Reflections on the Class

Media is my intended major, so I was sure to enjoy taking this class. As an artist I find learning all of the technical terms behind creating media a little tedious, but am also aware that it is essential in furthering my ability and reaching my potential within this field.

Early in the semester we focused on a part of media I really admire and hope to excel in, Film and Photography. Learning everything about angles and lighting will definitely come in hand very soon for me. However I do wish we had more hands on experience using cameras. Also, I really wanted to dabble with Final Cut.

The part of the semester I believe I excelled in was using Photoshop. I've always liked using Photoshop, but never used it extensively. This semester, with the help of the T.A. Chloe, I learned a lot of the ins and outs of Photoshop, and gained an increased interest in it. This interest has motivated to buy books and how-to's for Photoshop. I hope to eventually master Photoshop and perhaps find a career using my talents in it.

Overall, this semester was a great experience. I felt like I struggled with learning all of the terms but I feel like my hands on work took huge progressive steps. I hope to take 160 next semester and continue learning.

Design I Like

Kanye West's 808's and Heartbreak wasn't only one of the most innovative albums of our time, but the album art is something that hip-hop has never seen before. The design of this cover, doesn't take the usual path. The main focal point of the cover is the graphic of a deflated heart shaped balloon. This is obviously linked to the title 808's and Heartbreak  The text is aligned perfectly centered with the graphic, and doesn't use any bold colors or large fonts to emphasize on his name or the album title. The main focus is heartbreak. The multi-colored streak along the the left side of it, completely throws of the balance, but in a good way. Not too sure what that symbolizes, but it helps bring more life to the entire image, and the splash of color is more than welcome in an otherwise morose combination of colors. 

Analysis of Cloverfield (2008)

In the 2008 J.J. Abrams film, Cloverfield, we see a technique that is not of the norm, when you look at normal big budget motion pictures. The entire film was shot verite, which is a specific documentary style of film making, and is commonly seen today in reality tv. Recently, movies like The Blair Witch Project, and Paranormal Activity have also used this technique, but neither had managed to deliver the authentic feel J.J. Abrams gives us in Cloverfield.

The one thing that separates Cloverfield from other pseudo documentary films was that Abhrams gave this film a more raw feel, by seemingly delivering a movie that wasn't edited, but in fact was shot continuously. And in order to develop a character storyline, and easy break points he inserted what was perceived to be footage that was on the cassette prior to the night in the movie.

This movie lacked any common techniques used by film makers today, thus making it a success. What normal viewers expect from movies, such as depth of field, panning, and focus were stripped from this movie to maintain the home video feel.

Convergence

Today, the word media is synonymous with change. With the development of technology, things in media change daily, by the time you master a medium, its becoming obsolete, and you need to adapt. Most of the time these new mediums are different variations of older mediums. Photography and painting is becoming digital art. Film is replaced by ram. This process is called convergence, having different devices I technology come together.

Convergence is so common in todays world, we don't even notice it anymore. The cellphone is a camera. And with the Iphone 4 and Droid, video chat is replacing actually face to face conversation. Musical instruments and computers come together with software like Pro Tools, and Reason. And even motion pictures like, Avatar, get edited down using Final Cut Pro, a software available to anyone with a Mac.

Change is inevitable, in any field, change will happen. But in media, this change happens faster than any other. Notebooks become tablets, textbooks become ebooks, theses changes happen so fast, and we adapt so smoothly that sometimes we need to stop and look back to actually notice.