Category Archives: Random Thoughts/Musings

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Hawaii

  By Matthew Duong • April 7, 2016 ,

As some people know, I’m flying out to Hawaii tomorrow and I’ll be away for a week. I know, bad timing in the middle of the semester but don’t worry, I don’t plan on sleeping that much and I have been ploughing through the work assigned to me this past week. I even shot most of my shots for my Project Brief 3 and I plan to do them in the week it is due. (Thank god the deadline got pushed back). Anyway I have edited the skeleton of the interview that I have recorded and now all I have to do is find clips, music and/or images from Archive.org to edit into the video as per criteria.

I find this process to be very long but not tedious, it feels like I am learning lots of things along the way as I’m editing. Getting more used to the program is always good. I am constantly experimenting with clips and transition effects to see what is the best fit for my video. I was introduced via lynda.com to use something called ‘morph cut’ which morphs two similar shots, like interview shots, so the transition seems more seamless and doesn’t seem tacked on to each other.

Right now, the current sequence I have I’m happy with and I’m gonna spend the free time I have in Hawaii finding clips to add to the sequence on top. As for the style of video I’m going with, it just fell into place to be a very relaxed interview/show-reel type of video, so I think an acoustic soundtrack would fit.

In Hawaii, I’ll keep the blog posted with updates daily (?) on what I did that day.

Well, I’m off to finish off some work, do some extra blog posting and pack (I haven’t started).

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Thoughts on Batman Vs. Superman (No Spoilers)

  By Matthew Duong • April 1, 2016

After watching Batman Vs. Superman this week there were a couple of things on my mind. Batman will always be amazing and everything seemed shoehorned in.

Batman in the movie was probably the most interesting thing in the movie. It kept me really intrigued by his character. It isn’t the usual Batman we know, this Batman looks like he has went through a lot. He seems a more mature Batman. Kudos to Ben Affleck on delivering the performance as Batman. Every time that Batman was on screen it seemed such a more interesting scene. It felt more like a Batman movie than a Superman movie.

With the knowledge that the Justice League movie is happening, it really felt shoehorned in that they had references to the Justice League. It took away from the experience and felt like it didn’t really need to happen during the movie. Even the final ‘villain’ of the movie felt like he was just there because they thought it was cool.

Overall however, the movie was a good superhero action movie. I really enjoyed the darker tone of the DC universe compared to Marvel universe. However there were some things in the movie that felt like that did not need to be there.

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The Gift of Music

  By Matthew Duong • March 31, 2016 , ,

After watching the ‘reading’ on what music means to deaf people, it had me think on what music means to me. As a musician and guitarist I want to talk about my musical influences and how my interests in different genres has progressed.

My first influence in picking a guitar was listening to Metallica, mainly ‘The Black Album’. My favourite track from that album was The Unforgiven, from listening to this album I wanted to learn all of the best Metallica songs. I learnt how to play nearly all the best Metallica songs and I was also listening to other bands of that era too, like Guns n Roses, Bon Jovi and Green Day to name a few. I was very immersed in Rock Music and didn’t listen to anything much else in my young teenage years. I guess I loved the pure power of Rock Music, a real ‘gun ho’ type of feeling to it. I also felt like this type of rock music had a range, like in ‘The Unforgiven’ it ranges from emotional acoustic sound to heavy rock.

Then I got into some more acoustic music, Green Day’s softer alternative I think was the reason for that. I started to listen to a lot of Youtube sensations Boyce Avenue, Tyler Ward, Kurt Hugo Schneider etc. It got me listening to or acknowledging modern music through their covers. I enjoyed the laid back feel of the acoustics, I felt like it told a story rather than the ‘gun ho’ nature of rock music. My real love for these Youtube sensations was their original music, in which I haven’t heard anything like this. It was acoustic, soft, but also had range that was actually loud without being ‘loud’ if that makes any sense. It told a story more so and it moved me emotionally. A fine example is one of my favourite songs called ‘On My Way’ by Boyce Avenue.

It started off soft, like the start of a story, but as each verse and chorus progressed the music swelled and made it ‘loud’. This along with the lyrics really pulled at my heartstrings.

Nowadays I listen to a combination of above with soundtracks of my favourite anime, movie or TV show. But also I listen to a lot of trance or melodic dubstep. I listen to soundtracks because they generally remind me of a good moment in the series that I watched or convey the themes of the show or movie through the track, but sometimes I just listen to them because they’re catchy.

But with trance and/or melodic dubstep, I have been listening to a lot of it. Mainly through Youtube, through the youtube channel Arctic Empire.  Here’s one of their playlists/podcast.

I really enjoy this because it is relaxing, but at the same time has a certain bliss about it. I generally listen to this when I’m doing something else, like playing games, doing work, studying etc.

