Mr. Popcorn's Tragedy

Group work is good because it allows distributing responsibilities. By sharing the thoughts and techniques of individuals, the group members put less time and the outcome is greater than individual work than doing entire work by oneself. However, since the responsibilities are distributed, once one member misses to do certain job, it affects every other member’s plan so it is hard to cover that job. Our group did not start with clear theme and distribution. So the work was even harder than any other work I have ever done.   
The first idea started with fruits in the fruit truck outside school. We wanted to do lots of special effect but it was not possible for us who has never made videos. While the brainstorming, I got the idea of pop corn.  I thought it would be interesting if we contrast between human having fun eating pop corn and the pop corn hating being sold and eaten. Kimberly had idea that what if we make it as a form of advertisement so we slightly twist actual advertisement in cynical tone. 
The first plan was that I and Ring edit the video and Kimberly work with audio. Kimberly collects the background sounds. I edited first half of the video and Ring edited last half of the video.  It was simple rough cuts because we wanted to consider Kimberly’s review. We spent a week trying to keep in touch with Kimberly but she did not respond. A week later, Kimberly brought another video file because she did not like ours. I was mad at her not keeping in touch with us but I actually liked her video more than we made so I and Ring discarded and developed the video Kimberly worked. Ring and I edited Kimberly’s video cutting some parts out and putting some footage more and we added the sound.
When we recorded the video, in some part, sound was recorded very loud or very low. With final cut, the sound level had to be adjusted for each cut in order to keep the sound in consistence. In addition, we loop sound in some part to give a sense of continuity.
As a result, the Mr. Popcorn’s Tragedy was created!

Museum of the Moving Image

The Museum of the Moving Image has current ongoing exhibition, "Behind the Screen." It was interesting exhibition because it required the audiences’ participation. In this post, I would like to write about the demonstrations I participated in the museum.

 Through the MEDIA 150 class, I could have the live demonstrations by the museum staff, which was about the sound editing in the movie Titanic (1997). The museum staff showed a clip of Titanic first. He explained about the sound layers, which were the dialogue, music, sound effect, loop and foley. He set up the sound so only one layer of the sound could come out and he repeated with the other layers of the sound. It was interesting that dialogue had huge difficulty to carry out the emotions by itself and the combination of the sound creates different effect. Moreover, the way director Cameron uses sound effect was amazed me. For example, putting animal sound when the Titanic was sinking gave the ship a sense of living object. Also, when the ropes connected to the ship fell down into the water, the sound from the ropes is similar to the gun fire sound to represent the sense of danger. I did not know it is impossible to record sound at the field. All the background sounds we hear in the movie, such as the door slam sound, were made in the studio. In the Tatinic, the sound of Rose falling down on the floor also made by chair and big sacks so it could create gradual sound of body parts that touches floor at the different time.  

When I watch movies, I had paid attention on only the movie scenes. After this exhibition, I realized that sound is as important as movie to create proper mood and emotions.

Design Assignment - LG CF

Design is everywhere. For this blog assignment, I would like to talk about the Commercial Film series I like.

This is the one of the CF series of LG, the electronic equipment company. Design supposes to function to carry information and to attract attention at the same time. I think LG CF fulfills both functions. First of all, the use of the famous masterpieces approaches to the public friendly so it attracts the attention of the public. In addition, the products of LG are blended into the paintings so it creates the effect that they are accepted to the public in easy sense. Also, the use of the masterpieces is effective with the color and the composition. It creates the sense of elaboration and it correlates with the brand image of LG so it keeps carrying out the idea that the products of LG would be the same level quality of the masterpieces.

LG had released two more CF of the masterpiece series.

 

The copy of the commercial is very simple. It keeps repeating the "saranghaeyo, LG," which means "I love, LG." The simple melody and simple copy strongly engrave the brand name in the head of the audience. Besides, those two CF not only introduce their products and brand name but also carry humor. I think it is brilliant idea that gives the masterpiece that have serious and classical images the intimate and fun narratives.

I like the design that attracts the audience's attention not in graphic and sensational way but interesting way. Therefore, I would say that the LG masterpiece CF series satisfy beauty with use of color and composition, functionality as the commercial, and interactivity with the audiences.

Haiku assignment

It is a assignment for creating Haiku-like video. Kimberly, Ring and I shot short clips and this is the edited version by me.


This is the video using same clips but created by Kimberly

and by Ring

It is interesting that we created different video with same clips. 

Stamp Assignment

     This is about the history of Korea. Korea had been colonized by Japan since 1910 to 1945. In the period, Japanese government enforced institutionalize policy that attempts to get rid of Koreans' national consciousness. For example, the Mugunghwa flowers (the rose of Sharon in English), the national flower of Korea, removed from Korean land and the Sakura flowers (the cheery blossoms in English), the national flower of Japan, replaced the Mugunghwa flowers. Korean ancestors planted Mugunghwa flowers in secret dreaming a day of independence of Korea.

      After the independence of Korea in 1945, two separated government established in North part of Korea and South part of Korea because of different ideology. North Korea sought communist principles allying with China and Russia and South Korea sought democratic principles allying with the U.S. The difference of ideology caused the Korean War in 1950. In 1953, the North and the South Korea conclude an armistice and ever since that Korea has been the divided nation.

      While in the Korean war period, a lot of North Korean took refuge in South Korea and a lot of South Korean took refuge in North Korea to seek safer place for them. My grandparents are one of those refugees from North Korea. Even though they came to South Korea when they were little kids, I still saw sometimes they missed their hometown. They tried to cook food the way they used to do in North Korea. Sometimes they talked about their family members left in North Korea.

       When I was working on this assignment, I though about my grandparents. Because of the ideology of the government, the people had to get separated and to hate each other. With this assignment, I wanted to evoke that even though North and South have different flags, the people are the same people who planted Mugunghwa together all over the Korean land hoping independence of Korea.

Assignment 2 - Potato Exercise

Learning how to deal with Photoshop. 

The potato turned to this girl!

My art is intimacy. I try to make art with warm heart.

Being young, I thought the painting that looked realistic was good art. I started painting when I was in high school in Korea with watercolor, which helped me to discover a new passion for expressing emotion in art. I was trained to make realistic pictures and was applauded for my attention to detail.

I came to the U.S. for college. Not like Korea, the art classes here were more focused on feeling and emotion. I made myself loose from making realistic painting. I found that No matter what mood I was in while painting, subconsciously I would produce bright and beautiful arts. I tried transcending from reality to pure feelings, leaving the copy machine mentality behind and grasping the human spirit.

I want to produce the art that makes people feel warm.

I want to produce the art that carries intimacy.

My hunger has taken me to try out diverse art techniques such as painting, drawing, ceramic, sculpture, etching, collage, illustration, body works...

I see media as a platform that can be open to everyone. I want to use media as my new medium for art and especially to learn working on web production.

I believe my own art world will continue to expand with the new medium.