FST 302 Matt K

So we really haven't had a chance to work on this yet, we've exchanged some ideas but nothing concrete yet. The most likely so far sounds like cymatics, I personally have no clue on how to set up something like that but I think some of my group members do. I have no idea what my role is, I haven't really had a chance to focus on this yet as I have 5 other classes and it feels like every day a new assignment is dive bombed on my head from the sky. But I will be there for whatever the group needs and help in any way I can. If we do cymatics the only instrument I could possibly play is piano/keyboard and I'm really out of practice, I suppose I could do something simple though. I really don't know what else to write for this since we've only barely started talking about it so far.

I really, really dislike their music. I could write this whole post about why and how I dislike their music but I won't. The visual portion of the videos was pretty cool though, especially the more recent ones. I had never seen the treadmill video before but it didn't really have much of an effect on me, that clearly took a lot of rehearsal but compared to the ingenuity of the newer ones it was pretty inferior. My favorite was probably the one that messed with perspectives, that's just really cool and I wish I had a better word to describe it but I don't so cool will have to do. As far as the presentation, they did a solid job, no complaints.

I've been thinking more about the specifics for my self portrait idea as well as finding some good found footage. I've mostly been focusing on the first portion of the video. I want it to be a compilation of some of my vague, early memories (not the exact memories but more imagery/sound that evokes the memories for me). I will add post production to these effects to give them a sort of hazy, long-ago feeling.  For the soundscape I've thought of a few specific musical snippets to use for this portion. My parents were both huge hippies back in the day and were really into Indian meditation and stuff like that, it was a pretty big part of my childhood so I want to use some sound effects that remind me of that. I also have in mind a few samples from 90's hip hop songs that I remember as a child that really remind me of where I grew up in upstate NY.  Once my video transitions to the negative section when I went to 8th grade, I like the idea of using black and white, ...

This idea still needs some work, I only have the basic foundation. My idea is to mostly focus on my past up until now. I had a great childhood pretty much exactly up until I turned 13 and entered 8th grade when I moved to a much rougher school right as I hit adolescence. I think this moment was an incredibly important shift in my life and I want to portray it (along with other things later). My basic idea for this so far is to show peaceful, calm, and happy imagery/sound for the first portion of the video. These images/sounds will be those that I can at least loosely associate with childhood memories. Then the sounds/imagery will begin to warp into a something much darker. The next series of images/sounds will be much more negative, and at least some of the images will be of a typical public school (particularly the hallway). I haven't given as much thought for the rest of the video, but it definitely won't stop there. I think I will try to show the other major "c...

I'm not sure what I learned about sound design. I still know very little about sound design but I was glad to be able to work with a track as awesome as "Father Ascension." I have no idea how most of the sounds in it were achieved, it was much better and far more advanced than my soundscape. As for the visual part of 1d, I actually learned a lot more about editing and using premiere. We created things that I wasn't sure we would be able to but I had a vague idea about how it would be done. Some images were much, much more difficult than I initially expected. The red letters lighting up for the tatoo sign probably took close to five hours. Now I could create a similar effect much more quickly, but to learn how to do it I had to stumble around and mess up a bunch.  Overall this was my favorite part of this project, and this project has been one of my favorite things I've worked on so far at school. I'm genuinely disappointed they weren't shown at Cucalor...

I was only able to attend 3 screenings (I bought 4 passes) because this week was incredibly busy for me, I was barely even able to go to these three screenings. I experienced mixed emotions for the three events I went to but definitely had some positive experiences. I did intend to engage with more people around me but due to time constraints and being mentally distracted with the other things I'm working on I kind of just went to the screenings and left. Other than that, I was hoping to see some unique, well made films, which I did see a few.  On Friday night I went to Lords of Chaos, the only feature length film I saw at Cucalorus. I enjoyed it overall but felt like it had a little too much gore and violence - and I'm pretty used to that stuff. A few people were exiting the theater when they realized what kind of film it was. The other two screenings I saw were the Fiddlehead and Jackfruit short film screenings. I felt very mixed about the films at the former (I...

I have no idea what to expect. I've literally never been to a film festival before. I'm probably going to enjoy it a lot and wish I had bought more than the $50 4 screening pass, but this is a busy week for me and it will be hard for me to even find the time to do the 4 screenings. As for my plan of action or whatever, I don't have anything set in stone about which films I'm going to see yet. If you wanted for me to have that all planned out then I apologize but I can't really have that ready right now as I don't know my schedule for the rest of the week. I did however look over the list of films briefly and have a few ideas for ones that jump out at me. I'll probably try to go to Georg K's native American documentary.  After that Lords of Chaos, 8 Slices, A Hand, Escape the Ninja, Bonfires are all films that look intriguing to me (I haven't looked closely at the whole list though I'm sure there are others that will jump out at me). 3 actiona...

What did I learn shooting on film? I learned that I have no idea what I'm doing with it, at all. I'm older than most of my classmates but I'm still part of this newer digital generation. I have a ton of respect for all the film makers who had to work (and especially edit) with film, and there are obviously a ton old movies shot on film that look amazing, many of them still looking better than what is possible now digitally. All that being said, since I like editing on a computer more than anything, I don't feel much urgency in learning more about using film at the moment. As for the assignment itself, photography has never been my thing, I don't think I have a great "eye" for it. I don't mean to sound like it was a waste of my time because it wasn't, I do love branching out and learning things that I'm not used to. But its just probably an area I'm not going to focus on in particular.