Sequence, scene and shots

Here’s my understanding of these terms..

A sequence is any meaningful unit in a film.  It is mostly a collection of scenes and/or shots but depends more on how it adheres to each other in terms of meaning.

A scene is any continuous event captured by the camera and happens in the same setting/ location/place. It might also be a montage as long as it is  perceptually continuous and occurring in the same place.

A shot is more related to the editing and is defined by where the film is cut.  In other words it’s a frame or sequence of frames in between each edit.

I think that a scene by itself can be a sequence, especially in terms of the sequential occurring of shots and if it qualifies in terms of being a single unit.  Yet, I also find that there are two major distinctions
a) a scene always appear in a single setting/place whereas a  sequence can have more than one setting.
b) a sequence will always have the quality of wholeness whereas  a scene need not necessarily have this wholeness as much as it can contribute to one.

Is my interpretation correct? I still feel fuzzy about this.  Please share your thoughts.

link from sequence analysis to task analysis

Thanks Yujia for finding the link in her last post. Today, when I was reminded of task analysis(TA) by sequence analysis(SA), I knew there are some similarities, but also some difference, but I could not articulate at that time. This paragraph from Jeff’s post helps me think,

“But whereas task analysis if often used as a means to measure efficiency to ascertain usability, sequence analysis in film is used to gain insight into the objective basis of a subjective phenomenon: the experience of a film.”

Here is a definition of task analysis from Dan Saffer’s book, Designing for Interaction,

“A task analysis is a raw list of activities that the final design will have to support.”

“[it] is especially useful later in the design process as a check to see whether the design supports all the tasks required. … the designer can make sure the design meets all the requirements.”

From Jeff’s analysis about the SA, I got the sense that it is to make the invisible visible, and the unconscious conscious by seeing the break down of a sequence from the film, and find out and analyze what exactly shape the experience. While TA is about logic, exploring all possibilities of an interaction. The purposes are different.

However if going further, by laying the two out, I can see the possible connection here. If TA could also be used to analyze the sequence of interaction, instead of just examining whether something is missing, but also exposing the elements that consist of the design, we could also make the invisible visible, in terms of finding out how they affect the user experience. Any thoughts?

Ha, it seems that I should explore Jeff’s old posts as supplementary class readings.

Jeff’s blog post about sequence analysis and task analysis

http://interactionculture.wordpress.com/2007/12/23/sequence-analysis-film-and-task-analysis-interaction-design/

Reflective Interface Qualities

While reading about reflective qualities of the interface, it made me think of not only The Reflective Practitioner, but the way it was conveyed seemed to me that this type of interface quality is not only to strike a conversation with the artifact, but also to make us think and ask questions of the world around us (and the examples of net art and digital art presented were pretty epic). Anyways, I started looking for an example of an “artish” augmented reality type of design to comment on, and I found this:

This augmented reality pet was pretty interesting from the fact that the pet actually has pretty realistic behaviors, and that I could have a pet without actually having it in my house (as I am allergic to pet dander). But that was pretty much the only thing I liked about it (along with all of the comments of it on youtube – comments), as I didn’t like that I had to constantly keep adding semacode markers to allow the dog to move and behave in a larger amount of space. That didn’t seem like something a real dog would need in order to move around (and also, it makes me think that this would eventually be monetized, and the amount of cards one would have to buy would be epic, potentially leading to a large amount of waste when this whim of an interaction is over with), along with having an owner put this much effort in to having a pet move. While having a device that overlays the dog in real life is part of AR, I would have liked to see this interaction pushed further – incorporate our glasses, or other types of “reflective” surfaces in the environment to bring the dog to other environments. After all, a dog pretty much comes and goes wherever it pleases, and having a dog that sat still until you prodded it didn’t make me engaged with it at all.

I guess the only part of this interaction that would make me reflective would be the fact that this would not want me to get a pet, because it would serve as a reminder of all the effort I would need to put into the care of the alive being. If this was the intent of this interaction, then it certainly has succeeded, as it made me think (and then the authors would also have another exemplar of an interface to put in their mixed reality category, although I didn’t think that lumping mixed reality and digital art as reflective interfaces meant the same thing to me – they are pretty much different, in my eyes, as the mixed reality apps usually are meant to place more information in our environment to help us make the choices we need to make, whereas digital art helps us to push our understanding of the world around us and what we can do with it. This app, even though it may push developers to change the world, doesn’t really make me reflective in the same way the authors intended, so I guess I am looking for others’ thoughts here).

If you haven’t seen “text rain” before, it’s pretty darn cool, and is the kind of cool stuff I usually keep around in my head for off the wall concepts.

Semiotics of The Walker

I’ve been following One in 8 Million, a NYTimes.com section, for a while. Each week there will be a different story. I choose a recent one, a story about a walker in New York City, as an exercise for semiotics. (Click on the image to watch the story in the website. Sorry, flash player is needed.)

I am not sure what genre it is, but it is different from a movie. There is no movement, but continuous static photographs.

