Tristan’s Documentation Blog

The concept of our project is telling others to live in the moment, do not dwell in the past. In our story, we created a figure who always thought about the past and think those are the good days, but after a sudden transition, he understood that there is no meaning in dwelling in the past, only living in the moment can make every second matter and live happily and beautifully. We were inspired by a video clip and we decided to use this as our main idea. When processing this video, we had many changes about the constitution of it, for we are not sure how to make this concept not heavy to represent and how to make the transition naturally. After many times of discussions, we decided to use a projector to represent the good old days in the character’s mind, and this really differs from the latter part of living in the moment. I want to explore this topic is because I think many of us are suffering from the nowadays life. They aren’t things like that we don’t know how to do coding, how to write essays, how to make money for a living, etc. It is some of us eat for life, sleep for life. They suffer from the pain and don’t create happiness for themselves. I’m a person who studies hard to get a good grade, but I’m not a person who only cares about grades. It is more important for me to learn things through study and life, and this includes finding happiness through small things like eating something I like and spending some time playing. Base on the idea of living in the moment, we extend our topic to do not dwell in the past.

The storyboard matters in the first part of our project. At first, we shoot according to the storyboard so we can get some basic acquaintance about the things we made, but I think we didn’t use storyboard in the final shooting so much because we can feel free to extend something outside the storyboard. For example, the feature of the projector. My partner is the leading character of this project and his girlfriend is another character. I am the person in charge of directing and shooting. The first half of the video requires a bedroom and someplace similar, so we chose a common room in the dormitory because this place is much cleaner and has big windows. In the last half, we just chose some places which can match our narration, so we went to the park, the bench, the sofa. One friend did lighting for us. Thanks a lot. One difficulty we confronted is that we don’t know how to shoot the transition part of the character’s mind change. The best solution we found is using the blow-up of the curtain to indicate the change of the character and using the book to directly inform his change. When I was editing the video, I found the sunlight can also be a transition, so I slowed down that part a little bit and solve that problem. I was mainly in charge of editing. I used some basic functions like changing the brightness, color balance to stimulate the condition between reality and thought in the last part. The biggest challenge for me is to do the editing of those small clips. Although it’s not difficult, it took me a long time to decide to use which moment and did those tiny editing.

My role is director, shooter, and editor, which focus on the content of the video, my partner is mainly in charge of the narration part and acting part, and some of the editing part. In my previous works, finding suitable actors is the most difficult thing for me. My partner solved this problem and I cared nothing about the external affairs, I just need to go to the place and shoot. He really avoided lots of trouble for me. Also, in the former stage of this project, I had a huge essay due, so he almost shouldered all the work. Also, our conversation about the project is very smooth, for he really respects my idea and we never had a conflict. I had experienced groupwork many times before, and I can say that this is the best group I met. One thing I learned from my partner is to shoulder the responsibility actively. So in the latter part, in return for his hard work in the former part, I took the main charge of editing actively.

We used various camera angles and shots. We have close-shots and give the close-up view of the book, medium shots of the main narration, and long-shots while shooting outdoors. Also, I took some special features like the projector and the wind blowing the curtain. We also tried lots of camera angles while shooting his running, but finally used only one angle to pursue the overall aesthetics. The first part of the color tends to be dark, to bring out the sad emotions of the character, so we closed the curtain and only lit the character. The last part is colorful and because the ending is a white blank page, I adjusted the color to let it become whiter and whiter, to make it more natural and create a feeling between reality and mind. Similar to the color, the first part of the video is in a long tone and the last part became faster and faster, and the background music also changed. The faster pace of the change of different video clips also shows the increasing pace of the video, which can catch audiences’ hearts in our opinion.

The last word, I love communications lab!

storyboard final

Here is my blog post for the storyboard assignment: 图像

link: https://youtu.be/zABLecsR5UE

The memory came from last semester when I went to an exhibition on a piece of lawn. It’s a weekday, for I don’t like crowds. On that spot there were some old people strolling and talking, some kids accompanied by the olds playing and laughing, some students, I think are university students like me, going around the exhibition and so on. It was lunchtime, suddenly many office workers came out from buildings nearby. I walked around and saw more of them still staying at the office. I suddenly thought about life. We are first kids, then youth, middle age, and finally old. I want to convey the change of time to my audiences by representing some characteristics of different life stages. So, I chose the kids playing and teens laughing for the main sound in the first part representing youth, writing and hitting keyboards for the main sound in the second part representing middle age, testing blood pressure and sighing for the main sound representing old age.

