Artist Write-Up

1.        Although I didn’t come into winter term expecting to focus my senior thesis on making a film about falling, I feel pretty good leaving this term. Even though I only have 2 minutes and 30 seconds of the film, I feel as if I have done just enough to have a momentum of moving me forward in this thesis. I now have a good sense of where my film is heading and have set the tone of the beginning of my film. However, I also feel that my film needs a lot of work. Instead of just purely improvising, I need to start creating a narration and a strategically planned screenplay.

2.       My Thursday’s peer feedback session was very helpful in many ways. Although many feedbacks were very positive, they seem to not grasp the film just yet. This was very understandable for my part too just because I know I haven’t gotten enough stories and scenes to make my winter film a finishing piece. One of the most helpful feedbacks was the idea of having more than one perspective. Instead of just focusing on one character’s view of falling and getting up, they encourage me to do a more diverse perspective. This could be very good not only because the idea of falling and getting up applies to everyone, but also because it would just purely make the film even more interesting.

3.        Now that I have set the tone of my film, I need something different to happen. I need something that will trigger the audience and affect the next scene and the entire film. To achieve this, my vision is to create my story and to know play by play so I could use the filming part to my fullest. My vision for April 29 is to have a complete film that will take the audience away and make them question and think more upon their falling and getting up.

4.        Game plan for first work-in-progress critique on Monday, March 28^th is to have two more scenes done. These two scenes will create the gateway of my film and answer the tension at the beginning of the film. 

One Minute in New York

Blog Response

A One Minute Film in New York was a very interesting project. Given such a short amount of time to grasp all the footages I originally planned to film was somewhat very challenging, additionally, also because you never know what would happen in New York. I also found it challenging to edit my film just given the fact that the film was in New York and I wasn't able to go back there and redo scenes that I wanted to do, or scenes that I thought of during my editing.

My film connects to my larger thesis project because it is relevant to "Falling". Originally only working with photography, I decided to portray this by making a video. As Kerry Starbakka once said, “Human Condition is always in this state of falling, and it’s our reasonability to catch ourselves when we fall.”  I believe that there are also times when people are unable to catch themselves. Through tension, a one minute film in New York shows the story of a helpless and falling person.

Next Assignment:
Make another video.

New York Video Project

I want to use the video camera as my eyes, and to put myself into an action movie by capturing the essence of me going on a mission, fighting, balancing, and finally falling.

Have Fallen

Every story has a beginning, middle (things that happen in between), and an ending. To be fully honest, all three stages fascinate me in different ways. As for now, I'm experimenting and determining which is more important to me. Or perhaps, the three stages are all worth exploring. 

Final Project

Blog Response

Blog Response #1

“How else can one write but of those things which one doesn’t know, or knows badly? It is precisely there that we imagine having something to say. We write only at the frontiers of our knowledge, at the borders which separate our knowledge from our ignorance and transforms one into the other.”

-Deleuze

Although Giles Deleuze is talking about “writing” in his quotation above, it applies too to making art. As a visual artist, I believe that making art isn’t just a straightforward process of relating to something you know badly and creating it simultaneously. Curiosity and ignorance always play an important role too. There’s always the combination of knowledge and ignorance and a specific border where they meet and intertwine. As I relate this to my process of creating artwork, I often also wonder what will happen if I do this, and what will happen if I do that. The fact that I wonder while creating artwork speaks a lot about Giles’ quotation. For example, my artwork on “Map” started out with just one single idea of creating an overview of something that related to me the most, but this overview got enlarged to a map of my room when my ignorance and inquisitiveness exchanged ideas with my knowledge. I wanted something more than just an overview of a single object; I wanted to illustrate everything, even things that mean nothing to me. I came to the conclusion that it is these known and unknown objects in my room that precisely tell a story about me. It is precisely these that satisfy both my knowledge and my ignorance, and ultimately fulfill my urge of saying something.

Blog Response #2

“To me style is just the outside of content, and content the inside of style, like the outside and the inside of the human body. Both go together, they can’t be separated.”

-Jean Luc Goddard

When filmmaker, Goddard, said that style and content “can’t be separated”, I agreed with his statement. What Goddard meant is that two elements come in a package, and without one or the other, the artwork does not mean as much. He is also saying that “style” and “content” depend on each other, and the emphasis of one will only affect the other. As for myself, I have the intention of making most of my photographs well contrasted, shadow accented and with unique angles. Although these are skills that help a picture “look” good, these are also important skills to have in order to concentrate on a particular content. For example, my clothing project photographs are very contrasted in color and shadow accented, but these skills not only ended up making the photograph look “good” but also allow the shadow of my body part to emphasize the content of self-portrait on the project “Clothing”.