Daily Blog 1/19

Greetings, class. I'm glad to be here once again to tell any of you who were out today, or anyone who just wants to read this blog, what we did in class today. Today, we had two objectives. The first was to analyze how choices in cuts and assembly create the artistic process of editing. The second was to evaluate the effects of editing. To start off the class, we watched a clip of the handsome Alfred Hitchcock speaking about the use of assembly in film. After this, we were asked to answer what he meant by assembly. We learned that assembly is putting sections of film, messages, music, and other things together to impact the narrative in some way. With this, we looked at Hitchcock's example of him using an eye line match. This is when the camera shows a character looking at something, then showing what they are looking at, and then back to the character reacting to that thing. In Hitchcock's video, the camera starts with him looking out with a straight face. Then, the camera goes to a mother with her baby, and then back to him, smiling now. He talks about how if the middle shot was replaced with a woman in a bikini, his character is changed dramatically. After this, we broke up into our groups and were assigned to find a middle picture for the eye line match and explain how it would change his character. In my group, we chose a picture of a bunch of gourds. We explained how now Hitchcock looks like a man who really enjoys his gourds, and that with more context we the audience would be able to understand why. To connect this with the world outside of school, I saw the new Insidious film. After learning about the eye line match, I was able to recognize it in one of the scenes. It showed the main character's face looking for something important, then shot to that object, and then back to her face after she saw it. The eye line match that was used there really emphasized the importance of the object that she was looking for. Well, it looks like it's time for me to go. So with that, farewell, and I will see you all next marking period.