COMD 282 (LimH)

blog assignment

[hyunwoonglim]

Experimental Film?

 When I heard about an Experimental Film, I had no idea what it was. So I did some research about Experimental Films both in English and Korean and I watched some example films about it. Sadly, even after I watched those example videos about Experimental Films, there was nothing that came to my mind. Anyway, I had to choose an emotion and create an Experimental Film about the chosen emotion. Before we begin with our projects, two options were given: We could either work individually or work in a pair with a partner. Since I was not sure about this week's project I decided to work with my twin brother, my everlasting partner. I think it was a good decision to work in pairs, not because my partner understands this project better than I do, but because I was relieved that I wasn't the only one ignorant about this project.

We had a hard time deciding on the emotions that were given on the list. If we knew what we're going to create it would be much easier, but we did not have any plans for our project. "Sometimes you gotta run before you can walk," said Tony Stark. We just took one of the emotions that were not selected by our other peers: "REMORSEFUL".

The first thing we did was to look up the word in the dictionary.

Remorseful  [ re-mawrs-fuhl ]

adjective

    1. Full of regret

    2. Feeling sad and guilty

It was somewhat similar to other listed emotions such as depressed, sad, bitter, or maybe even reflective. Therefore I was thinking that we should be focused on regretful expression.

In the beginning, we wanted to make it an interactive form of media, so that the audience can actively participate in our work. However, we did not know how to make them work, so we just decided to make it seem like there is an option that the audience can make a decision though it’s just a video.

I had one concern about the “experimental” aspects of this project. I was worried that if we experiment with it too much, it would just look like a Frantic video that has many crazy kinds of stuff in it. Since we had to express Remorseful feelings while experimenting with it, I thought it’d be best if we can balance it out between experimenting and expressing the emotion.

We divided the video into two big parts. In the first part, we tried to show images that show some uncontrolled behaviors, such as abusing drugs, addicted to video games and tobacco, etc.

And in the next part, we tried to show some images that contain people who are grief-stricken, and regretful, and so on.

Perhaps because of the lack of working time due to various other tasks, there were many shortages in the completeness part. In particular, the selection of background music in the second half is quite regrettable and I think we could be more experimental on the second part.

Overall, I loved the challenges that we faced. I think we learn more when trying something that we never tried before.

[hyunwoonglim]

"Sound for Silent" was the title of this week's project. As can be inferred from the title, we were asked to add a sound to silent videos, especially using an old silent film. The film that I found was "A Funny Shave (1960)".

This film is a short comedy film that maximizes the comic feeling using its overall fast speed and loud gestures. I decided to use one of the very famous comic background music (Amazing Plan) and I think it helped a lot to add more comical effects.

I thought it would be "easier" since the film contained many, big gestures. However, I think it turns out to be rather harder. Because the movements and gestures were big and abundant I had a hard time finding audio sources that perfectly match the video.

I approximately used 20 different sounds to create this 2-minute video, and I had to look up over 50 different audio effects to select the best out of them.

The most challenging task for me was to sync the audio with the video. Since I had to add audios from the different sound sources, the length and the speed of the sound were not matching. Therefore, I had to adjust the speed manually, and if the sound changes, I also had to modify the pitch.

I'll have to say that this project was challenging for me, but it definitely helped me to understand how hard it is to create sound effects.

[hyunwoonglim]

Edit Midterm

This week’s assignment was to create a movie trailer with an already-existing movie. It sounds simple but it wasn’t, because we had to make it look/sound like a whole different movie. First of all, I had to search for a movie that suits this project and the one that I can download. After searching for several movies, the movie I chose was Joker. Joker that was released in 2019. 

I wanted to make this movie as different as possible from the original movie. Therefore I’ve decided to edit this trailer to make it look/sound like a romance drama. In the original movie Joker is illustrated as a hopeless comedian who later became a somewhat psychopathic killer. He also appears to be suffering from a mental disease. There is a scene in the movie where what he thought was real didn't really happen, but turned out to be his imagination. In the same context, a neighbor living next door, she  appeared as if she was Arthur’s (Joker) lover, but this also was his imagination.

