Project 1 -- Time Map

Response of Memento

Memento chronicles two separate stories of Leonard, an ex-insurance investigator who can no longer build new memories, as he attempts to find the murderer of his wife, which is the last thing he remembers. One story line moves forward in time while the other tells the story backwards revealing more each time.

The most significant manifestation of Leonard's injuries is that his short-term memory has been destroyed; he is incapable of retaining any new information, and must resort to copious note-taking and Polaroid photographs in order to keep track of what happens to him over the course of a day (he's even tattooed himself with a few crucial bits of information he can't get along without). That's exactly why the film can be intriguing in flashback. Because Leonard's mind was a puzzle, he cannot settle his memories in a forward order. So the movie was cohered by many piece of fragments, just like his mind labyrinth.

But in this obscure and recondite memory chaos, the director do give us a clear clue to follow the plot. The colored frame is flashback and the black-and-white is positive sequence.

Project 7 -- Fictional Documentary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vvav7TUQl08

Our mockumentary is about the world-renowned musician Joe Hisaishi. He is a composer and musical director known for over 100 film scores and solo albums dating back to 1981. But in our storyboard, he is a musical artist with a congenital eye illness that lives in New York. His special vision gives him a unique way to observe the world and immerse himself in musical creation. Due to his particular disorder, he acts oddly that is different from ordinary people. So our fictional documentary was designed to record his daily life and tried to make audience standing in his shoes to see the world. 

In order to make the movie shots more diverse and professional, we used to cameras to complete shooting in different angles. The whole documentary accomplished in two scenes, one is actor's home, the other one is Washington Square. There are also tow interviews of related supporting actors to make the character more vivacious and picturesque, one is Joe's doctor, one is Joe's sister.

Project 6 -- Sound Piece

Project 5 -- Sequential

The response of Exit Through the Gift Shop

This documentary is about a story of how an eccentric French shop owner and amateur film maker attempted to locate and befriend Banksy, only to have the artist turn the camera back on its owner. A very interesting look into the life of street art. The believable aspect of this Mockumentary is very inartificial throughout the whole film, for example, the footages of many street artists that appear in the beginning of the film are quiet practical which are the scene we might truly see about graffiti artists, especially when the police were pursuing and capturing the artists. It’s a very common and realistic phenomenon often happens to them. Another important feature for being believable is the shooting technology, the shaky and jouncy camcorder provides audience a sense of realism, the frames are not stable, complete and clear enough, it was often out of focus, for example when they following shoot the motorcycles or the man was climbing to the top of the house. Although it shows unprofessional, those tricks made the whole film as authentic as the real documentary. Also, the background noises from some scenes are very believable, such as the rumbustious street full with busy vehicles and any daily sounds recorded inadvertently. It added more authenticity and restore some qualities of life. Last of all, the mosaic that put on some interviewees’ faces made the film as serious as a standard documentary.

The most unbelievable aspects for me is the sound effects and the background music that added artificially. It penetrated almost every scene of the film. The music was fairly exaggerated and dramatic like a score of a vintage Mickey Mouse movie. The melody and tempo are kind of humorous and clownish, especially the whistle. It present a atmosphere of inveracious and oriented purposes. Also, although the mosaic is a professional tool for documentary using on interviewees to show respect and privacy, but the format and appearance of mosaic in this film was kind of interesting, it’s different from other documentaries, the mosaic gave me a feeling of unseriousness and fooling. There are some shot cuts, transition, effects and variation were intend to be grandiloquent, dramatic and over reacted, such as the quickly zooming in and rotation of camcorder that used many times in the film.

For me, the entire purpose of Exit Through the Gift Shop was to force the viewer to slow down and really look and think about art. Certain attendance to art have gotten in the way of actually seeing artwork as a statement. Instead, art as monetary value or art as a projection of one’s identity have clouded the meaning of certain works of art. This Mockumentary attempt to show that "authenticity" can be manufactured for sale and asks us to ignore price tags and instead look at the art itself. It’s also similar to Banksy’s point, that the modern art community often values hype over quality.

Project 4 -- Graphic Novel

It's a story about spiderman performer in Time Square. He dreams everyday that he is the superhero saving the world, but turns out he is just a pitiful nobody that earns money by taking photos with tourists.