash and changed it to a subway station fall instead. 

We then created story boards to mark all the shots and changes. This process was crucial to encapsulating the emotions and feelings we needed to showcase in the story. I definitely used my story board when I was on location and it made the filming process so much smoother, efficient and effective as I knew exactly what I needed to shoot. Justin and Julia also prepared story boards and it made it so much easier to gauge the creative direction for the shoot. Justin obtained a friends stabilizer and we filmed off his phone. We were going to use the Canon Camera but decided against it and used his phone instead. The quality was really strong and was easy to move around considering a lot of our shots were dollys. 

I was the actor in our film and was obviously heavily involved in that aspect of the project. Having had a lot of acting experience before, I really wanted the opportunity to have a project I could look back on and be really proud of. I spent a long time working out the best way to choose scenes, shots, lighting and angles to make the adaptation as close to what I envisioned as possible. 

After this we each edited a scene using Premier Pro. This was the first time I had used Premier Pro and really enjoyed working with it. Prior to this my only experience had been iMovie which was really limited in comparison but nonetheless a good foundation. I played around with changing the pacing of the raw footage and made it match with the audio to create more seamless transitions. 

After the scene construction we looked to the interactive elements. Justin’s coding skills are incredible and he was able to take our ideas and make them into a reality. In the first scene we use interaction by clicking on the sides of the screen to change the perspective of the video. You can either watch the video by only following my feet or by watching me across the street in like a voyeuristic type of approach. For the second scene we chose to have the user select a different filter for the scene and the third is the repetitive image of the eye. 

The website itself is simplistic and minimalistic which is what we wanted as the audio/video should be the focal point. You click to begin and the website automatically scrolls down and plays the first video. At the conclusion of the first, it does the second and the third so you are able to completely be immersed in the project. 

A post-mortem on whether or not the project met your goals.

The project exceeded all of my goals! I could not be prouder of how everything turned out. I am honestly so proud and cannot praise my team highly enough. They all worked so incredibly hard on this. We did take on a really big task and it definitely paid off. 

I hadn’t had much editing experience but I am now confident in Premier Pro and have a new found appreciation and love for cinematography and video production. I am usually the person being directed in front of the camera so having the creative control for a change was actually really refreshing and gave me an unforgettable experience that I thoroughly enjoyed. 

If I had more time I would have tried to experiment a little more with Premier Pro to develop some of the transitions but for the first time in making a short film, I felt we did a really good job. 

Screenshots of the Project 

The majority of my work was in storyboards, filming and editing so that is where my screenshots come from. 

The first screenshot showcases the raw footage on the left and the sequence order on the right hand side. 

The second screenshot shows where everything is in the film log. You can see the effects on some aspects of the video as well as muted sound and black spaces timed perfectly with the audio. 

The Third Screenshot is the RAW Video Footage folder which stored all the originals. I would create other folders so I could manipulate the footage without ruining the original should I want to play around with it. 

The Fourth and Fifth are Story Boards that were used when shooting on location to aid in the effective and efficient scene shooting process. 

Project Link: http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~tlb394/audio/index.html

Preface and context

This project was a lot of fun to complete! I really, really enjoyed working on the audio. My background is in dancing so audio really is important to me in creating meaning. Every single beat, rhythm and melody can convey so many feelings and emotions depending on the interpretation and I really wanted to use this aspect in this task.

After class, we came up with the idea to compose a piece that provided insight onto the dorm life on NYU Shanghai. However, I didn’t want the idea to form a cliche that involved the collection of random sounds and depositing them onto a webpage. Instead,I came up with a slightly different angle and asked my group members if they thought we could incorporate it to elevate the meaning within our piece. 

Project Description 

Essentially the project revolves around the connection of two old friends, in this instance played by myself and Jamie. I am a student at NYU Shanghai in Shanghai, China whilst Jamie is a student in Beijing, China. 

The piece begins with an audio recording of the two of us talking and reminiscing on when we used to watch the stars together when we were in the same place. 

In order to record this piece of audio, I used my phone to record it and then also used my phone to take a recording of the recording of Jamie’s voice on her phone in order to create a distance sound effect. I also tried to do this on Audacity but felt that the sound distortion sounded a little too perfect, when the intention for this was to show that in reality not all phone call connections are seamless. 

After this conversation, Jamie really wants to experience the NYU Shanghai dorm experience, however she lives in Beijing. This is when we use the next page to immerse Jamie in this experience by being able to experience what typical day of dorm life is like at NYU Shanghai. 

The next page leads to a floor plan with five doors, a washing machine/dryer, kitchen, common space and a cat. The objects are positioned on the floors trying to resemble a dormitory floor plan. Jamie was really talented in doing the majority of the coding to get the website exactly where it needed to be. Jamie actually originally used the Vincent Van Gough (Starry Starry Night) background as a joke but as soon as I saw it before recitation on Thursday, I knew that we could actually incorporate it into our meaning. The backgrounds relevance is that irrespective of the fact the two protagonists (friends) are in different cities, they still look at the same sky. This provides them a sense of connection that no matter the city, they are united by the stars in the sky. 

The cat in the middle of the piece plays the song “Vincent” which is an audio rendition of Starry Starry Night. I used iMovie to change the volume of the song to keep it playing at 3% so it didn’t interfere with the audio sounds but could keep a constant sound in the background. 

