Comments on Medp 150

The labs for Medp 150 were more interesting than the lectures. It's good to get hands on experience. I feel like I learned more in the labs, I mean this is a production class and the best way to learn those skills are by actually doing it. It's important to have instructions and guidance, but sometimes it's easiest to learn by trial and error, just playing around and see what works. At the same time, I thought we should’ve had a little bit of guidance when learning to use Photoshop. Some parts were easy to figure out, but other parts were more complicated. A suggestion for labs could be to have to people there to help us out. I have nothing against the teachers that were there, it’s just that the teacher is always busy helping another student out and sometimes you have to wait a long time til they can get to you. I tried asking my friends for help, but they had to do their work too.

I didn’t enjoy all of the lectures, mainly because they were long. The material was good, and the power points were presented well. I thought it was good that they put their personal input into them. It would’ve been much easier to pay close attention the entire class if they were a little shorter. Something that’s trivial, the attendance didn’t get circulated to the entire class and we had to wait like ten minutes after class to sign the sheet, so maybe it would be good to come up with a better system.

Something that's very important that needs to be changed about this class is the reviews for the tests. I think it's important to give us an idea of what they are on, not just to study the entire semester's notes. It's hard trying to figure out what topics to focus on, and what topics aren't important. Many times when taking a test that I don't know what material to study, I find that I don't spend enough time on stuff that actually appears on the test and spend too much time on stuff that doesn't appear on it. I find myself saying if I only studied that part a few minutes longer... It's a lot of material to remember, on top of all of the other classes we're taking. Each class is individual and important, but we have lots of material to remember.

Hunter College needs to have classes on radio! They need to have labs for radio too so students can gain more experience and learn how to use equipment. I have a show at WHCS (Activity Grrrls' Radio Revolution) and know how to broadcast, but not everyone gets the chance to learn the more technical stuff. Even if they can’t create classes on radio, they should devote on lab in this class to radio.

Even though it wasn’t too easy to figure out, I’ll remember how to use Photoshop. I was excited to learn how to use it! I feel I have some skills in this area, but I could learn more.

"Call Me Invincible"

This is the coolest design I've ever seen! It fuses together the faces of Pat Benatar and Debbie Harry! It also puts together two of their song titles, Call Me by Blondie and Invincible by Pat Benatar. This design was used on t-shirts and promotional materials for the tour they did together, also joined by The Donnas.

This design has some vector graphics. Since it's a drawing, there's not too much to be said about lighting. It definitely serves its purpose. It attracts you to the poster, making you read what they are advertising. It's such an awesome design that you'll want to come to the concert, who could resist that line up? It's a very functional design. It's very creative, not to mention eye catching. Besides the morphing of their bodies, the flowers are very significant and stand out. Those vines weave all around each other, down to the banner where it says “Call Me Invincible”.

The reason everything connects could be to represent how Blondie and Pat Benatar are connected. Debbie and Pat are both influential women in music. Because they’re women, they had to face struggles to be taken seriously. They both were popular in the same era. Pat and Debbie were both front women in their bands, though Pat was just Pat Benatar, her band didn’t have a name. The only thing this concert was missing was Joan Jett. That would’ve just been mind blowing to see all of them in one night! What I like about this design is that it includes The Donnas. They often got left out of promotional materials. Yes they aren't as famous as them, but they're just as talented. They kinda took them on like they were their big sisters or something! Every once in awhile I'll see someone wearing this shirt at events where there is girl music represented!

I went to the show they did in Brooklyn and took some videos, only for audio purposes. If you decide to watch these please don't actually watch them, they are not good. I don't feel like taking an actual video of something and not enjoying the show so I just sling the camera on my wrist and record it for the audio.

All Fired Up by Pat Benatar

The Tide is High by Blondie

The Runaways

The Runaways is about Joan Jett and Cherie Currie’s adventures throughout being in the first all girl rock n roll band. This movie was inspired by the book Neon Angel a Memoir of a Runaway, written by the lead singer of The Runaways, Cherie Currie. Writer and director Floria Sigismondi uses many different techniques throughout the movie such as composition, camera movements, and framing. There are tons of close up shots in this movie. I think those are the most frequently used throughout The Runaways. Since this movie was based on real people, they worked very hard to make the actors look as much like the real people as possible (they did a phenomenal job!). I think this was why they stressed the close up shots, to make us focus on what they looked like. To give a few examples; they use medium close up shots in the scene when Joan Jett and Kim Fowley first meet Cherie Currie, an extreme close up of Cherie’s eyes when she is in the shower after she has a fight with the band, and a close up of Cherie when she lights a cigarette backwards while going to audition for The Runaways. They also use look space in several scenes; when Joan and Kim first meet Cherie, and when Marie visits her twin sister Cherie at a drug rehab facility. Another technique used was the tracking shot; when Kim Fowley walks into the club to find Cherie, and when The Runaways flee from their first gig at a house party about to be broken up by the cops. A 360 degree dolly shot is used when The Runaways are performing “Dead End Justice”. A pan movement is used when Joan is in her room making the famous Sex Pistols shirt. Lead room was used when Joan was leaving her first guitar lesson. Most of the time, there were normal angles. Deep depth of field was used when they were climbing the Hollywood Hills. A zoom lens was used when Joan first meets Kim and Sandy outside of a club. These techniques were constant throughout the film, with the exception of a few. Again, their goal was to convince us that they were really Joan Jett and Cherie and Currie, as well as some other characters, and they certainly achieved it! The Runaways is in theaters, so see it now!

**There isn’t a mention of the other Runaways (Lita Ford and Jackie Fox) in this blog entry because there was an emphasis on Joan Jett and Cherie Currie. Sandy West was portrayed in this movie more than the Lita and Jackie, but not as much as Joan and Cherie. Lita and Jackie wanted nothing to do with this movie. They couldn’t even get the rights to use Jackie’s name, so they made a fictional composite bass player named Robin Robins, who had three lines in the entire movie.

View the trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHpEJ749TRM


Joan Jett
Kristen Stewart




The Real Runaways

Museum of Moving Image

At the Museum of Moving Image, I saw quite a few exhibits and demos. I especially enjoyed all of the albums that were framed. I have a bunch of albums framed on my wall.

It was also fun to look at the lunchboxes, board games and memorabilia from TV shows. I enjoyed seeing the transformation of the microphone. Along with that, I liked the old music playback forms. I’ve never seen what Betamax looks like and they had it on display.

I couldn’t make any of the scheduled times, so I went on my own. When I got up to the special effects display with the Freddy Krueger, the wolves, and the girl from “the Exorcist”, there were a group of kids from a school all sitting on the floor in front of it with a tour guide talking to them, so I couldn’t go up to the display. I decided to stand and listen for a minute, and the parents kept looking at me! What was I supposed to do; their kids were blocking me from seeing anything!

One of the demos I went to was the Automated Dialogue Replacement. That was a little fun, but a little annoying since they played the scene for me a bunch of times, even though when I needed to speak, the words were on the screen. I chose the “Wizard of Oz” scene, where Dorothy says “Toto I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore, we must be over the rainbow.” They told me to rehearse the line and speak in a normal tone. Then I recorded my voice, and they played back the scene with my voice inserted.

Something I learned about media productions was how different sounds can mimic others, and how different sounds are blended together. An example of how sounds can be similar is how jungle noises sound like sinking ships.