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In this workshop, the most interesting part is recording exercise. Using the H2N zoom, Sylvia and me chose the first question to do exercise. And also, in this class, Professor Louise gave us a suggestion for sound editing. Once the sound editor editing audio, it would be better to put the sound appear before the appearance of the character. In this way, people would feel more comfortable to see the video, accepting video.

To record sound, it is difficult for recorder to avoid noise so people need to record sound in quiet space. If recorder needs ambient sound, it needs to be recorded as another audio, and then combine all the audio together. By this method, the main audio that is the sound of interviewee can be placed on foreground.

Sound, to be more concrete, it should be Media Affordances, which is the topic of this lecture. Rachel Wilson showed us a PowerPoint of the topic, and that PowerPoint has almost 70 sides, that amazed me. To be honest, I download that when I back to home, reviewing the lesson. Too many knowledge need to be knew and remembered. Indeed, I have spent a lot of time to read that PowerPoint although some people told me that is not worthy.

In this PowerPoint, there are seven parts to introducing the Media Affordances (Sound). There are Listening VS. Hearing, What is Sound, Components of Sound, Types of Sounds, Sound perspective, Recording Sound and Microphones etc.

For the first part, listening and hearing, these two quiet similar words are actually different. According to the PowerPoint from Professor Rachel, Hearing is an ability of perceiving sound, and Listening almost depends on attention. It can be easy to understand by listened to the music made by John Cage who was an American composer, music theorist, writer, and artist. The most famous music is 4’33’’ but this music makes many musicians angry, because there is no traditional melody in that music. Also, for me, I cannot understand what he wanted to express when I listened 4’33’’ firstly. However, I do think that his music is one of the best examples that can help people to understand the difference between listening and hearing. It makes me remember the video called the beat I was born without.

This video talks about a experience of a woman who is deaf. She cannot hear everything since she came to this world so she cannot normally communicate with normal people, that makes she feels very lonely. Travelling to Holland, she found out a community that lots of deaf people gather together, enjoying dancing and listening in clubs. Not only this woman, almost every deaf people here express that they can listen to the music, dancing with the beat.

So, to be honest, everyone can listen to music if they focus.

It was the first time that I recorded sound with professional machine that is the zoom H2n. At the beginning, Sylvia and I spent some time to make sure how to use the recording machine, indeed, that was very attractive. The first problem we met is that how to find out the files that belongs to us, and we finally solved that. Then we chose a special space in level 11 in building 80, just the level up on our classroom. Then the next question come to our mind was that who is the interviewer and who is the interviewee, but we didn’t spend lots of time on that. After discussion, Sylvia became the interviewee because she has a better voice. Although the special space is empty and Sylvia still felt shy, the results are good.

To make a audio, recording is the first step. Now turn to the next step that is editing. This time, I used two softwares that are premier and audition. Firstly, I used premier to cut the sound in order to connect each main recording, making it more fluently. Next I found out there are some noise in the ambient sound so I used the audition to dislodge that noise. Moreover, to protrude the main recording that is the voice of Sylvia, I used premier making the loudness of that sound more loudly.

At the end, I think it would be better for me to edit sound with premier and audition together.

The reading of this week is about some bits from making media studies, and I saw the video that made by David Gauntlet from the post of Professor Brian Morris. Media is a subject characteristic of practice so normal people would think that there is no theory of media. Although there is theory of media, it is useless. According to David, the media study is mainly about connect lots of things to media. Almost all the people know that media is useful and powerful, also in daily life we can see media everywhere. Based on the power and function of media, David suggests that we ought to consider about what good things we can do with media.

In media study, people will learn about and with media, moving forward and understanding of look backward.

The computer that questions David for a long time asks David about the relation between creativity and media. David answers that it is not all about creativity, it is a kind of refreshing. Actually, I cannot understand any differences between refreshing and creativity. Simply, those two words are all about somethings new that come out. Maybe I will understand when I study in media.

Thanks

Yolanda

To be honest, it is not difficult to take picture, in other words, it was so fun. The hard part is clipping video, because I did not know how to use that related software such as premiere and After effect. Fortunately, I have a friend who study in animation helped me a lot.

In this assignment, I learned that the style of the background music needs to be similar with the style of the video. In a video, the story that a video want to present is the most important part, especially the meaning in the story. Because the meaning in story is presented indirectly, the background music ought to be served as a foil to the story.

In my video, the subject of my video is me, talking about my daily life. Well, I think it a good way to let others know who am I. I have study piano for almost 12 years so I have a great taste in music. The background music I made on myself so I did not put reference at the end of my video.

And also, I have study how to make the music fades out and in. I knew how to use the After effect to make the title more interesting.

At the end, I found out the fun of making video and I interest in that now.

Look down, look down

People with high self-esteems

Look down, look down

Hang your exalted head down

Those little life need to be cared

The collocation between background music and content of video is very important because the background music can affect audience’s emotion when they are watching video. And also, background music can affect the overall feeling of the video so be careful when you choose background music for your video.

