Submitted by Jen Kling on Monday, May 8, 2006 - 01:05

final portfolio

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Annotated Playlist: Journey Playlist
I really enjoyed making my playlist, as it was a chance to work with music. I’ve loved music ever since I was little, but I’ve never felt able to work in the medium, so it was really neat to get a chance to (in a small way) act as a composer. Figuring out how to physically post the playlist was a bit tough for me, as it was our first assignment and I didn’t quite understand the idea of our class blog just yet. But I really had fun creating my playlist, even though I felt spoiled for choice most of the time. There’s just so much great music out there, and it’s impossible to know what you’re missing most of the time. On that note, I am beginning to think that music has maybe taken over as the dominant creative form of communication in our culture. It seems to me that it used to be novels, short stories, and poetry that acted as the primary forms of creative communication, but now I think music is fulfilling that role.

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Submitted by Jen Kling on Friday, May 5, 2006 - 04:47

video collage

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Here's my video collage, The Written Word.

With this collage, I'm trying to say something about the influence that the written word has had on history. Books have been, up until recently, the place where humankind has stored all of the knowledge that it's gained over the centuries. Without books, we wouldn't have any history, any sense of how people on the other side of the world live, any idea that there is a common, collective experience called living. Also, though, writing is how we communicate--we send and receive letters, we learn and teach by reading and writing, we express our most true experiences via the written word. But all too often, I think people lose sight of how much the written word acts and has acted as a shaper and influencer, not only of culture, but of humanity. To try to bring out that connection, I paired pictures and videos having to do with the written word with Billy Joel's song "We Didn't Start the Fire," a song that is all about having an awareness of what has and is shaping (mostly western) culture. I attempted also to, after a fashion, give my video a chronological order; I wanted the viewer to understand that the written word had an origin, grew to encompass the world, and now is slowly being replaced by computer technology. That's why, for my credits song, I chose "Video Killed the Radio Star," sung by the UNC Clefhangers. The song is about the end of an era, and, in a way, I think that with the advent of computers, our generation may be seeing the end of the era of books, of paper and ink. So I also tried to mark this ending with my collage. Ultimately, I just wanted to celebrate books and the written word and point out how crucial they have been in the creation of this common idea that we have of humanity.

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Submitted by Jen Kling on Friday, April 28, 2006 - 03:25

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Hey everyone, if you haven't already, I just wanted to encourage you to stop by the Art Gallery in the Union and see the exhibit there--it's called PostSecret, by Frank Warren. It's a really cool exhibit, and it's only part of a larger conceptual art project that's been ongoing for some time now. Frank put stamped postcards in aynonymous places-airports, book stores, etc.-with instructions written on them. The instructions are to write a secret on the postcard, something you've never told anyone else, and then mail it back to Frank, aynonymously. Then, he posted the cards he received on a website, PostSecret.

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Submitted by Jen Kling on Saturday, April 22, 2006 - 21:18

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Ok, i've got these video clips that i need, but they're .mov files, which apparently windows movie maker doesn't like to import. so i need to make them into .avi files. so if anyone has a program that will do that, or knows how to, that would be incredibly helpful. thanks!

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Submitted by Jen Kling on Thursday, April 20, 2006 - 04:16

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Well, ladies and gents, today i had my first ever run-in with iMovie, and let me tell you, it was quite a doozy. I trotted over to the MRC, all excited to begin finding clips for my final project (which, btw, is going to be the history of the book, i've decided), and to begin, the lab attendant was out, so no one could help me. ah well, i thought, this will give me time to do some reading for other classes! so i read for awhile. upon spying the return of the lab attendant, i marched up to him and asked for help--it was then i discovered one needs an appointment to work on the computers in the MRC.