For this project particularly, I thought this would be the perfect subject. Therefore, I have decided to use his imagination to create my own movie trailer. “Joker the lover”

The overall tone and color of the scene of the original movie was quite dim and gloomy. I thought it would be very hard to get rid of those feelings, so I just decided to use it for the advantage. The overall mood of my trailer is similar to the original movie. However, the difference is that in my trailer, Joker doesn't look dangerous at all. He rather looks like a pure-hearted man whose soul is wounded from the harsh world. 

Personally, I found that the background music and audio effects are very, very, and very powerful that it can just shift the whole mood of the movie. So I mainly focused on the audio effects and the dialogues between the main characters. Finding the scenes(videos) for the love story was not hard because I just needed to find the scene where Joker and his neighbor are together.

[hyunwoonglim]

If you guys remember, last time I have posted an article about Tableau Vivant, which is a French word for “living picture.” I was actually very into this Tableau vivant type of artwork, especially after I watched some modern artworks examples about it. They just looked amazingly fresh and somehow doable.  

SO.. I and my twin brother (Jiwoong Lim) have decided to create our own Tableau Vivant and we did!!  Actually, it was an assigned project from our department (COMD, Bilkent University) BUT I’ll have to say that I personally really enjoyed while working on this project. Although the work was not easy due to various technical and environmental limitations, we managed to complete the project completely and I am happy to say that we are satisfied with the final outcome.

To speak about some of the hardships we’ve had.. We did not have a proper lighting setting at the time, so we used multiple smartphone flashlights and the laptop’s screen(we used the brightness of them) instead. Also, we did not have some props that we needed for the project, so we made them, using Blender, the free 3D modeling software. In addition, I became a model myself for this

 project.Here’s the procedure:

1. We looked for the reference artwork to work on (this took like few days I think)

2. After we’ve fully decided on the reference image, we set up the stage including all the light settings and some necessary props.

3. We took many photos until we get the most decent one.

4. We’ve modeled some props using the blender, those that we could not find from our place. We tried our best to make them match our light setting.

5. We’ve put them together and edited them on Adobe Photoshop. Divided them layers by layers.

6. Animated Images that we’ve created on Photoshop, using Adobe After Effects

7. Added transitions between shots and put a sound source that matches the image using Adobe Premier Pro.

8. Finally, checking if there is anything to fix, edit some minor mistakes.

[hyunwoonglim]

Tableau Vivant

Modern people live in a flood of images poured out by various media. It is very interesting that the politician's hand gestures or facial expressions and poses in the picture are not only visual strategies to appeal to the senses of the viewer consciously and unconsciously, but are also based directly and indirectly on art history. Tableau Vivant, which literally means "living picture," is an art that reenacts certain physical moments into paintings and sculptures, but it has become a common visual phenomenon that is always encountered in advertisements, fashion photographs, videos, and movies today. Tableau Vivant captures movement while in silence. The poses and actions of the main characters captured in the Tableau Vivant are dramatic, but they are pictorial and seem to be bustling, but they are silent. The statue of Caesar, who raises one arm and sends greetings to Roman citizens, suggests that the original form of Tableau Vivant has already been a historical form of political and dynamic functions since ancient Western times. By the end of the 18th century, Tableau Vivant became part of a popular social activity among wealthy bourgeois socialites and artists, which is now considered a bourgeois art form. In particular, at the time when Goethe's cultural authority was dominated by the German bourgeoisie and aristocratic society, Tableau Vivant was recognized as one of the popular social cultures, turning wealth into a sophisticated means of self-expression. The bourgeois dilettantes who attend social gatherings and parties can take a pose in front of the camera that appears in classical art by utilizing expensive costumes and props. This culture of social entertainment, which can be enjoyed without much effort, is comparable to the Hollywood economic principle of injecting large amounts of money and manpower to take a few minutes of footage today.

[hyunwoonglim]

Movie review :: La Jetée

One common premise about science fiction movies is that it deals with various forms of time-space travel outside the real world. This science-fiction world as a spatio-temporal journey is, on the one hand, an expression of utopian/dystopian imagination that responds to a given reality, and on the other hand, a desire to track the traces of memory/history imprinted in it. In addition, science fiction films show the possibility of escaping from the chronological flow of time by adding the premise of technological advancement. In other words, science fiction movies often reveal the concept of the time very differently. Past isn't something that has already passed and never comes back, but something that can be revived into another provocative space, and the future can act as a cause of the past's renewal rather than as a result of past subordination.

