Assignment three–Vivien Hao
Link to the slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1vzCfib-8Xs88ApAqt8GoXc8OtPaUd-Ba9BttTNKgUsY/edit?usp=sharing
My part of research:
Three mechanisms from the book Karakuri:
Part two:
One of the questions that my group raised during the discussion was: “Nowadays, the ways we play have gradually migrated onto digital platforms. Do we still need physical musical toys?” A response that we agreed in common during the discussion was that for sure digital platforms could make plays more convenient and bring more possibilities to players. For example, playing the piano is no longer limited to those who have access to owning a piano. Piano apps could also allow players to learn the very basics of playing the piano. However, the experience of physically practicing skills on a real piano would never be replaced by such apps. I completely agree with that answer.
Assignment two–Vivien Hao
Part 1: Throughout the movie, the artist—Cas—talks about her design concepts behind each project. Her central design intention was to give fundamental instead of complicated and well-designed toys to children from my interpretation. She wants to not set up as many limitations for the children when playing with the toys. On the other hand, most toys in the market give detailed instructions to the children and tell them how to go each step. Cas wants children to have fun and use their imagination when playing with the toys.
One of my favorite toys from the movie is rigmajig. Since I was younger, and even today, I am still so fascinated by toys that require more hands-on work. This toy includes several pieces of crafted wood and screws. The rest are left to the players. The screws all look the same, which means all the holes are the same sizes. It is much free assembling rather than goal-orientated.
Part 2: As I mentioned in class previously, my favorite toy would be stuff animals. I specifically love those from Disneyland, such as Duffy, Stella, Lotso, etc. I think I like them simply because they seem to be cute figures to me. I place to carry them around with me, put them on my drawers, shelves, etc. From my understanding, the target users for these toys are children and early age adults. They are still in the market, and sometimes there are special seasonal editions. They usually get sold out quickly even though prices tend to be much higher than other brand toys.
The article “toys are more divided by gender now than they were 50 years ago” mentions that we see more gender divide in toy shopping nowadays. Stuff animals specifically, I think, showcase much gender divide than other toy series. The general public tends to have a conception that stuff animal toys are for children and females only. If a boy shows a preference on stuff animal toys, people might judge him as an outlier.
Assignment one–Vivien Hao
I have taken lessons on pencil drawings, so I do have some experience making symmetrical drawings. After lining down the squares on the paper, I then started making similar replications that were shown on the PowerPoint slides. Then with the free drawing parts, my inspirations came from symmetrical drawings.
This video seems to be very inspirational to me. I like how the artist incorporates his artwork with real life. For example, in the beginning part of the video, he draws a cube. Then he takes out an edge from the cube, and it becomes a stick. In the later part of the video, he portrays several toy looking objects, and all display his facial images.
Final Project Blog Post–Vivien Hao
A. Concept
For the entire semester, one of my biggest concerns was when will I be able to return to Shanghai. After days of pulling the required documents together, applying for the visa, I finally received my visa in my hands at the end of November. For the project, I thought it would be memorable and meaningful if I chose to focus on this topic. Unlike others, I chose a slightly tedious route to get back. I chose to fly to Korea from my home—Guam—and continue my trip to Shanghai. I will not be out of quarantine before the course ends. So I chose to record my way to Korea and stop the scene at the quarantine hotel. The journey beyond that, I leave that for everyone to imagine.
B. Process
I recorded the first scene driving around the island. I asked my mom to drive the car while I was sitting in the passenger seat, holding my iPhone on a tripod. It was quite hard to record a stable scene, even with the tripod. But later in the editing process, I cut out some of the shaking parts and tried to make the scene look as less shaking as possible. Same for the other settings, I cut out some parts that don’t look very pleasing to me. The voice recording part took me a longer time than the editing process. I wrote my script after I finished recording. I had a rough idea of what to put on the hand, so I did not write it down before making the films. However, after I finished writing the script, I found out that the voice cover process is more challenging than expected. I had to be exact to seconds. I got suggestions from the class on my rough cut that my voice cover sounded matching to the scenes. However, I need to have metaphors and not to match up the voice with the settings. With the limited time and resources to start over the filming process, I decided to write another script that will sound relevant to the scenes but does not match them as my first script. After I finished writing the script, I then checked my voice with the scenes’ flow. I want to spend reading the entire script while not go overtime or suddenly increase my speed toward the end of the video. Therefore, I had to make sure my voice had a steady pace and cut off at a precise time.
C. Conclusion
For me, having an idea for the topic was not hard. However, drafting out the explicit scenes to record and writing down the scripts took quite a bit of time. The actual video editing process did not take much time. After several video editing practices in class, I also tried to edit videos out of the class, so I think I now have a good grasp of the editing techniques. If I had more time, I think I would take the other route. Include scenes that look relevant but do not look as literal as those I have in my video.
D. video (My original video exceeds the maximum size the Blog allows, so the attachment below is the compressed version. If needed, I can show my original video with another platform)