Citizen Kane

I thought that this movie, especially for being so old, showed amazing cinematography. One major way that the camera is used to put more depth or meaning to the story is the two scenes that are shot both above and below Mr. Kane. The first is when he was a boy; he felt small and insignificant in comparison to the banker (I forget his name) and his parents. The camera shows this by filming below eye level so that you feel how small Kane feels. The other scene I noticed this is when the camera man shot from underneath Kane, making him look huge and imposing when he had gained a high stature in life.
Another good example of cinematography was the usage of layering, or putting characters in the front scene, middle scene, and the back of the scene. There were many examples of this, one where Kane is listening to a man talk from the back of the room, another where the investigator is talking to his ex-wife, and many more (I just can't think of good examples haha)This was something fairly new to movies and it creates the 'movie' feel versus the recorded 'play' feel.
The final piece of cinematography/graphic touches was how one scene would meld into another. The director did this a few times, first with Kane's ex-wife, they zoomed in on her face while the background shifted to the scene of her memories. They did it another time with the fellow in the nursing home who kept asking for cigars, as he faded out of his story, the nursing home was still the room that the memory was of.
When it comes down to it, the time this movie was created and the amount of cinematography skills used are very impressive and set the foundation for other movies to come.

Before and After- my editing example

I have been editing my photos since about. . . about 9th grade using Photoshop Elements of various versions (my favorite is 5.0 even though I have up to 6.0). Because of this, I have already played around with editing tools for quite a while and have figured out (basically) what I like. So when I read this chapter, there wasn't too much that I could learn, or so I thought. The one thing that made the difference was the 'level adjusting' thing that I had never before heard of or used, so for this assignment, I wanted to try it out. And boy did it make a difference. For this picture, when I first photoshopped it, it was too. . . blah. Not enough contrast or dynamics to it. Soooo I went back to it after reading this chapter. I adjusted the black level, grey level, and white lever ever-so-slightly and BOOM! My picture looks like something worth posting! haha It's amazing what such a simple technique can do to up the ante on your photos. This photo didn't need any cropping (surprisingly) but I know how to use the tool.

Feature Photographer #4- Sooper-Deviant

'Curiosity' and 'Baby Steps'


This weeks featured photographer was, again, so painstakingly obvious that I am ashamed that I didn't think of him sooner. Everyday when I go online, one of my homepages is the site Deviantart.com. It is an amazing place filled with talented artists that share their work online to inspire others and motivate hard work. This site hosts anyone and everyone who finds it, showcasing the best online sketchers, manipulators, cgi workers, and photographers along with many many more. It is hardly a week that goes by that this guy, username Sooper-Deviant, isn't on the front page of 'Most Popular in the Last Three Days', and I have to agree with the general population of the site that he is simply amazing.

On this site, there isn't really much of a bio page, limiting the information I have on him as a person, but I do know what he does. He is a photographer (duh) that goes around the United States taking pictures- most notably of zoo animals. You're probably thinking 'Big deal, big deal' but the fact is that it IS a big deal. And not because waiting for an animal to move for hours only to approach the obstacle of a chain-linked fence or solid glass that is in between you and your subject. No, this man is much more impressive than even that- it's HOW he captures the animals. In his photos, you not only see and appreciate the pure beauty of whatever exotic animal he got lucky enough to capture, but also in how he portrays the animals. He gives them human emotions, feelings, and actions. His titles also add to the humanistic feature that he gives every one of his subjects.

I can only imagine all for the hard work, patience, and motivation that he had to have to continue to learn by trial and error, about how to capture such life in animals that so rarely are seen the way he portrays them. I highly encourage anyone to look at his magnificent (and obscenely large) gallery on Deviant art, his link is here:Sooper-Deviant

Critique- Where the Wild Things Are

Being 17, I had this book read to me many times as a child and I read it myself when I was able to. Needless to say, I was very excited for this film to come to theatres, but i still can't tell if i am disappointed in the film or not. As far as graphics go, the monsters were pretty realistic (well, as realistic as a giant chicken can look). The fur moved in a realistic way and their eyes were engaged and shining as real eyes would. The only thing that gave way to the fact that they weren't real was their mouths- a straight line that didn't curve much, just opened and shut in a uniform way. That being said, the CGI was still pretty impressive.
Now, talking about the movie, it wasn't as. . . kid friendly as I would have thought. Immediately I was in terror for the protagonist, Max, who was nearly killed several times throughout the movie. It wasn't an obvious 'let's kill Max!' but subtle things that made me scared for Max's safety. There is also the fact that the subject matter was very dark, Max is an obnoxious boy who runs away from his mother screaming 'I hate you!' within the first twenty minute. I won't deny that there were parts of the movie that had me near (okay, AT) tears for Max and the depression that he feels. There are also a few swear words and a scene where his mother is having a date with some man (his father died though the movie doesn't alluded to the event very well, if at all). Finally, there were hidden messages everywhere in the movie, mainly symbolism in the form of the monsters who portrayed different people in Max's life or even conflicting personalities in Max himself. I seriously doubt that a kid would pick up on these subtle touches, let alone understand them. Not to mention that there wasn't a definite ending or obviously clear message in the movie, you had to pick up the pieces and put them together yourself. This was hard for me to understand and, as I have said, I doubt a child would be able to understand it either.
This is not to say that a kid would not enjoy parts of the movie, there was definite humor and an intense journey that would entertain anyone. But I would have to conclude that this movie, while a recreation of the beloved childrens book, is not meant for children at all, but for the adults and older teenagers who were read the book as a child or read the book to their own kids. If you loved the book and enjoy movies that are meant to be read into, to be understood, then I would gladly point you to the direction of the nearest theatre, for this movie is a treasure to all those who know indeed Where the Wild Things Are.

