When You Know...

When You Know... from Bana Ch N on Vimeo.

MoMI

During this visit I knew about a lot of techniques that they use during shooting or after shooting in post-production. Three of them were the most that I really liked. The first one was the ADR (Auto Dialoged Replacement). I never thought before about the way that ADR is done and what I had in my mind about it is just a regular recording studio. During this visit I knew that they actually have the movie parts being showed before they start doing the ADR then when the person will start to talk they will have subtitles going with the image so they don't speed or talk slower than the original recording. The second one was sound effects parts. I knew that sound effects can make a big difference in the way the final product will be, but experimenting some weird or funny sound effects on a movie that I have seen so many times gave me a totally new different experience about the movie and make it sound funnier. The last one is the Zeotrope and experiencing it was really nice, it represented a way to start thinking about videography and how to crat moving images from stills. The creation of Zeotrope was the first to introduce a short story told by moving images in a technique that included the shutter speed that is so important for the videography which is created from stills only.

Sarah & Laurel last moments

At the beginning of the scene a wide shot of the city landscape from the rooftop of the building and Sarah is looking at it. Then, Laurel arrives walking and hugs her sister Sarah because it has been sometime they didn't met. An over the shoulder shot shows Laurel approaching to Sarah and then they hug and the camera switches to Sarah and it is an over the shoulder too. During the conversation, the shots keep switching from over the shoulder close ups and medium shots of Sarah and Laurel in the frame facing each other, which gives a great flow to the conversation between them. The shots were not stable 100%, but I think that this fits the scene because of the stress that both sisters are feeling and even that they are happy seeing each other they both are worried, but they are trying to hide it. Laurel gets a text from Oliver and she had to leave, she never thought that this could be the last time she sees her sister. She goes down the building in a long shot that shows her going down on the stairs, Sarah is still on the rooftop of the building and the same wide shot of her looking at the landscape of the city, like she's saying good bye to the world. Sarah starts walking in dolly close up shot preparing her self to jump and leave the building's rooftop when suddenly a voice talks to her, the person's voice is unrecognizable for anyone who is watching the series and we don't get to see the person's face. This kept it mysterious who was on that rooftop?? The sound effects that were made over the person's voice made it sound like a robot or a non-human voice so it is unable to be recognized. Sarah stops and turns around, the frame changes to have a wide shot of Sarah facing that unknown person and she was surprised and shocked from seeing this person. After saying her last words, Sarah was shot by that person with three arrows and felt from the rooftop to the street where Laurel just arrived few seconds ago. This part had a lot of great sound effects and Foley sounds that gave real sound of what an arrow being shot could sound like, the sound of the arrow going into Sarah's body. Also, the sound that was in the background when Sarah is falling form the rooftop, then when she hits the trash bin and then hits the floor. Sound played the main role in these shots, besides the shots that focused on the arrows that were shot at Sarah and then the way she felt down was a perfect shooting. Last shot was Laurel saying her last good bye to Sarah with a lot of pain and the shot is a dolly wide shot that was moving away from them. Which implied that they are now so far from each other.

Jessica's Audio Portrait

An afternoon at Wall Street

I was hearing different kinds of sound. Some of them are soft and some are so noisy. The first background sound was a construction sound, the one that is usually heard when trucks are involved in the work. People keep passing around and everyone has their own environment. Some people were walking in a rush and their shoes were giving different sounds men's sneakers or boots have different sounds than women's heels. At some point I was hearing the sound of an empty room or maybe better to call it space sound, it was the sound of nothing. I heard this when there was no noise around and no wind passing. This was the weirdest sound I heard. A while after that, there was a trash car which was as a background sound and different languages that people are speaking in the neighborhood they were mostly tourists. Mumbling all around the place in different languages creates a nice ambiance. A ship passes or probably arrived to the deck and it sound was heard clearly beeping. A bicycle passes and the sound of the wheels running on the road gives the difference between the size of the ship and the bicycle. A while later there was a sound of a subway stopping I could hear it from the open venture on top of it. Later, I passed near a popcorn truck and the motor noise was filling the place and made it so noisy while it was smooth for a while.

Define a Space

Theater at Hunter College


DefineASpace from Bana Ch N on Vimeo.

Artist Statement

When I started high school I made a list of what I want to study in the future. On the top of my list I had medicine, but I didn't had enough grades for it when I finished high school. As the way universities work in my country it's based on your grades at the last high school year official exam.

So, the second thing that I really wanted to do was architect, but the same problem not enough grades for it. That made my third choice on the list just a dream in my head. Film making, I always wanted to be the person behind the camera, the person who actually make these artistic pieces. Being a director is what I dreamed about for a long time.

It is really hard to convince your family with something they don't think it could make a career because it is based on luck. Besides the difficulties that there was only one university that teaches it which was in another city and I can't go there for it.
Therefore, I went to university and started studying business and kept my hobby in photography.
I kept taking photos of anything that I found interesting.

I had to leave my country because it's no longer safe. I transferred to another country and continued studying business with a specification in banking and finance.
Unlike the U.S. colleges system where switching majors and studying many majors at the same time is an easy thing to do, we have a different system high school official exam is what determines the student's future and switching majors is nearly an impossible thing to do.

At that university they had media majors, but I had to study business otherwise I'll lose all my previous credits and just start over.
When I transferred later to Hunter and found out that I'll still need credits besides all the requirements for my economics major, I decided to take them all in media production field.

Furthermore, I found out about MNN Firehouse the youth media center where I'm taking courses and I'm really enjoying everything there. I'm learning a lot and I'm getting closer to what I really want to do Produce and Direct.