Reading Response #3

Scott MacDonald’s Introduction to “Avant-Garde Film” is a brief synopsis of avant-garde cinema. He discusses avant-garde in the first half in regard to audience reaction, then gives a brief history on the formation on avant-garde cinema. Audiences almost universally dislike and are confounded by avant-garde upon their first viewing because avant-garde shatters our perceptions about what a film is. History shows that avant-garde receives much of its origins from the Lumière brothers and developed in many countries such as Russia, France, and Germany.
I chose to read this article because I am not very educated on avant-garde film. For all its weirdness, I find avant-garde strangely fascinating, possibly because I don’t understand it. My mind tends to thinks rather linearly and has always had an aversion to abstract arts. The main benefits from reading this article are learning some basic avant-garde film history. More importantly I learned to really give avant-garde a chance, if anything, to at least enjoy it for rebelling against the conventional Hollywood cinema.

Video Hardware/Software Review

The Olympus digital camera overall worked like most other digital cameras I have used. The only issue I had with it was that I couldn’t figure out how to turn on the display screen, but that only took a few minutes to figure out. I have an Olympus camera myself, with slightly more features than the one I used on my drift. I’ve also used a video recorder with higher video quality than the Olympus camera. I was able to use the camera to complete the assignment, but when using the video function I had to stick to more well lit areas in order to see anything on the video. In an ideal world, I’d like a camera that took high-resolution images and video in any format I wished. It wouldn’t blur unless I set it to and could take great nighttime pictures and videos.

I used iMovie 6 to edit the video for my drift. I’m very experienced with iMovie and know how to use it inside and out. I have been using the program since my sophomore year of high school when I took a class on television editing. I’ve edited a variety of videos on iMovie and feel comfortable using it. One day I hope to upgrade to Final Cut Pro, but at the moment I don’t have access to it easily.