Hello ladies and gentlemen!
Once again, we have made it to the end of yet another week. This week was different from the last, and I hope you all enjoy this synopsis of the week.
The Wire
Way too much happened in these episodes, so I will cover the parts that I found the most interesting.
First, I am rather impressed with character Dennis. He was actually able to get up and leave the game, and more importantly, he was not killed! This was actually interesting to see because this is something that you don’t see happen in reality. One of the things I really took note of was the difficulty he had with finding something honest to do. For a person that was tied up in crime, he learned with the help of community members which I think was a good example of how it works in real life for ex-convicts. Granted, it is not the full story, but it is still good that they took a look at it.
I can begin to see where the mayoral race is going to be a big focus moving forward. Carcetti and the others going for mayor is going to be a good story. If Carcetti can rally enough support, it will probably end up being a good run between him and his friend. Unfortunately, it is sad that they didn’t go together. They really would have made a hell of a team.
Speaking of team members, I’m feeling real bad for Prez. He really was never cut out for street work at all. I am curious to see where exactly he is going to go. The fact that they are considering this as a racial case is just stupid. I like Lester’s response when Daniels wanted to ask him about Prez “for the record.” Lester literally gave him one of those, “You are joking right?” looks. Hopefully he does not wind up in jail or anything like that. He was a good addition to the team.
However, Daniel’s unit was not the only group that suffered from loss of a member. The Barksdale Organization is going to end very soon. Throughout these episodes, Stringer and Avon seemed to be losing on both their legal and illegal fronts. To make matters worse, they had a, “leadership issue,” which kind of left their command in disarray. However, the ultimate blow came with Stringer’s death and his confession. Firstly, I called it when I said Brother Mouzone would come back for vengeance. To even make it worse for Stringer, Omar came to even the score as well. At this point, Avon is in charge, and he has made his war with Marlow pretty clear. I once thought Marlow would not last, but I have the feeling that he will be the new evil.
The last thin I noticed was that McNulty and Kima are beginning to become very similar in their actions. The one surprise I had was that McNulty and that DC lady (can’t remember her name) did not progress any further. He made an interesting point that she was much higher than him and really did not see him as much after she found out that he was not highly educated. However, as I stated before, I find myself more and more not really caring about their relationships.
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Still Doin’ My Dailies
I had a rather spooky LEGO Halloween picture.
Hope you all enjoy it! I tried to focus on the color black. It turned out rather well.
Today’s TDC was pretty fun! I decided to make a food tower that had support. It would have looked more like a cool pyramid, but the granola bars would not cooperate!
Curse you granola!
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Analysis Time!
The Scene from the Wire I chose to analyze was this:
Season 3, Episode 11:
Start: 41:23 – End: 42:57 – Link: http://www.wire106.com/the-wire/season-1/
Here is what I found; I’ll include an overall summary of this exercise in the end.
1. The Camera Work.
The first thing I noticed about this entire scene was that it always stayed focused on Carcetti or Colvin, specifically their facial expressions. While the dialogue is rather important in this scene, there is a lot to see here, specifically when Carcetti begins to walk down Hamsterdam.
The camera constantly focuses on Carcetti from the chest up as he walks down the street. More importantly, the scene felt like trying to make a video and random people just keep walking in the way. I would like to note that this (the people walking in front of our view on Carcetti) was used for three camera transitions, which zoomed in on his face.
The next interesting thing I noted about the camera work was that it never shows you what he is looking at. The camera cuts to get different views on his face as he turns, but you never see the specifics of what he is looking at. More importantly, it becomes a complete mess as the background and characters around him get blurred. It almost creates a sense of bewilderment and confusion at the situation. Based on the camera work alone, you can see that Carcetti is appalled by the situation in Hamsterdam. No sound was needed at all to convey this.
2. The Sound
The sounds of this start in the car, and you can hear that they are in Hamsterdam. Even while the two men are talking, you can hear the dealing on the street. Something to note about their conversation is that it is really slow. In past scenes, Carcetti’s conversations have been rather fast paced. Here, it goes much slower, almost as though he is somewhat scared to see this mess. The most interesting part of this is Carcetti’s walk. When he gets out of the car, there were a couple of key things to notice while listening.
1. You don’t hear him at all. You don’t hear him breathing. You don’t hear his footsteps. You don’t even hear any interactions between him and the people (not that there were any). My point about the interactions is that he is basically invisible, yet he is very present in this place. It is almost a kin to wishing to be a fly on a wall while a given event is going on.
2. The sounds of the crowd get louder. When Carcetti is walking, you hear the sounds of people selling yellow top more so than any other sound. You also hear the noise of other people (potential buyers). In many ways, it is similar to a market. However, one noise did stand out even above the dealers. Towards the very end of this scene, you hear a baby crying. This means that this is a place where children are being exposed to these drugs. I think that sound right there was meant to just stick out more than any other sound, just to show how screwed up Hamsterdam actually was.
3. Wrap Up
Putting audio and camera work together, this scene was really interesting. I picked up on a couple of additional things that I missed the first time around. The first thing I would like to point out is that you don’t actually see Carcetti go back to the car. The conversation he and Colvin probably had (or lack there of) would have been interesting to see on camera. The second thing I noted was that shortly after the child cried, Carcetti stops in his tracks. He appears to be frozen, and his eyes seem as though they are fixed on something. I also picked up on someone yelling the words “swing state.” It could be a possible reference to the election, but it was rather hard to tell.
