weblog for Sound and Vision SSII
Back on line.
yes, after a long long delay i am back on line across the pond from nyc to london. i started school and am pretty much set up apartment-wise. i got a job at a local pub and bought an old bike to get around on.
i’ll post more info and pictures soon…gotta run
It’s been a while since i lasted posted to my blog. i’ve been very busy working 4 jobs and have not been getting into the lab as much as i’d like. i will be in the nyc area until the start of september. the start of september i’ll be traveling to wisconsin then nantucket and marthas vineyard until late september when i’ll be heading to london to start the school year.
i’ll post more updates along the way. until then….
today was the last working day for the interactive collage. i was able to put together a collage that incorporated finalcut, dreamweaver, and flash. Amy and Dana were a great help along the way.
my website has made great progress during the semester. i still have a long way to go and will continue to use the labs until i leave for london. i want to explore ways to obtain server space at parsons or at my school in london or a private retailer of space.
i will continue to post blog entries and keep in touch with my professors and classmates. i hope everything goes well tomorrow. looking forward to it.
tys
today was the last working day for the interactive collage. i was able to put together a collage that incorporated finalcut, dreamweaver, and flash. Amy and Dana were a great help along the way.
my website has made great progress during the semester. i still have a long way to go and will continue to use the labs until i leave for london. i want to explore ways to obtain server space at parsons or at my school in london or a private retailer of space.
i will continue to post blog entries and keep in touch with my professors and classmates. i hope everything goes well tomorrow. looking forward to it.
tys
during the first section of the class we grouped up and worked on our final projects and websites. i am still having difficulty with flash but am determined to learn how to use actionscripting correctly. so much to accomplish by friday…i should be in the lab all hours of the day until we work something that meets of exceeds standards.
tys
Today we reviewed our scripting to sound projects during the first half of class. each project brought something new to the table. i was great to see how each group managed to work so well together. around lunch time dana (still recovering from over the weekend laser eye surgery) soldiered on to guide us into our next project. sitting on the table with the bright laser projector beaming in her eyes couldn’t have help the cause but she’s a trooper. she just put on her jackie O sunglasses and continued the lecture.
i grouped up with Pat for the final project and we discussed different ways of going about creating our interactive collage. we combined many of our ideas and sorted thru the footage taken over the weekend. to read further into our proposed outline please read my last blog entry.
for the second half of the day amy (rehabbing from a near fatal green pepper slicing accident) arrived heavily sedated on codine. she too managed to go the distance teaching a class full of flash numb nuts how to insert action script into their final projects. with one hand she instructed us fielding every question with complete professionalism.
after class i stayed behind and work on some flash inserts i plan on using in our collage. at first i inserted bitmap subway identifiers. this was not a smart move. why insert bitmap images into a vector program? so i replicated each colorful circles of the metro using the flash tools. it should work out to create some impressive effects.
looking forward to getting lots done tomorrow. i plan on waking early and head thru the subway for more collage images. should be fun
tys
2. Prepare your Interactive Collage presentation. PRESENTATION ON MONDAY MORNING Get together with your group and prepare a formal presentation explaining in detail, your concept for your interactive collage. This is our last project so make it exciting! Use visual/audio support to demonstrate your ideas (ie. sound clips, uploaded images, video footage, references to other existing sites. By Sunday night at midnight have a 500 word description of your concept posted to your blog.
After reading the Jem Cohan article an reviewing the Experimental Web Playgrounds & Portals i was still without a concrete idea as to what our group would want to explore for the interactive collage. the colors in motion site by maria claudia cortes was like a children’s book flash project that was crafted well but lacked depth. the cool hunting site and new today site were just well designed pages with lots of flash extensions. for our interactive collage we want to try something different.
this weekend pat and i traveled throughout the city capturing scenes mostly from the subways. from harlem to wall street to the west village and out to coney island. we want to incorporate the video and found sounds we collected along with scanned images, voice over narriation, digital photos, and drawings to import into flash and finalcut. from there we’ll create short films to act as portals that will be accessed by an index page created in dreamweaver using images scanned in as a collage generated using photoshop. the goal of this collage is to incorporated all we have learned so far in the class to develop an interactive environment that shows our vision of new york city.
the concept of our collage will be simple. the end user will be presented with a collage of images gathered in and around the subway stations of nyc. the user will navagate thru a host of rollovers that will guide them deeper into the areas identified by the rollover images. an example: in the upper righthand corner there might be an image of a harlem brownstone that when rolled over presents images relating to that particular neighborhood. when clicked upon a javascript pop-up window would be presented showing a short film clip of that area giving the viewer the sound and visuals to that particular place and time. after the clip is played the user will be brought back to the main collage where they can explore other parts of nyc. by clicking one object they might be transported to the bronx or wall street or brooklyn or coney island. each location will be supported by subway footage from that particular neighborhood and show the ubiquitous red ‘you are here’ circle shown on the subway maps at each location. we also want to incorporate each subway identifier using flash. we’d like to have fun with the m&m like multicolored subway labels bouncing flashing, and rolling around the collage. the blue ACE circles bouncing over the flashing grey L line then rolling past the R and the W on and on will really give our collage an extra nyc flavor. the colorful circles should be easy to replicate and animate using flash.
