Project Progress

I spent a hefty chunk of my Thanksgiving break working on my project. I finished watching the last three films, and the page for each film is essentially done. I may mess around with the transitions, and I'll probably change some of the colors to make for easier reading, but the bulk of my main pages is completed.

I'm nearly completed with some of my supplementary pages as well. My 'Actors' page is giving me a bit of trouble, as there are two in-site links that refuse to work for some reason. I may just delete the text for those links and make them again.

I haven't begun working on my 'Source' page yet, but I've been organizing my source information. I decided that I'll have a main source page, and the citation for each film will be accompanied by a link to a minipage for screencaptures from that film and their citations. That will be easier than trying to fit over 50 images on a single page.

I have a few more citation questions. First, people credited for films (director/performers) aren't credited "Last Name, First Name" the way that authors are. However, Wong Kar-wai follows Chinese name order - Wong is his surname. I'm assuming I can credit him in the citations as "Wong Kar-wai" instead of "Kar-wai Wong?"

Also, I'm not sure whether to credit films according to the year they were made or the year the DVDs I watched were made. For most of the eight films I watched, this isn't an issue, but there are two special circumstances I'm unsure about. For the film "In the Mood for Love" (2000), I watched the Criterion edition, which wasn't put out until 2002. More significantly, I watched a remastered edition of "Ashes of Time" (1994), a DVD that didn't come out until 2009. With that film, I understand that entire scenes from the original were replaced, as some of the film stock was badly preserved and couldn't be remastered. Am I right in thinking I should credit the film as being from 2009 and give it the name on the box ("Ashes of Time Redux")? I'm not quite sure how to reflect the specific edition I watched and still include the actual age of the film - MLA guidelines don't offer much insight.

Procrastinated Project Progress

Because I'm so clever, I was working on my project last night and completely forgotting about posting a blog about it (apparently, something due in three weeks is more urgent than something due last night). Anyway, here is my update, if a behind schedule.

Things are gong well with my project. I'm nearly completed with six pages of my Wix project - the introduction page as well as pages of five of the eight films I need to watch. I have my hands on two of the remaining films, and the last should be coming to be today via Netflix.

I'm enjoying working with Wix. I've gotten into a rhythm for working on my project, and I think it's turning out nicely. I need to make several informational pages - one for films, one for actors, one for my sources, and one explaining navigation for the site. The actors page is in progress, and with any luck, I'll finish that or be close to it before I watch the last three films over Thanksgiving break.

One thing I'll have to do is go over all my pages again and work on my transitions. When I move to a new page, everything sweeps in from the right, and I'd like to find something a little gentler.

One thing I'm not sure about is whether I need to cite sources that I link to. For example, if clicking on the name "Maggie Cheung" sends the reader to the actress's Imdb page, do I include that on my sources page? Any help with that?

At any rate, I'm enjoying the project, and it's encouraged me to think about other poems I've written that could be enhanced by hypermediation. Something to ponder...

Project Progress

I've been working on making a Wix site for my project, "Hong Kong Love Story", for a few weeks now. I've been gathering resources for each page film by film. I've rewatched five films so far, grabbing screen captures and writing down useful quotes as I go. I've just about finished the main pages for the films I've seen so far, and the minipages are works in progress.

Initially, I had a little trouble when I started on my minipages and then went back to revise my main pages. With the minipage frame occupying so much of the space, I had a hard time grabbing the pieces that I wanted, and I soon discovered that my revisions weren't showing up on every minipage. In fact, entire blocks of text would disappear as I clicked from minipage to minipage, and that wasn't exactly what I was going for. I admittedly wrestled with this for some time before I realized I should just reduce the size of my minipage frame and revise the main page to my satisfaction before resizing and getting to work on the minipages.

I've been working both on and offline. After I see a film and collect my images/quotes, I generally print my images and then cut them out. On the back of each image, I write the description or quote that will accompany it, and then I paper clip the pictures to another page with descriptions for each stanza on that particular section of the poem. This makes it a little easier to keep track of everything and visualize what I want to do when I get on the computer.

Project Proposal

Wong Kar-wai is a filmmaker who specializes in melancholy romances. He's known for his bittersweet themes, lush cinematography, dreamlike voice-overs, and excellent actors, many of whom appear in more than one of his films. His understated love stories that almost never end well aren't for everyone, but I'm a big fan of his work.

About a year ago, I wrote "Hong Kong Love Story", a long poem that imagines a continuous thread running through Wong's eight films. For my final project, I plan to design a website to showcase my poem. The section for each film would have its own page, and certain lines would link to screen captures, descriptions of scenes/characters, quotes from the films, or Imdb pages. I want to allow the audience members to pick and choose what they want to see - for example, someone who's never seen any of Wong's films would benefit from written descriptions of scenes. Conversely, a long-time fan would more likely be content with the poem/images and wouldn't need to click on the descriptions. I want to create a multi-layered site that could allow anyone to enjoy the poem, regardless of their previous knowledge of Wong Kar-wai and his films.