Focusing on the photo I post, it took by me, and just look at this photo, guessing the time I took this. Is it morning or toward evening? Well, let us add background music. The first music is active, lively, going with a swing. Almost all the people would think this photo was taken at dawn. The second music is heavy, horrible and playing in slow speed. And also, almost all the people would think this photo took in toward evening.

In fact, I took this photo in toward evening.

Except video, audio is the most powerful thing can affect the overall feeling of audience when they are watching video.

This week we did not have a lecture because of the public holiday so I am going to type something about a video I saw in the workshop of my contextual major that is modern Asia.  This video was talking around a topic, modernity and modernization, and the content of this is an obvious single of modernization, the urbanization.

This documentary was taken in 2006 to 2007, almost 10 years ago, and the main village in this is located in the middle of China, a poor and undeveloped village. This documentary shows a process of urbanization of the village named White Horse Village, and the argument between villager and the local government.

From this documentary, I suddenly found out a point that all the things we see from video are what the producer wants us to know. It means almost all the documentary that seems like real is actually mixed with fake.

Just take the video I mentioned before as an example, the main subject is villager, and they had lots of interviews with villagers. A great part of villagers think the local government destroy their old and historical home, they want to be rich, having a better life, but they do not want to change lots of thing. I can easily felt that this documentary spends too much time on villager but government official. Negatively thinking, the BBC chose White Horse Village from thousands of villages in China, and this White Horse Village had argument with the local government, a strong argument. In fact, in many villages, the villagers listened to the local government, no strong arguments happened. So I cannot control myself to think something wrong and bad to our national benefits. Is it possible that the BBC wants to bring shame on Chinese government? Let lots of audience who never been to China may misunderstand Chinese developed degree and Chinese government.

In the end, we need to question the videos we will see and saw, do not always believe something in media.

The third time of my workshop is coming, and I come to used to the class that full of English. I was so excited with the coming public holiday for six days, but before that we have lots of assignments need to be submitted.

Above all, Professor Louise asked us a cool question that is what is the dream job. I still remember that when I was a young child, parents and other adults liked to ask you what your dream? What do you want to be when you grow up? Actually, they were the same question that what your dream job? In many opinions from our students, travel video, natural historical documentary producer, and YouTube editor are dream jobs. Well, for me, I would like to be a pianist or a journalist when I was a child. And now, I have a dream that I can have my own media and cultural company, changing the world via little things. To be honest, I do not like to sit in the office for a whole day, and I like to go outside, it would be better if I can work outside.

I have to admit that I did not finish the Haiku when I had the workshop, and lots of students have done their own assignment, that makes me felt so awkward. One reason for me did not finish the Haiku is that I do not know how to use the premier and not exactly understand the requirement of the Haiku. Professor Louise played some videos that made by my classmates, that helps me a lot.

Then, they talked about the famous social media such as facebook, Instagram, twitter and napchat. I remember that they said that twitter is dead, and I was confused about that because I use these social media for less time. However, I can talk about two famous social media that are wechat and microblog. And also, there was one thing that I agree with is that these social media has become a platform for user to do business and advertising. This situation not only happens in the Chinese social media but also happens in internationally social media. At first, the user use social media such as facebook for connecting friends and family members, but now they see lots of advertising in the social media. We ought to keep some individual areas for our friends.

This reading is a caricature not a passage so it is easy to understand what the whole caricature wants to teach and explain.

At the beginning, the boy who is the subject of the caricature, like a teacher to explain what is closure. Closure is a abstract concept, that based on our experience of our senses, and the boy mentions that our perception of reality is based on faith and act as faith. In daily life, the closure helps us to complete the world we live in. in photograph, film, electronic media and television, people use the closure unconsciously. People have imagination to combine the agent of change, skipping time and changing motion, and the closure is the base of imagination.

After explaining the closure, six panel-to-panel transitions are mentioned and interpreted. Firstly, moment-to-moment transition requires very little closure because the changing thing in the frame is less. Secondly, action-to-action transition be used in a special situation that there is only one subject in a moment and frame. Then, the subject-to-subject transition be used in a situation that the frame stay within a scene or idea, in order to note the reader necessary thing happening. Moreover, scene-to-scene transition is used to transport reader and audience across significant distances of time and space. Next, aspect-to-aspect transition is used to set a wondering eyes on different aspects of places idea and mood, passing time for the most part. And the last one is non-sequitur, the most special one, because there is no logical relationship between panels.

In the next part, boy talks about the different cultures between traditional western art and eastern art. Western art do not worry about the whole but focus on the goal-oriented culture while the eastern art is cyclical and labyrinthine. Due to the difference, western artist and eastern artist are used to use different transition methods.

Well, at the end, boy emphasizes that we must to find out balance between too much and too little when we are doing video or caricature.