FST 302 Matt K

So I will probably sound pretty ignorant by saying this, but for me the venue I watch something in means next to nothing. I do appreciate though how much it means for a lot of people who crave discussion with other film buffs after watching something obscure, for me however that has never been particularly important. I do something that would probably infuriate most of these art house film makers we are learning about - I often watch things on my phone. I'm aware that a lot of film makers would never want their films to be seen in this format, but there is something really nice about being able to watch something while lying in bed. Also, I prefer watching things on my own time and not in live screenings because I like to pause often. I really hate having to hold in going to the bathroom during the riveting ending of a film but it seems to happen every time I go to the movies. Sometimes I also just like to pause and reflect on what I just saw, or to make food, etc. Basically I'...

I liked how this presentation had an emphasis on images over words. One of my biggest problems with my presentation was that some of the slides were just a ton of words, but I needed it written down to talk about it. I was impressed that they seemed to generally know what to say about each slide even if there were no words at all. As for Maya Deren herself, she sounds like a fascinating person who was really ahead of her time. I think something this school should take in consideration is not showing us Meshes of the Afternoon 7,000 times by the time we are seniors, at this point I hate it (and I thought it was really cool the first time I saw it) and unfortunately it was the only thing I had to associate with Maya Deren. It was nice to see that she did in fact make other films, films that look pretty interesting in their own right.

This presentation contained a lot of good information but it was honestly just too long, so for me and my limited attention span I only took in the first 30 minutes of it. Nonetheless, I did leave with a better understanding of Mekas. Having only heard of him through my Harry Smith research I wasn't aware he did the same thing for basically every other experimental film maker out there. He sounds like one of those people whose motor and drive just never really stops running even in his old age, which is really impressive.

I'm sitting at one of the computers in Randall Library doing this 1.5 hours before it's due. This is obviously a very well lit place. One thing I've noticed from observing in here and in my apartment this morning is that surfaces immediately around a light seem to be the darkest part of the room. Here in the library, there is a large rectangular fluorescent light every yard or so all along the whole ceiling, which provides the majority (or all) of the light in here. But the actual ceiling that isn't one of these rectangular lights is darker than anything else in the library on the walls or ceiling. I guess it makes sense considering there are no light sources from the walls or the floor, but it's something I never thought about before. I guess part of me thought that since the ceiling is right next to the light, some of that light would spill over, but instead I'm realizing that light really does project outward in a specific shape, possibly a cone or something ...

The only source of light right now is through the three windows by the entrance of my apartment, all with the blinds drawn. Looking down at the rug the light seems to come from the windows in a semi-circle, gradually fading. The door, which is to the immediate right of the windows, seems darker than the rest of the room, although as I say that I realize that the wall that the windows are on are all equally dark. Shadows linger on the very edge of my ceiling (which is diagonal, sloping upwards) and then stop fairly abruptly, at least compared to the gradual diffusion on the rug.

For this exercise I really only dipped my toes in the water as far as the possibilities of sound design. I didn't really use any effects other than manipulating the speed of the various sounds. I have experimented before with heavily editing sound files in Audition, but there are so many options and sliders that it's pretty overwhelming. I would be interested in actually learning more about all this stuff. I don't want to specialize in sound/sound design but since I want to grow as an editor it's all connected and I could definitely benefit from learning more. Other than that, I also learned that for some reason you can't export a file in premiere if the files within the project are located on a flash drive. I'm not sure why this is, but it turned what I thought would be a 5 minute exporting process in to a 2 hour panic session where my exported file would only play the first audio track, and no google searches shed light on the problem at all. Eventually I fi...