In this article, I am going to talk about a movie called La Jetee, directed by Chris Marker that features these sci-fi films.

La Jetee develops narratives through voice-over commentary from the omniscient point of view. Before World War III, a boy comes to the airport with his parents, where he witnesses his future death. Soon after, World War III broke out, and Paris was contaminated by radiation. Survivors live in the underground where everything is restricted. There, people were divided into winners and losers, and losers are subject to the experiment. The purpose of this experiment was to enable time travel to the future for the supplies. Scientists are wanting to change the hopeless world into a better world through time traveling, trying to accumulate knowledge and technologies as much as possible. The main character, who was chosen for the experiment and sent to the past, is attracted to a woman and falls in love, and after returning, he is sent to the future as a successful time travel in the past, where he gets energy. Returning to reality, he is offered asylum by people from the future. But he goes back to the past to meet a woman he loves even though he knows the fate of his misfortune.

Anyone who has seen La Jetee will be surprised that the work consists of only a series of photographic images, the voice and music of the narrator to develop the story. During its 28 minutes long running time, the film shows black and white photographic images except for one moving image. In fact, La Jetee is the movie that breaks the norms and customs that most of the traditional narrative movies have.

For Director Christ Marker, it is the images of the past, not the past itself, that define the present time. This shows that images of the past always work selectively from the past itself, just as we think that it is impossible to remember all the past that has passed through life and therefore memory is always optional. Here, photographs are images that condense the past into the smallest unit of time. Therefore, Marker's expression of images that don't move was very extraordinary in a way that it does not follow traditional narrative movies.

[hyunwoonglim]

Movie Review

The movie <Seungriho> is finally unveiled. The movie, which has been delayed several times due to the Corona 19 incident, has received explosive attention since its release on February 5. There are various reasons why the response to the movie is bound to be hot. Representatively, the huge production cost of 25 billion won was invested and it is Korea's first SF set in space, which amplified expectations. As it is a work with great contributions, the production company has been considering the appropriate time to release the movie. This situation also stimulated the audience's curiosity about "how great a movie it is."

It ended up going to Netflix to compensate for production costs. The long wait is over, but I was a little disappointed. This is because <Seungriho> is a movie that deserves to be seen in theaters. If the theater had been screened, more vivid experiences would have been possible through the large screen, sound, 4DX, and screen X.

The background of <Seungriho> is the Earth and the universe in 2092. To replace the Earth, which has turned into a difficult environment for mankind due to extreme environmental pollution, a new nest, UTS (Utopia above the sky), is created in the orbit of space satellites. UTS is a place where you can enjoy a clean environment and a rich life. And there are cleaners in space that collect and sell space junk. These space cleaners make money and send money to their families on Earth, but they can't get out of poverty even if they keep working.

<Seungriho> is also one of the cleaning ships. The crew consists of pilot Captain Jang, Taeho, engineer Tiger Park and engineer robot Updong. They are also suffering from poverty and even in debt. Meanwhile, he discovered Dorothy, a humanoid robot that could make money, and jumped into a dangerous deal. The crews are planning to sell Dorothy, who is known as a weapon of mass destruction, but things don't go so smoothly.

As the play unfolds, the identity of Dorothy and other sailors is revealed. Although the characters have different desires, they fight against injustice for the common purpose of coexistence. Aside from nationality, gender, and age, it is impressive to see them unite from a cosmic perspective that is "nothing above or below." In a word, <Seungriho> is a work that depicts the process of the characters in the dystopia playing their part and creating utopia.

<Seungriho> added Korean colors to the existing SF film framework. Robots, Imperial soldiers in suits, and space combat scenes are familiar. Environmental pollution and class discrimination have also been the subject of many SF films. On the other hand, the way sailors sit around, play hwatu(Korean board game), and eat soybean paste stew, and Korea's unique "Jung" such as family love, appeals to be "Made by Korea." The fresh materials such as space cleaners and space cleaners can be cited as the unique characteristics of <Seungriho.>

<Seungriho> is a meaningful film that has been considered exclusive to Hollywood. It is not a story with a magnificent world view or meticulousness, but it must be a warm and fun movie that only Korea can make. We look forward to the release of the theater when the Pandemic situation is lifted.