cchung's blog

Today in the Time Class, we watched a 1960’s French film called La Jetée. It was about a prisoner  who was used as a subject of an experiment about time travel. His key to the successful time travel was his memory from his childhood where he saw a woman at an airport right before he saw a man die. He could go back in time to find the woman from his memory and falls in love with her. But when the experiment ends with success, the prison guards decides to execute him. To run away from his fate, he once more goes back in time at the airport to find the woman he loves. But as he finds her at the airport, he finds out that one of the prison guards followed him to kill him. Then he realizes that the reason of this memory haunting him is because the man he saw dead when he was a child is in fact himself.

I thought this was a very interesting approach to making of film. We usually think of a film as a moving picture. But La Jetée was a film which was constructed by series of still shots (pictures) in black and white. When I heard about this film at first, I assumed that this would be a very boring movie because I am so used to watching all the movies with many movements and CGs. But actually this film had its own personality; because it was made of still shots, I could pay more attention to the details of the scene. The lack of movement in the film also made me to pay more attention to the sound. It was so amazing how I was so in to the movie even without the busy movement. Somebody in my class mentioned that it was almost like seeing a visuals in your head while reading a book, which I agreed.

Place: Next to my desk

Time of day: 7 am, 1 pm, and 5:30 pm.

Object: water bottle

At 7 am in the morning, the light is creating a high contrast between highlight on the bottle and the darkness of the room. The room is still generally dark, but the light coming in from the window is reflected on the shiny metal bottle, which creates a bright highlight, that makes the bottle almost seem foggy. At 1 pm, the room is brighter and there are more value range found on the bottle. Also the background is more clear too. At 5:30 pm, the room is very dark and it is casting a very dark shadow on the scene. The bottle is only defined by the highlights reflected on the the top of the bottle. It is now difficult to see the detail in the room.

At this setting, I would say that the most interesting time of the day is evening. The room is generally very dark, and you can only see very little bit if the object by the light reflected on it and the dark shadows. I would say that it is similar to guess what animal is in front of you by touching only few parts of the animal. If you can feel the smooth, but cold skin, it is a snake, and if you can feel soft fur and wet nose, it might be a dog. Although the detail is missing, you can kind of figure out that kind of object it is.

Place: My living room, in front of a window

Time of day: 8 am, 1 pm, 5:30 pm

object: apple

At 8 am, the light is still dim and it makes the apple seems slightly shining. Because the light is not that strong, there is no bright highlight or really dark shadow. Instead, the light is lighting the room very evenly. At 1 pm, The light is stronger than it was at the morning. The apple is casting a darker shadow on the table, and the light is reflected on the top of the apple. The back side of the apple is also covered in a darker shadow. At 5:30 pm, the shadow behind the apple is darker than it was in daylight. the room is generally very dark now. There is less middle tone now; The light is creating higher contrast between light and dark.

In this setting, I would say that the day time (1 pm) is the most interesting time of the day. At 1 pm, there were more value range. It is almost like there are more flavors to a food. If someone eats an apple, it is sometimes sweet, sometimes sour, and sometimes bitter. At 1 pm, the light was creating many different values and colors in the scene, which made the view more interesting than other time.

Place: My housemate’s room. front of the window

Time of day: 9 am, 2 pm, and 5 pm

Object: Lamp

Light is coming in from the window. In the morning, the light looked a bit blueish and cold. At 2 pm, the light got more direct and shadows became shorter. The glass body of the lamp was reflecting the light. The light felt warmer at this time. At 5 pm, the sun was going down. It became much darker in the room, and casted more shadows on the wall.

At this setting, I think the most interesting time of the day is morning. The sun is not casting such a strong light yet, so the scene seems a bit colder. The light is week, so the highlights on the glass body of the lamp is nor reflecting much light, but the cotton hat of the lamp seems brighter because it’s white and it is reflecting more light.

While watching the video about James Turrell’s works, I didn’t fully understand the aspect of his work, but I could still feel his passion about what he wants to communicate with his audience through his works. In the interview, he says that what he is trying to do with his art is to unite everyone with the universe and show them how we are not separated from the sky and atmosphere, but actually we are a part of it. I think that his works would be more easier to understand once I actually see it and experience it with my own eyes in the environment.

Welcome to your brand new blog at MassArt WordPress.

To get started, simply log in, edit or delete this post and check out all the other options available to you.

For assistance, visit our comprehensive support site, check out our Edublogs User Guide guide or stop by The Edublogs Forums to chat with other edubloggers.

You can also subscribe to our brilliant free publication, The Edublogger, which is jammed with helpful tips, ideas and more.