Adobe Flash offers every user to create awesome web pages, interactive games, and videos. Especially, if you want to create a simple animation of your own, this software is a champ in the market. However, it needs a hard work for some people who are not familiar with the Flash. There are minor difficulties such as inadequate two-monitor support; hand-drawn animation support. Therefore, if a user wants to create his characters by using his hand, he has to spent more time on the hand-drawn animation tools...
The good thing about Flash CS3 is that I can import Photoshop and Illustrator files with layers. These elements can be edited from within Flash, by importing or simply dragging a Photoshop or Illustrator file into your Flash workspace. This option makes users work much easier.
I’ve had some technical training in art (painting and drawing). So, for me, using my hand to paint something on a snow-white gesso canvas is much more easier and exciting. Yet, the hand painted subject on the canvas doesn’t move like the subject in the Flash. That’s why any flash animation work is always interesting to look at.
For the class project, I attempted to create two characters using brush and pen tools. It was a very painstaking work because I had to draw every part separately on each layer. I think I got lost at the end. It was too confusing to work with too many layers. So, I decided to work with two images from the Internet. If I was much more experienced with the Flash, I could have done a lot better creating a few characters in different movements. Yet, this Ouija board is a good, simple start.
The good thing about Flash CS3 is that I can import Photoshop and Illustrator files with layers. These elements can be edited from within Flash, by importing or simply dragging a Photoshop or Illustrator file into your Flash workspace. This option makes users work much easier.

This actual filmmaking experience for the first time in my life opens a whole new chapter for me. As a terribly disorganized person, I find it very difficult in planning for the pre- production aspects, which also means a lot of paper work. I had to manage shooting list, storyboard and budget list. And I had to work alone as a director, cinematographer and editor. Somehow, I had a little extra help from someone (as a gaffer), whose field is nothing to do with filmmaking: electronic engineer that is. And I also dare to shoot a short film (about15 minutes) with Arriflex SR (25 fps). The result was disastrous, wrong lighting and panning which made most of the footage (10 rolls of reversal, both color and black and white) looks so unprofessional. I would have done a lot better if I had found a cinematographer whom I can trust and share my vision. Another regret is that I should have avoided shooting a sunset with reversal film, which is more complex when it comes to adjusting light for the set. Yet, when I first saw the footage that I shot (even though it was bad), I felt like I found my God. It was like magic. I don’t think I will ever go back to pursue my career as a painter. Probably, for my next attempt, I wish to find and work with other people who are more experienced than me. I dearly enjoyed the editing for the film. Although, I still have a lot to do (to hide my weak shots).

The film Solaris (1972) is a slow paced film directed by Russian cinematic genius Andrei Tarkovski. However, many patient viewers get rewarded at the end, final sequence of the film. This mind bending and poetic film is composed of many long slow panning shots, lingering images and seamless editing techniques, which allow the audience to meditate. In the beginning of the film, the main character Kelvin meditates a lot by walking on his family ranch. The camera shows gorgeous images of planet (foggy flower field, green algae waving around under a moving stream), earth, which Kelvin and all other human beings belong to. The film has retro or nostalgic feel due to display of various colors like warn burnt sienna and green. As for the ending, the camera goes back to the beginning of the film; Kelvin walking on his ranch once again. However, in this slowing moving film, which lasts about three hours, the last six minutes come as a shock. With a few long shots and reverse shots, the camera reveals that Kelvin is not in a place (in his home) where he is suppose to be in. Tarkovski shocks the viewers with his perfect control of his camera, slowly reveals an ambiguous image of some kind of contact as well as showing perfect isolation of a human being (Kelvin in the film).

New York City; a city that never sleeps.

Shrieking subways, thudding pile drivers, roaring boilers, noisy neighbors, raucous restaurants, ambulance …

New York City, especially Manhattan is always filled with various sounds such as these which are considered more noise than sound. However, the most impressive sound of the city is completed by mixing these noises with sounds coming from groups street performers playing different types of music (like classic, jazz or rock). Therefore, the mix of these different sound elements rhythmically represents attractive and unique NYC. So, by just listening to this sound without looking at the city, people can imagine the densely skyscraper filled and restless Manhattan.

Yet, Queens is quieter than Manhattan. When I listen to the sounds of my neighborhood, Queens which is a little bit different to those sound of Manhattan. The sounds make people feel more rested and homely, because Queens is not densely filled with skyscrapers, and is more space availability and less people, any sound is weak and does not travel far. However, some people get some distant plane noises (people who are residing near the airport like JFK and La Guardia).

Many places in Queens have sounds of culture such as voices of Chinese vendors in Flushing, hyped Latin American music from a radio in Corona and European or Japanese people chatting in bars and restaurants in Astoria. These are the true sounds of highly multi cultured Queens NY, where all nationalities of people live in their own distinctive ways.

