J. Murphy Blog

In my final project, I wanted to do a recap of all the things that I have accomplished and that made me happy during my sophomore year. I am grateful and thankful for all the love and support. Here's to junior year...

In my performance piece, I decided to do something very outside of the box. I used the power of film on taking a look through my own eyes. I see the male dominance in my major and how it affects women like myself. The inequality in the film industry has been prevalent ever since the industry first started. As the years go on, the industry tends to accept more women into the field. Although it does accept more women as time goes on, we should not settle for less. By saying this, it does not mean women overpower men but have an equal balance of both. I love to see my very few peers like my classmate Meghan thrive. I added my own voice over for the importance of having a voice and showing that this message is coming from myself. I used the non copyrighted audio to have a dramatic mature appeal. I started and ended off with my eyes for the use of showing what I see in between those clips. My inspiration for this has to be the foreign woman (I am not sure of ethnicity) that professor Dors...

I decided to collaborate with Holly and use the kitchen space for this project. She took the refrigerator area and wanted to do a late night snack theme whereas I used the stove and oven area. I wanted to have it be preparing a dinner for monsters. There are ear nuggets with "blood" as well as fingers and eye balls. I thought this was a creative experimental project and I had a lot of fun creating it.  

In this project, I made a flip book out of a 208 page book. My theme that I drew around was the sky. I started off with clouds that leads to floating balloons. Once a balloon pops, a flock of birds enter the scene. As the birds exit the scene, the sun and moon are shown to show change of daytime. I end off with starts and my name in the stars because I hope to one day become a star. In post production, decided to use sound effects to suspend the disbelief for the audience. This creates a more natural appeal to watching a story. My story may be simple, but you can make whatever you want to make out of it. There are little details in this that show symbolism. To me, the green balloon is the lonely soul that is different from the rest. A side note that I would like to add is it was difficult to get all the pages while flipping the pages. I had to retake this a few times. Within the three days of making this, it took me a total of 6 hours to complete this flip book. Overall, I am satisfied...

Holly and I decided to pick my bedroom for this project since you can see the view of downtown. At first, I was a little skeptical how this would turn out. I have seen so many examples of this working but I couldn't imagine actually doing it myself. I put 8 garbage bags on my window with duct tape. In the center of the garbage bags I cut a hole and taped the end of the garbage bag box on the top layer to create a square shape. Cutting the holes out was an arm workout since there were so many layers but once I finished, the light came in and I was amazed. I never thought I could have created a piece of artwork like this in my own bedroom. The coolest part was seeing cars drive by and the picture would have movement. Overall, this was a fascinating project that I enjoyed.

This is a photo of myself that was taken a year ago in Los Angeles, California on the day of the Oscars. I aspire to have my own walk of fame star and win an Oscar award as a film editor. I bought this one in the picture as a souvenir to remind myself what one of my goals are in life. Last semester, I won a "mini Oscar" award at the Black Box Film Festival for best animation. I found it ironic that this was given to me as an award since I hope to receive one in the future. After college, I plan to move out to Los Angeles and find work out there. This has been a dream of mine since I was 15 years old.

Madama Butterfly was written in 1904 by the composer Giacomo Puccini. This opera has three acts ranging from 30-50 minutes in each act. The language spoken was Japanese, which was a struggle to follow along due to the language barrier. Although there was an issue with this, it's possible to follow along if paying attention. This opera told a story about love, sacrifices, and betrayal. The first ten minutes into the opera, you can tell that there is tension between a man and a woman. Watching the claymation version to this opera also helped with following the story. We tag along to this journey as the audience is faced with having the fourth wall broken. The fourth wall is broken multiple times during this opera. In order to break the fourth wall, the characters must make eye contact or talk to the audience. The fourth wall is broken within five minutes of the performance. It's clear that the audience is involved with the story because of the interaction of the characters. Th...

This 10 minute film made with claymation, tells a story that is unusual yet so powerful. Some may find this inappropriate to watch due to the sex scene but isn't this what most people experience? There is no dialogue between the two characters but the way the song and sound effects take over is still able to bring emotion to this film. I may have been a little uncomfortable watching the sex scene but it showed this woman's love life with this man. She was extremely happy in the beginning and at the end she is not. I feel empathy for this nonliving object which I believe was the goal of the film. There are some unrealistic moments such as the pregnancy of the fish turning into a baby but we understand the meaning of this newborn. Something I didn't understand was the kite that her and her daughter became. It did look like they were attached at the heart and when the father of the child breaks the line between the mother and daughter, I took it as a metaphor for breaking her ...

