For our motion study film assignment we were to make a film using the minimum of 72 frames minimum and create a Motion Study Sequence.

For my motion study film I was originally doing a film in which I animated my friend Marcus juggling a soccer ball in front of a mural near my house.  However our times didn’t really match up in the end and due to time constraints I choose to focus on something else.  In this film I focus on a small altar made for my Nana who recently passed away.   Although my original plans for the film fell through I think the film turned out more meaningful and I’m proud of it.

This is the film I made for the FIlm Noir Assignment we were given. For the assignment we were asked to make a film that was shot in black & white and in a film noir style.  I named my film Work, and it stars my friend David Peletz.  In the film I follow David working hard in order to one day fulfill his dreams and ambitions.

My movies in google drive

This link has 3 of my videos (one is a rough cut of my documentary).

I Scream- A parody of film noir which follows the journey of a woman buying ice cream…naturally, drama ensues and the music simply intensifies the whole scene.

A Day in the Life- This is a stop motion I made of my daily life. I honestly just didn’t want to deal with scheduling other people, so I figured my subject would be me. The parts that last longer in the video are the parts that feel longer.

Cuba Documentary- I had the amazing opportunity to go to Cuba about a month ago and I managed to get voice recordings of my conversations with Cuban people about government and politics in both Cuba and the United States.

I really enjoyed our trips to the Castro Theatre because I always love the environment of being around people who all love the film as an art form. The first time we went was to watch a Noir film called the “The Dark Corner.” To me, the film didn’t seem to live very much up to my expectations and it plot seemed to be a little shallow. However, I did very much like the aesthetic of the entire film. Film Noir is a beast of its own, and its visual aesthetic using shadows, contrast, and scenery is an accomplishment in its own right.

Another face-to-face adventure I admired greatly was when we got to listen to fellow Aardman Animations co-founder Peter Lord. I really enjoyed listening to him talk about the success of Aardman and the task of working on big projects, such as Wallace and Gromit films or the recent Shaun the Sheep film. I was especially captivated when he began delving into what it means to have rhythm in a joke. He mentioned that if a joke’s timing is only one or two seconds off, the joke could lost all of its impact. This notion of timing seems to be extremely difficult to articulate and seems more instinctual than anything. When discussing timing, I can’t help but think of Tony Zhou’s (Every Frame a Painting) recent video on the Coen Brothers, talking about the timing of the shot-reverse-shot. Back to Aardman, the theatre gave a film compilation of Aardman’s works. It’s always a pleasure to watch Wallace and Gromit’s “The Wrong Trousers,” and it’s just as hilarious with each new viewing. The train chase scene will always be legendary whatever direction the film medium goes.

This is a sketch that I did for my blog post analyzing the film “Only Yesterday” by Isao Takahata. I wanted to do a sketch because 1. I wanted to something where I was drawing to respect the art form of hand-drawn animations and 2. I feel like a sketch appeals to the theme of “simpleness” that is evident in the film’s form. Moreover, I personally decided to do a sketch because I used to love sketching in the 5th grade and admittedly don’t do much of it anymore, and since the film is about reflecting on your 5th-grade life as an adult, I thought a sketch would be appropriate for me to do.

In terms of the sketch’s content, I decided to draw a teapot because I feel like drinking tea around a table or sharing meals is a common image in many Asian movies, as seen in the film I watched and this film’s tribute to the Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu. There’s something both meditative, nostalgic, and real about watching characters share tea on the movie screen. And watching these moments, I feel like I’m being given access into the “home” lives of the characters I’m watching on screen. So I drew this teapot to highlight all of my particular fondness and curiosity around the subject.

This was my motion picture film. I had a fairly difficult time trying to come up with an idea for my film. I was thinking that I wanted to be shooting a ball moving around and have someone then eat the ball, but I still didn’t feel that was enough for the film. Then, I watched a video of Murray Gell-Mann giving a talk to Google employees about creativity. He talked about how in every creative process lies an aspect of randomness and that in order to boost creative, one could simply take the last word in a random New York Times article everyday and think a little bit about that word. So I tried it out and ended up with “Trump.” I was a little skeptical of the concept initially since Trump is literally on every media outlet today. But then I realized that his presence in media did fit my “ball” theme of consumption. So I decided to shoot the movie combining the two ideas and ultimately play with editing to extract the themes of consumption and excess. Moreover, the title comes from the idea that we can tell our own stories. I think it relates to Trump’s presence in the media and how he can shape and manipulate his own narrative being told to others.

I really like this idea of combining two concept together and making something work out of it. I think I first heard this method from Charlie Kaufman talking about “Being John Malkovich.” He talked about how he had this idea of traveling inside a tube and being in someone’s head and this other idea of being John Malkovich, so he took these two ideas and mashed them together. I found this a really interesting and kind of random way of doing things, but I hope to use this creative process again in future projects.

I thought that our first face to face meet up for the Film Noir festival at the Castro theatre was really cool. It was pleasantly surprising to me to see how much of a film community we have in the Bay Area. I didn’t expect so many people to be at the theater but it was packed, and that was awesome considering that they were showing old movies that many of these people had already seen before. It was good to see that the movie theater culture is still alive despite modern technology which allows us to watch anything without ever leaving our homes. I also got to become more connected with the Castro theatre which was amazing and I am curious to see what other events they have coming up!

The other thing I thought was really unique was our trip to the Musee Mecanique. This was definitely a place that I would never have stumbled upon without this class. It was such an interesting and strange place, and had so many awesome antique games that I would never have been able to experience otherwise. I also really liked the Exploratorium. Even though I’ve already been there a few times, it is always so cool to go through the museum and find new things that I missed previous times. Then having our own private film festival there was awesome and inspiring. That was the first time that I saw such abstract and non-conforming methods of film and cinematography and I am so glad that I got to experience it. I’m eager to learn more about what other crazy but really cool kinds of filmmaking are out there that I have yet to discover.

This assignment was to create a motion study (animation) using a minimum of 72 frames. We studied Muybridge as well as old animation machines at the Musee Mecanique and the Exploratorium in order to get inspired for this film.

I decided to make this film about plastic soldiers that come alive. It was really difficult to shoot an entire film only using pictures, and I was surprised at how difficult that makes the editing as well. However, seeing the final outcome was really cool even if all that work only resulted in a minute or so of footage.

This was the first Bay Area Cinema Assignment that was assigned this semester. The assignment was to create a noir style inspired film and to also have it take a place at a particular Bay Area location that we are interested in. The film had to be black and white, less than 2 minutes, and feature a variety of unique shots.

I enjoyed making this film and ended up doing a color version as well. I went to the beach at sunset with my friend and tried to capture as much of the beauty of the landscape as possible. The story is fairly simple because I tried to focus to attention on the cinematography/visuals/audio.

The color version is the only one publicly accessible at the moment on Vimeo.