Crossing the river - Wenhui - 7 Days in NYC: Exploring Contemporary Landscapes

Crossing the river - Wenhui

5/24/2015

Water has a lot of impact on New York City. It helped forming the culture, business, transportation and landscape pattern hundreds years ago till now.
Through our trip to NYC, I took three clips, above the water, on the water and under the water. Like the city and people in the city, the water is flowing all the time. Traveling around water brought me different experience of observing the urban landscape.
How people could make good use of waterfront, how to transform the waterfront into a landscape that could benefit people living in the city and could have a resilience function either for the sea-level rising or storm water threats are very crucial.

12 Comments

Yangluxi

5/24/2015 04:55:52 pm

I saw your draft and i got this video is consisted of 3 transportation we took during the week. And comparing the views from these 3 different transportation is really a great idea! I like this theme!

Yangluxi

5/26/2015 08:14:24 am

After reviewing this film, I think maybe you could combining the three sound clips of each video together into the film. For now the sound is from the left video, but maybe you could have a switch between each video of the sound track~

5/25/2015 02:03:08 am

there is a great deal of craft in the way you've prepared the film: we often don't emphasize the exercise of restraint (i.e. more is not always better!!), and wenhui is trying to do a lot with very little indeed: relying on only 3 shots that are all filmed in a similar, scrolling manner, using using equal parts of the screen to present each experience, splicing in 2-3 second full screen shots to break the pace of the film, dubbing the dull sound of the wind hitting the csmera and the mundane conversations on the subway —these are all very simple, with very effective results. the east river was not a site listed on the itinerary, yet it comes across in very different and powerful ways in the film.

a few comments on how to improve the work: the left hand shot looks like it might want to run in reverse so that the water is always moving from right to left in each 1/3 of the screen. i'm a bit worried about the ending of your film, since we only seem to arrive on the other side of the river in the subway shot, and the other shots just end for no particular reason (i.e. we haven't arrived on the other side yet). because you smartly use full screen shots ot cut up the film, you could arrange it such that the last 20 seconds of the film are all dedicated to the experience of arriving on the east side of the river?

intriguing work!

Jingyuan

5/25/2015 05:44:50 am

I really like the film! Begin with the steam of car is very powerful and the font is very elegant and simple and matches with the tone of background. Three split screen show the difference between three locations. Through the comparison each part, no matter the fastest one, or the slowest one is stronger than they display alone.

Junhui

5/25/2015 06:09:32 am

I really like the technique you use for this video. Using three split video from the beginning to the end is quite restrained, but you use it very successful. It not only emphasis the theme about crossing the river but also provide people a chance to have three different speed of feeling crossing.

Crystal Peritz

5/25/2015 11:41:14 am

I really like this film and the way you take something people see as a hassle and turn it into something scenic. I like how you used the split screen here it really portrayed what you are trying to get at. I do feel like a lot was going on in the video which made it hard to concentrate but you did capture your theme. I would recommend maybe simplifying the video to two screen and also to show many different way to cross the river in a clearer manner. (For example the subway.)

Matt

5/25/2015 01:02:37 pm

A big progress to refine the information from the draft. I appreciate the effort to come out the theme which is very nice and standing out. I like the film you took on the cable car to show like the cross section of the city and the hierarchy of the urban landscape. But what kind of experience of crossing river you want to display in the video? Nice film.

Jinsung

5/25/2015 02:00:56 pm

It's really smart way to show the combination of 3 part of water characters of urban landscape. If you add more effective sounds rather than raw sound, it could support your theme. Few comments. If you divide whole film to the three phases and the left, middle, and right shot expand to whole screen in each phase, it can show more things of above, on, under the water.

Tong Zhao

5/25/2015 03:13:51 pm

What a amazing film.......!
The technique you used is excellent!!!!! And the slow speed makes everything elegant.
Your theme is really clear. Great work!

Paul

5/26/2015 12:27:36 am

I can imagine that you made a lot effort on adjusting the time of three different videos and make them started and ended in such a smooth way, good job!! The way you combine the split screens with few "descriptive"whole screens is really nice. Only some small deficiencies, first one is the sound, maybe use some other music or sound to cover the noise can make it better. Second one, is the whole film just narrate "crossing the river" or something else behind this idea?

Christina

5/26/2015 04:55:30 am

As a viewer, I can tell that you put much thought into this film while we were on our trip. That in itself makes the shots more powerful. The sequence of the 3 shots are all put together nicely, but having them all flow the same direction would have been more effective. Nice work!

Joanne Pereira-Melo

5/26/2015 05:08:14 am

Your idea is definitely one of the more unique ones I have seen thus far. The film is very neatly organized and simple. I think it would have been beneficial for you to label the three parts in the beginning of the film instead of writing about it in the blurb. My one concern is that the shot on the far left is very unclear. I had understood that the train was going underground but having that moving brown/black blur shot was not very pleasing to the eyes. My favorite part of the film is the shot from the TRAM going from Manhattan to Roosevelt Island. It was clear and well captured. Well done!

Crossing the river - Wenhui

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