My overall take away from this scene was that it was meant to show how screwed up Hamsterdam really was to someone who was never actually dealing with it physically. It was one of those scenes that seemed to take someone on high and put them down with the rest of the rabble. The sounds and camera work showed clearly what Carcetti thought of this, and even showed his uncertainty through dialogue with Colvin.
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Thoughts on LLA
This was an interesting activity. My overall opinion has to be that this really got me to think. Whenever the focus was put on someone in this scene, they always seemed to blur everyone else around that character. Even when Colvin and Carcetti were talking they would blur one or the other then switch camera angles and un-blur the other when they began to talk. I found myself learning a lot about how some of these methods were used to shift focus for story telling, which was really interesting.
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Learning How to Read Movies
Thoughts on the Opening of M
Okay, I’m going to be quite honest and say that this took a couple of views to even understand what the heck was going on! The lack of English really killed it for me. That being said, I’m going to attempt to put my thoughts together and give you all an impression of what I saw.
The first piece of crucial information I noticed was the setting of this. It seemed to be based around a little girl and someone I’m assuming is her mother. I did not pick this up till the end when she was calling for the young girl. However, the girl was gone because she was either killed/kidnapped. I know this much because of the balloon that floated away that the mysterious man bought for her, and the fact that there was a ball with no child (yeah that’s right, a good ol’ driving principle rule).
The second piece of information that was conveyed very well was time shifts. Now, in most movies that have color, this is no problem since you can visually display what time of day it is and show this based off of other things. However, I counted at least 3-4 focuses on the clock which show the first seven minutes occurred from 12:00pm – 1:15pm. This was something that I found interesting, especially for a person that does not watch old movies (or foreign ones for that matter).
The third piece of information that I thought was interesting was the importance of making a mysterious individual. The person that picked up the little girl was a silhouette the entire time. With the exception of when he bought her the balloon (which you only got to see his back), you have no clue as to who this person is. However, I feel as though the time focused on that sign on that pole gave some information as to who that person might be. As the girl and him spoke, the camera still stayed focused on the sign.
My current unknown is the relationship between the two women at the beginning. Again because I could not understand a thing they said (and had no subtitles), I could not decipher whether they were friends/family/servants/etc.
That is about what I got in two watches of the first seven minutes.
It was pretty interesting to actually focus on these elements.
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Still Being Inspired
This one was just plain cruel! However, I could not stop from laughing at it. That dog looks so depressed that that is not a treat. I’ve seen some cruel stuff in my days, but this one was just great. I wonder if the dog actually fell for it though.
Anyways, I’m inspired by this, and I hope to pull from this inspiration at some point during this class.
Danielle, you’ve inspired me!
So, I just got inspired today! I started looking through folk’s websites, when I stumbled upon this lovely little picture. To most people, this is just a tree. However, this inspired me to remember that awesome time of year called “Autumn.” Since I’ve been in college, the rest of the world is almost invisible because campus life take priority.
Every once in a while, it is good to sit back and take a look at your environment and enjoy it. Thanks to this picture, that’s what I’m now doing after I post this!
Jasmine Dragon, you’ve inspired me!
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Home Videos
http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/whats-your-skills/ – 4.5 Stars
Along time ago, in a year far far away, I use to take karate. I had been doing it for roughly about 8 or 9 years, and stopped after my freshman year. It has been a while since I did any of my open hand forms, but this is my 2nd open hand form. I recorded it using my camera, and did this in my dorm. No other modifications were necessary; just a camera and some light.
I decided to go with this because it was something that I use to do a lot. I had to tone the form down just so I did not hit anything in my room, so it is not at its peak. As far as the video itself, I tried putting my camera as far back as possible, but unfortunately, I still managed to get out of its view at least once. I thought this would be relatively good for this assignment, and it turned out rather well in my opinion.
Again, I’m new to this whole video thing, so it may not be the highest quality.
Hope you enjoyed the video. Let me know what you think!
http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/dear-sixteen-year-old-me/
Today I decided to leave some advice for myself, if I could send something to the past. Anyways, this video was made using the video recorder on my laptop (I’ve been experimenting with what works better for recording today). After I recorded, I used Window’s Media player to tweak the brightness and the saturation of the video to try to make it look slightly better.
I decided to give some advice on college as I recall having some thoughts about my major. I remember not knowing what I wanted to do prior to college, and I had doubts in case I did not like the major I chose. The information in the video came to mind as I now sit back and reflect over my past years and approach the end (senioritis is beginning to set in). With that in mind, I made a shorty 46 second video.
If you watch it, let me know what you think! I’m still trying to find the best way to record decent looking videos.
When I saw this assignment in the bank, my mind immediately began to think of a bunch of “highly unlikely moments.” Thankfully, I still had my computer up, and I’m now making use of a vimeo account (which apparently needs roughly about 40 minutes to compress a video). I rather enjoyed this one.
So the idea of an inanimate object attack came to mind when I thought of previous shows/movies. The two that came to mind was the movie Small Soldiers and the episode of Futurama where the robots rebelled. While there are a ton of things you could do, I thought about this, specifically if you were on campus (otherwise I would have mentioned use of more actual dangerous tools, rather than what I mentioned).
Anyways, this was all done for the sake of goofing around, so I hope you enjoyed it!
Let me know what you think!
Additional Thoughts- These video assignments have been entertaining, and challenging. I’m still messing around with my available resources and finding which I like using . So far my laptop is good if I need sounds, and my camera is better if I don’t really need sound.
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Farewell
This week was full of video assignments and video related stuff. I can see that we will probably be building on this in the next couple of weeks as well.
Lastly, does anyone else think that we have an impending video final coming?
Hmmmmmm…
