Final Project

MOMI

The Museum of the moving image is a really cool place and absolutely relates directly to what we are doing in this course. I really loved all the old scripts and costumes, especially “I Love Lucy” and “Mrs. Doubtfire”. I think these exhibits give us a closer look into what went on behind the scenes during those productions and allows us to break down some of the stuff we see on screen. It was also cool to see all the old make up that was used in films and T.V. shows, especially “Sex and the City”. I love Marilyn Monroe so it was cool to see her featured in the museum. I also thought that all of the old video game consoles were really cool, they show us the evolution of gaming and display some of the most popular and classic games that we all love. One of my favorite exhibits is the King Tut room. I really love time period movies and Ancient Egypt is one of my favorites. I think that’s its really beautiful and creative and really transports you to a different place when you are in that part of the museum. Another really cool part of the museum is all the old cameras. I think it’s really interesting to look at the equipment that was used in old Hollywood, how big it is compared to the equipment we use now, and how intricate they all look. This museum has everything to do with this class because it looks at every aspect of filmmaking, from pre-production, planning, to production, to wardrobe, ect. Going here is a really cool experience.

Relationships between shots

https://vimeo.com/59940289

For this assignment I chose to analyze the short film “This is it”.  In the film, two guys in their 20’s move into an apartment together and experience what its like to have to deal with the everyday annoying things that other people do. The cuts in this film are quick and directly coordinate with the story. The story is told in two parts, from the point of view of each roommate and according to series of questions they ask each other about the apartment. The size of the shots usually match with each pair of questions asked, and the way they edited this made it funny because it shows both perspectives in the same areas of the apartment. The tone of the film was funny but the characters were never laughing, they were experiencing frustration that many of us can relate to, which is what made it funny.  A lot of the shots matched in composition as well, which made the film flow seamlessly and I think the fact that they chose to use mostly just the natural sound elements of the environment made it realistic while still maintaining the humor and absurdity of it.  The shots were all very quick and each told their individual story but when they are all combined they also tell an overall story with a beginning, middle and end so I defiantly think the editing was well done. In three minutes this film accomplished and showed a lot, great use of location and most likely limited budget.

Aronson Awards

Attending the Aronson awards for social justice journalism was really amazing. First of all, it was really inspiring to see how passionate the people being honored were about their projects. They opened my eyes up to a lot of things that I was only vaguely familiar with. The stories they told and their process creating these documentaries were incredible, heartbreaking and extremely important. As a film maker, my goal is to make fiction narratives, but seeing some of the stuff that these people were talking about really made me want to do documentary work and make an impact on the world the way that they have; by telling the stories of real people living under crazy circumstances. Some of the stories I remember are the ones about the water crisis in Flint, Michigan and the chemicals in the factories giving “popcorn lung” to workers all over the country. These stories were truly heartbreaking because there is nothing these people could have done or known about what would get them seriously sick. The story about the Alabama prison system and the cases of police brutality were also incredibly heartbreaking and really reflect a major social problem that we hear about very often and yet never get any justice for. I hope that through documentaries and with the help of incredible people like the ones I saw at the awards, the government and big corporations can address these issues more urgently. It was also amazing to see a recent graduate receiving an award, to see how passionate and driven someone my age is about making a change is inspiring. Everybody there deserved the awards they received, I am really glad I decided to go and help honor them. 

Portrait of a Person

https://soundcloud.com/darya-igamberdiev/portrait-of-a-person

What I Hear

As I lay in my bed in my Harlem apartment, I hear almost the same sounds outside my open window every morning. It's always a mixture of sounds that soothe me, and sounds that disturb me, sometimes waking me up. I hear birds chirping and cars driving by, creating a swooshing sound which is not that different from the sound of the ocean. I also hear the beeping of the garbage truck mixed with the yelling of the garbage men and people on the street. There is a couple fighting loudly on the street, and a woman, who stands in the alley right below my window, has her cell phone on speaker while she has a mundane conversation, all I hear is "uh huh" and "yup" from her end of the conversation. The design of my building must bounce sound pretty far because I am on the fourth floor and I can almost make out what the person on the phone is saying, they are talking fast, but I cannot quiet tell if it is a man or a woman. I hear a plane fly by every couple of minutes, the sound of it overpowers everything else, almost like the rest of the world is muted in comparison to its vibration. I hear cars beeping at each other, adding to the hostile environment that the people arguing have created. Every couple of minutes, it's almost silent, I just hear the birds and the occasional car passing by, as if the people arguing had left, and the woman had hung up the phone, but the silence ends and it's clear that the people are still there, and the woman had just walked into the building for a minute. Far away, in the park down the street I hear a man call out for his friend "Johnny", "Johnny", but nobody replies, he is the only one I hear in the park.