To have or not to have; a director's personal thought on becoming a single mom.

A documentary is a great medium that can be used to reflect some interesting aspects of many lives in reality. The director Anne Catherine Hundhausen who is a former graduate of Hunter College, brings her latest documentary called Single Choice: Many lives. This brilliant film tells the director’s search for an answer on becoming a single mother by undergoing procedure called donor insemination. Ann Catherine is sets out on a journey to interview some women who have had (or having) children via donor insemination. She also meets people who are the creations of this procedure. The film explores either side of the main subject: pro or con, advantages or disadvantages. The director herself is in her mid thirty woman who have experienced many monogamous relationships with men and failed to have a family with any one of them. She, like many other women out there, is tired of being in a relationship and getting married. Therefore, becoming a single mom is an option for her. Because, all women want to be mothers which can be the most precious thing to do as a woman. The more they wait, the less chance they will have become pregnant due to fecundity which is likely reduced as women are getting old. The topic also concerns about women’s anxieties of getting old without having any family in our society. However, Ann Catherine gives the audience (especially women) a chance to examine our role or true  identity of being a women, with her insightful and easy to grasp work of art.

The earliest credit sequences were for silent films. Presented on title cards and containing printed material that were photographed and later incorporated into the movie. These cards also included the dialogue and set the time, place and action for the scenes. As the movie industry evolved, so did the titles. After the achievement of sound, titles began to function as a transition: taking on the responsibility of displaying the movie's title, the name of the director and establishing the hierarchy of actors. In the 1950s, titles began to move beyond realistic communication and evolved into complete narratives, establishing the mood and visual character of the film.

Since then, the creation of film titles have changed dramatically. During the 90s a new wave of designers have elevated the art of film titles to a new phase desktop motion graphics. As technology of desktop computers advance at a rapid pace, design companies are able to create visually stunning motion graphics that had been by a big production house in the past. With faster processors and affordable compositing and editing softwares, designers assume a greater control in creativity.
Saul Bass was the industry's pioneer. His work spans 50 years, 60 films and dozens of corporate projects, with his most famous achievement of the storyboards for Psycho's shower scene also being his most controversial.

Saul Bass

The Double Life of Véronique

The cinematographer Sławomir Idziak photographed the film using a golden yellow filter, and the resulting sepia color scheme. When Weronika sits on a train, she holds up to the window (already offering a warped view of a townscape,interestingly, a cathedral most prominently) a small translucent ball with little stars frozen inside it. A close-up camera shot of the ball again gives the viewer the same point-of-view as Weronika, and once again the world outside is inverted while the stars grab our attention. Also, the color blue is deliberately eliminated from the film. True blue appears only a few times in the picture, in each instance reflecting a subjective feeling of love or otherness: Weronika's sighting of Veronique (where she appears almost haloed by the color); the blue dress of Weronika's aunt; Veronique's discovery of the puppeteer's reflection in a backstage mirror; Alexandre's van; and another subjective view of the puppeteer, as Veronique watches him covertly through a stained glass window. Also, her encounter with the puppeteer whom she is attracted to and also offended by, the scene from that moment, the warm green color became much more dominent throughout the film. Her attraction to the puppeteer is also suggestive of her search for the/an Other/other. Who is the puppeteer but the God-figure of the world of marionettes?

Museum of Moving Image

Upon visiting the museum of Moving Image in Astoria NYC, people can see the insightful glimpse of the history of how we develop our vision to see the world through the camera. In the museum, there are many different types of cameras on display. They vary from very early types of camera such as wooden boxes with lenses, a techno color, video and digital as well as huge Panavision cameras which are popular in feature film making in the present time. Arguably, cameras are the most primary tools to transfer various image to the film negatives. Then the images can be projected on screen. However, early moving pictures had to be viewed through the peep hole machine called kinetoscope, an early motion picture exhibition device which was invented by William Kennedy Laurie Dickson and Thomas Edison between 1889 and 1892. There were two kinetoscopes in the museum which allow people can use to view two early films by Georges Méliès called Le Voyage dans la lune and Eating a Soup which features Charlie Chaplin. Also, people can go into a sound editing room where they can record their own voices and play it over a scene from Wizard of Oz. There is sound track editing room for people to choose one of several kind of music to play over some scenes from different movies. These experiments of the post production aspect of film making helps the people have more specific understanding of what movie making really is. And all these significant technical discoveries of motion pictures started from a toy called a Zoetrope (wheel of life). It is a device that produces an illusion of action from a rapid succession of static pictures, invented in 180 AD. The toy needs three basic elements to make its illusion possible: light, frame and speed, which are very important in modern day film making.