http://fmundergrad.hunter.cuny.edu/~ferrandom/

Patton Portrait

http://youtu.be/PUqh0vQIp-0

Thoughts of the Project

I feel like for this project I didn’t have as much trouble that I thought I’d have. The only thing that I felt like might have been restricting my work on it was the fact that I’m juggling other projects in other classes but the same can be said for other people as well. Whenever there was a problem it could have been solved through more recording or clarification of Final Cut.

Another quick run through of photoshop would have been nice for anyone that would have wanted to use it in their projects or photos if they wanted to do something special with them. Another thing that would have been helpful is teaching about other solutions in cases where students have bad audio. People always don’t have chances to re-record their subjects so it’s nice if there were ways for people to work on th audio through final cut or other programs they would have access to in the labs.

It may also just be me, but in regards to this project I just didn’t like the whole interviewing process. Using this project to allow the students to get familiar with equipment, programs and techniques is a good way to teach. But I would much rather have liked to choose my own subject, because suddenly you are given a person to interview and build a narrative around it from the content that you’re given. I just think that it is better to have someone choose their own subject and let it be something that peaks their own interest, because then it becomes something that they have their own investment in and they want to look deeper into it rather than it just be another assignment where everyone has the same constraints.

Canemaker Q and A

“The Moon and the Son” was a very well developed animation for what it was trying to do. Canemaker tries to depict an interview of him and his father before his dad passed away. It isn’t like most animations in several ways. For one, the relationship between Canemaker and his Father is extremely tense making this not an animation for kids. Another is the fact that while the piece itself feels old, it was actually made a few years ago. Canemaker still retains a very classical style of animation by still using older forms of media. Unlike the other animations that we see on a regular basis he isn’t literal narrative with his animations. Canemaker is much more abstract and by being abstract with his form it’s seems a lot easier to convey emotions to the audience.

He also manages to find ways to blend these different media in his animation. Throughout his pieces he alternates between crayon, colored pencil, marker, etc. and I was surprised to see that it didn’t make the piece sloppy. While I’d like to believe that he did this for artistic reasons, in the FAQ he basically says that he was just using whatever was available to him.

In his other earlier work, Confessions of a Stardreamer, you can see that his style is pretty apparent. He uses the interview with the actress in a different way than he did with “the Moon and the Son”, for one there is only one person piece as opposed to two. Which means that there is only one set of emotions and thoughts that he’s trying to convey rather than try to have two entities bouncing off of each other within the piece. I think would be interesting to think that he’s found a way to balance the father and the son off of each other for the sake of the piece and I think in a way he did. Canemaker used himself as a way to unravel his father and in a deeper way than how he would have earlier on in Canemaker’s life. The interview gets to the Big Picture which is his father.

Sound and Image Relationships

I think that music videos do a good job of trying to blend music and visuals into a new coherent form of media. It’s also interesting the different angles that music videos will try to take. In one instance they can try to tell a story that mirrors that of the song, or they can try to tell a new one all on it’s own and they’ll have the song in the background for reference. Videos might just be more deliberate and they’ll have the artist or band singing the song and a whole bunch of other stuff will be going on in the background.

The video that I decided to look at was “Gold on the Ceiling” by the Black Keys. Other than the fact that I like the song I decided to pick it because in this instance the video’s director decided to create a sort or montage direction. They decided to play the song in sync with what seems to be a bunch of footage from the band’s touring dates. The director is constantly cutting to and from different shots in a way to trying to make sure that everything in the video is coherent. I also like the seamless transitions between cuts that the director makes when trying to make the song a diagetic element for the video, by having the lead singer sing the song in question throughout different shots. At first you’ll see them performing in New York, then in a studio recording and finally a cut to Hamburg and it’ll all seem fluid.

Patton Portrait

Patton Portrait from Matt Ferrando on Vimeo.

Sound Walk

The Village is a pretty hustle and bustle kind of place. Most people would be under the impression that noise is too much and everything seems to run together. But they don’t seem to catch the individual aspects of that clutter that can make up all of the hustle and bustle. Today a lot of the noise was contributed to construction being done up Houston St which I guess would be the neighborhood’s soundmark. During lunch time there isn’t as much foot traffic and noise around the east village because it’s a little more residential than tourist attraction. As opposed to a Saturday night where it has a very vibrant night life with a lot of people/drunkards making noise. There aren’t as many people so you can’t hear a ton of foot traffic. There was a light drizzle and while you can’t hear the rain itself, as a result a sound signal that stood out to me was the sound of tires treading across the wet pavement on the street.

While you can’t really hear a lot of the background sounds because of the construction work, but you can definitely hear the subtle scuffle of tourists making their way up Houston as well as them snapping photos. Every couple of seconds you can hear the car-horns honking. Along Houston you can also hear faint sounds of the trains passing below your feet in the station. you can also making out the faint sounds of whistles probably coming from the construction workers and crossing guards.