Museum of Moving Image

This week the Media 160 class took on the MoMI in Queens. We parted into groups and ventured off into the enormous world of moving image from its past, to how it has evolved over time, to how it is handled in the present day. What I found most fascinating during my visit to the MoMI was the filming of certain Sci-Fi movies, that giant spaceship you see is really just a toy prop. I don't know why it blew my mind so much, because in reality the idea that they went out to space to film an actual spaceship is so ridiculous. However, I guess I just never really thought about how they filmed scenes of this nature. The image pictured left is the actual prop from one of these movies and had hundreds of wires that controlled the lights and elevators within the prop to make it look as if it were real. It just blew my mind how an audiences perception can be so altered into thinking it is one thing. For example, we reviewed a scene from Titanic focusing more specifically on sound, foley sound, special effects etc. The movie was filmed in a giant swimming pool and all the sound effects were added to make it sound the way it did in the movie since electrical equipment like microphones couldn't be in water. It's amazing to think of how far movies and moving image has come and how people have harnessed ideas and techniques to bring it more and more to life. Now a days we have 4-d Movies in the works that makes you feel like you're in the movie, its insane.

Linear Media Post

What exactly determines how long shots are? Camera angles and shots are all different and their movements combine to create a sequence of images, just like a sentence, the order combine to have it make sense and create a meaning. The piece of media I analyzed is a music video by The Weeknd. As explained to me, a linear pice of media has a traditional beginning, middle and end which this video contains. The events happen sequentially as opposed to experimental or abstractly. The beginning starts off with the artist singing to an audience, towards the middle he is still serenading the crowd while a suspicious man is at the club watching him. The camera keeps focusing on a woman who is watching the artist perform, and right while this happens the artist is set on fire at the hands of the suspicious man. The ending is the artist finishing his song while still on fire, but the crowd is going wild. Since it is a music video, the sounds are the the lyrics to the song and it matches up perfectly to the images because you can see the artist performing them. Each image matches the sound playing in the background. The constant reference to the woman in the music video matches the lyrics which seem to indicate that the woman is like a drug which makes him unable to feel his face, as if it were on fire which he becomes in contact with. What is also interesting to note is the correlation to his other music videos, the suspicious man who lights the artist on fire is in many other music videos as if each music video were a piece of a larger story. The shots are mainly close ups of each character from the artist, to the woman, to the suspicious man. This reinforces the suspicious of the man while indicating a love-type relationship between the artist and this woman. The colors remain consistent throughout the piece, dark and only colored when the artist is set aflame placing emphasis on him. The cuts seem smooth and seamless, to indicate a story being told. What determines long and short shots is the importance of the shots and how much emphasis to place on the shot.

piece of media analyzed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEI4qSrkPAs

https://soundcloud.com/giuliana-videla/carla_interview2