Final project

The idea of a narrative sounded very interesting but due to creative differences, my partner and I decide to do a documentary. The hard part was finding a subject that would bounce off the screen with personality and charisma. My first choice was Lee Rogers but I hesitated to pursue her for the project. Lee Rogers is mistrustful of others. She doesn't connect very well with people and she believes she was a secret agent in the 80's, saving kids in an underground mission from a cannibal. I have approached Lee many times and I never know what I'm going to get. Most times she's a very nice individual, but there are times where she can get very agitated. It was my luck that I found her in the latter stage whenever I wanted to approach the idea of filming her.
My mission was to capture a woman who recently sued a filmmaker for putting out a documentary about her. I almost decided not to go on with it but little by little I realize that if I talked with  her long enough, I was able to record her when she was calm. I recorded most of the footage and all the audio. I didn't know how to prepare for her so it was me deciding when and when not to film her.
I picked out some of the jazz in the video, as I felt that the beats complemented very well with the rhythm in Lee's voice. I edited a rough draft of the project but it did not come out the way I envisioned it. Maybe I was too close to my subject and I was trying to show more than the running time permitted.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=92AmGY8P2po
This scene from 12 years a slave is one of my all time favorites. It's something that stayed with me till this day. The goal in everyday scene is to say as much as possible with as little as possible. Too much dialogue and the scene might drag down, too little and the meaning might be lost.
This scene meets in the middle. It says so much with very little. It doesn't even use music and it stirs so much emotions in its audience.
The very long shot doesn't feel dragged out because the audience is given an active role. We have to look around and see what is going on in the background. It's nothing but mundane activities, but it is so fascinating because it almost feels like we're actually in that time.
Writing about this scene makes me look at editing in a whole new way. When I was working on the final assignment, I was flipping and rushing through the shots. But it is very important to carefully plan out the scene if the motivation is to have the viewer experience the work.

Asia society

I went to the Asia society museum with a couple of my classmates. We were all unfamiliar with Nam June Paik but we had very similar options on his artwork. It was very difficult to understand the underlining themes in some of his pieces, but I was fascinated with how different they all were. There were several quotes of his displayed on the walls, and from this I understood that he was trying to introduce the emergence of technology with ourself. His motivation in some of his pieces was humanizing the wires and cables that he worked with. In one piece, he took a small television and colored it with paint the same way a little kid would.

 He was creating these pieces at a time where technology was accelerating so fast people were uncertain where it would all lead. Some of his pieces tackled this problem by asserting that technology will one day be a huge part of our lives, so much so that we will have a hard time distinguishing the dividing line with our devices and ourselves. I think this theme echoes louder now that we pretty much live in our phones and we have become like the very robot that is on exhibit

Saturday screening

On Saturday, I was present for the screening of the documentary "The River of Life."  The film flows from event to event, without having a main focus. It moves on without stopping, like a river. 

In all honestly, the documentary wasn't to my liking. The project is highly personal, and at times I didn't connect with it. It wasn't a cultural barrier, as the film dealt with the universal themes of life and death. It's a very long home video, and like home videos, the person filming it will get more out of it than a external viewer will. 

I did like the concept of a man turning the camera to his family and filming every monotonous moment in his life.  It's reality T.V in it's purest form.

The River of Life is not a technical marvel. The footage is gritty and the editing is elementary. But that wasn't the point of it. The film comes from China, where governmental restrictions limit people's options for an opinion. The importance of this film lies in it's raw style of shooting. To me, it says that anyone with a camera has a voice. 

MOMI trip

I've been part of the Astoria community for some time. I spend a lot of my time there back in high school. It's an awesome place with great restaurants and apparently a great museum. After all these years, I just discovered this place. Goes to show how attentive I am. 

The architecture of the building is imaginative and dynamic. A large portion is constructed with large windows and as I walked in, I was thrown into rooms that resembled the halls of a spaceship. The walls were slanted and colorful. But despite the beautiful physical aesthetics of MOMI, what I got out of it the most was sound, and how effective it can be to enliven a scene. 

Growing up and reading up on film, my understanding of it was that a movie is a story told in pictures. A screenplay is written with pictures and motion in mind, not sound.  And yet, I witnessed a very famous scene being butchered as different aspects of sound were stripped away. 

The scene in the Titanic that has all the passengers scrambling for their lives  has been seen by millions and people can often recall with great accuracy what happens in the scene. Few will elaborate on the specific sounds. And as sad as  that is, that's the beauty and function of sound in a film, I think. Nobody will notice that you blended in an elephant horn in there, but without it, the scene is not as effective and robust. These sounds hidden in the background play in the back our heads, in our subconscious. It puts us in the emotion that the director wants us to be in. In the case of the Titanic, a gun shot was used to force us in a "fight or flight" response. 

The other very interesting exhibit was the ADR booth that had us experimenting our voices into a scene from "Coming into America."I knew that actors had to reread or reenact their diologue in post production to get a clearer sound, but I had no idea how it was done. It's extremely difficult and demanding in that it requires the actor to put himself in the same emotion that he was in when he originally filmed the scene. It just adds another layer of appreciation I have for the craft. 

interview

https://soundcloud.com/edgar-ventura-10/sound-interview-lee-rogers

What I hear

I decided to walk by the park next to my home in Flushing, Queens. It's early in the morning but it's bustling with life and lots of noise. It's not the loud, evansive sounds in the city. The sound I experienced in the park is the kind that people look for in YouTube videos to achieve relaxation.

Relaxing music sleep 

Relaxing music study 

Rain sound for sleeping 

It's a chilly day and the wind is blowing. The leaves of the trees rustle. The smaller branches creak and twist so awakerdly that I thought they might break at any point.
The wind subsides  but it woke the creatures that sleep on the canopy.
I hear an orchestra of songs chirped by a number of birds.
The squirrels scratching on the bark
The dogs without a lease running all around the park. The owners yell out for them to return and the dogs react with bark after bark.
My footsteps become a dialogue between me and the environment.. Every footstep sounds different, depending on what I step.
When I walk on the pavement, the steps sound louder.  Ocassionally I might step on a twig.
When I walk on the grass, the sound is absorbed by the ground.
As I walk down the hill, I immediately hear the loud quaks of the ducks that circle around the pound. But they aren't loud enough to drown out the curses of the competitive tennis players. The tennis ball is hollow and as it gets hit by the racket it creates a noise that echoes across the park.
Just a few steps over, a couple of old buddies are playing bocce. The ball clash and bounce. I don't understand the game but I know it's not going well for one of them. The man grunts and bickers under his breath. 

Train ride

 Artist Statement

I believe that the images and words that we manipulate is an attempt to understand the events that revolve around us and the people that we come across. For a long time I have been fascinated by the psychology to understand the behavior of people, the reasons why some of us do certain things. It has been an obsession that has led me to research and explore the twisted minds of psychopaths, the mundane signs that influence our decision making, and how the cultivation of the seeds of childhood affect the plant in adulthood. 

I don't have any specific influences. I take anything and everything that I read and watch and try to form some kind of connection. 

My work revolves around the idea that we are all capable of doing anything given the right social conditions. Events shapes us, sometimes into completely different people. I deconstruct a character by understanding how he or she will react and act to experiences and events.