Project 3: Final Project

Here is our film for project 3. We call it "Interview With a Vampire".

Andy, Daniel and I worked pretty closely for our project. We were together for most of the video’s production. The story was my a bit of a compromise. Daniel wanted to do a documentary while I wanted to create a work of fiction. Andy wanted to do a comedy. Ultimately, we settled on a parody of a documentary. Andy could tell jokes, Daniel could use his documentary expertise, and I could have some fun with the story.  We chose to make the script into an interview to keep the characters from moving around. Since we had a pretty strong script, we were confident that the dialogue would carry the video on its own.
I wrote the script with Daniel and Andy looking over my shoulder and making suggestions. This worked pretty well because I’m a pretty good writer, but I’m a bit impulsive. Daniel and Andy were able to let me know when one of my script ideas was a little over the top. (Some of the humor in our initial draft was a bit questionable and was best left on the cutting room floor). After submitting the script, we realized that the project ran a bit too long, so we cut some scenes. This was surprisingly easy because we were able to cut two unnecessary characters from the script, which saved us from finding additional actors. There was one scene involving the main character’s sister that I really liked and I’m sad that we couldn’t include it, but the video gets along fine without it. The main purpose of using additional characters was to add some variation.
When it came to filming, we split up the work based on our strengths. Andy was comfortable with the sound equipment from project 2, so he did the sound recording. Daniel was easily the best cameraman out of the three of us, so he recorded the footage. Since I had written the script, I played the lead role. This made sense because I knew how the characters were supposed to act. We only ran into three real obstacles. The first was that our desired filming location was inaccessible, so we had to improvise. The second issue was that our microphone ran out of batteries at one point and we needed to replace it. The third issue was that every ambulance in Manhattan and every loud tour guide in Hunter College seemed to be out and about that day. Repeating an entire scene because of a sudden ambient noise was frustrating. We expected to have filming done in an hour, but due to these issues, we almost took two hours!
During the editing portion, Andy and Daniel did most of the audio work on Premiere. We worked together for the footage. I also used my animation knowledge to create some special effects on After Effects. At the end of the video, the vampire turns into a bat and flies off screen. I drew the bat in Illustrator and made a quick animation of him fluttering by. It ‘s an unconvincing effect but it’s supposed to be funny. My hope was that showing a live-action human turning into a cartoonish looking bat would be amusing to the audience. The animation itself moves pretty smoothly, so I think the campiness will come off as intentional rather than a lack of ability.
Overall, I’m really pleased with how well the video came out over such a short time period.  Andy, Daniel and I all got along very well and did our share. My only regret is that I had to cut a few scenes and special effects due to our limited amount of time.

Extra Credit Assignment

For my extra credit assignment, I decided to redo project #2 and improve it based on my instructor's feedback and what other students did in their projects. My biggest mistake in my original interview was using both the questions and answers. I feel like using the answers only made the interview more focused and that my questions broke the immersion. Unfortunately, I was not able to fix the low volume without recording the original clips again. I think that the updated version has a better story and contains more details than the original.



Tomas Medina extra credit assignment from optomasprime on Vimeo.

Aronson Awards

The Aronson Awards Ceremony was an interesting event. Each of the speakers had a different story to tell and each one seemed to have a moral. I guess this makes sense since each of the speakers’ achievements had something to do with social justice. In this blog post, I’m going to be discussing the award recipients whose speeches captivated me the most.

The first individual that I’d like to discuss, David Carr, was not actually present at the event. Unfortunately, Mr. Carr had passed away, but his presence was felt at the ceremony. Everybody there seemed to know him or at least know of him. What I remember most from Carr’s memorial video was his advice to “never count anyone out,” meaning that even a seemingly hopeless situation can be improved. I really like this philosophy. I feel like Mr. Carr and I would have gotten along if I had met him during his lifetime.

            The other individual that caught my attention was William Greider, who had won the lifetime achievement award. Greider gave three pieces of advice to journalists. The first was that the world was entering a new age of technology and information. The second was to get information from the people, since the media and politicians are governed by special interests. The last and most important piece of advice was to not lie. This struck me as especially important. Dishonesty has been a big problem in the media.

Museum of the Moving Image Trip: Practical Effects

During our trip to the Museum of the Moving Image, I was most captivated by the exhibits on makeup and practical special effects. Today, computer graphics dominate the special effects industry. By using a computer, scenes can be filmed in distant worlds, actors can become bizarre creatures, and just about any stunt can be performed by digital lookalikes. However, it wasn’t always so linear. Special effects existed long before computer graphics, but they took a lot of creativity. A great example is the use of makeup. Today, makeup isn’t as thorough a process. Computer generated effects do most of the work of making a character’s face convincing. In the past, a lot of effort went into making masks and make-up that seemed lifelike while being filmed. One of the exhibits showed the make-up from the film “Little Big Man”. The film tells the story of the last surviving witness of Custer’s last stand. The main character, who is portrayed by Dustin Hoffman, appears as an elderly man and a young man. Rather than use two actors, Hoffman was transformed into his older self by using a special foam latex mask that fit so well that it could even blink!

