Category Archives: Film and Media Review

Film analysis: Coming Full Circle with WALL-E – My Favorite Project So Far!

This is hands down my favorite ever project for DS106.

Initially I had a hard time coming up with a film to analyze. I don’t have any subscriptions to any streaming platforms, so I had to do my best to find clips on YouTube. While brainstorming, I had a lightbulb moment that reminded me of a particular scene in WALL-E that I wanted to delve further into.

I picked a scene where the majority of the attention is put on the characters. I focused in on the close-ups of the characters, and how different cinematography elements were strung together to tell a story without the use of dialogue.

I used OBS to recording my desktop screen, with the audio recording on. I wrote a script beforehand and printed it out to read, and it was recorded all in a continuous take. This allowed me to not perform any extra work of overlaying my voice on the clip, nor did I have to download the video to my computer. However, this forced me to record everything in a single take, which gave me no leeway to mess up any of my lines for 3 minutes. It took way too many takes than I want to admit to get all of my lines down, and timing my commentary with the transitions of the clips was even more difficult.

Once I did get it down though, I was so satisfied with the end result. I think this is one of my best works so far, and I had a blast walking through the creative process behind the analysis. I’d argue that the timing of the commentary is a method of storytelling in and of itself, and I think it really shines through in my WALL-E analysis.

I’ll definitely explore editing clips in a video editor in the future, but learning OBS was a great experience for the rest of my DS106 journey.

Moon Graffiti – Eerie yet Captivating

This short story was unexpectedly gripping for the entirety of the 10 minutes. The conversation between Armstrong and Aldrin signifies uncharted territory, as this was the first time man stepped foot on the moon. The entire story has an underlying mysterious backtrack, until the middle where sometimes just their voices and breathing fill the audio. Sound effects are also littered into the story, and even if these sounds aren’t accurate to what can be heard in space, it adds to the suspense and gravity of the situation.

I am personally very afraid of space, and anything of the unknown. It’s the feeling of knowing that there are things out there that are unknown to us, or potentially too advanced for the human mind to grasp. The “fear of missing out” or FOMO is also a reason why I fear the unknown, as eventually man may be able to conquer space and comprehend all of the mysteries in our galaxy, but I’ll never be around to witness this.

But the nature of the unknown and the fear that future civilizations will have to conquer gives me comfort at times. At least I won’t have to face these uncharted territories myself, all at the cost of my FOMO inside of my tombstone.