Final project: I Hate Jeremy

I Hate Jeremy (Edited) from Vanessa Yip on Vimeo

Blog Post: Neighborhood Sounds

I live up in Whitestone, on the border of Queens and the Bronx above busy Flushing. In the most part, it is a quiet area. Not much happens out there. Bus services isn't very frequent, and streets aren't that busy with people.

From this audio though, it may seem different. I was walking home with my phone out getting audio sounds. But it was Halloween. So the town sounded a little busier than normal. More people were out, especially with their kids because of trick-or-treating. It was windy and wet, as you can hear in the audio from the wet pavement. More cars were passing by than usual on the street. Granted, this was night time.

The bar doors were open as I walked by. It sounds like that place was lively and busy. In reality, however, I saw only two people sitting down inside.

I guess from this audio, you may think my neighborhood is the normal busy type. Well, unless you're from New York, because so many towns have a lot of noise. This is very quiet for New York. However, this is a holiday in the suburbs. Whitestone is generally more quiet than that. We only get lively when the annual Greek Festival Weekend comes around, and that's in June.

Blog Post 4: Analyzing 'The Last of Us' 's "Truck Ambush" Cinematic Cutscene

I decided to analyze a scene from one of my favorite video games, The Last of Us, a game by Naughty Dog about a Texan survivor in Apocalyptic U.S. 20 years in trying to get a young girl to a resistance group cross country. I chose a scene that didn't contain any big spoilers to the main plot, since they have already shown the latter part of the scene in the game's trailer.

To summarize the scene, this scene is after Joel (Our Texan Protagonist) and Ellie (The teenager) obtain a car in Lincoln, Massachusetts from a contact of Joel's named Bill (and this scene is after they dealt with a whole hoarde of zombie like people). They are on their way to Pittsburgh, and the scene is mostly focused on a portion of the car ride to their destination. Cut to daylight, Joel and Ellie arrive at a crowded yet deserted highway. So he changes route. They come in contact with a "wounded man". But Joel knows "He ain't even hurt.". It turns out to be an ambush, and the scene ends with Joel crashing the car into a garage.

This is definitely one of my favorite scenes (that are non spoilerish) from the game. It gives an overall feel for the game that is intense, emotional and story driven. Naughty Dog is well known for making cinematic games and succeeded with the style of movement, cuts and composition.

There is a guitar piece from 0:53 to 1:23 was a great add-in. It ended the scene connected to saying goodbye to Bill to the point where Ellie spoke in the car, and shows that they had been driving for a little while. It's a good transition to have. It's the only obvious non-diagetic music piece in this scene. The rest is diagetic, thanks to Ellie stealing one of Bill's old tape cassettes, that played Hank William's songs. And the song that starts is "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive" (which is fitting for a world filled with hunters and fungus infected killers). Despite the title and lyrics of the song, the song does match the scene where Ellie and Joel are bonding because of the 'happy' tone of the music. It's showing a lighter side of the apocalypse when things are calm. I like that they show that they have the tape running, because from the edit from night to day (or at least cloudy to sunny), they're playing a different song by Williams called, "Forsaken and Alone", another fitting song for the feel of the movie. This song has a deeper tone than the first one played, and helps lead the story into a more intense scene, which is into the ambush. The song goes from diagetic to being non-diagetic as well, because the song becomes louder and doesn't have that radio static anymore. It sounds clearer.

The scene is very cinematic, and involves a lot of camera movement. Composition-wise, many of the scenes follow the rule of thirds (having characters at the 'money' spots). For example, 0:00-0:04 (Bill and Joel in the back of the truck), 1:13-1:18 (Joel's car driving by), and that's just naming two. tracking and panning is also very successful. They're not too long, they're not too flat, and it's a video game so it's hard to show a realistic on hands camera tracking, such as several of the interactions between Ellie and Joel in the car and when the hunters start their ambush. A very good one I noticed is when Ellie gives Joel the tape. The camera keeps their track on Joel and follows his hand putting the tape into the tape deck. It's funny how, grabbing from the mood of the music, how the 'happier' song plays during a scene that is raining and toned down colors, while the more deeper and tense song plays during the bright daylight, switching how we usually feel about what those opposite color tones in a scene do. What determines how long shots are really depends.mostly it shows either a track or change in camera angle to change focus on characters. I think the longest shot was the part where Joel decides to turn around the car (3:20-3:32) so around 12-13 seconds, and that part used a tracking between characters as well as the change in foreground focus and background focus and then back.

I believe the cuts are very seamless. At the part where it is dark and raining, and Ellie says,"I'm not even tired." in response to Joel telling her to get some rest, and then 3 seconds later, it smoothly cuts to daylight and Ellie is shown to have been sleeping. You didn't need another scene in between, or a cross dissolve transition. It was a seamless cut because of the same framing of the character's placements. Still, there was also something about the cut between cgi cutscenes and gameplay that I always had an issue with. You can't see it here, but the scene starts from a cut that went to a blackscreen , and ends cutting a to black screen for maybe a millisecond or a second and then it moves on to gameplay. It is very hard to do a very great 'jump-into-gameplay' cut if the level of graphics for the cinematic cutscenes is different from the gameplay graphics. So in the future I hope they find a better way to deal with that.

As I said before, Naughty Dog is well known for making their games feel like a realistic cinematic experience, and watching this game does make you feel like you are watching a movie. It successfully shows realistic camerawork using tracking and panning. The editing and cuts is very smooth. They give both the dark and light atmosphere in terms of lighting and mood. And the scene shows enough content to get a feel of the world without spoiling the game. It shows that music is as important as the visual of the scene. It makes you feel like anything can happen. You could be in a down time moment driving and trying to stop the teenage girl you are looking after from looking at pornographic material to dealing with hunters in an ambush. It goes from relaxed to very tense. Shows also that this world has cut back on technology, and how much of a struggle people are facing with supplies and also the change in people's nature. It's enough to get this game a 10/10 score on many different gaming review sites and a nomination for Game of the Year 2013.

Hey guys! This is an interview that I did with one of my classmates. She talks of one of her favorite hobbies. Check it out :)

Define a Space: Hunter College Campus

Defining a Space, Hunter College

Here is the project for defining a space

Artist Statement

Hi guys! My name is Vanessa Yip. I was born and raised in Queens, New York. My major is General Media Studies. I'm focusing on working on my Web Production and Graphic Design, but I also want to be able to do a little bit of journalism, specifically critical analysis (review). My interest include watching film (movies, tv shows, anime)  drawing, and playing video games (I'm one of the weird people who like Third Person View games rather than First Person View games).

The art style I do is always constantly changing due to the influence of the world. But people seem to notice that one thing sticks. I’ve always been into Asian style or Asian influenced art. Aside from being part of my ethnic roots, I watch a lot anime, and from my childhood it must’ve been something that stuck and influenced the way I drew most of my art. The  I’m a big fan of video games, and what many in my favorites elements I grab from it is the flowiness of the strokes when I use paint and the appreciation for the aesthetics of nature.


 What I wish to try to express with my work is a story.have in common is beautiful graphics and a great story line. Companies such as Naughty Dog and Square Enix with games like Uncharted, The Last of Us and Final Fantasy have successfully elling through tv shows, movie films and anime. Breaking Bad done just that. In fact, it was Final Fantasy 10 that gave me a strong feeling that I would pursue a career in the arts.  ory I also gained an a value in the importance in design and stthas always kept me on edge, and not only does the show have some of the best writing I’ve ever encountered, but they do pay attention to their camera stills and what is in the scene to help the story move along. That’s an art.