Final Project

Life with a Sound Track from Rebeca Otero on Vimeo.

Editing Analysis

Though I rarely notice the editing of a film when watching, there is one scene in “10 Things I Hate About You” which has always caught my eye. This is not a particularly spectacular scene, although there are some important developments, but it opens with this great shot in which the camera spins to show the neighborhood before landing on the main characters' house and dollying in though a window. The music for this shot is a song that starts off sounding very mellow and then changes to an angry indie rock sound once the camera finds the house. This change makes it obvious that you have landed on the house in which Kat lives. In the scene that follows the shots focus on following the conversation so there isn't much change in the images shown. The shots are mostly stationary but they adjust as the characters move and they last for the length of a character's line or if they make a move that brings them out of a shot which another character remains in. The cuts are mostly obvious which works for this scene because there are arguments going on. By following the characters the way it does you come to feel that you are in the room watching the person talking and then turning to see the reaction and their response, like a tennis match. When Kat opens her acceptance letter you get a jolt from her screams of excitement and the sudden shot change to show a new view of the room. When the dad announces his new rule on dating, so key to the plot, the shot changes in another jump which marks the importance of the statement. Anything that jolts you from the flow of shots is very strategic, it has a purpose in the story.

Travel Stories

At the Museum of the Moving Image

The Museum of the Moving Image provides an interesting perspective on movies and their production. At first I felt that the magic of movies was being spoiled by the reality of how those amazing effects are actually created. I wanted to cover my ears, shut my eyes, and flee before anything else was ruined for me, probably knocking over exhibits and causing a lot of trouble as I clumsily exited. Though this would have been an interesting story to recount in the future, I slowly came to realize just how interesting it is to discover how magic is created through people’s imagination. One demo that I found particularly interesting was the one on sound effects. My little tour group was shown part of the scene from Titanic where the ship is sinking which was played several different times. The amount of work that went into a few minutes of footage in just the sound production was astonishing. The limited amount of dialog for that scene was not shot with the video at all, but rerecorded by the actors in a studio and when it was played on its own with the scene it seemed awkward and out of place. Each layer of sound by itself was strange and revealed a new level of detailed work contributed to the production. The sound of a body falling onto a deck turned out to be a chair with four sand bags being knocked over and the suction of a porthole almost sucking a character through turned out to be the sound effect of wind combined with a lion’s roar played backwards. A gun with the silencer on helped create snapping cords and almost nothing that you hear in the clip was what it seemed to be. Until the clips were are played together didn’t even seem to go with the video. It was...ear opening? Sounds lame but the truth is it made me pay greater attention to the complexity of sound.

What I Hear

The sound walk assignment was a challenge in self-control for me. I had no difficulty disconnecting from technology and just walking, the problem was that when I have time to myself and I can listen to the world around me, I end up humming. So I ventured outside for my walk worried that I would end up listening only to my own thoughts and the sound of my own voice. The first sound I encountered was in fact humming but it was my grandfather’s as he went back into the house. The sounds that are most prominent in my friendly little Bronx neighborhood are those of cars passing by, the hiss of busses stopping and the chirping birds. A few of the cars hard the windows down or were really blasting the music so I could hear the songs playing briefly. There was a pretty consistent wind that I could hear as well as feel whooshing against me, rustling the leaves, flapping the flags in front of the more patriotic homes, and the jingling of a number of wind chimes. Dogs barked in some distant yards and people strolled by talking into their phones.

I heard a few ambulances go by, I was surprised I didn’t hear more since I live by a few hospitals. There was the soft scratching of brooms against pavement as some of my neighbors swept the sidewalk and the chatting of a few people standing outside apartment buildings in the area. When I passed one of the buildings a little girl was shouting “hi” down to all the people walking by which was sweet and was a good end to the sound walk.

Define a Space

Just Around from Rebeca Otero on Vimeo.

Artist Statement

When I was in the second grade I was put into a special reading class because I was behind the reading level of the other children. People that know me well are usually surprised by this because I often have my face buried in a book, but it was my dad who made that possible. He pulled out books like The Chronicles of Narnia and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and had me read out loud to him after I finished my homework. I was pulled into a world of fantasy and magic that I have never truly exited since; it is the root of my creativity. From this place of memory I create dreams of the world around me. They are not always happy, they tend to be filled with color, and they are not mind shatteringly complex, but they all come from a desire to see something new in what my eyes pass over every day. That can mean a world of monsters roaming the train tracks or just a picture of a place that I see everyday taken from an angle I never view it from.
I want my work to have whimsy and make people think more about the world around them. I want to make something that will make people laugh at the gum on their shoes or think more about the old shirt in their closet that they should have thrown out years ago. I want people to see that even simple things can be important and I want to make something worth noticing.