Composing in Film

Introduction:
In the unit of Composing in Film, Video, and New Media, we talked about copyright issues, how to produce video and looking through the film archive. This unit was comprised of studying how to mash together different old film clips to create something new.

Starting Point:
In the film unit, I started off not really knowing anything about film. I was eager to learn about how film is produced and to talk about copyright issues. The concept of film I understood previously, but I had never thought about the idea of taking old footage and splicing and chopping it up to create a whole new video. Before this unit of Contemporary Composition, I had only made one video for my Spanish class Freshman year, and everyone takes videos on their phones nowadays so filming has become an everyday activity now, and I wanted to learn more about it.

What I learned:
In terms of the individual journal writing, I learned about the stories of various teachers in the film school as well as what it takes to become successful in film. We also read a piece on Lev Manovich and discussed his principles, some of which include numerical representation, modularity, automation, variability, and transcoding. Not only that, each piece of technology can bleed into any other category. We also learned about the collaboration between two schools- Film and Design & Production. This was the first time we heard about any collaboration or almost mention of any other school. In terms of the unit overall, we discussed the difference between film, video, and new media. As our last project for this section, we made a channel surfing video, here it is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOoVc2aIsG4 This was a collection of other videos from the film achieve and then we spliced them up and made it look as though we were flipping through channels.

Things I would like to know more about:
I would have really enjoyed learning more about the process of filming- where the idea comes from and how it gets to the screen. While the 2 film teachers shared their stories about the film industry I would have liked to know about the process. I would have also very much liked to learn about how film is actually created the equipment and everything. Learning about film editing software on my own would have been much appreciated since I had neither Windows Movie Maker or GarageBand or Premiere- a friend let me borrow their computer to complete the assignment and they already knew the software.

Conclusion:
I found this unit to be very interesting, especially since I did not really know anything about film or the film world. Learning about the different experiences the teachers have had and how film is now used in everyday life. I did not realize how much it took to produce a film! I enjoyed creating the projects and how you can take old things and cut them up and create new. This was a great unit, the only thing is, is that I wish I could have learned more about the process.