Music is a tool for many things and for me it is a method for conveying and feeling emotion. Without it, life would be very, very boring.

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Thoughts/Afterthoughts of our discussion on media in our tutorials

  By Matthew Duong • March 19, 2016 ,

In our tutes this week we talked about how media (social media in particular) has evolved in a way that everything has become a lot more public and interactive leaving the old idea of ‘don’t get in the car with strangers’ out of the window.

In reference to Gauntlett’s article/s we discussed how we use social media these days. Most of us, me included, use Facebook for its messenger and discussed how its easier to message and keep in contact with people. With this we talked about how the positives that have come about this new age of media, with its new thought out way of being creative and unique rather than being something that is mass produced, boring and the same. We have to be innovative and creative about the way we approach media, to produce, to communicate, to study. By doing so, we will attract more audiences and more producers of media alike.

Another thing we raised up was this notion that we have changed from avoiding strangers to now embracing them. We used Uber as an example. Now we can go into strangers cars and no one bats an eye about it. Even when we were brought up we were told ‘not to go into cars with strangers’. Now strangers can interact with each other with this Uber app and go into each others cars, this saves a lot of money as opposed to taking a taxi. Most older parents do not like this notion of getting into a strangers car but we argue that it is in fact safer than a taxi because of how Uber is monitored. I personally do not use Uber because I have not gone around to actually downloading the app.

This new conception of thinking about media is better for the future as the newer generations learn about it and we use it. It has evolved into a much better, innovative and creative way of thinking rather than a monetised, capitalised system.

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David Gauntlett reading and a conversation I had

  By Matthew Duong • March 17, 2016 ,

David Gauntlett’s blog on the change of how media is created and learned and how we can adapt and change the way we think about media as an academic study or a method of relaying information.

It got me thinking, it prompted me to think back to a conversation I had with my uncle this past week. In the conversation we talked about how we feel media has moved to a new age, this meaning that not even a decade ago, we used to only look at media at home through our computers and TVs. The only ‘mobile’ media source we had were books or newspapers but they weren’t really how they are today which is ‘On the fly’. Today we are able to experience media through our phones, tablets or laptops. All these things available through a 3G, 4G or wireless network, which has picked up its effectiveness over the most recent years. We read and watch things more on the fly more than we ever have. Now we can watch the latest episode of Game of Thrones or The Walking Dead on our phones on the train on the way to school or work. We are also able to stream sports such as Football, Rugby or NBA live through our phones, there was a time where this wasn’t common practice. It is in a change of our thinking, we are able to keep in touch with each other through social media anywhere we go, well anywhere that has an internet connection, now we can watch the latest YouTube videos on our phones when we’re travelling. I remember a time where the only place we got to watch YouTube was actually sitting down at a computer or laptop and actually going on the site.

So what does this mean and how does it relate to us as Media students? Well everything we make now must be accessible via mobile devices in terms of media. If we create a video, it better be available to view on YouTube. If we’re streaming it better be available to watch on a phone or tablet app.

And how is it going to be taught? Gauntlett touched on this with his blog posts about his book ‘Making media studies’ saying that media has evolved to what it is now from its roots as a very small, bare-bones profession. Now jobs and institutions exist that wouldn’t have a few decades ago or at least would be very rare. We have to change the way we think about media, we have to make it ‘both a subject, and a method’. To create new media we have to be creative in the way we go about making new media, we can’t rehash ideas that have been used over and over again. We have to adapt to this growing profession. Not only we have to be creative but we have to know our audiences’.

I’ll use E-Sports as an example. Over the past half of a decade E-Sports has grown exponentially with games such as Dota 2 and League of Legends having people compete for prizes of millions of dollars. The style that was introduced when E-Sports was first introduced some years ago was very laid back and edgy. There were jokes in the broadcast that wouldn’t get past censorship screens on TV, but that was what audience liked. The audience being fans of the video games: Gamers. Understandably the E-Sports scene had players competing for millions of dollars and the organisers felt it was proper to be more professional, so they had the hosting panels wear suits and conduct interviews very much like they do in sports and the community did not like this.

As to quote Pyrion Flax (a Dota 2 personality) in an interview (I’ll post the link after this) ‘We got here by not being like that (professional Sports) we got here by being different’

Ultimately, we should change the way we think about media and how we are to be more creative in producing more media as it is evolving and I think Pyrion Flax put it beautifully ‘we got here by being different’.

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Playing around in Premiere

  By Matthew Duong • March 14, 2016

So this weekend I’ve started playing around in Premiere, upon opening it up in the tutorial I was overwhelmed with the interfaces that were on the screen but after playing with them I became accustomed to them. After getting used to the interface, I went on Lynda.com to learn how to use the program.