Out of all of the short experimental films that I watched at the FLEX Film Festival, I would have to say that Applied Pressure was one of my favorites. I feel like their was a deeper meaning shown without having to use any words. The audio used was a mixture of calm crashing waves with dark deep music in some parts. When using the darker music in some areas of the film, it appeared as if there was danger occurring. All these different women shown were getting massaged by men. They looked like they were enjoying the massage until the darker music played. I believed there was a metaphor for the darker music. The stop motion picture had a lot of aggressive photos during the darker audio that looked as if these women were being abused. The color of the film was tinted red as well which can symbolize danger. To me, this film can portray an abusive relationship. I might be overthinking this film's real meaning but this is how I analyzed it and I think it has a lot of meaning to it.

Raul grew up in a very poor lifestyle. He struggled with prejudice and being accepted in his culture. He ends up becoming a brilliant scientist and has a lot of concepts and thoughts that he brings up during this interview. Raul makes a point that creativity has nothing to do with art or being intellectually advanced but it in fact has to do with how you proceed with nature in relation with yourself. In order to do this, you have to be a good observant with nature. It has nothing to do with the lifestyle you have grown into. There is no advantage for those who are financially more stable. For instance, take a look at Raul. He struggled financially and became a brilliant man. Everything comes from nature. Ideas come from interaction from other ideas. The issue is the technology that people are using. There is no interaction with one another due to technology. Another important concept by Raul is doing everything with intensity. At first I was a little confused what this meant. As he beg...

Jonas Mekas had an interesting take on film. This typing of filmmaking is not abnormal for experimental films. Mekas used many different techniques in his films. All of the ones we viewed in class had a different style. He had shaky cameras, montage clips, time lapse, dialogue, audio, and even himself in the films. It's not common to have a filmmaker in the film. Experimental film separates itself from others due to its use of nature. The audience is unable to suspend their disbelief unlike other films with a clear story. I noticed with the titles of his film shown were all poorly hand written in marker. This a technique he used in most of his films. Some films were hard to read the story and others were easier. The Elvis  film was pretty easy to understand. I guess the history of the time period can indicate whether one understand's his story. I happened to know who Elvis is. Younger generations, will possibly not know of Elvis and this film may not make any sense to them.

About myself I am 19 years old from Oceanport, NJ. I have three brothers, a sister, and a nephew. I am a sophomore student in the BFA program for Film and Media Arts. I work for Web Direct Brands as a video editor intern. My hobbies/interests are traveling, yoga, gymnastics, listening to music, and going to the beach. What I expect  I enrolled in Art and Technology due to it being a requirement for my major. I am curious to learn about the history of how technology was developed, especially in the film industry. It would be interesting to know about the background of the technology used for my major.

I never thought I'd say I enjoyed an 8 am class, until I took Digital Media with Professor Santiago. I created fun projects that I can use for my portfolio in the future. I lost a lot of sleep over making most of my projects, but I love the way they turned out and believe it was worth it. I learned a lot in Santi's class, including different softwares which I am so appreciative about. I would definitely recommend taking Santi's class to anyone interested in Digital Media. Even if it is an 8 am.

Our last project, we used GarageBand to create the audio for our animation. I thought this was the easiest project that we have created all semester and it was ironically our last one. I think I found this one not as difficult since I am a film major and enjoy editing audio. Attached is what my timeline looked like in Garage Band. I had 11 different layers with different sound effects.

On this project, we had to create a 60 second long animation with 600 frames. I spent up to 50 hours on this project. I hand painted almost each frame which was very time consuming. It was worth it in the end and I'm very happy with what I have created. I ended up submitting this to the Black Box Film festival and I won an award for Best Animation

First time using photoshop in Digital Media and I definitly struggled with it in the begging. The first one I did was the yellow tone which took me 2 hours just for this one. As I made more, the process went faster. It took me a total of 7 hours.

I made two photoshopped pictures, one was for fun and the other one was more detailed. I plan on studying abroad in France on semester and hope one day I can make it to the Oscars (and meet Leonardo DiCaprio of course). When I was exiting out of Photoshop I thought I saved all of my projects and I did not. I only exported my Paris photo as a JPG. This was a slap in the face since I worked on the details like being behind objects and making a shadow.

I used photoshop for the first time since Freshmen year of High School. I struggled a bit figuring out the tools so this project took me some time. Back home, I always joke around with how I am the golden child out of all my siblings. I have my three siblings in the right corner and I am highlighted in gold. I organized each layer so I wasn't confused. I played around with the original background so it doesn't look like the original. I did this with the halo and cloud as well. I also smudged my teeshirt so it didn't say "deegee" on it. I like the way this project turned out. 

I made a poster of myself using tracing tools on Adobe Illustrator. I decided to make three different versions. I had a different idea of what I originally wanted to do which included blowing bubble gum. I had a hard time making the bubble visible so I used a selfie instead. I enjoyed creating these. The top left is what Santi played with in class.