another tool available to us we can include into our collage are voice overs. i’d like to get into the sound rooms in the labs and record both pat and myself. i don’t want to do the monotone jem cohan style but something completely our own. we can describe the subway stops and the neighborhood as it is being shown to the viewer. at various points in the collage the viewer might be viewing a quicktime pop-up on top of the main collage of digital images and scanned objects while listening to the rumbling subway tracks or chatters of passers-by in the terminals or on the streets all while listening to the narration of pat or myself. we what to bombard the viewers senses so that they get the feeling of being in an nyc subway in soho or standing outside a deli in spanish harlem or walking along madison ave. we want to give the viewer wherever he or she may be in the world the nyc experience.
as of now we are still in the initial stages of recording throughout the city. we still have many more video and voice-sound clips to record as well as design the main collage. we will have to complete many more forays into the city to find objects and items that are original to each subway stop and scan them. at the end of the voyage we want the end user not only to learn about nyc thru sound and sight but to grab their attention and keep them clicking thru the collage soaking up all of the images and found sounds contained withing each rollover, quicktime short, and flash animation.
the ultimate challenge will be to keep from falling into one program or another too far. i don’t want to entirely use flash or make it a long final cut film nor do i want to just be an overly linked up html sight. i want to make our collage using the full collage of programs we’ve used during the semester. i want to show that we are proficient using each program and are able to use each to support one another. to simply use one program for the entire collage will limit us and bore the end user. I hope to get working at top speed after our crits monday morning. to be able to focus all my energies to this project will clear up many of the fuzzy spots and fill holes where needed. with the support of our classmates and professors i am confident that we can create something special.
tys
Today we learned how to use Flash all day. Both sessions of pure Flash insanity. I learned a lot and will play around with the site this weekend. i still think i will use dreamweaver as my main site but will embed flash files into dreamweaver. making my entire site a flash site is a little too much too fast. i’ll take small steps towards that goal.
i spent a few hours after class working on my site and thinking about my next project. we are so busy with the script to sound project it’s hard to focus on gathering footage for the next project.
i’ll post our ideas for the collage by sunday night.
so much to do….
tys
today we reviewed our rough cut ’scripting to sound’ projects then had some time to work on them before designing our homepage composition. before we set out to design our web pages dana showed us successful sites that other students designed and portfolio pages that used dreamweaver and flash. we will learn all about flash tomorrow and begin to set-up our web sites for the final.
i’d like to use flash in my final site but only as embellishments to a standard html dreamweaver site. i think it is very difficult to make an all flash site. unless you are really good at flash you should stick with dreamweaver and html.
looking forward to the final week of class.
tys
1. Museum of the Moving Image Blog Response- Write about your favorite part of the exhibit and 3 things you learned about the process of film-making that you didn’t know before your visit.
8:30 am i arrived at the computer lab and wrapped up a few things before heading to queens with the class on a field trip to the Museum of the Moving Image. it really was unlike any museum i’ve been to in my life. there aren’t too many places where you could play arcade games the entire time. i paid $7.50 for admission but the arcade games were free. i must have played $10 worth of great video games for free. after i was dragged away from the video games we went thru the main museum space on the 2nd and 3rd floors.
there was so much i learned about the production of moving images it’s difficult to only speak to only three examples. i guess i’ll start with the Hair & Make-up section of the 2nd floor. i learned that during the early days of Hollywood actors wore heavy greasepaint make-up until a guy named Max Factor invented a thinner greasepaint that looked better during close-up shots. i remember hearing the name Max Factor on make-up ads every day but never knew he was a real person.
While watching one of the documentary films about the making of the new peter jackson king kong i learned how they combined a stage set with computer animation to show what times square nyc looked like in the early 1900’s. the set designers and costume designers went thru old pictures and newspapers of that time period and matched up everything to establish the period, social milieu, and style of the day.
In the panning and scanning section of the museum i learned about aspect ratios. i remembered speaking about aspect ratios in class so i paid special attention to the display. from the standard 1.33:1, to the euro 1.66:1, to the theatrical 1.85:1, and finally the CinemaScope 2.35:1. all are used to give a scene and sense of grandeur or tightness depending on the directors intent.
In the TV section of the museum one of the rooms had stacked monitors with different views of one baseball game. it showed how one guy directed the camera men like a conductor choosing what the TV viewer would see at home. the director would switch from the home plate view to the 2nd base view if a runner was trying to steal a base. it was a great behind the scenes look at how sports events are recorded and transmitted to the final viewer.
all in all the trip was a success and i’d like to make more trips to out queens in the future.
2. Complete the first cut of your video short which you will present as a group during tomorrow morning’s critique (Thursday). Export your 720 X 480 file as a quicktime movie with sound and present to the class in a quicktime window on the projector. (no credits needed yet.) This presentation will be graded as a work-in-progress. All late work will be marked down 1.0 points for each day it is late.
go to http://a.parsons.edu/~sis/2006/class/andrew/portfolio.html and click on ‘Ride to Parsons 1st Draft’ to view our very rough draft. making progress….little by little.
tys