The instructional videos were very helpful, one of the main points that I found was getting used to the keyboard shortcuts. Using ‘I’ and ‘O’ to mark your starting and end points of a piece, using ‘shift ‘+ ‘1’,’2′,’3′ or ‘4’ to switch between the interface panels saves a decent amount of time. Using ‘comma’ or ‘fullstop’ to insert or overwrite in the edit definitely is more preferable than selecting, deselecting, reselecting, drag-drop etc. The only problem is committing these functions to muscle memory. Having used other programs in the past (iMovie, windows movie maker) it was more of a click on the screen rather than the use of keyboard short commands. Even things like autoCAD when I was learning how to use it in engineering they never really emphasised the use of keyboard shortcuts, more like a ‘find your own way of doing things’ kind of thing and this ultimately wastes a lot of time for students. That was a bit of ramble, anyway using Premiere like this makes me feel more professional, in the sense that the actions I’m doing are easy and seamless but from the outside what I’m doing looks rather complex from someone who wouldn’t have a lot of knowledge of editing.

So how far am I up to in project brief 2? Well I really like a shot that I used from project brief 1 of me turning on my Xbox, I want to use a couple of shots from that. I’ve only done one shot however of me turning my Xbox on and fading out, which I imagine would be the start of the video and would transition into stills accompanied with a voice-over. What I want in my next project brief, stills accompanied by a voice-over by me, maybe a video of me playing guitar, reactions of me playing games or watching TV/sports something like that. As for the voice-over, I think I’ll just go over things like ‘this is me, this is my life’, sounds corny but all the videos from last year I’ve watched so far have been something along this nature. Maybe I’ll come up with something new, who knows.

Anyways I’m out for now, thanks for reading if you’ve stuck with this post for that long. Until next time.

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My identity

  By Matthew Duong • March 10, 2016 ,

So the last few posts have been pictures, soundclips and videos and here is an explanation of them.

  • With each different component I tried to convey a part of my persona into each one.
  • Each component was a different interest of mine
  • With each picture I showed my past and present hobbies – Football, Japanese Culture, Gaming and Food. With a final picture relating to both pastimes
  • With each video I tried to show a bit of ‘daily life’ activities. Like turning my Xbox on, showing a pan of the room I was working in at the time.
  • With each sound clip I tried to convey my hobbies and interests in action as well as a bit of diversity in my cultural knowledge.
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Jeremy Bowtell’s presentation got me thinking on Inception

  By Matthew Duong • March 8, 2016 ,

I’m not even sure if this is SFX or editing but Jeremy’s presentation got me thinking of a scene in Inception. The scene where Leonardo Di Caprio’s character was explaining the architecture of the dream world to Ellen Page’s character. The editing/SFX had a particular effect on me when I first watched this in theatres.

Watching it for the first time I was awed in a way that I haven’t in a long time. The landscape being ‘folded’ on top of each other via the buildings, the infinite staircase and the bridge building scene amazed me on the scale that this movie had at its premise. That from one angle the staircase was infinite but from another the staircase was incomplete. The landscape was infinite but could also be literally right on top of you. The use of Ellen Page’s character’s imagination to create more features of the dream world I thought was amazing. The editing combined with the SFX in Inception is a great example to produce a sense of scale, imagination and epicness to the audience.

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The Scott McCloud comic got me thinking about Ishida Sui

  By Matthew Duong • March 6, 2016 ,

So upon reading the comic by Scott McCloud it got me to appreciate one of my favourite manga writers that I follow. Ishida Sui, who is most famous for writing highly acclaimed series Tokyo Ghoul. A quick synopsis of Tokyo Ghoul: an ordinary quiet boy Kaneki Ken, gets turned into a Ghoul (someone who can only survive by eating humans) against his will. So he has to learn to adapt to survive in this world where Ghouls are hunted and oppressed, only to be met with tragedy.

Anyway, Ishida is a master at creating a story and this McCloud’s comic got me more appreciative on why. Ishida is very much into a ‘show don’t tell’ kind of approach and it keeps the audience guessing. McCloud describes Western comics or manga as a kind of ‘in the moment’ with each panel and Ishida exercises this practice beautifully. He is ever so subtle with each panel with reveals and foreshadowing scattered throughout every chapter. This conveys his story in a subtle way and always leaves the audience guessing what’s going to happen. Not in the way that someone says ‘I wonder what’s gonna happen next’ more like ‘I need to know what happens next’. This is why Ishida is one my favourite manga writers and Tokyo Ghoul is one of my favourite manga series.

Scott McCloud, 1993, ‘Blood in the Gutter’, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art(Northampton, MA : Tundra Pub)

Ishida Sui, 2011, ‘Tokyo Ghoul’, Tokyo Ghoul (Japan)