Forest Hills T Stop

Here is my last and final project. I don't want to say anything that would prejudge you about the film, so take a look.

David Claerbout

So Michael and I were both late in meeting each other: we planned to meet for lunch before the talk. We met just before the talk in the gallery. Our guide was great, very informative and I enjoyed his way of speaking. He has a wonderful way of being fully present yet seeming just a little bit disengaged, which seems very MIT to me.
As for the exhibit, the first piece blew me away. I loved how the shadow came into the space so that the viewer was engulfed and engaged by it. I also loved how the piece was visible from both sides and how that changed your perspective on the piece.
I was intrigued by the highway ramps, but not enough to stick around and find out what was hidden in the foreground.
The umpteen versions of a story playing for 13 hours did not pull me in, although the view and architecture were very intriguing.
The many images about the moment of throwing a ball alternatively attracted and repelled me, as I soon felt it was too full of artifice to work.
I loved the still picture of the kids where just the trees moved. This was my favorite piece, so simple, yet so sublime. Are the kids moving, and the trees stopped, or the other way around?
In general, I liked how he plays with time and with digital media, and his work scares me. It is so full of artifice and manipulation that I don't know what is real, which may be his point. I also started to expect him to manipulate me, so I could not see later pieces in the collection without wondering what the fakery was.
In all, a good exhibit and perfect for our class.

How to Make Toast

Its interesting working with real actors. Especially when they are YOUR progeny. But they were awesome. This film needs sound. The school camera was great and I was able to do a lot of editing easily in iMovie 3.0 (I have an OLD Mac at home)!

Are we the cutting edge?

While watching TV, I saw this ad from Cisco, who makes the switches that run the Internet. They were pushing just in time convergence: they had an add where a inventor makes a prototype of a skateboard and users use it and give him instant feedback via IP phones that have video camera's in them. The inventor continually improves his prototype using their help until its "perfect"! It was a very geeky ad that I am guessing went over the heads of lots of people. What I found interesting is that it requires the kind of media savvy that we are learning in the program.
At the same time my buddy mentioned that while there are tons of videos now on the net, must of them suck. He was arguing that making media by the masses dumbs down the quality. I tend to think my buddy missed the point: every time you make the bar easier for the masses, you get more content for free. Now there will be a lot of junk out there, but there also will be a lot of interesting or important content (see Rodney King, etc.). What do you all think, and how do we make sure the quality stays high as the quantity jumps?

Treatment Assignment: How to make toast (Berger)

The premise for my movie is simple: imagine Thing 1 and Thing 2 from Dr. Seuss's the Cat in the Hat making toast. Now imagine that my kids are Thing 1 and Thing 2.
I see one child opening the fridge and bringing out a loaf of bread, then throwing a slice at the other. Then they might both run around the house holding slices. Eventually bread gets into the toaster, then the toaster might be set on too high a setting. Smoke pours out. Alarms go off. Children smile. Toast.

Berger's Flash Movie

My movie exported to Flash as a 12kb file. However, since Blogger won't take Flash files, I had to make it a movie. The same movie was 13.9 MB proving Ravi's point that vector is smaller and better than raster (if you have vector content). As you will see, I got better with Flash, but I still find a lot of the interface awkward.

Assignment 2: Ruggles Story (Berger)

I had a lot of fun with this assignment, playing in Photoshop. I tried ghosting in the image on the bottom right. After I played for a while, I thought I better edit it down. However, I made sure to leave one little thing that Mary might not like.

Assignment 1: Ruggles Empty at Night

This is my shot for Assignment 1. I was in Ruggles the night of the snow storm and it was empty. Since I don't often see it this way, I thought the transformation would be easy to make.
- Mike Berger