Sound-Image Relationships

The final scene of Bryan Singer’s The Usual Suspects acts as the resolution of the question “Who is Keyser Söze?”, a question asked all throughout the film, by all including the criminals accomplices and the FBI agents who have been desperately looking for him. No scene shows such intensity and closure than the twist ending, which finally answers this question. The main FBI agent on the case is sitting in his office, drinking coffee, and then all of a sudden there begins slow zoom-ins to his face and the newspaper clippings and police reports on the bulletin board. This occurs while simultaneously repeating snippets of Kevin Spacey’s character, Verbal Kint, saying everything that his character has been discussing in conversation with the FBI agent throughout the film. The audience then sees through the editing that Kint had fabricated an entire story based on topics and words he saw on the bulletin board. The edit increases the pace and creates tension with it's quick cuts back and forth, to previous scenes in the film and the FBI agents face while the agent puts the pieces together and realizes the answer for the biggest question of all: “Who is Keyser Söze?” The relationship between the sound and images is key to this scene with the monologue that can be heard on screen and the quick shots that follow each of the words said in it. The cuts are smooth and quick, which is necessary for the viewer to be able to follow the thought process of the FBI agent. Finally, Singer gives the audience a long take when it cuts to Spacey’s character in real time. We then see the character drive away and dissapear right as the FBI agent is looking for him, with a soft, playful score in the background. 

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_6560AW1zQ

"Becoming Robot"- Extra Credit Blog

The exhibit “Becoming Robot” featuring the works of Nam June Paik was very interesting.  For an artist of his time, his works were very advanced and expressed concepts of technology in life that remain true to this day.  I thought his incorporation of televisions was a really unique idea.  I have never thought of televisions or screens as an art or an object that could be displayed as one.  I also noticed how he managed to show the human form in his work a few times.  Using televisions to create robots, which display the human form, in Family of Robot was something I had never heard of before or even imagined to be a thing.  Creating the form of a typical family out of something so common was a nice twist on his robot idea.  Although, Family of Robot was a lot more visually appealing than Robot K-456, the fact that Paik was able to create a functional robot that acted as a human, by even “defecating”, is amazing.  Robot K-456 is a perfect example of how Paik’s work constantly portrayed the human form.

Paik’s goal in his work seems to have been to show how technology has become a part of our everyday lives and how there is a connection between the human body and technology.  This can be seen through the TV Chair and TV Bra for Living Sculpture.  TV Chair featured a regular chair with a television facing upwards from under the seat, which could be seen through a clear seat.  TV Bra for Living Sculpture was shown in a featured video of the live performance where a woman wore a bra made out of two small televisions and played an instrument.  These two works attributed a technological characteristic to two basic things people use everyday, a chair and a bra.  Paik definitely had a distinctive view on technology and he succeeded in making a statement with his work by showing what truly interested him.  The fact that he was so interested in technology during his time leaves the question of what he would think had he still been alive today.  It would be interesting to hear or even see an artwork response to the technologies and flat screens that are in use in our current time.

Final Project Overview

"No Luck Plug" is a short film about one college student's struggle to find an outlet before her iPad dies during her study session.   The student searches and searches without succeeding in her efforts and clearly gets upset.  This movie follows the student's thoughts as she deals with her unsuccessful search, which helps emphasize the annoyance she feels.  This movie was influenced by my very own constant experience with the exact issue, especially in the Hunter library.

This was a first time experience for me, in having the make a fiction movie with storyboards.  The process of making this project was a bit difficult at times, with rushing against the clock to shoot all the footage and having to play around with different editing ideas.  The fact that we had to make storyboards helped a lot with putting all the scenes in order at the beginning of editing, it was a really good template for how the final product should look.

These are photos of the storyboards:

Script:

Shot 2: "OK, time to study."

Shot 3: *ding*

Shot 5: "Oh, great!" (sarcastic tone)

Shot 9: "Ugh! Now I have to get up." (annoyed tone)

Shot 11: "Are you kidding me!?"

Shot 12: *sigh*

Shot 14: *sigh*

Shot: 21: "Come on!"

"No Luck Plug"- Final Project

No Luck Plug from Jessica Vasquez on Vimeo.

MoMI Trip

On our class trip to the Museum of the Moving Image my group got to look at a lot of interesting devices and tools used in the film industry both past and present. One interactive part of the trip that I got to participate in was doing voice over in the sound booth. I was one of the three students who volunteered to do the voice over. It was actually a lot harder than I thought it would be with trying to match my timing with the actor's lip movement on the screen. Another interesting demonstration was when the tour guide dissected all the parts on the computer that go into editing (video, voice over, and sound effects) for a final movie scene. She chose a scene from Titanic and showed us how comical the individual parts are and then how truly in synch they are when put into one final work. These two demonstrations showed me how many aspects go into the sound in films. I never knew that in some movies the dialogue was not in real time with the acting, but done in post production voice over. I've always assumed that when dialogue was messed up then the take had to be redone, but instead I learned that often times the scene is kept and the actors redo the dialogue only, in a sound booth, which is then later added as a track over the video. These two demonstrations showed me how much work is really put into post production and editing. The changes in moving image technology have allowed for a more efficient editing process and an overall better quality in the final product.

Tattoo Interview- Audio Interview Project

Tattoo Interview from Jessica Vasquez on Vimeo.

Sound Walk

I decided to go on the sound walk around my neighborhood in the Bronx.  Since my neighborhood is very residential, with only houses around, I thought a walk around here would be interesting since it is typically quiet.  I decided to split my walk into two walks of half an hour each.  I went along the same route, just at different times of the day to see if there was any change in sounds.

My first walk was on a Wednesday around 10:00AM.  The first thing I noticed when I stepped out of my house was the sound of the wind.  It was a low, soft sound.  The slight gusts of wind were producing another sound that came from the trees.  The sound of the leaves rustling in the wind was a bit rough.  It sounded like a slow crackle noise.  The rustling leaves continued all throughout my walk.  The wind also created another sound which was louder than the leaves but pleasant.  This sound was that of various wind chimes hanging on the porches of some houses.  The wind chimes created a sort of music that accompanied me on my walk.  During my walk I heard about five different chirping sounds from birds.  Some chirps were lower than others and some were further than others.  I have never actually taken the time to listen to my surrounding nature, and to realize the differences in the chirping sounds of birds was very interesting to me.  There were a few loud noises that occurred during my walk which were not the result of nature.  The first was construction noises from work being done on a house.  The noises I could identify were hammering and drilling.  These noises were loud and distracting.  It was a continuous banging and buzzing.  I then heard a loud noise from down the block that turned out to be two leaf blowers in someone's yard.  It was a very mechanical sound with the loud humming that always tends to come from machinery.  The most common noise was that of cars driving by on and off randomly.  You could hear the engines as they zoomed by.

My second walk was later on in the same day at around 7:00PM.  During my night walk I found only a few differences in the surrounding sound.  The only sound from nature that had changed with the time of day was that of chirping birds.  At night there was no evidence of birds being around.  The other noises that were no longer present were the construction noises and the leaf blower noises.  This was definitely due to the time of day, because when the noises were present it was at a time when most people were not home and would typically be at work or in school.  I noticed that at night residential areas such as my own are much more quiet and relaxing.  It seems the differences in sound between times of day are very much a lack of, rather than new sounds.