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.