What You Eat/Like IS NOT Real Chinese Food

Outcome

Statement (Intention)

What I did for the project was totally different from the proposal in which I planned to make a supercut of people’s over-exaggerated reaction after tasting the dishes in an animation Cooking Master Boy. Yet the project guidelines require us to create something meaningful so I first thought about relating those melodramatic reactions to fast food ads where hamburgers appear extremely tempting but not at all in reality… However, after talking to one of our TA, Kevin, last Thursday (Oct. 6th), we came up with the idea about gross American Chinese Food because it would not be very compatible to combine animation with real life ads while gross American Chinese Food is a good representative of culture remixes. Later on, a more “brilliant” idea occurred to me. Why should the theme be “gross”? Thus, the statement is:

My personal experience tells me that American Chinese Food is good to eat, but they are not real. Therefore, as a Chinese who is proud of the nation’s abundant cuisine culture, I feel obliged to clarify that most Chinese Food that Americans eat/like is not authentic or does not even exist in China.    

Context

I just searched online and the first video came up on YouTube was this American Chinese Food vs Real Chinese Food news program. I watched it and strongly agreed with most of the content, so I decided to modify it, for example adding pictures, to exaggerate the effects. The second remix example on the course project webpage, Staring Newscasters, might be subconscious inspiration of mine. I used the moments of “what” from a funny supercut of Don Draper (although I don’t even know who he is or the show that he performs) for people’s response after learning something surprised (that is, the “Chinese food” in their opinion that they like were actually not authentic) because I was still influenced by the very expressive way using people’s exaggerated reaction in the animation. And I incorporated the funky Yao’s face meme that I saw from Dope Meme in the Meme Tennis project.

Additionally, I have a blurred impression that one of the readings says something like none of our ideas are original; they all come from certain sources. Therefore, I must have saw the use of red ”X” somewhere but I couldn’t remember.

Process

I cut the moments that I found appropriate from Mad Men: Don Draper Says "What?" and integrate them into appropriate place in the news program. I added frames of pictures, which feels like making PPT in Premiere; and for some parts of the connection, I used the “Ping-Pong” technique (duplicate a small period of the video several times and apply “reverse speed” for the clips in even position to make the connection more smoothly) learned in visual labs to make some pronunciations of words like “No” or “Eh” longer.

Product

As I mentioned before, I tried to exaggerate the effect of plain news program by adding pictures and people’s reaction to it, making it more provocative and dramatic. Since the topic was about Chinese food, I thought it would be appropriate to find some meme of famous Chinese figure as represent of Chinese’s reactions in addition to Don Draper’s “what” as that of American’s reactions. That’s how the meme of “Jackie Chan—what are you talking about” and “Yao” came into the picture.

Besides, I had no idea about how to make an end at first; but I found the situation where Don Draper vomiting in the bathroom in stark contrast to the last sentence from news reporter—“Take care”; thus I used that as the end.

Critique

To be honest, I’m pretty satisfied with this project as my first editing work. And the outcome expresses my ideas relatively clearly and effectively. 

As to the spreadability, I post the work on YouTube and share the link on Facebook. Although I also share the link via Wechat, due to the fact that I assumed my potential viewers to be Americans and not all of my Wechat friends have YouTube or Google access, I don’t expect many views from that platform. Up till 21:13pm October 11, 2016, there have been 28 views in total. 

Personal Reflection

After I chose the alternative topic about clarifying the fact that what Americans eat/like is not real Chinese Food, I felt more motivated to create the project. As interest is one’s best teacher, and I strongly agree with most content of the original news program, I edited the video with great passion and the editing process became my pleasure. Therefore, I learned that finding a “right” topic helps me create the whole project a lot (that also makes it much easier to write this documentation as I just need to write down whatever came to my mind instead of thinking hardly about why I chose the topic and what on earth I would like to express via the media last time)! I also appreciate all those interesting sources appearing online because without them, my project will be based on nothing.