MONTAGE

Due to the pictures are chosen to match what the character says, so I think they use montage as one of the editing techniques to make the sequence of this story.

MISEN-EN-SCENE

I am sure every picture is deliberatively selected, including the composition of each photograph, how that photograph match the voice over, etc.

Production Design

They shoot on location, and the props are from the real settings in the city and costumes are all from the character her own.

Actor

Although the “actor” is not a professional actress, I think there is still a sense of performing in this story-telling, photo pose as a performance.

Sound

They use voice-over as parallel sound, and I think it is non-diegetic sound, since in this case, only us as watchers could hear it, not the people in the photographs.

Color

Black and white, so that people could only focus on the content of the photograph and the story itself.

Framing

There are some photographs use close-up camera position, and the one above is a deep depth of field but with the character blur. My connotation is that this photo reveals the inner voice of the character that she doesn’t like to walk in the city, as her voice over in this part is “I don’t feel like in the city.”

There is one look-down camera angle. My connotation is that it reveals the loneliness of the character.

ICON, INDEX & SYMBOL

The walking man sign on the road is at the same time iconic, indexical and symbolic sign. It is iconic because it is the resemblance of human being; it is indexical because it is caused to exist by the existence of human being; it is symbolic because the sign is not exactly like human, but by convention, a sign with a shape like this would make people think it is human. [I am still not confident when trying to distinguish these three concepts. These arguments are copied from Barnard's book, page 148-149. Please help me.]

At when there is 1:13 left, the photo of the character’s sketchbook is seen as an index to her thinking, for her voice over is “if I don’t walk, I can’t think”.

I think the graffiti picture when there is 1:28 left is an icon. It is like a portrait for a lady.

The photograph when there is 1:20 left with a picture on the ground with two women in cheongsam on it, (I think they are from old Shanghai time), it is iconic, but I am not sure whether it is symbolic. Can you find any conventions?

QUESTION

When there is 00:38 left, I don’t understand why when she said”I noticed buildings”, but the photograph shown is having a shallow depth of field and making the building out of focus, instead focusing on an old man. Maybe they don’t have a better photograph? Probably not so.

CONFESSION

This exercise really helps me to think deeper of the terms, instead of just memorizing.

This is by no means a complete analysis. I would like to hear your voice.

Clerks II Signs

So most people know that I love the Clerks movies, so I wanted to try and see what types of signs I could find in there, to exercise the reading for Thursday’s class. This is from the sequel to the movie, and, of course, has some epic R-rated language, but it makes me laugh, and we’re adults, so I hope this is OK for posting. So here we go…

The first thing that struck me was a sign of the title of this video. I thought this was where Jay rapped his signature rap, as it was referenced in the his own movie (Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back), but this version of the rap is different, and is indicative of the time he has spent in jail and cleaning his life around. It’s also not as loaded with as many epithets as his usual mouth, but it’s a sign that the rehab program he was in has started to change his thinking. It’s even more interesting to see Silent Bob’s expression as Jay is rapping, as he sort of shies away – it’s not Jay’s best, and it doesn’t sound really good. This might be a sign of how he really feels for Jay – either concerned for him, or embarrassed that he still hangs out with Jay.

Where Jay and Silent Bob are standing is also very interesting – they are standing in front of a Mooby’s fast food restaurant in Leonardo, New Jersey (a place that has been established to be a “waste pit” in other movies). The Mooby’s is also a reference to McDonald’s, because it’s everywhere in the View Askew universe (the set of movies Kevin Smith has directed with these characters), a sign of its omnipresence and hold over the lives of people who can’t get a “real job” (aka Dante and Randal, and Jay and Silent Bob usually end up wherever Dante and Randal go, maybe a sign of fate?). The bricks behind them are quite apparent, even though the Mooby’s logo is perfectly written on there and the paint looks really good. It’s an interesting sign because the stereotype of New Jersey is that it is a dump and that large buildings like this usually receive a lot of graffiti (which ends up happening later). It’s an interesting sign at the possibility of hope of life for Dante, Randal, Jay, and Silent Bob. Now that’s something I didn’t see when I saw the movie the first time around.

I also appreciated the fact that not only did this scene point to and reference other movies (the Buddy Christ shirt is from Dogma), but it also pointed to what our commonsense notion of what a drug dealer and a reborn Christian talks and acts like. Even though Jay and Silent Bob have gone through jail, they both still have the same posture and the same types of conversations of when they were drug dealers (could be signifying that rehab doesn’t work fully?), but that the experience was worthwhile for them, as they now found the Bible, and Jay wants to do something with his life now. It’s even more of a sign of how the experience of jail worked on them, because their language is still roughly the same as when they were standing in front of the Quick Stop. Another “cue”/sign here is that Silent Bob is in the scene, as he’s the director and the character, but he holds up the Bible to the camera when Jay references it, potentially showing us a view they may/may not have in terms of faith and religion in modern day society (could be parodying this type of people, which I could see).

