Superheros

Superpowers

Listen to the first 20 minutes of This American Life.

If I could have any superpower I would choose the super speed.  In the video below you receive an audio presentation of how and why I selected my super hero, along with a picture of him or her.

Video Jokes

We were asked to prepare two video pieces based on a chosen joke.  Below is the joke we selected and our interpretations.


A few days after Christmas, a mother was working in the kitchen listening to her young son playing with his new electric train in the living room. She heard the train stop and her son said, "All of you sons of bitches who want off, get the hell off now, cause this is the last stop! And all of you sons of bitches who are getting on, get your asses in the train, cause we're going down the tracks."

The mother went nuts and told her son, "We don't use that kind of language in this house. Now I want you to go to your room and you are to stay there for TWO HOURS. When you come out, you may play with your train, but I want you to use nice language."

Two hours later, the son comes out of the bedroom and resumes playing with his train. Soon the train stopped and the mother heard her son say, "All passengers who are disembarking from the train, please remember to take all of your belongings with you. We thank you for riding with us today and hope your trip was a pleasant one. We hope you will ride with us again soon." She hears the little boy continue, "For those of you just boarding, we ask you to stow all of your hand luggage under your seat. Remember, there is no smoking on the train. We hope you will have a pleasant and relaxing journey with us today."

As the mother began to smile, the child added, "For those of you who are pissed off about the TWO HOUR delay, please see the bitch in the kitchen."

In the first video we recorded the audio after the filming of the video.  Specific cuts, positioning and framing were made to ensure the characters' lips were not visable during their dialogue.  It also portrays internal conflict through the parent's beginning portion when the viewer hears his thoughts.  An interesting fact about this video is the voices for the two characters were performed by each other, as in the father's voice is used for the child and the child's voice is used for the father.  The father's facial expressions created subtext to how the audience should feel and virtual lines were created by the line of the dad's gaze constantly looking at his son.  Lines were also created by the time out corner which formed a box around the child.  Shape was incorporated in the contrast of the father's square face and hat with the boy's round face.  The movement in this video is not as easy to notice as some of the other techniques.  It is established by the son appearing on the left side of his father when he uses bad language to show he is on his dad's "bad side".  But after his time out he moved to the right side metaphorically moving to the "good side".

In the second video we took a silent film approach.  This totally eliminated the dialogue they share because it appears as text.  Because of this we decided to make the characters' movements very animated and wild to make the video more attention getting.  When we framed the characters we wanted to always make the parent seem larger which showed the importance of her.  In contrast, the boy always appeared on his knees to make him smaller, and also featured camera angles looking down on him.  The rhythm of the video has a quick tempo, because without the audio it seemed monotones and boring.  We added music which helped add to the rhythm also by giving the audience something to listen to during the piece.  We manipulated the space by giving an illusion of multiple rooms. In the video there is a kitchen, a family room, a reading room and an entrance to the boy's bedroom.  I feel that we did a good job considering our location was the entrance to a classroom. 

These videos have affinity in the fact they are both about the same subject and both filmed on terrible cameras, also they both portray the adult as more powerful than the child.  Videos one and two contrast in ways also; depicted in the genre, filming techniques, audio placement and many more.