(the cute dog at the exhibition, which also the inspiration for me to add barking to my audio)

I used many sound excerpts in this project. I used dog barking, the child playing, teens laughing to represent the lives of youth. For the life of middle age, there are writing, hitting the keyboard and finally can’t endure the dull life, workers dropped the pen and get up in anger. For the life of old age, I used the sound of a sphygmomanometer, the sound of heart jumping, and used the sound of a rusty metal plate to represent the aged joint and skeleton. If I only have these three parts, it seems isn’t coherent, so I added transitions between each part. It is a mix of knocking the doors and turning the book pages, both represent leaving the original space and moving on to a new one. The main recording is done with the external mic and Tascam. During the recording, I tried different distances, different volumes and tried to create a variation of the same sound. One problem I encountered is that for the old age part, I think it would be better to have a sound of high blood pressure rather than a normal blood pressure, so I let my friend go for running and took his blood pressure immediately after he finished running, however, the pressure is still lower than the limit, so I decided to use the normal blood pressure and vague the broadcast. Another problem is in editing. When I finished the first edition, the layer of the audio is not abundant and I need to add some very soft background music. I tried to record, but all the audios are hard for me to process some tantalizing bgm. At last, I chose an excerpt from one of my recordings and processed it to create a sound-like murmur. I think my editing process can be described as smoothly, I can use pieces I created in the previous assignments and recompose them to the final project.

If I have more time, I will first improve the old-age sound, for I am not quite satisfied with the sound of sphygmomanometer, I want to find a more specific example. Another thing is that I want to try to record a better bgm, a sound that can linger around you consistently but still can’t interrupt your perceptions of the main sound. One feedback I received from my instructor is exactly to add more layers of audio, base on which I add some assistant sounds like heart jumping and sighing, and the most important one, background music. During the critique, the sounds are much lower than I expected and nearly half of the time is no sound (the voice of writing and hitting the keyboard is very low), this extremely affects the perception of the audience. One feedback I received after the class is that my composition is a very complete work, but some of the excerpts are a little bit abstract that the audience doesn’t know what I’m conveying.

(the screenshot of my final work)

Steyerl means that the authenticity of documentaries has decreased, so people tend to have unbelief in them. The documentary is supposed to represent reality, but many uncertainties make it impossible to take everything under consideration. Nowadays, however, people can use this characteristic to change or even distort the truth, which is actually a way to convey their expressions. When it comes to the relationship between fiction and truth, I think the truth is the foundation of fiction while fiction is an artistic expression form of truth. Fictions are composed on the basis of truths, after processing, the truth becomes an attractive fiction, which is a kind of expression of how the processing part is in filmmakers’ opinion. When people are attracted by fiction, they are more willing to read the prototype of the story, which is the truth, and then make the truth more known.

The authenticity and representation of the truth in media are decisive for me. I’m not a person who reads lots of news, but the platforms I read the news on are all big platforms. If I read some fake news about, for example, COVID-19, I will lose faith in this platform because it teases us. If I still read through this platform, I will become a puppet of this platform, think about what they want me to think, do what they want me to do. The live broadcast is a relatively authentic manner for its objective and real-time. It conveys the things that happen just now and no huge editing is made. Maybe this is one medium that is mostly closed to the truth.

The memory is about the time I did rock climbing this summer.

I’m a person who is always willing to challenge myself, and I’m totally not afraid of things like rolling twisters and Bungee jumping. So I think I will also not be afraid of rock climbing. However, when I first step on the real rock, I felt scared. I looked down, the nearest ground is several meters far away. I looked around and failed to find a place to rest. the only thing I can do is climb.

I began to climb. it’s so hard for me that I can’t pay attention to almost anything outside. I can only hear the friction between my shoes and the small metal pedal, the sound of wind blowing past my face, the scratch of my skin by the rock, and occasionally, the sound from the former person or latter person. Sometimes I climb through the plants, and the sound of plants can, to some extent, comfort me. I was very tired at that time, and when I saw I still have a long way to go, I felt really despair. I wanted to shout out, shout out to myself who made the decision of climbing, shout out to the devil difficulty of the climbing route, shout out to……

However, in the end, I was forced to complete climbing.

Tristan Liu

Contrast

Concept

The concept of my work is contrast, using colors to the two extremes. In society, I think the era is leading us to be more harmonious, from wearing clothes to the building newly designed. If a person wears both red and green, or both yellow and blue, seldom people will think the match is beautiful. But I think contrast is a kind of beauty, so I want to use my camera and Photoshop to show that.