I came up with the audio sounds and each group member collected a couple each and I did all the audio editing. 

Behind the first door is the Eleme phone call that Demi collected. 

Behind the second door is the phone call back home that I asked one of my friends to record. 

Behind the third door is the sound that Demi collected of the entrance barriers to the dorms 

Behind the fourth door is a conversation between Demi and myself that happens quite a lot at the dorms, where people want to sleep yet are continually interrupted by questions 

Behind the fifth door is a panicked me who forgot to do their Chinese homework and rings my roommate. 

I wrote a small dialogue for the conversation: 

等一下我会给我的室友打电话。室友！室友！我忘了做我的中文功课！你可以帮我吗？我得问你三个问题。第一个问题是，在中国你觉得男女平等的吗？第二个问题是你觉得身体健康非常重要吗？第三个问题是你最喜欢什么运动？

The translation equates to: Hold on a second, I will call my roommate. Roommate, Roommate, I forgot to do my Chinese homework, can you help me? I need to ask you three questions. The first is whether you think that in China men and women are equal. The second is if you think the health of your body is important and the third is which sport do you like the most. 

I thought it would be nice to incorporate both English and Chinese into the piece to show the international diversity of NYU Shanghai. 

I edited all the audio sounds either in Audacity or iMovie. I found these two applications the easiest to use and convert them into MP3 or WAV formats so I was able to code them onto the website that Jamie had established. Audio was recorded on the 8th floor piano rooms when no one was using them so we could achieve optimal sound. For the sounds where they needed to be more muffled, they were recorded onsite (kitchen, common room, washer/dryer, entrance barrier) as we wanted them to sound as realistic as possible. 

How the Project Works

The project follows an index page and then an audio page that is linked via the use of a onclick-button. Essentially each image is connected to a piece of audio and you can click the image the play and click the same image the pause it. The only image the will continuously play is the cat because it forms the background music that provides continuity to the motif of the “Starry Starry Night”. 

We decided against having each door link to a new HTML Page as we wanted to focus on the interconnectedness of the dorms and that everything is in close proximity to each other. The piece is almost voyeuristic in the sense that it really does provide an insight into the dorm life of NYU Shanghai without clear introduction or establishment of context. That is why the audio is so important in conveying what the context of the sound is. 

Post-Mortem 

I really do think the project met the goals of the group. I know at least personally I was really really proud. I thoroughly enjoyed working with Jamie and Demi to create this assignment. I have a new found appreciation for audio and especially audio editing considering I spent so long just listening to the same sounds over and over again. 

The project met the brief of being centered around audio and I think we collectively added some deeper meaning than just a random collection of sounds being deposited onto a HTML page. The story is central to communications lab and audio is one form in which we are able to experience contexts and situations that we may not be personally involved in. Its a way to stay connected and included and I think this project is a powerful representation of just how much of an impact audio has in our lives. 

The Danger of a Single Story is an incredibly powerful TedTalk. This was actually the fourth time I had viewed it. I had seen it during my Orientation week and also when I was an Orientation Leader for the Class of 2022. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a very powerful lady and she provides such deep insight onto an issue that so many people often ignore. To me it really reinforced that you should not just listen to one persons opinion on a topic and treat that as a representation for an entire country or culture. 

For example, if you’re traveling in Australia and encounter someone who is racist, that one person shouldn’t be taken as a representation for the entirety of Australia’s attitude to race. If people generalize, then, this is when we begin to see the danger of a single story. This is how tensions and divisions are incited in society and without dialogue to air these misconceptions they only perpetuate a sense of unease in the world. 

I often rewatch Chimamanda’s Ted Talk to remind myself to avoid making generalizations and to clarify any misconceptions because especially in being a part of an international community at NYU Shanghai they can be detrimental to the inclusive atmosphere we advocate for and strive to achieve. 

This piece on Theft and Artistry was actually a very interesting read. It was similar in style to the articles on plagiarism and the Molotov Man that were read last week but presented deeper insight into the topic of originality. 

This piece actually examines the effects of cultural appropriation on the artistic industry, in particular, the music industry. 

I didn’t actually consider how much of an impact (statement) could be made by using a particular country as a background in a music video. What I found quite interesting was the following quote that was made: “When we’re presented with caricatures of other cultures, she says, it’s easier for people to view them as sub-human”. This was one aspect that I did not actually consider. I didn’t consider that cultural appropriations (or caricatures made of other cultures) could actually contribute to maintaining a cycle of systemic degradation and dehumanization that can act as an enabler for political manipulations. 

One can definitely not underestimate the power of the artistic industry especially with those stars who are currently in the limelight. They are the ones who truly hold the power of influence and what comes with that power is en even greater responsibility. However, this does come with a double edged sword as quite often these public figures are more highly scrutinized and held to higher standards. Yet, through this, they do have a chance to create positive change. 

There is a difference between theft and artistry but drawing that line of what constitutes appropriation can be quite difficult to navigate. Being mindful of respecting cultures and traditions is certainly important but one must also be careful to not completely blanket ban the incorporation of culture into art. Cultural awareness can actually be heightened through exposure but only when executed in the right way and clearly, this is what the artistic industry needs to pay more attention to.