Essay 8

For this essay, the assignment was to select a film sequence and then analyze it using the concepts in the notes. I decided to select the trailer from the upcoming release, "The Hobbit".

The success of the previous three Lord of the Rings movies shows that the directing crew and editors are doing something right in the filming of this film, but here I will dissect the individual elements that make the new trailer so appealing.

Although there is a sample of the soundtrack in the trailer, there is also a preview of the dialogue. Since this is a very action packed movie, in order to clench the audience of the trailer and heighten anticipation for the movie, there is a lot of the fast paced action and dialogue shown.

The variety in camera movements of these action scenes helps add to the excited mood of the trailer. The director of the movie and the editor of the trailer chose a very nice variety of change in both orientation and position. Of all the camera movement types listed in the notes, all seem to be used. One of the strong aspects of these films is the scenery and all the different locations of filming (or computer generated landscapes). There is a large portion of this trailer where the camera pans across long landscapes. Many of the most groundbreaking scenes used in the trailer are where a character is saying something pivotal to the plot and the camera motion uses a lot of dolly, tracking, and crane motions to create the various moods of what is being said whether the focus of the shot is on the speaker or the character(s) that are reacting.

Because this is a trailer, there is a lot of editing, cutting, and compression between the shots in order to make the trailer as "short and sweet" as possible. It would be an extremely boring trailer if there were long scenes of casual chatting or walking from point A to point B. The distances and gaps between the clips leaves it up to the imagination what will happen next until the viewer goes to see the film! As far as expansion goes though, it is not used here in this trailer because once again, it would make the trailer much too long and boring.

I find that this trailer captures the audience's attentions fabulously and the variety in the shots and subjects creates the perfect mix to create anticipation for this film and I would not make any changes.

Trailer -->  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTSoD4BBCJc

Essay 9

My chosen visualization topic of interest is color. Ever since I can remember, color has always been my favorite element of design. I've been told that I've been color coordinating items since I was little. My mother told me that I used to color coordinate my pegs and other childish toys that I was given. Even now, my closet is color coordinated to a ridiculous degree. A favorite past time of mine several years ago was to scavenge through magazines and clip as many colors as I could and then paste them all together and try my absolute hardest to create a perfect color spectrum. It wasn't as difficult as it might seem to some people because I've always had a strangely keen understanding of color and how different colors work together or don't on a visual level.

One of the things about color that fascinates me the most is how it is used to convey anything. Without color, nothing would exist in my opinion. Color is the sky and the grass, the books we read and the clothes we wear. It gives shape and size through contrast and tints and shades.

Most importantly, it is used to convey emotions. The fact that the subconscious mind takes the color red and turns it into anger absolutely blows me away. It seems so many people don't take that into account when doing things like selecting their clothing or the paint for their living room. In this case, the color red is not just a favorite color that people choose to plaster on their walls, it is the emotion they want to convey to their guests and how they want to feel on a permanent basis. I am amazed at how certain ones like light blue or pastels can immediately be calming.

Another thing that I find awesome is how as a society, specific colors have come to have a certain association and iconology. An example could be purple which often refers to royalty and high society. Or green which can relate to nature or money but could not be associated with poverty as the color grey or brown could.

Scientifically, one of the most impressive things about color is simply how it works. I love how the color we see is actually the result of an extremely complicated process based on the lighting and the material and what is rejected versus accepted based on the current standards.

Overall, I find color absolutely fascinating and I feel that design and the world as we know it would all cease to exist with out it.

Essay 7

This image is a rendered, unsurfaced, and untextured model of a pair of lungs and the trachea that i modeled two years ago.

The lungs began as a simple cube. Let's assume the left one was modeled first. If my memory serves correctly, a mirror modifier was placed on a single one along the y-axis. The mesh of the cube was then carefully changed. The top left corners would have been lowered to almost the mid point of the entire cube and then the vertices touching that corner were lowed and lined up accordingly. All of the edges along the top were also moved into a smoothed position to help form the slide of the lungs.

This same technique was used on the rest of the general shapes of the lungs to form the bean shape.

The interior of the lungs where they begin to connect with the trachea weren't as simple. There weren't many edges available to form into the dipped shape (it's there I promise, just difficult to see). I ended up having to create more edge loops in order to have the necessary pieces to create the dip.

Once I felt like the single left lung was modeled to perfection, I turned off or applied the modifier and made a copy of the lung. Once I had the copy in the correct position, I had to make some minor edits to it so that it wasn't backwards.

Once i was satisfied with the lungs, it was time for the trachea. The trachea is a tube with a lot of added edge loops in order to make it ribbed. The ribbing didn't take too long, but I was very picky about the spacing between the ribs.

After I felt like the lungs and the trachea were modeled to the best of my abilities, I unselected it all and added a sub surf modifier. This smoothed everything out and made it all very complete looking.

From this point, if there was anything that I felt looked awkward, I simply reentered edit mode and continued to model it until I liked it.