Results

I really enjoyed "Results" and getting a chance to meet Andrew Bujalski. I thought the characters were really well developed and had interesting personalities. I also thought it was different and interesting that there was no "bad guy" in the movie.  All the character had their own stories and flaws but nobody had any bad intentions or negative feelings towards one another. I think this made the movie better because it really made it about them as apposed to a complicated plot. It was surprising that Trevor was actually a good guy, I was waiting for him to do something that turned him into the stereotype of a personal trainer or gym owner, ect. but that never happened, which was cool. The movie was simple, but it was done right, both the story and the cinematography. I thought they chose great shots, which I noticed from the very first scene. It was also really great to hear about the making of this film, especially because it is the first film he has worked on that had big name actors and a bigger budget than his other films. It was inspiring to hear about how things developed for him and makes me want to check out his other work. Overall, I think this movie needed to be made, it was a breathe of fresh air in comparison to the hundreds of movies that revolve around restaurant workers, baristas, and office assistants. This movie made me think about the world that people who work in gyms live in, and it made me see gyms differently, so I think it's defiantly a good thing that a movie makes you think in those terms. I've been telling all the friends that they need to see it, good job Andrew!

Sequence 01 from darya igamberdiev on Vimeo.

Artist Statement

I wrote my first poem on a mothers day card in the third grade. I think I fell in love with that process right then and there. I continued to write poetry, but just for fun, because although my parents made sure I was well educated in the arts as well as academically, it was always an unspoken fact that I would pursue a career that was more sensible and less of a risk. 

I went to college and got excellent grades, but could not pick a major, it felt like I wanted to do everything and nothing. In my second year of college, while being exposed to the world of hip hop via friends and new artists I liked, I took a look at my now extensive collection of poems and decided that I wanted to turn them into songs. I can't sing, so the only way I felt I could express myself was through rap. It was hard being suburban, white, ect. and trying to fit into a world I knew nothing about, so I went to a friend of a friend who was a local rapper and asked him to help me. After a few meetings he stopped answering my calls and a few weeks later put out a "diss song" about me and a friend of mine. It seemed silly but we recorded one too and went back and forth on Youtube for a while. After that it became all about proving him, and everyone else wrong. I wrote and practiced endlessly, and slowly, as I got better and better, it became less about proving people wrong and more about how much I loved it. But I still only did it for fun. I was still in school and decided I wanted to be a lawyer. 

At 21, I moved to the city from Long Island and reconnected with an old friend who was also part of the hip hop circuit. I was going to John Jay College and was one semester away from graduating, when I dropped out to pursue music full time. Something in me clicked, I knew I was meant to be an artist, not a lawyer. I recorded a mixtape, and decided it was time to shoot a video. I borrowed my Dads Nikon 90d, and my friend, who had never touched a camera shot a video for me which I though my other friend would edit. When she bailed on me I decided to mess around with final cut and see what I could do. That was it. I edited the video in 3 days and was completely in love. In the next year I recorded and edited about 15 videos for myself and my friends, but started to feel like I wanted to get away from music videos, and into film. At that point I came up with an idea to combine my love for music with my growing love for film. I was very inspired by Kanye West's "Dark Fantasy" since his songs were a new brand of hip hop and his concepts were similar to mine. I started to turn my general idea of doing something about the 7 deadly sins into a screenplay and eventually a short film/music video hybrid. I was and still am working on the film and music simultaneously, and I'm really not sure if I am a musician working on a film, or a film maker working on music. Either way, I finally feel like I have something worth giving up an easier, risk free way of life. But I don't think I ever really had a choice.