Halima Abedin @halimaabedin-blog - Tumblr Blog

Artist Statement

Language has its flaws. It can't help us communicate to others exactly what is on our minds. As a result, the people we talk to only have a partial image of what we are trying to say. But to me, media like film and music are able to better express what someone is trying to say. Media helps us get closer to 100% transferring our feelings and thoughts to another person’s brain. When I watch a movie or listen to a song, I feel the emotions, the fear, the heartbreaks, the ecstatic joy that the creator is expressing.

This power of media drew me towards the passion of creating it. One such media that I want to create are documentaries. I love making documentaries because not only am I able to practice my love for shooting and editing videos, but I also get to meet people and hear their stories and then turn that into a visual work of art. Everyone has a story and each individual story is fascinating. I want to provide my audience with a lens that gives them the power to feel these stories.

#ihaveadream #filmmaker #mediamaker #documentaries

Our second short documentary! #reneewashere

“Mother’s Day” by Elizabeth Lo - Editing Reflection

The video I watched was a short film from New York Times Op-Doc called “Mother’s Day” by Elizabeth Lo. It shows the lives of a few children in California who visit their mothers in prison for Mother’s Day. These children are representative of every child who has a parent in prison. One of my favorite scenes in this film was the scene where children were singing “Little Einstein” while footage of the deserted landscape as viewed from the bus window is shown. I loved the way this was edited because it really juxtaposes the innocence of these children, as heard by their singing, and the harsh reality of their lives, as represented by this view. I also really liked the montage of prisoner moms meeting their kids and interacting with them. It really captures the emotional state of parents who are imprisoned and humanizes them. The narration of one of the children that begins at 6:20 was treated really well, especially the way there was a pause at 7:00 after he says he’s getting used to feeling hurt. I felt that this pause was very powerful in affecting its audience because what the child said was heartbreaking and this pause lets it sink in.

This film was structured by the chronology of the children getting ready to see their moms, finally seeing their moms, and then going back home. The film is led by the child in the beginning who was reading his mom’s letter. This introduced us to the film’s motif. Then we follow the children into the bus and travel with them. After that, we see them waiting in line to see their moms, finally meeting them and interacting with them. Then we see them saying goodbye to their moms, most of them in tears and, boarding the bus home. Something that I found effective in the editing of this film was the scarce use of music. Music was only used twice and whenever it was used, it lasted only around fifteen seconds. One of the times music was used was at 3:16, when a child was waiting in line, crying out of fear that he won’t see his mom, and when of the moms saw her daughter and grandbaby. The second time music was used was at 7:04 when the children were leaving, boarding the bus and sitting melancholily in the bus. The rare use of music made those moments stand out and helped us feel the pain and emotion of those shown on screen during those times.

https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000005004440/mothers-day.html?playlistId=100000004867895®ion=video-grid&version=video-grid-headline&contentCollection=Op-Docs&contentPlacement=1&module=recent-videos&action=click&pgType=Multimedia&eventName=video-grid-click

Our first documentary short! #reneewashere #theascent

Reflections on Documentary Truth Claims

In conversation with Ann-Louise Shapiro, Jill Godmilow points out that there are two types of audiences, a passive audience and an active audience. In the case of documentaries, the former type of an audience watches a film, often with an empathetic mind, and learns from it but does not carry any of this information into action or everyday conversation. An active audience, however, takes what they watched and analyzes it, leading to critical discussion that surpasses the specific event in the documentary. Godmilow calls this audience an audience of individuals and aims to make films that create such audiences. I think this is a good idea because it means that films will inspire people to produce change in the world rather than create an audience that feels sympathetic towards an issue for only the duration of the film. An audience of individuals will go beyond the surface of the issue raised by a film and try to understand the root causes of the issue which is great because then viewers can apply this knowledge to many other similar issues that were not in the film. This gives viewers an opportunity to become active in finding solutions to such issues way past the point they finished watching the film.

Ultimately, I believe the main role of the viewer of a documentary is to be informed. It is a bonus that some viewers begin to take action in the real world after being armed with the knowledge gained from watching a documentary. As much as I find it important and necessary that documentaries produce an audience of individuals, not all documentaries present issues that need to be solved. Some documentaries serve to inform people about an event or a person. For example, some documentaries are watchable biographies about a famous singer and do not discuss an issue that needs to be solved. In these cases, the role of the audience is to just learn. In the case of documentaries that present an issue and add a critical viewpoint, I think viewers have a suggested role to discuss these issues and the film’s critical take on them because they can either agree or disagree with the film. But either way they are being informed about one side of an issue and that is the chief role of a viewer.

I find Godmilow’s desire to make an audience unsettled to be valuable because documentaries that do that do not give a happily-ever-after ending, so to speak, and that is important if films are discussing real life issues that remain unsolved in the real world. The main role of documentaries is to educate, or rather edify as Godmilow stated, instead of to entertain. If documentaries present an issue and then show an imaginary solution to the issue just to end in a pleasing way, the audience is left with an incomplete picture of the issue. On the other hand, if documentaries show an issue in its actuality, as still persisting in the world, they will remain in viewers heads long past the point they finished watching them. This in turn can lead to further discussion of the issue and possible action towards solving the issue on the part of the viewers.

A Visit to the MOMI

A short walk from home to the Museum of the Moving Image on a beautiful day foreshadowed my visit. It was brief, yet fascinating. There were what seemed like ancient artifacts, things like photographs and equipment, linking back to the very beginnings of cinema. There were behind the scenes treasures like costumes and make-up from the sets and drafted scripts. And there were various collectibles ranging from action figures to magazines from various shows and movies.