I couldn’t really find too many more signs of the change of Jay and Silent Bob (other than than the lack of music going on – since it is silent – Jay usually raps with non-diegetic music – it seems to signify something has changed about his lifeworld), but their costumes are a little bit cleaner and worn on them as well, signifying their use in jail, along with the hard lives they have been leading until this point. The costumes of the people who want to buy drugs from them also were done well enough (including their posture), to signal that they were also down on their luck and they think that weed will help them, but the audience ends up being surprised that the main reason they choose this dealer is that he makes them laugh – a sign for the audience to laugh, as it is unexpected.

Please feel free to add on – I would like to see what other signs I take for granted in this scene, as I know these characters pretty well (or at least I would like to think so).

(^^)V

Cheat sheet!

If we were to create a cheat sheet for Interaction culture, what would it look like? (all the fancy terms, with a two line simple explanation and a bull’s eye example). I propose that all of us do this as a class.

Currently struggling to understand these three terms – structuralist view, hermeneutic view, phenomenological view! What’s the difference? How do they fit with each other? Please provide comments or feel free to add your own terms (with or without explanations). Let’s cheat!

Here is a video from one of my favorite movies – Ratatouille. For those of you who have not watched it yet (please do), Remy (the protoganist) makes ratatouille (a vegetable stew). Anton Ego is this big shot food critic who is a hard ass, extremely critical, hard to please and is very skeptical about the stew. The below scene is when he tastes it and is completely floored by the taste since it reminds him of his mother making him this dish during his childhood.

Now let’s try to put on different goggles and see this video again.

Structuralist goggles – The stew was good because it had tomatoes, carrots, beans, etc, cut and cooked perfectly. What is the ingredient? How do we identify it?

Non-phenomenological hermeneutic goggles – The stew is usually prepared during summer. This is because most of the standard ingredients grow during summer. No lifeworld involved.

Phenomenological hermeneutic goggles – The stew is considered as a poor man’s dish since most of the standard ingredients are not expensive.

Non-hermeneutic phenomenological goggles – Anton Ego’s experience is the perfect example for this. Tasting this stew transports him back to his memories.

Am I right? Please correct me if I am wrong.

Semiotic Approach to Ne Me Quitte Pas

Expressively the addresser is constructed as begging, strong yet submissive, desirous, desperate.

Conatively the addressee is constructed as stubborn, unforgiving, an object of desire.

Phatically the relationship between the addresser and addressee is constructed as dysfunctional, rocky, loving, romantic.

Referentially, the song leaves out some aspects of the relationship between the addresser and addressee to assist the receiver in an identification with the position of the addresser (phenomenological semiotics?), but also gives enough information to help us understand the phatics of the relationship between the addresser and addressee.

Metalingually this song doesn’t explicitly state any facts of the relationship or situation of the addresser and addressee to leave the song up to interpretation of the listener.

Ne Me Quitte Pas is formally a song.  It’s words vary in meaning and connotation verse to verse, but not so that the story of the addresser and addressee loses cohesion.  The chorus remains the same to emphasize the begging of the addresser for the addressee not to leave.

I have no idea if any of this is right, but I thought I would give it all a try.

“What The Foucault” series: Author

So I was trying to understand the works of Michel Foucault and came across one of his essays titled “What is an Author?” You can get the text here.

I think what Foucault has to say about the notion of an author is very important and is key to our class discussion about authors, architects, musicians, film directors, ciritcs and ultimately designers.

The Title:
Foucault did not make a grammatical mistake when he titled his essay as “What is an Author”. Rather it sets the tone for his entire discourse. He views the author not as a person but as an idea or a concept.

language, culture and structualism

Sometimes you’ll hear Chinese students talking with each other in Chinese mixed with English words.  Most of the cases, it is not because they are too lazy to translate, but the words can hardly be translated.  An English word is linked to a real world thing, but it is not always possible to find a Chinese word pointing to the same thing.  The meaning of word is, in structuralism point of view, constructed in the structure of language.  Vice versa.  I’ve read some English translation of ancient Chinese poem and feel part of the meaning and feeling is lost in the translation.  Good translator can preserve more original meaning, but not all.  There are so many Chinese words that are so accurate for describing some thing, but I cannot find English counterparts.  Vice-versa.  Every now and then, I cannot help myself reading some Chinese poem or essay because I’m thirty for them, for the meaning and feeling which cannot get in the current structure of identifiers I’m working with.  Sometimes I feel a little desperate about that because there is some meaning and especially feeling, or we call it culture, cannot be translated, accurately expressed, experienced in another set of structure.  Is it why there are wars, misunderstandings, and discrimination?

It has something to do with my capstone topic: promoting the appreciation of classical music among people.  I would like people to feel (not only listen) classical music in a different way, in a tech-imaginative way, which might provide an intriguing access point to classical music-this oldest music genre.  If classical music is considered a set of language where meaning is constructed within, how am I going to express the meaning in another set of structure?  Well, I think I’m not going to accurately move meaning from one set of structure to another, but rather, expand people’s horizon and life-world by leveraging technology.  I will try to be a good translator as well as a magician.