Final Project medp160

Homebro from Nicole Costelloe on Vimeo.

Blog #3: Relationships between shots

For this assignment, I chose a drug deal scene from a movie called Another Day in Paradise. The movie is about a young couple whose drug addiction leads them to commit small time robberies and crimes.  In the movie they team up with an older couple who mentor them on how to live a posh lifestyle through drug dealing and robbery. When they are first introduced to this lifestyle, there is a lot of comedic relief, but as the movie goes on, the relationship between the characters and their risky lifestyles grows seemingly dark.
             In the scene, the older mentor, Mel, is teaching Bobby how to bargain with people when selling them drugs. Mel tells him to just "hang there and look cool", and takes a gun and tucks it in his waist band and sits on a striped couch. The movie takes place in the 70's, and the way the yellow, brown, and red striped couch match the mustard yellow wall suggest that. Also, the characters are constantly chain smoking. Mel is wearing a mustard yellow shirt that matches the couch he sits on and the wall behind him. However, despite all of these colors, the hotel room they're in is pretty dark. I think the room is dark to suggest a gloomy feeling about this lifestyle.
       Once the clients arrive, 70's surfer music begins to play, and there is fast paced upbeat guitar, and the shots quickly cut between Mel and the clients as they negotiate the prices. I think the music and quickly cut shots reveal an exciting, fast way of living that the drug dealers and junkies in the movie experience. The quickly cut shots are definitely obvious, and once the clients mouth off to Mel, the shots begin to include Bobby to capture his reaction to how his mentor deals with it. As the tension grows, the shots between the clients, Mel, and Bobby last longer, until Mel kicks over the coffee table and pulls out a gun. Even though the clients, Mel, and Bobby are all in the same room, they are all in different shots, and the shots are cut so you can see their different reactions. I think this is done on purpose, to create a dramatic effect, also to reveal how unpredictable this lifestyle is, and to speculate how even though Mel and Bobby are a team, they are two different people with two different perspectives on the world. Mel calls his girlfriend to bring the drugs to the room, and the up beat music fades out after the clients leave.

Audio Portrait

What I hear: Soundwalk

I'm sitting outside of the West Building at Hunter College. I hear the idle rumbling of a truck's engine. The sound of the grill sizzling at the RoadSide Grill food truck suggests it's sometime around lunch time. There are sounds of chatter coming from all different directions. A young man screams, "Where is she?!", over the syncopated percussion of a woman speaking another language on the phone. There is a rhythm of click clacking shoes that walk by. Women in heeled boots are the loudest, as they stomp down the streets of the Upper East Side, and some shoes make no noise at all.
     The idle sounds of motors suddenly turn into sounds of movement, and I hear the vrooming car and truck engines run. Some motors sound rustier and older than others. When I feel the vibrations on the sidewalk, I can hear the 6 train under me gliding against the metal of the tracks. To my surprise, the sounds of distant car horns and echoing police sirens are meaningful to me. They suggest that I am not alone in this city filled with action, and that help is never too far away. It's soothing to hear the buses squeak when they stop, and rumble when they go. I've grown accustomed to the absence of silence, and the trivial background sounds that are essential to NYC.

Artist Statement

      Story telling transcends time and space. Some days, I have thoughts and feelings I wish I could express to others that don’t necessarily exist in my life right now. There’s always nonsense that makes me laugh that I wish I could share with people (living or dead) that aren’t present at that time and moment. I've never considered myself to be a story teller, but I've always been a writer. My goal as an artist is to bring the monologues I write to life.
       Since a young age, I've always been interested in collaging. I liked taking mundane and repetitive images out of magazines and making them aesthetically pleasing. Collage art is pretty abstract, but as of this year I've managed to incorporate it into a zine I created that unites collaging and storytelling into the same medium. To me, growing as an artist means exploring the various mediums you can use to bring your story to life.
       Lately, I've been inspired by photographer and artist, Signe Pierce. Her ability to capture ordinary reality and make it seem hyper real is really cool. I think it's interesting that she creates art that can be modern and digital as well as nostalgic. I've always been inspired by artist, Alex Pardee, and his surreal characters that remind me of nightmares and old cartoons. I remember reading something he wrote about a breakup in one of his zines at a young age, and feeling a connection to the way in which he wrote and expressed himself. The way in which he sincerely and honestly writes about everything that inspires him manages to inspire me as well.