One of the cool things that my group and I were introduced to by our tour guide was an exhibit with strobe lights where a bunch of rockets were falling and melting into human hands. After being mesmerized by this visual, I was stunned to see the revelation that happened shortly after, when the strobe lights turned off and stable lights lit the visual. The magician’s secret was the use of strobe lights to assist a stand that rotated numerous rockets in different forms and positions, all representing the same rocket as it fell into the hand. The strobe lights gave the stand time to adjust to the next position during every millisecond it was dark.

Another cool thing our tour guide introduced us to was a participation in automated dialogue replacement (ADR). We were able to see the process in real life as two students participated in replacing the vocals for dialogues in School of Rock and Babe. They were allowed to rehearse first and then they were given the lines, the actual scene in mute, and a countdown to when they should begin. It was amusing to see the result because the ADRs meshed well with the scenes and the lip movement of the actors in the scenes.

The visit to the MOMI was intriguing and I think the best way it can be summarized is by what a fellow classmate said, it was like a time machine to the past as we experienced cinematic revolutions first-hand.

Relationships Between Shots - Drive (2011)

In the following video, we see Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan and a third actor in a climactic scene from the 2011 film, Drive. All except the first shot took place inside of a single elevator. The cuts in this scene are continuity editing, not montage editing, because they depict one moment instead of several moments put together.

The scene begins with a shot of the inside of the elevator from outside, portraying a perfect example of a frame within a frame. After the elevator shuts, we move to a medium close-up shot of the third actor looking at Gosling suspiciously, then looking away. Since he is about Gosling’s height, he does not look up or down at Gosling, demonstrating an eyeline match. This is followed by a medium close-up shot of Gosling that begins a point of view sequence. Gosling is staring intensely at the third actor’s face and what follows is a close-up shot of the third actor that tilts down to reveal a gun in his coat pocket. The next shot returns to Gosling and this time he is looking down at the gun, demonstrating an eyeline match and matching the camera tilt. This shot reveals why he was staring intensely at the third actor and concludes the point of view sequence.

We then move to a shot focusing on Gosling and Mulligan, and this is done by slightly excluding the third actor from the shot and by dimming the lights while keeping them on Mulligan. This shot also obeys the 20mm/30 degree rule since it is quite similar to the previous shot but zooms out to avoid a jump cut. What follows is a two shot of Gosling and Mulligan, and the camera tilts up from Gosling’s hand to his and Mulligan’s faces. This is the longest shot, lasting a minute and ten seconds, and it is one of the only shots with music to accentuate the tone. It is followed by a shot from the back of the elevator focusing on all three actors where a fight breaks out between Gosling and the third actor. This is followed by 13 quick shots that alternate between three things: Gosling beating the third actor, the third actor’s head as it bleeds and cracks open, and Mulligan’s reactions to it all. Throughout these alternating shots, there is a matched action of Gosling stomping the third actor’s head to a pulp.

We return to a medium close-up shot of Gosling as he looks back towards Mulligan to see her reaction for the first time, then we move to a medium-long shot of Mulligan to resume watching her reaction ourselves. Her eyes are looking up towards Gosling, demonstrating an eyeline match since she is shorter than Gosling. We return to the medium close-up shot of Gosling, concluding another point of view sequence, then return to the medium-long shot of Carey as the elevator shuts again. We finally conclude the scene at the back of the elevator with a close-up shot of the scorpion on the back of Gosling’s jacket. These final five shots also have music to amplify the intensity of Gosling’s and Mulligan’s reactions.

There is a total of 26 shots in these three minutes and through the use of a variety of angles, shot sizes, sounds and techniques, they put together an incredibly powerful scene.

“What I Hear” - The Soundwalk

As I commenced my morning commute some morning last month, I decided to unplug my music and take a “Soundwalk” through the neighborhood I grew up in, Long Island City. While I walked to the Queensboro Plaza station, I heard various sounds that somewhat painted a new picture of my neighborhood. There were well-known noises like the different sounding engines of cars stuck in traffic, or moving cars, several beeps and honks from car horns on all sides of each intersection, trucks beeping at a pulse rate by backing up, and all the rattling sounds coming from construction. Now, these are expected noises from a busy city and they may even cause a migraine, but after actually paying attention to each and every one of these noises, I noticed how well these noises integrated into the city. They were a permanent aspect of the city’s identity or personality, so to speak, because no matter how much they agitated us, the city wouldn’t sound the same without them.

Some other sounds I discovered, or just paid attention to that day, were people chatting, the crossing guard commanding cars and leading people, and the rain pattering. I notice that people tend to be more free and relaxed when around other people versus when they’re walking alone. People talk only when on the phone or with other people, otherwise they keep their eyes sharply forward and avoid other human beings. There wasn’t much conversation between the crossing guard and pedestrians either. Although people tend to be avoidant and tense, something that was relaxing, at least to me, was the sound of the rain pattering. It also stood out more because while every other noise exists every day, it doesn’t rain every day so we don’t hear rain consistently.

Lastly, a block away from the station, I heard some clock, couldn’t tell where, musically telling us it was 9:00 in the morning as it played a melody and dinged 9 times. Soon after, I heard the N train rattling its way over to the station through the tracks and coming to a screeching halt. This can sound agitating and even deafening as well, but it is also a part of the city. All these sounds gave me a sonic painting of the city because they showed what was integrated into the city’s identity to a point where we don’t notice them.

Project 1 Completed!

#media #media studies #college #hunter college #club fair #project #a for effort #summer #fun #dog

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Halima Abedin