Guest Lecturer - Kirsten Johnson

Filmmaker Kirsten Johnson, visited our Media class full of energy, looking forward to what she could give us with all her experience in the film world. She talked about movement and position. She moved around a lot, she interacted with the students, she made students get up and walk across the room. For example, she made the whole class stand up and stand across somebody and stare into their eye's for a whole two minutes. To me she showed us the uncomfortableness every human has interacting with a stranger. As a Filmmaker, that's what life is about, interacting with one another to discover something you probably wouldn't have known if you hadn't spoken to that person. Johnson analyzed a series of shots of balloons from her film The Above. The way Johnson shot that sequence, was like she was interacting with the balloons, she got in between the balloons, she played around with her positioning her movement, everything she was telling us in the lecture. It is important to have your own point of view because no one else is going to have that same point of view. I found that very interesting throughout her lecture. Kirsten Johnson is a very interesting woman, she has a lot of experience and shared her knowledge of this industry as much as she could with us.

Final Project - Get Out

Audio Portrait

Film Scene - Shot by Shot Break Down - Some Like It Hot

A total of 24 cuts in the intro scene to Some Like It Hot from (00:01:40 - 00:03:15). This film starts off with a police car chase. As four men in a funeral car try to escape the police we have a series of shots that relate to the next one and cuts are made in accordance with continuity editing protocols such as Matched Action, Eye-line matches, P.O.V shots and so on.

The break down of this scene starts with a wide shot of the street and a couple of cars on the street passing by. We cut to the interior of the funeral car where we see the handle of a coffin(What's inside?) The camera moves up and we see two men sitting across each other. We begin to hear distant sirens and the two men look at each other and we cut to a wide shot of the front of the car and we see the driver, the passenger and the two men in the back. As the sirens continue to intensify the men in the back look out the back window. We cut to the exterior back of the vehicle and we see the two men looking out the window. We cut to their point of view and see the police vehicle approaching. We cut back to two men looking out the window. This gives us the viewer a sense of continuity, we focus our attention more closely and let the story unfold. Another example of a cut made in accordance with continuity editing protocols in this scene is at (00:02:22 - 00:02:28) when we cut to the two men in the back taking out their guns breaking the window and jump cutting to the exterior of the vehicle in continuity breaking the glass and shooting out the window, this is can be referred to as matched action. At the end of this scene the men open the coffin and we see bottles of liquor pouring from the gun shots and subtitle 'Chicago 1929' giving us a sense time and why these men were running away from the police. This film was released in 1959 in black and white, I believe it was well edited for its time. 

What I Hear.

On my Soundwalk I took a hike into the mountains. This occurred from 11AM-12:30pm. I heard the dry leaves crackling below me, as I stepped on top of them.  I heard the twigs crack as I stepped on them. I heard the the soft squelching sound of moist moss as I stepped on it. I heard the loose rocks falling off the hill as I climbed.

On this perfect fall morning, I hiked up to this overlook and sat on this rock,  I closed my eyes and took a moment to take in all these sounds. The very distant sound of cars below driving back and forth. The grasshoppers running their hind legs against their wings making a chirping sound. The crickets rubbing the edges of their forewings together making more chirping sounds. I heard a couple of branches breaking off a dried up tree, and falling to the ground, "crack, thud, crack, thud." The wind whispering through the trees, it was a pretty calm morning so there was a soft rustling of leaves blowing, "whoosh, whoosh." The chirping birds that flew by. Lastly, as I sat there quietly, I heard this roaring sound from up above, it was an airplane passing by. 

It has been a while since I actually sat down and listened to my surroundings. I enjoyed this exercise because it helped me become more aware of sounds we may disregard on our day-to-day basis. 

Define a Space Project

Artist Statement

Hey there, my name is Alexis Gomez and I'm a Documentary and Television Production major. I really like taking snippet videos of really anything and anyone. I like to capture the beauty of landscapes, sunsets, etc... I also like capturing people and their movements, their behaviors, their reactions to awkward, uncomfortable situations. I like to edit and put videos together even when they aren’t very long videos. But all of this done on an iPhone...i would love to get to better understand the camera and really all its features and the difference it can make on a lot of future video recording along with learning how to piece these videos together cause I know very little. But it’s not just landscape and human movement I would like to capture, being a taxi driver has shaped a different worldview on my behalf. I see a lot of different interesting things when I work, I hear a lot of things and I would love to include all of that into my future work.