Process

Image I

The initial photos I took are about two girls playing on the swing toys. I tried to use their clothes to make a contrast with the black background, but taking pictures of humans seems too difficult and the contrast is not so obvious. So I begin to take pictures of items. I first wanted to take pictures of a still pear and a blue bag, however, when my friend took an orange from his room for me, things suddenly changed. Instead of pear, orange became my leading character. The orange color and the blue bag really contrast with each other and when we put on some light, it is more beautiful. I thought the picture is still too dull, so we found a tissue and put it under the blue bag to create some ups and downs, which is more complicated in composition and the mountain-like shape makes the picture more beautiful.

Image II

When I finally decide to choose which photo will be my first image, I began to collect more elements of blue and yellow (or orange). I need contrasts, but I don’t want to use orange and blue bags again. While searching for fruits I found blueberry, so this became my leading character. After taking these photos, I begin to add elements into PS. Because the yellow bottle is very big, so I make sure that I will let it stay in the bottom right to create a solid foundation. Because I want to create a feeling of running through, so I add another small yellow bottle and that girl’s hand with the blue nails to create a line through the whole paper. Then I begin to add some small blue parts, which are blueberries. I used three blueberries to create a triangle, and the virtual-actual degrees vary from each other to create more graduations. After finishing all of these, I think the image is still dull. So I enlarged the blue bag, made some special effects to let it looks more cyberpunk, and added to the image as the background. I intentionally left a  white triangle background, thus creating a new layer and making the image have more content. Thus, a colorful contrast is done. It echoes the first image, for they both used yellow (orange) and blue, which made contrasts. Also, the composition is to some extent similar. They both have a long item to traverse the whole paper, in image one, it’s a blue bag, while in image two it’s a yellow bottle. Thus, I created contrast in the similar, which I think is a great idea.

Conclusion

In the class, professors pointed out that my work can have a more responding relationship. for example, I can add another small white triangle at the bottom left to create an echo with the upper right triangle. I really like my second image. if I have more time, I will work on the first image. I can have a better light when taking photos, I can use the camera more skillfully, at minimum, not to lose focus in almost half of photos. I can also find a better place to create better contrast, not just took photos in a common space in the dormitory.

Contact sheet

The “fluidity of the digital” means that photographers can feel free to modify the photograph and other digital media to reach their own needs. Photographers are no longer just the recorder of real life, they can edit and manipulate the photographs to make them present in various ways.

One typical example would be photo-editing applications. In order to achieve a certain goal, many people use such app to beautify pictures to the largest extent, ignoring the fact that they have changed the essence of the photo. The one on the right is the type that we usually see as a promotional photo, but its origination is the left picture. The beauty of the sea is fluid. By using beauty apps, those not attractive pictures become attractive, which can mislead and deceive people then gain benefit from this.

When comparing the capacity of capturing reality, I think virtual reality and video are better than photography and photography is better than book and text.
Compared with text and book, photography can better capture the reality for it can automatically present a vivid image for readers and can omit the procedure that readers try to imagine the image in their mind. Also, images taken by photo are absolutely more realistic than images in mind.
The reason video is better than photography is that video is composed of countless images, which can present people with images from different angles. Virtual reality is much better than video, for it can create three-dimension images while a video can only create two-dimension images, which can give the reader an immersive feeling.
However, the comparison has an exception. In terms of recording time, photography is the worst compared with the other four media. The other four can all capture the moment in a time period while photography can only record a time point.

Link to the song:

https://youtu.be/ThvSTegU1mQ

Concepts
I knew this song about half a week ago before choosing the song. The moment I listen to the song, I felt a lot of freedom and added to my favorite song. The part I played in class has a strong rhythm that I want to dance with. The whole song is very retro, which can remind me of 1980s old cinema and KTV. So, I decided to compose some retro and classic elements in my sound visualization project. My initial thought was to put a huge disc in the middle and put other retro items surrounded, but this was overturned in the mid critique, for a huge disc is too awkward and can’t emphasize other parts. So, I decided to change the disc to a small part of my project. Disc, in my concept, means classic and old. Because now seldom people use the disc to play songs, it can give me a feeling of the passing era. This song also creates a feeling of freedom, so I choose the word “party” to represent this freedom. I tried to create an atmosphere that everyone sings and jumps freely at a party, and not be restricted to anyone and anywhere. I also tried to link the party and disc together, which means that this party deserves to be memorized and be put into the disc.
I used many Gestalt theories in my project.
Proximity
The many “Y” in the middle part forms a projector lamp, which can highlight the letter “R”, which represents a dancing person.
Continuation
There is many “A” running through the whole graph, which can link party and disc together and make it as a whole.
Symmetry
The disc uses symmetry. By rearranging the word “disco”, I tried to let “D” in the upper part and bilateral symmetry, which can give me a feeling of steady-state and can let lower part looks more symmetry, for lower parts are not absolute symmetry in letters.
Process
I don’t know many functions of AI at first, so my first draft doesn’t contain too much technique. I just created a huge disc and put some shapes on it, for I wasn’t figuring out which elements I’m going to use yet.
After the mid critique, I began to find some symbols in the last century’s film poster, trying to find some typical figures. I looked through countless posters, can’t find anything symbolistic but found a feeling of unlimited. Unlike today’s posters, the old ones are bolder to use more patterns to behave. This is the reason I chose the word “party” and made it become a real party.
Then I attended the workshop held by LA and fellows. It is really helpful! That night, I began to work on the project. I moved the disc to the corner, used “T” to create a light, used “R” to create dancing people, and used “Y” to create the outline of light. Then I used “A” to link them together and added an abstract “P” to make the project more artistic. I intentionally left some part of “A” out of the graph to give people a feel of an extension.
Conclusion
In the final critique, the instructor pointed out that when looking at my project, everyone will pay emphasize on the disc and then move through the line “A” and finally reach the central part. This is somewhat unbalanced and I need to let my piece be more integral. But I regarded my symbols as a success while listening to the music over and over again.

