Avengers: Endgame (Contains Spoiler)

I want to talk about Marvel's latest movie Avengers: Endgame. I am a true fan of Marvel and DC comics and I have been watching the cartoons and movies related to comics since my childhood. Marvel created a beautiful universe in time. Of course, I am talking about the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In Avengers movies, they spent lots of money and they accomplished beautiful works but I do not think the last one is worth for 15th place on IMDB's top 250 movies. I think the previous Avengers movie Infinity War was better than the last one. The soundtracks of the Infinity War was astonishing. Last one might be better I think. I really afraid of Captain Marvel will come and save the day. But that never happened luckily. Death of Tony Stark was very emotional and I think that was the strongest part of the movie. Hawkeye and Black Widow's sacrifices was a nice twist. I did not know which one will spare their life. Overall, It was nice but a little overrated for me.

Billie Eilish as a Contrast

I want to talk about Billie Eilish. She is a young and beautiful singer. I can easily say that she is using contrast everywhere. Not only her music videos but also her daily life contains pieces of contrasts. For instance her facial expressions. Everyone can say that she has a beautiful face because she is really beautiful. But in pictures, she always has that boring face which creates a contrast from her beauty.

She also has lots of unexpected and weird music videos which I like. I think It is quite nice to watch them when I consider visual art. She is creative and doing that kind of things at that age is showing that she is very talented.

Legion Episode 1

We watched Legions first episode and I want to explain a little. Firstly, I already watched Legion before and watching It second time was nice to remember the things I forgot and It gave me another perspective while watching. Legion is based on twists and contrasts. Director uses these two features very well through the episodes. Sometimes your brain hurts while you trying to understand. It is hard to tell whether we are seeing things through David's perspective or not. The usage of colour is perfectly designed for showing the mood of David and other people. Also, the environment well designed for understanding the TV series deeply. There are lots of unexpected scenes such as stuck in a wall. It was a nice episode and the rest of the series is also good.

Lıghting Workshop

Light is everything. In order to get an image for photography or movie, first, we have to know how to use the light. We saw various scenes from movies and animations to get an idea about light. To sustain a light which does not look abnormal to the audience, we have to set up the places of lights wisely. Light has lots of purposes. We can provide various emotions with the help of the light. We learned 3 point lighting and almost every scene or image use this type of lighting. We created 4 photographs using the light which contain 3 point lighting, horror, cheerfulness and suspense. First, we took the suspense one. We put the light just behind the subject and put a reflector in front of it. Because of the colour of the reflector which is white, our subject created a high contrast on top of the white background and become a black silhouette. After that, we did the horror one. Again we used one light but we lowered its height in order to give a campfire feeling. We also used the low key technique to give a dramatic feeling with high contrast, highlighted parts and darkened parts. Then we set the light with 3 point lighting and took two photographs. We change the subject’s facial

expression to a more cheerful image. In the future, we are going to use what we learned about light for creating moving images and we will take better photographs.

Photo Movie

For this week, we tried to create a short movie using just black and white photographs. In order to create it perfectly, first, I and my groupmate start thinking the script. We decided on a script based on cheating. Then, we sketched on a piece of paper to visualize some of the scenes. I believe that in order to accomplish that kind of movie, visuals must be more dramatic than normal. There are some ways to make photographs more dramatic. The most important one is using the light properly. We tried to take photographs which emphasize the low key technique. Low key is basically referred to as a style of photography that utilizes predominantly dark tones to create a dramatic looking image. Where high key lighting seeks to over light the subject to the point of reduced contrast, low key lighting intensifies the contrast in an image through intensely reduced lighting. So, we tried to place the lights in order to create those kinds of effects. We also used over the shoulder shot to give a better visual to emphasize conversation between two people. Another thing that we pointed is using the negative spaces in the frames wisely and economically. We put two stories behind just a single photograph. For instance, while the man bringing the drinks, we placed the girl on the right side to give the feeling that she is waiting for him next to the table. The last thing we tried to accomplish is showing the details with close-ups to the audience for having a catchy feeling. We also used some symbolic scenes. One is changing the focus of the same photograph in the end with the ring.  Finally, we believe that with all of these, the movie gives its message to the audience clearly. Of course, it will have mistakes but, I think we applied what we learned into the movie.

French Movie

The movie we watched in the class, basically shows that how single shots can be use for telling stories. Every photo exist for a particular reason and this makes the movie more efficient. Shots are telling so much things and with this, audience has become directed by the photographs to understand the movie. It was an old movie and It was nice to see cinematography in movie before technological enhancements.

Fatboy Slim - Praise You Music Video, Directed by Spike Jones

To be honest, Fatboy Slim’s music video “Praise You” directed by Spike Jones was definitely overrated. For its era, it may seem as mocking to other music videos and its kind of a parody of general ideas of the music videos created in that era. When I dig down on the internet, I realized that “Praise You” had some awards at 1999’s MTV Video Music Awards such as Best Direction, Breakthrough, and Best Choreography. I believe that if a music video which is not choreographic, awarded for best choreography, it creates a sense of irony. I think the reason behind it might be the first example of the flash mob which is this music video. People did not see anything like this before so that, the interest and awards might come because of this. I am judging this video with the understanding of 2019. That is why it looks ridiculous for my point of view. It is like Jackson Pollock’s paintings for me. People call that art but I believe that It is just random colour splashes which are based on personal stories for explaining the understanding of the painting. Spike Jones might accomplish something new while creating this music video using the method of making fun of his era’s other works but still I think this is just a music video which contains random dancers leading by one man and some meaningless dance moves. If this was the point, I get it as an innovation for this era, otherwise, it has no point for me.

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