Final Blog

This is a compilation of the edited footage that I had gotten from the interview with Mrs. Arlene Otis. It was quite the experience. The clips I chose to be in the final video were comments that I thought stood out the most. Thanks JPNA and especially Mr. Lewis for setting us up with these interviews.

TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES!!!

I do not any of my final edited footage up on my page due to some formatting issue that occurred and youtube not being so nice. It will be posted as soon as everything is corrected!

Final Artist Statement

The individual project is the documentation of what changes the JPNA area has gone through and what it is gearing towards through the interview with Mrs. Arlene Otis. I began to gather information about JPNA on the internet and also the packet that Professor Greene had handed out to my class at the beginning of the semester. The packet gave me an understanding of what and where JPNA originated from. Through my group project, interviewing long standing residences, I was only able to attend one interview. The interview was with Mrs. Arlene Otis. This interview was the first of four interviews that were lined up for us through Mr. George Lewis. Mr. Lewis is an active member of JPNA. All present at this interview were Joseph Brady, Niraj Keshvala, Professor Greene, and I representing FILM150. The interview was conducted at Mrs. Otis’ home. The interview lasted for forty minutes.

As I sat there watching the footage, I was trying to get the key points of the interview. There were many comments she had said that stood out to me. She spoke about the changes in the neighborhood and how she had decided to stay in the neighborhood. She was one of the citizens that stood up and fought for their community. She was not going to let anyone intimidate her or take advantage of her.

Editing is one of the most tedious tasks I have encountered with this project. It took me longer to get an eight second clip than just playing the whole interview. I used Windows Movie Maker to do the editing. I have never used anything with film before this project. I used the camcorder on vacations, but I have never done anything on this caliber before. I used my own camcorder for the interview. Using an editing program, I had to upload the footage on to a computer in order to do anything with it. The camcorder was the same version that we can check out from the media room at school but just older. It had all the wiring that I supposedly need to get started. Hooking up the camera to the computer was the easy part. It seemed easy enough until the computer kept on prompting me to download the required drivers for the camera. Getting frustrated, I got on to Sony.com and chatted to a technical support representative. He was very helpful and told me that I needed an IEEE cable in order to get my footage onto the computer. After I purchased the fire wire, it was smooth sailing after that. That was probably the easiest step in the whole project. The rest of process was pretty challenging. Editing was a whole different ball game in itself. It takes lots of patience and repetitive steps. Editing helps make a clip look more attractive. It also helps with weird transitions in conversations a lot smoother. Sometimes written texts are better than hearing questions asked from the interviewer. Editing is a game of the process of elimination. Not only did I edit footage of the interview, I also edited music with this project. This process was a bit easier than editing footage. I was getting better with the editing process so the music part was not too bad. I had to play with the volume control, fade out, and time frame of the music I wanted to work with.

Service learning was an interesting component in FILM150. I was not sure where this was going to tie the general topics together, but as I sat down looking at the different things I was doing it made sense. The multicultural component was the service learning and gave me opportunities to go somewhere different. With the different things I have obtained from the area, I got to use it towards my final project. The film part was the usage of both my digital camera and camcorder for this course. This is the first time I have really used these two items to its full potential.

Thoughts of Blogging

I have never blogged a day in my life until I enrolled into FILM 150. There are a lot of "first"s with this class.

For the first time I:

-uploaded footage on my camera onto my comp.
-editing footage. It did not make me into an aspiring director, but it makes me want to definitely want to use my camera for many memorable moments with friends and family.
-used photoshop. I plan on playing with this software a tad bit more.
-blogged!
-youtube! I added some footage on the internet. It did not inspire me to do any daily podcasts or anything.

New experiences opens many more doors. 

ARTIST STATEMENT

I started the essay with where I first started my walk in Lindsay Heights. I started from Johnhsons Park and walked about the park. Then, I proceeded through the rest of the neighborhood. Walking up and down the streets, the houses did not look any different from one another. Each row of homes had both old and new. Some of the homes are older but it seems as though there are some efforts with some renovating. The busier streets are lined with businesses. I ended the essay with pictures of the houses to show that even though Lindsay Heights is in the city, there is a quiet and tranquility quality to the neighborhood.

Walking through the neighborhood, its does not like a neighborhood in the “city”. Instead, it looks more like one of the suburbs in the Milwaukee metropolitan area. It has a big sense of community. I met a couple of people that were on two different spectrums on two separate trips, but it seems as though that they knew the people that drove or walked pass them. The expressions on the residences face as they talk about the positive changes in the neighborhood are just priceless. It is something to brag about from where it was to what it is now. The “fore fathers” of this initiative can reap some reward from all of their hard work.