Introduction

This is a picture of the natural world. The natural world is something that was not created by us humans but by a force that we don’t know. In other words, they were born in this way. This is a system that introduces the principle of our world like who eats who and who is the most powerful in their world.

The bottom part is grass, they can turn carbon dioxide into oxygen to make humans survive. But they have no arms and legs, so when animals want to eat them, they can eat them. They are called producers, who can produce oxygen for humans and animals to survive.

Other animals are called consumers, which means that they consume energy but do not create energy. In the middle of the plaque is a worm, which eats plants and smaller insects to live. It is very small and weak so when bird wants to catch them and eat them, they can’t resist but only be eaten. This bird relies on eating worms for living. In the left bottom part, there is an animal called a rabbit. It survives by eating grass. On the left top side is a creature called an eagle, it survives by eating small animals like rabbits and birds. However, it doesn’t eat what rabbits and birds eat. On the right part of the plaque are two snails, which survive by eating grass. But it could also be eaten by birds and lizards as the plaque shows.

It may sound complex that one needs to eat many other creatures to live and can also be eaten by many other creatures. However, only in this way can they maintain their life, for their moving consumes energy, which can only be gained through eating.

Maybe you don’t understand what energy is. Energy represents movement and operations; it is the foundation of every living creature’s action. It originates from the sun – who can give lights to grass, and grass can change this light to energy in their body and give energy to other upper creatures by being eaten. The sequence of eating and being eaten forms a chain, which is called the food chain. From the plaque, we can see that there are many food chains. One is grass to rabbit to the eagle. We both maintain our living by eating things, and if you cannot be eaten by other creatures, you are at the top of the food chain. It is like the behavior that we humans eat apples and bread and you eat giant nut or gourd and a gelatinous ellipsoid. However, the component of the food chain must be living creatures, so if you change your food to some living creatures, then it means in this chain, you are at the top. The sun itself is not composed of the food chain, but it is the foundation of the food chain.

Criticism

Animals in the plaque are not so representative, and if aliens don’t have similar experiences, they may don’t understand the basic understanding of plants and animals. they may not form a system consciousness although this is not a causal relationship.

How do aliens in the story language and communication style different from the human language (oral, pictographic, phonetic, etc.)?

Unlike humans whose language and communication style are exactly the same, aliens’ language style and communication style are different. Human language is linear, composed of words and phrases, and always forms by the logic of cause and effects. But alien language writes like a circle. The change of their strokes represents different meanings. So when we compare the writing of human language and alien language, human language needs to be read line by line while alien language can be regarded as a drawing and be understood immediately. 

Their ways to produce sound also vary. Humans produce sound by vocal cords while aliens produce sound by vibration. 

For phonetics is closely related to writing, these two languages then vary much more. Humans can speak in the way they write but aliens can’t. For words must be expressed one by one and their writing doesn’t have any sequence, so they try to find the biggest freedom of not using the sequence. Humans’ writing and speaking are complementary while aliens’ speaking can only be a weak substitute for written language.

How does the physical structure of our body inform the way we communicate? How about the aliens?

For human communication organs are formed in a two-dimension way, it is hard for us to form a complete logic before speaking, so we usually speak in a linear way and follow cause and effect. However, aliens have seven limbs and seven eyes, which are formed in a three-dimension way. This makes sure that for them, every direction is front. This enables them to finish thinking about what they are going to say before communication, so their expression is no longer limited to structure and words, and can write whatever they want to express.