Relationship Between Shots

Blog #3

Wong Fu Productions has become known as clean and emotional. They make short films on YouTube. Actually that is an understatement. They make emotional rollercoasters that you as the audience do not know you are riding until you hit the drop. I have always admired there work and there editing everything is clean and extremely organized. Getting all the shots is one thing, but the painstaking artistry comes through editing.

One short from Wong Fu that I love is These Four Walls. The main character is a paper pinwheel. Yes, a paper pinwheel. From the very first shot you see a wonderful pan from the title to a window, which fades to a pan of a different room. Right from that shot the title rang through my head “These four walls” I felt the four walls I felt the obstacle. Then another fade closer to this little pot. And something wonderful happens, it grows! The Pinwheel grows out the like a seedling. The entire sequence of shots following seems like a time-lapse video of plants growing. When you watch a time-lapse video of plants growing there is a slight shake to the video and the plants, it almost feels like the plant is struggling to grow but against all elements it defies gravity and grows upward. So is this Pinwheel. Throughout all of these shots there is a very pleasant piano playing in the background. The piano sets the mood. When watching this I don’t feel sad or mad, but this pairing of a growing pinwheel, and the piano music makes me feel inspired. Really a great pairing for the overall feel of this short.

 This pinwheel travels. It travels to see landmarks and landscapes. You can tell that the pinwheel travels for the camera movement in each shot and then the cut back to the pinwheel. All of the shots that shows the pinwheel’s point of view mimics the human eye movement. The some of the shots in this film are slightly shaky, I think this makes the pinwheel alive. We can look at something and it seems stationary, but it is not the blood is always gushing through our veins, and our heads are always in motion trying the take in every visual aspect of our environment. There is always slight movement, something that tells us we are alive. In the case of this film, so is this pinwheel.  Overall every editing choice from the color to the shots is always executed for purpose.

Droplets and Mush

As I walked out of my front door I can hear little thuds, little footsteps that belong to Lux.
She is sending me off. Normally I have my earbuds in my ears with trance blasting as loud as my ears can take it.

But this time it was different, I HAD to listen. I have always known about the sounds in my quite suburban neighborhood. I have always choose to ignore them and drown all the sounds with whatever Spotify chooses to play. For this assignment I have chosen to open up my ears during my whole commute to Hunter. When I left my front door I saw my cat meet my at my front door but this time I heard her little paw-steps reach the doorway before I saw her. It I crunched into my boots and said my goodbyes to my dear Lux until tonight. I know she doesn’t understand me but I would like to think on some level she understands does. My walk from my house to the nearest MTA bus is about 20 minutes. During my walk I closed my eyes hoping I don’t trip into a puddle on this wet day. The first sound I noticed was the sound of rain drops on my umbrella, it was crisp and soft at the same time. I loved it. The little droplets were all different, each a different size and each making a distinct sound. Some were light and some were heavy as if it was glad its journey was finally over. Next I came across this patch of sidewalk that had not been cleaned in, probably ever. Everyone knows the sound that dried leave make but what about when they are wet? Mushy? Soggy? YES. Very mush and very soggy, it felt like I was walking through a swamp, and it sounds like a wet rag being smacked on a wall. Once that mess was through and I reach some cleaner sidewalk, I had to stop and check the bottom of my shoes.
I finally reached the bus stop everything looked grey and the wind had started to blow. It was getting really chilly and you can see that in all the faces of everyone waiting. I always stand under a thin tree by the bus stop. Usually it is because I want to get out of the sun, but since spring had not blessed the tree with leaves, it’s just a little bare tree. The wind was blowing the branches and knocking them into the bus stop sign. It was a light “clang” one that I would have never noticed if I was standing under the tree. If I was in my normal earbud induced privacy I would never heard this. “Since when was this tree so close to that sign?” I thought to myself. And then the logic in my head screaming at my, trees grow, branches get longer; eventually it had to reach the sign!
There is so much that i just pass by and never give a second thought. After this whole walk I remembered how much I used to love running in the rain. I was the one weird kid on my track team that enjoyed running in the rain. As long as there was no thunder I was always delighted. Since my years out of High School I had really forgot about the little delights I used to love so much. 

breathe. from Stephanie Zhang on Vimeo.

Artist Statment

I am a travel deprived Asian-American girl, well that’s what my one of my friends described me as. Ever since I could remember I have always yearned to travel. The need to see the world stemmed CSI Miami. This show depicted a tropical paradise that was riddled with crime and it touched the deepest parts of my curiosity. My curiosity grew and soon turned to love. Every breathing moment that wasn’t spent in school, I had spent watching every crime show that grazed my sad little public TV box. I had used these crime shows to take me around the world.Thank god for streaming nowadays.

Do you feel something special when you listen to your favorite music artist? How about when watching your favorite TV show? There is an emotional attachment that we make with art. For me that emotional bond is with characters in TV shows and with a DJ's choice in beat. When characters in a show perish, my heart aches, "Why is that?" I wondered. What causes this physical-emotional response for a fictional character? Ever since I started catching all these feelings for people that could never exist outside of a TV screen I have wondered about these questions.

I took my first film class in high school taught by my favorite English teacher, Mr. Daszenski. That is where I was first exposed to film as a profession, as an art form, and as a science. These shows were no longer a string of perfectly narrated episodes that I watched on television each night. I realized each detailed cut from scene to scene was a choice, and was made for extracting an exact response from the audience. That is what I want to achieve, at least that is what I hope to achieve one day. I want to create stories that leave the audience hanging on for just one more episode. And for that wanderlust that still yearns to travel; I want to bring the world to those who are not fortune enough to travel and see with it their own eyes.

~ Stephanie Z.