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Submitted by Jen Kling on Thursday, April 13, 2006 - 03:05

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I was just brainstorming for my final project, and I've come up with a few ideas I wanted to run by people. Btw, i'm really excited about this project, i think it's going to be a ton of fun. a huge headache, of course, but well worth doing. ::grin:: also, i had a random thought today...so i know you can only use around a 30 second snippet of a song, but what if you broke up the whole song into 30-second snippets, and then played all the snippets in a row, with a miniscule pause between them? would you still be breaking copyright laws? b/c technically you're not playing more than 30 seconds of the song at a time. i'm sure no court would actually buy it, but i thought it was an interesting idea. anyhow, on to my ideas for the final project...

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Submitted by Jen Kling on Monday, April 10, 2006 - 06:34

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so, i've been working on my film paper for the last few hours, and while i feel like i've given it my best shot, i had a lot of trouble with the prompt. mainly, i thought it was a lot to ask out of a "4 or more" page paper, especially when we probably needed to talk about at least two scenes from each movie in detail, and then talk not only about the technical aspect, but also the style and themes running through each. i can understand the first part of the prompt, though--it just made me nervous because i thought i was going to have a hard time because i have no training whatsoever in writing about movies, and these seemed like some very in-depth questions to start. but it was interesting figuring out how to answer them, and on the whole i enjoyed writing the paper. still, i had some problems with it.

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Submitted by Jen Kling on Wednesday, April 5, 2006 - 21:30

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For starters, let me say that I'm not really into the whole online video craze, so for me, doing this assignment was fairly annoying, since I don't really have the patience to sit there while my computer loads these videos. However, I was pleasantly surprised at some of the stuff I found--there were ones that were quite intelligent, I thought, that really, far from representing the dumbing-down of American culture, in fact represented American culture's growing awareness of itself.

To begin, please watch this film: David Belle-Insane Stunts. This is actually a short from a French movie--however, the important thing is that it's a video of David Belle, one of two men who invented the sport of Parkour. Parkour is sort of like free-style walking, but much more athletic. Instead of just jumping from place to place and occasionally hitting a wall, the person is supposed to actually flip from place to place; naturally, this can lead to some quite dangerous stunts. Parkour is originally french; however, it's recently begun to become popular, or at least more recognized, in the United States. This isn't one of my videos: I just wanted y'all to have an idea of what Parkour actually is, b/c it makes my next two videos much easier to understand.

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Submitted by Jen Kling on Monday, April 3, 2006 - 17:17

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For our filmmaking technique assignment, I decided to research a technique known as the point-of-view shot, or pov shot. A pov shot is exactly what it sounds like: it's a shot taken from a certain character's point of view. Normally, a pov shot is established by three actual shots: first, there's a shot of the character looking at something, then a shot of what he/she is looking at, and finally a shot of the character again, reacting to what he/she has seen. Now, according to my research, the important thing in pov shots is the angles--after you show the character looking at something, when what he/she is looking at is pictured, the angle has to be correct, so that it seems that the audience is actually looking through the character's eyes at the object that he/she is looking at. Preferably, then, the third shot, of the character reacting to what he/she has seen, is at the same angle as the first shot, to maintain continuity. So that's what a pov shot actually is; while it technically consists of three shots, that sequence whereby the audience is put behind the character's eyes for a period of time is known as a pov shot.

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Submitted by Jen Kling on Tuesday, March 28, 2006 - 06:00

final portfolio

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Annotated Playlist: Journey Playlist
I really enjoyed making my playlist, as it was a chance to work with music. I’ve loved music ever since I was little, but I’ve never felt able to work in the medium, so it was really neat to get a chance to (in a small way) act as a composer. Figuring out how to physically post the playlist was a bit tough for me, as it was our first assignment and I didn’t quite understand the idea of our class blog just yet. But I really had fun creating my playlist, even though I felt spoiled for choice most of the time. There’s just so much great music out there, and it’s impossible to know what you’re missing most of the time. On that note, I am beginning to think that music has maybe taken over as the dominant creative form of communication in our culture. It seems to me that it used to be novels, short stories, and poetry that acted as the primary forms of creative communication, but now I think music is fulfilling that role.

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