The Hero Archetype

I believe that Buck Rogers was the perfect hero archetype. He became a hero through unusual circumstances (being frozen for many years until his body was discovered and 'thawed'), he has talents that no one else has (ingenuity and space ship driving skills), he was unwillingly put into the situation (because he didn't choose to be frozen in time), and he also has a sidekick, Buddy. I know Mr. Anderson didn't include that in the slide show, but I think the sidekick thing is important for a hero. Since we only watched the show for about twenty minutes, these are the only hero traits that I could find, but it was pretty obvious that he was the main protagonist of the story.

Are you brave enough to desend?

Are you brave enough to desend?
Originally uploaded by kelleymann

This is my favorite shot, it emphasis my view on beauty in discord. I wanted to force the viewers to appreciate the spooky emptiness that the city holds. When I see this picture, a million images and stories come to mind of who may have walked those stairs and why they were there. It kind of reminded me of a movie as well, like I had seen the stairway before. I don't know exactly what I am trying to say but the point is that this photo made me THINK and FEEL the subject matter, and I think this is a great leap in learning photography for me.

Modern Day Princess Tower

Modern Day Princess Tower
Originally uploaded by kelleymann

On this photowalk, nothing I took a picture of really struck me as stunning. I stared and stared at each picture trying to find something good in them when I noticed that the more I looked at some, the more I liked them! They had stories in them that I was thinking of when I captured the shots, I just had to think about what I was seeing instead of composition and lighting etc. I think this photowalk taught me how to not over think the specifics and focus more on what I wanted to portray. By then end of my photoshopping session, I couldn't pick which ones I wanted to feature!

This particular shot was one that grew on me- when I first looked at it I could only notice the crooked slant that the building has. . . but then I really looked at it and remembered how I thought the building looked like a princess tower. After thinking about that story, the real reason the building caught my eye in the first place, I started to like it more and more.

The Alley

The Alley
Originally uploaded by kelleymann

This is from the photowalk I took this weekend. By sheer luck, I was in Menomonie when I was assigned this so I had plenty of new scenery to take a look at. This was in an alleyway. I like the rustic feel that the brick wall and logo gives you. I was also found it comical that the entire alleyway appeared to be color-coordinated right down to the recycling boxes. I tried to emphasis this by placing everything else in black and white.

Features Photographer #3 10.8

Alright, after much searching I finally realized that the photographer I wanted to feature was so blatently obvious- my senior picture photographer. Miss Kimberly Halverson is very young, a fresh talent that deserves a second glance. She goes to school at the U of M but is a photographer down at the Zumbro River for Graham Photography. I don't know much else about her but her pictures are amazing! They aren't your standard senior pictures, every single shot has something unique that tells a bit about the person's personality. I like how she can capture emotion and personality in her shots.

I will try to get some examples of her photography up soon but currently the school has facebook blocked so I can't find her pictures.

'The Virus'

Our very first group project for the Media Arts class was to create a silent film based on the originals from the early days of filmography. The only requirement was that we set the storyline around modern ideas, such as the computer, to create a sense of irony in the film. Sounds tough and boring, right? Wrong! It was a lot of fun, and after a few trial and error effects, the result was great! In My group was Dustin, Brent, Laura, and myself with the video featuring Brandon. The first thing we set out as a group to do was create a script- this was probably the hardest part because we had to create an entertaining yet easily conveyed storyline without much words or subtitles. After we fine tuned the script enough so that it was ready to be used, shooting the scenes was fairly easy- none of them had to look perfect because we were aiming for poor quality. After everything was shot, it was up to Windows Media Player to help us make the film look legit. We had to mute the volume on the videos because a. it was supposed to be silent and b. there was a lot of laughing in the background. When it was silent, we had to make the film look old. We used the 'film grain- older' and 'greyscale'. We could have just used 'film grain- oldest' for the black and white look, but we found that the 'oldest' effect was too bouncy and too hard to see what was happening. Once that was done we added subtitles where they needed to be for the story to make sense. The final step: finding appropriate music. This was probably the hardest part of the editing half of its creation but after much fiddling, we got a fairly decent and believable soundtrack to fit the story. The end result was better than we could of thought! The whole process was fun and it was a great project. Here is the video, judge the authenticity for yourself!

Silent Film How-to

I made a quick little screen cast on screen-o-matic on how to mute the sound of a video when working in Windows Movie Maker. It's pretty simple and will help us during our silent film project that I will be blogging about shortly. here is the video:

Featured Photographer 10-1

For this weeks featured photographer, I had a lot of trouble picking who to feature. I literally searched on Flickr for about an hour before giving up and moving over to Deviantart.com, an online art gallery of sorts. After just a few moments of looking, I already knew who i was going to pick: an artist that I had actually seen around the site without knowing that one person was behind so many beautiful shots! Her Deviantart username is 'zemotion and her personalsite is HERE. Her real name is Jingna and she is originally from Bejing, moving around a bit when she was very young. I found this fact interesting: she used to be a rifle champion at the early age of 14, breaking a national record! Eventually she left her prestigious gun school (hard to explain haha) and took up fashion and photography.

I love her pictures because they capture emotion, regality, and fashion at the same time. My more favorite photos of hers are her fantasy shots rather than her fashion photography, but all of her work is full of innovation, unique subjects, and excellent lighting and composition. She has received awards for her captured beauty and on the site I am a part of that I found her through (deviantart) she had received many 'Daily Deviations', a pretty high honor. I suggest you all visit her site and see what the young artist has to show the world.