The special effects section contained the Yoda puppet from The Empire Strikes Back. The puppet was extremely intricate and seemed to be alive when I watched the movie as a child. Even now, I still find the old Yoda very convincing. However, I can see his drawbacks. As a puppet, he must always stay on the ground, where the puppeteers are hidden. In the original trilogy, Yoda wasn’t very active. All he did was shuffle from place to place and speak. When Yoda was reinvented as a computer generated character, he became something of an acrobat and even had his own fight scene. That could never be done with a puppet. The other problem with make-up and puppets is that they’re not very expressive. A mask doesn’t have any facial muscles and the thicker it is, the less it moves with the wearer’s face. Puppets also have a limited range of expressions. It takes a lot of engineering to get a puppet to move realistically. On the other hand, computer graphics will never be physical objects. They’re harder for actors to interact with and they reflect light and cast shadows in a way that reminds you that they’re not actually there. I think that practical effects will always have a place in the world of film for this reason.

Blog 3

Relationship Between Shots

For this post, I am going to be examining the highway battle scene from Transformers: Age of Extinction. I chose this clip because I remember being frustrated by the camera angles when I first saw it. I’ve embedded the clip below. However, the only YouTube video that I could find is a little bit long, so skip to 2:00 for the scene that I’ll be analyzing here. Everything before that is just a long chase scene filled with explosions noises, and dizzying camera movement. There’s really not much to say about that part.

At 2:00, we see Optimus Prime (the large red and blue robot) being flung down a road by an explosion. Optimus begins to stand back up, then the camera cuts to Mark Wahlberg’s character calling for his daughter. The camera then cuts back to Optimus. The cuts are very quick and add to the overall feeling of danger and panic.

When the camera cuts back to Optimus, he’s knee deep in a fight with Galvatron (the large silver robot). This is a bad transition because Galvatron comes out of nowhere. We never saw him catch up with Optimus, so this all seems rather sudden. There should have at least been the sound of footsteps so the audience could know that he was coming.

For some reason, Optimus and Galvatron are never in the camera’s focus. Instead they are always in the corner of the screen with a significant portion of their bodies obscured. I’m not sure if this was done to show how big the robots are or to draw attention to the girl running away from them, but it’s very distracting and annoying.

Sometimes, the camera angle is not as bad. There’s one part where the camera closes in on Galvatron’s face when he speaks. It really adds to the effect.

At 3:00, a missile comes out of nowhere and hits Optimus. Optimus moves in slow motion as he gets hit. The tone of the scene changes dramatically. Dark clouds fill the sky and the music changes to a slow, ominous orchestral piece. Lockdown, the robot who fired the missile, calmly walks onscreen. This scene is better edited than the last one. We get a good shot of Lockdown entering the fray and the camera focuses on him when he starts speaking to Optimus. I also like how the use of shadows and the color black

Project 2

For my second project, I interviewed my classmate Andy. The sound is a little soft, so i suggest wearing headphones.


Sequence 04 from optomasprime on Vimeo.

"What I Hear"

I live in a dormitory on East 25th street and 1st avenue. While the area is relatively “quiet” when compared to other parts of Manhattan, it is still quite noisy, even at night. The most notable noise is the highway. You can hear cars rushing by all day and all night. It almost sounds like a strong gust of wind that never ends. I have grown so used to hearing the traffic that it has become background static. Sometimes, if you go close enough to the East River, you can hear the sound of water splashing against the docks. It is not very loud, since the waters are mostly still. In the evening, the area is nearly devoid of people, but the footsteps of a late night jogger can occasionally be heard. There is a hospital near my dorm. I often hear the drone of ambulances driving by. On one side of the hospital, there is a garage for the ambulances. Sometimes, I can hear a loud clanking noise coming from the garage that echoes through the night.

Define A Space

<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/121295718" width="500" height="375" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen&

Macaulay Honors Lounge from optomasprime on Vimeo.

gt;</iframe> <p><a href="https://vimeo.com/121295718">Macaulay Honors Lounge</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/user38025672">optomasprime</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>

Personal Statement:

My name is Tomas Medina. I love to create videos. My favorite things to create are animations. I was exposed to animation from growing up watching various cartoons since childhood. I have tried my hand at multiple forms of animation, including two dimensional, three dimensional computer graphics, and stop motion.

I like animation because it is such a unique form of storytelling. You can create anything, so long as you can imagine it. Anything is possible. I can make things as colorful and outlandish as I desire. All emotions that my work would convey in live action are amplified in animation. I have grown quite fond of that control. Every one of my animations is a separate universe and a story waiting to be told. I also like the idea that it is something that must be learned. Not many people can animate and I feel special knowing that I am one of them. The best pride I feel is when I show my work to others.

A lot of my stories usually center on friends going on adventures together, an idea that I got from the film “Stand By Me”. I really like to explore this sort of premise because it reminds me of the time that I used to spend with my friends. It invokes a sort of nostalgia. I also like to include humor and some fantasy elements in otherwise realistic settings. That’s the beauty of animation. Something crazy like that makes sense. There’s no such thing as wrong or right.