Friday, April 13, 2012

In Progress Critique

When looking at a lot of my classmate’s final project and getting feedback on my own work I learned a lot. The main thing that I was able to see was if my audience was able to get the point that I wanted to make with my video. That has always been my main goal. I want to make sure that the meaning behind my work is evident and that whoever watches it is able to connect with it somehow. Watching other people’s video I wanted to see if I could understand what they wanted to get across too. I also enjoyed hearing other people’s ideas on how they would display their work.  I wanted to do something different besides showing my video on two computer monitors but I think that is the best way for it to work.

Also getting feedback on things that I could change and things I could add into my piece was very helpful. I always want to be the best artist that I can and learn as much information as possible so any time we have critiques it is important to hear how people felt when watching my work because on a larger scale others may look at my work and feel the same way. Everyone’s ideas for their own individual pieces seem to be interesting and although we were able to see a lot of peoples work fully or close to being done I am excited to see what changes they will make and how their finished product will come out. 

Monday, April 2, 2012

Ann Arbor Film Festival Previous Winners


Although I wasn’t able to make it to the Ann Arbor Film Festival this year I was able to find some of the previous winners work. It was hard to really find any of the previous artist full work but I found excerpts and trailers of some of them. I am not sure if the work I found was the correct pieces but if they were I found a lot of nice pieces. A few that stuck out to me was one by Huang Weikai. His piece called Disorder was the winner of Michael Moore Award Best Documentary Film. I personally liked this piece because one day I want to make a documentary of my own. These types of work are great because they show real life events. In Disorder it seems like it took place in another country and although it was a trailer, to see a little of what goes on in other countries and how they differ from America is great. We as Americans that haven’t had the opportunity to travel can see a documentary like this and get a better understanding of the struggles that people in other countries have. To win an award by Michael Moore is a big deal because he is one of the most popular documentary artists around so that says even more about the piece Disorder.

Another piece that I really liked was In a Pig’s Eye by Atsushi Wada. This piece won the Prix DeVarti Funniest Film award. I was only able to find excerpts on this piece too but the little that I was able to watch was funny and interesting as well. In a lot of my video art I like to bring humor into the equation. Sometimes it is on purpose and other times it is something that comes naturally. Laughter is the key to living in my mind so to be able to make my audience laugh is something I really enjoy doing. Through all the work that I was able to view I found them pretty cool and it would have been great to see what this years festival had. I was inspired by the work I viewed to learn more and one day be able to make much more interesting pieces.