If given more time, I would try to learn more techniques editing videos in Premiere to create better effect for the red “X” (probably an effect that emphasize the “no” meaning more strongly instead of the current scaling version), smoothen the connections in between and maybe try to add some audio effects in the background.

Sources

I used videograbby.com to download all videos and I searched all dishes with “Panda Express” added to the search term to keep consistence with”Beijing Beef”, the first dish mentioned in the news program which comes from Panda Express. But definitely no offenses to Panda Express as I, in fact, like the food from a Panda Express near Universal Studio, Orlando.

Project Cover Image:

http://www.kentkedl.com/?tag=chinese-food

Videos:

1. Mad Men: Don Draper Says "What?" – YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsJSRP7cZVo

2. American Chinese Food vs Real Chinese Food - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMuJgtRdPpk

Pictures (in the same order as they appear in the final remix work):

1. Bejing Beef

http://dinnerthendessert.com/panda-express-beijing-beef-copycat/

2. Red Cross:

http://www.clipartbest.com/red-cross-image

3. General Tso’s Chicken

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/panda-express-touts-american-chinese-classic-new-general-tso-s-n627216

4. “Jackie Chan—what are you talking about”

http://www.pwnfitness.com/2013/05/29/what-is-muscle-belly/

5. Crab Rangoon

http://paralyzedwithjoy.blogspot.com/2012/03/date-night.html

6. Cheese

http://weknowyourdreams.com/cheese.html

7. Broccoli Beef

http://nutrition.healthgrove.com/l/35112/Panda-Express-Beef-And-Broccoli

8. Broccoli

http://feelgrafix.com/985814-broccoli.html

9. Broccoli (banned)

https://ohijustdontknow.com/2011/11/18/lets-ban-broccoli/

10. Fortune Cookie

http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/new_logo_and_identity_for_panda_express.php#.V_r48juVtUQ

11. “Yao”

http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/532271-yao-ming-face-bitch-please

References

1. Course project website

https://daraghbyrne.github.io/mediasynth2016/modules/module2/creativeproject/#documentation

2. Staring Newscasters

https://vimeo.com/28868879

3. Dope Meme

http://ideate.xsead.cmu.edu/gallery/projects/dope-meme

and personal experiences ;)

Proposal

I used to watch Cooking Master Boy (Chūka Ichiban!) when I was in elementary school or even earlier. And about ten years later, the animation is still being broadcast on TV during the summer vacation, attract all the children. When I first watched the episodes, I kind of believe that the dishes cooked by Mao, the Cooking Master, were indeed so delicious that all the people who tasted the dishes would feel like as happy as they have been to heaven. Later on, I realized how exaggerated the plots were and people’s reaction after tasting each dish was just faked to create an unrealistic impression. Therefore, I intend to create a supercut, capturing the dishes and those facial expressions to highlight how exaggerated the “repetitive” reactions are.

Those pretentious reactions also make me think about the contrast between how a dish looks in the menu and how it looks in reality. Thus, I might also incorporate some parts in the McDonald Ads v.s. Real thing into the product.

Sources and Samples (for Proposal)

All episodes are available online through Youtube or other websites. And I can download them via http://www.videograbby.com/.

Episodes Content List – from which I can briefly review the content of each episode and recall whether there are those exaggerated facial expressions in it and if yes, approximately at which point will they happen.

http://www.tv.com/shows/cooking-master-boy/episodes/

This is a blog on RenRen, a relatively washed-up Chinese social website, which includes a lot of screenshots of those melodramatic faces.

http://share.renren.com/326963092_11107840234/5494723525

McDonald Ads v.s Real thing—this is a Youtube video demonstrating the contrast between McDonald Ads and the Reality (actually, I find the French fries and chicken salad looks very similar to the Ads; it is just the real burgers that look not very lifelike).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zx1IvvLuuEI 

Spreadability

Based on the “quality” (watchability and listenability) of the final product, I plan to share it on Facebook mainly for the friends that I met at CMU, and on Youtube to see whether it will go viral and/or on Wechat with my high-school friends.