Portrait Photography

I took 10 portraits of my beautiful friends around Elon on a bright beautiful day. Enjoy.

Video Project- It’s Crunch Time

Think about when you feel pressure. How do you react? What are you thinking? In this piece, entitled “It’s Crunch Time,” I will visually show, from the perspective of the speaker/ athlete/ student, what pressure is, where it comes from, what it feels like, and how it affects us.

Lost in Translation- a different kind of good

Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation is not one of those movies that keeps you on the edge of your seat. Without much dialogue, the film did not win me over in the same way that, say, Raging Bull did. Because of all the gaps in conversation between characters, the cinematographers of Lost in Translation had to progress the film in other ways. The cinematographers did this brilliantly as they used settings to speak for the characters. For example, towards the beginning of the film, Bob is shown towering above a group of Asians inside an elevator. This image depicted Bob as the lonely man he was and it did so without any dialogue. I understood that Charlotte was somewhat of a loner from one of the opening scenes when she simply gazed out over her hotel window’s view of Japan.

What I liked most about this film was the way the cinematographers made both of the main characters lonely, sure, but more importantly, so likeable. Even though both had their problems, both were people that any viewer would want to be friends with. They won me over with their senses of humor, never obnoxious and flamboyant, but dry and innocent. Although both were married to other people, I was pulling for them to leave behind their lonely lives in order to be together. This brings me to another point. What did Bob whisper to Charlotte at the end? I loved how the director left me hanging. Maybe they did end up together? We can never know for sure.

10 staged photos

Gimme Shelter

The Maysles brothers’ Gimme Shelter is very different from many of today’s documentaries. Using a style known as Cinéma vérité, where there is no voiceover but where the camera angles, audio, and editing, as a unit, form the filmmaker’s opinion, the Maysles Brothers bored me to sleep with Gimme Shelter.

There were some things I liked about this style of documentary, however. Because the Stones were obviously very comfortable with the filming crew, Gimme Shelter really provided the audience an up-close encounter with the Stones. As a result, I felt like I “knew” the Stones much better than I did before. The scenes where we saw Mic watching the tape of his concerts was a very nice touch as they helped provide me with an understanding of the man off the stage. I must admit, this documentary was real. Usually that’s what I want in a documentary.

But in this documentary, “real” bored me to sleep. Whereas in highly regarded documentaries of recent times like Jesus Camp, King of Kong, Born into the Brothels: Calcutta’s Red Light Kids, and Hell House, the film crews often interviewed their characters with specific questions, Gimme Shelter was too real for me because the crews never talked to Mic Jagger. As a result, I didn’t get to hear enough of the Stone’s opinions. But I definitely heard enough of their music as the movie used full songs throughout. This made the documentary even more boring.

After watching Gimme Shelter, I’m beginning to realize that a good documentary needs things to be staged every once in a while. There needs to be some sort of interaction between the crew and the real life thing they are recording. If there isn’t, the documentary just becomes simple footage with some editing and audio thrown in. That just doesn’t excite me.

Raging Bull- film at its finest

Raging Bull is not a movie about boxing. It is a movie which uses the boxing ring as merely a setting to better expose Jake LaMotta for what he is: a stubborn, aggressive, and insecure man.

Raging Bull is a film about Jake LaMotta and Jake LaMotta only. As a result, Scorsese faced a challenge in keeping the audience enthralled with this frail character. But as we have seen in some of his recent movies such as The Departed, no one can captivate an audience quite like Scorsese. The movie jumps around in time, at first starting after Jake’s boxing career, then progressing through it, before ending with Jake’s post-boxing demise. The audience was never tricked, however, as throughout, at every moment in time we see LaMotta, we see his problems. The use of irony in the film was brilliant as well as Scorsese was able to depict the most unstoppable fighter in the world as someone who had more problems than you or I. With this irony, Raging Bull comments on the vanity of human glory. Regardless of how much success one can have in the ring or in the public spotlight, the money or the fame is never enough. They can never be enough to satisfy you, but as we see with LaMotta, they can come to own you. 

So that’s why Raging Bull is now one of my favorite films of all time. 

Mad Hot Ballroom

I really enjoyed Mad Hot Ballroom. The filmographers did an excellent job of capturing the beauty of being young. That is what made this documentary so great. The kids were all so likeable that you could not help but cheer for them by the end of the movie.  I also loved the greater message of the film, that “the key to success in life is to find something in life that you love to do and to do it well.” 

The cinematography was also great as the camera angles really helped capture the kids’ perspectives throughout the film. I’m learning by watching this many documentaries that it takes much more than just a good story to create a great film. It takes a crew that works hard to most effectively capture human emotion throughout the film. This film would not have interested me if it was simply about a dance competition. But because the film so well displayed the growth and character of these kids, I have come to the conclusion that Mad Hot Ballroom is one of my favorite documentaries I have ever seen.

Nighthawks Digital Story Version 1

Here is my first version of my Nighthawks Digital Story. Tell me what you think.

Street Photography

In Chris Weeks’ “Street Photography for the Purist,” Michael Kaiser describes the form of photography I attempted to capture this week perfectly: “Street Photography is easy. And it is difficult.” Why is it easy? Kaiser says, “because you find your subjects virtually everywhere. You don’t need to go for the extraordinary.” Don’t get me wrong, I love small towns (see: Billings, MO) but there’s just not that much “extraordinary” going on on a rainy day in Graham, NC. So at first I was very frustrated with Graham- “it’s just too boring,” I claimed. But soon enough I began seeing what Patrick Kahn sees in street photography, that “street photography is about immortalizing a moment, a mood, an image. It’s about capturing the essence of a moment, with all its emotional weight and/or its poetry and/or its flavor.” It doesn’t matter where you go. Of course, taking pictures of random people is a little strange. I often asked people if I could take their picture and that I went to Elon. I was pleasantly surprised when nearly everyone I talked to responded so well to me.

Here are my 10 best street photos:

Run Lola Run

Considered the best German film to date by many, Run Lola Run achieves cinematic greatness by very unconventional methods. While not offering any complex or compelling plot, Run Lola Run is great because of the unconventional presentation of the story and the intense and rhythmic selection of music. By almost “replaying” the story of Lola and Mannie over and over again, the director is able to expose the characters of the films in different manners as they react to different situations. Also, the use of animation brings another cool aspect to the film as it visually keeps the audience’s attention. What most significantly affected my experience with the film, however, was the music as it rythmically coincided with the action of the film perfectly, keeping the audience always interested. This film showed me that simple elements such as music and visual effects can make an ordinary plot a great one.