Over the past few weeks, I’ve moved from a passive moviegoer to an active “reader” of cinema. This journey required me to step out of my comfort zone, analyze the fundamental grammar of film, and apply these methods to my own viewing experiences. Below, you will find a summary of my work, reflections on the process, and a look at the challenges I encountered along the way.
My Work Present
To explore how cinema works, I completed the following assignments:
Reading Movies (Part II): I deciphered Roger Ebert’s essay on “How to Read a Movie,” where I learned techniques of attentive viewing, cinematic language, and the “stop-action” method.
Look, Listen, Analyze (Part III): I did a three-part analysis of the training montage scene from Rocky IV to see how editing, music, and framing shapes an audiences viewing experience.
Video Assignments (Part IV): I observed the anime character Rimuru Tempest and analyzed him in video format to show how I can apply those newly learned techniques in my own media.
I learned everything on screen is intentional. This ranges from every camera angle, cut, and sound choice to create the an emotional response from the viewer. I discovered how to find these techniques and how to create proper engagement.
The “stop-action” method was difficult for me to engage with as it felt unnatural to constantly pause a film. This caused me to unengaged from a film as I focus on finding specific things within a scene. While that was hard, The three-part analysis was easier for me. Muting the audio had me find myself instinctively noticing framing and camera angles after reobservation with the scenes.
What drove me crazy was the rubric to create a proper blog for the video assignments since there was so little to go off of. I enjoyed the Listen phase of the analysis. It is fascinating how much of a movie’s emotional heavy lifting is done by sound effects and score. Separating that layer revealed a totally different experience than watching the visuals, which I found to be a very eye-opening exercise.
The unit audio storytelling was very interesting as It made me expand a skill I was already practicing. I was already focusing on making music and creating short films and this assignment assisted on me learning what audio works together. This assignment helped me create narratives, comprehend how sound effects emotions when you hear it, and creating deep significance with the audio.
Podcast Reflection
When listening to the podcast, I understood how tone and editing does when telling a story or how to progress a song for an audience to understand. The story I listened to is “Modern Love: My Husband’s Breakdown Was My Breakthrough“. The use of music and vocal reflections to tell a compelling story with using both a direct POV and an outside perspective of her story creates a deeper understanding on what the author was feeling within the story. The ambient music with the constant change of emotion from the interviewee, Anna helps with emotional value for the audience so readers know how much her story created conflict for her.
Ira Glass
Ira Glass’s video explanation on how to properly convey audio storytelling helped me express what I wanted to portray through audio. His explanation on a gradual process and how different aspects such as tone and process with audio storytelling showed me how to progress a story through sound without adding unnecessary fluff. I felt like I understand how to engage an audience to hook them into the message and how to maintain said audience by different methods to attach them to my style of writing or the overall story.
Creating Audio
The first audio creation I did was make a location based on pure sound and have the audio encapsulate my audience in a made up environment I made with compiled audio files. i used band lab to do all my mashups of audio and I decided to create an accounting firm environment. I decided this specific place because my career goal is to be an accountant and I wanted to imagine myself in said environment so I made what I thought it would sound like.
After that I did the multi star audio assignment where I did multiple audio task to shown competency. I learned that audio creativity comes from many sources ranging from news breaks, content related audio, and even music blends to convey emotions or a story without directly giving a sequence. I started with creating a mashup of my favorite songs off one of my favorite albums ‘Thriller’ by Michael Jackson. I took a mix and master of the songs ‘Wanna be Startin somethin’ and ‘Billie Jean’ by him because I thought the mashup would sound good based on the tempo.
I than created a playlist of my life which was a little bit of insight of events that happened in my life. I used multiple different genre songs to do this ranging from pop to rap to give different aspects and perspective to theurgy explain how I feel. I explained each song group to give an analysis on what was felt at what time and why.
I than created a news story with the assistance of AI to configure a story whilst adding my own elements. I created the story and let an AI reader read it to make it similar to a televised news story. I used my imagination and improvision and based this story in Richmond, VA. This audio assignment showed me how thought out news stories are and gave me creative challenges to make something real without having a real example.
What I learned about audio storytelling was it can extend the story your trying to tell with the ability to add more emotion and passion than you could with a written story. The addition of sound adds another factor on what you want the audience to understand. The hardest factor of this assignment was the news story as I feel creating a fake story is difficult as a real life scenario can be anything but if it doesn’t make sense it doesn’t become important to a reader or listener. The easiest part was creating a place or environment with sound because I previously had an idea of a place I would be at. What drove me crazy was he mashup part as I feel making two songs blend without editing the original files is difficult but it didn’t frustrate me as I found it fun to understand tempo and rhythm of music that don’t belong together. What I enjoyed the most was the playlist creation as I was able to reflect healthily and sharing my vast music taste gives me hope people can enjoy music as much as I do. Overall, I feel as this is the best unit and I was able to explore myself more with this assignment.