It was a nice sunny afternoon that I was able to go out to the Lindsay Heights area. As I was snapping random pictures, I noticed that some of the pictures were darker than one another.
The positioning of the camera made a world of a difference with the outcome of the shot. I had to take my hand and shield the sunlight in some shots. Lighting is a vital component to photography. It makes the photograph. Taking a picture straight on is not always the best shot for the intended subject or subjects. Angles may simply give photographs more character with just a tilt of a camera.

I have always like looking at photographs and taking them. Even though we do not to get to experiment with all of the different tools out there dealing with media in FILM 150, with the few we have touched upon, it has sparked an interest that I would like to look more into. This project made me do something I have never done before. I did something out of the norm, but it was also a positive note.

Around Lindsay Heights

Final Project

The saying “the older you get, the more wisdom you obtain” is very fitting. The long standing residents in Lindsay Heights area have seen many changes in their lives. Their insight and stories on the history of the area could be very encouraging to other communities that want to steer their own in a positive direction as these residents here. The Lindsay Heights area is the root of many people’s lives. By documenting and interviewing the current residents, the former residents might want to reconnect with their past. The documenting might enable people who thought about moving back “home” to keep it on the top of the desirable neighborhoods.

The American Way

It is often heard that “a picture can say a thousand words”. The first photographs known to man can project the same numbers of words regardless of its time frame. Images can have a different affect from one person to another. At first glance an apple is just an apple, but as the observer may dissect the imagery it may unveil a can of worms.

In the photograph, RECEIVING DOLLS DONATED BY THE AMERICAN FRIENDS SOCIETY, by TOYO MIYATKE, 1943), denotatively it is just an image of little girls holding baby dolls that were given to them. The setting of the picture seems as though they are standing in a room that looks like a classroom. The girls are of Asian decent. The girls are not in traditional garments but in “American” attire. The girls are looking down at the doll as though they are enthralled of their new toy. Some of them have their head slightly tilted, giving it an endearing, tender, or soft look. One of the girls, third from the left, is studying the features of her doll. Her face seems like it has a quizzical look on her face from the angle. There is a single boy standing on the right side of the image.

AT THE TIME OF THE LOUISVILLE FLOOD, (by MARGARET BOURKE-WHITE,1937), there is a line of people holding bags, buckets, and baskets. They are standing in front of a billboard that says, “THE WORLD’S HIGHEST STANDARD OF LIVING” and “THERE’S NO WAY LIKE THE AMERICAN WAY”. Some of the people in line are in tattered clothing. There is a lady that is looking directly at the camera. She looks very tired and weathered. The setting of this shot seems as though they are waiting in line for some type of assistances outside of a store of some sort. There is an electrical line that is at the top right corner of the picture. It may imply that the setting is in the city. At the left side of the picture there is a couple of people that may look like a couple adolescents.

The images that I chose speak together in unison of the irony of “the American way”. The girls are holding dolls that are “white” dolls. Do those dolls depict the American image? Their skin color is not quite the same as the dolls. The girl with the quizzical look may have thoughts running through her mind of the “American” image. “We got such good, fantastic stories to tell. All our stories are different.“, is a quote from a Japanese lady urging Asian Americans to know their roots . The time period of the picture and the quote is a good connection of the two. At the time of the picture being taken, Japanese American citizens were being sent to internment camps. These words could reflect positively for the young girls in the picture holding the “white” dolls to not let go of their ancestry teachings regardless of what they are proposed. THE WORLD’S HIGHEST STANDARD OF LIVING”, those Americans standing in front of the billboard are starving and in need of assistance and some of them are in tattered clothing. “THERE’S NO WAY LIKE THE AMERICAN WAY”, the figures in the ad is of a “white” family driving a car having a merry ole time, as where the citizens below are in troubled times. The date on the picture implies that it was taken during the Great Depression. During that time frame “the black leaders and intellectuals declared disappointment in the Roosevelt administration: “The Negro worker has good reason to feel that his government has betrayed him under the New Deal.” . The people in that line were probably the product of the National Recovery Administration.

Imagery is strong when it is used with the right context. An image is everlasting. It has the power to persuade and call to the masses. These images exude the same irony even though they are not taken at the same time.