Blogging Around 3: Interesting Title Here

MOAR BLOGGING AROUND. YAYYYY

My first comment was for Sebas. His is probably my favorite blog to read every assignment because of the amount of comedy that he puts in everyone of his posts while still making a strong argument and giving lots of detail and evidence. In this post, he essentially describes how the line between reality and special effects is getting thinner and thinner, and how he wants to travel to see the Northern Lights to see if they really are spectacular or the people documenting them have just added on more bells and whistles. It was an awesome and insightful post and I enjoyed reading it immensely.
My Comments:
Hey Sebas. First of all, loving the pictures as always. Your captions always make me laugh (especially the one about the Queen and Betty White). As for your blog, it was just as awesome. As someone who has been fascinated by special effects since they were 5 and someone who has deeply thought about going into a career involving them, your blog really hit home. How much of what we see in the movies and TV is actually legitimate? Is the chair that I'm seeing in that McDonalds commercial really there or was it edited in to make the McDonalds more McDonaldsy? Maybe it was recolored to be gray from its original red. Maybe its shinier. You see it all the time with food in food commercials. Whose burger actually looks as glamorous as the ones seen in commercials? *coughcoughkrabbypattiescough* That's right--NO ONE'S. It's kinda creepy, really. You really did a great job with the concept. It's crazy to think that reality and simulations are being mixed to sucha point that you can't tell which is which. Is that the future of us? Are we just as phony as the things we advertise? (HAHA I AM HOLDEN CAULFIELD) I don't think so. I really hope we aren't. PS--I hope you get to see the lights someday.

This is for you, Sebas:

 

My next comment was for Jordan. Her post, entitled "Mankind is Stupid" is one of the most insightful, amazing, thoughtful blog posts I've read this year. It really made me think about my attitude towards humanity and why I have little faith in it. She explains that people really need to think before we do things, because we really haven't done anything good for this world. Yeah, we have technology, but have we actually improved this earth of ours in any way? No. We've just started wars and killed our brothers and racially discriminated for years. No biggie, we're still awesome, right? Overall, one of my favorite posts ever written in Academy ever. 

My Comments:

You win, Jordan. You absolutely win. You're honest, to the point, and I'm really impressed with the entire idea. And you're right. I'm a pretty cynical person, honestly. Despite my apparent "sunny demeanor" (Thanks, Mrs. Sible), I really don't have much faith in the world or the people around me. I kind of muddle through, talking to the 2% of people I actually enjoy getting on with and trying to stay motivated. I really have the terrible attitude that most of the world is ignorant, stupid, causing trouble, annoying, or just not really worth putting up with. I think it stems from all the news stories of drug busts, and stupid arguments over stupid things, and religious conflict, and stories of 5 year olds being shot because there were two idiot 13 year olds playing with a gun that they got out of their father's drawer in the street and it misfired. It drives me crazy. I feel like people don't think about what they do at all. I fell like everyone is so utterly self-centered that they can't actually process thinking about the safety of themselves and their families when they go out and play it cool with their drugs and their guns and their gangs. People need to think about their actions instead of just acting on impulse and causing trouble for those around them. The less drama the better. Though I love History to death, I also agree with your comment on how we learn nothing from it. I enjoy learning about it, but if the point of history classes is to learn from the past, we've done an incredibly shitty job on that. I really loved this entry, Jordan. Great job!

Jordan:

Dialectics: Good versus Evil in "The Matrix"

Yeah, I know already. Good versus evil is an incredibly cliché and generic subject that has been done twenty billion times by every movie, book, work of art, or story since the dawn of language and literature and all that great stuff. I mean, one of the first written stories, "The Epic of Gilgamesh" was pretty much a tale of good versus evil along with a bunch of prostitutes, ogre-monster guardians, and an epic friendship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu, the original Bros. How much better can it get? But seriously, I know that this topic has been done time and time again. What I think is interesting is how "The Matrix" chose to do it.

Good versus evil can be done in tons of different ways. It can be very clean and clear cut, like in superhero movies like "Batman", where we know off the bat that the Joker is the evil villain and Batman is the awesome hero who has to save the day. It can be like the Mario games, where you have a series of evil henchmen that you have to beat before you get to the ultimate villain, Bowser. It can be less direct, like in "Hannibal", where he isn't known to be evil and is trusted by the "good guys" to help track down the evil killers. Basically, one evil is fighting another evil with good while doing evil things outside of their knowledge. Those are only three examples of thousands of ways that people have used good versus evil.

Memories...

So now we get to "The Matrix". When the movie starts off, we have no idea what's going on. There are a bunch of rapidly changing green characters flashing across a completely black screen which dissolve into the title sequence. Then green source code appears as what seems to be a telephone conversation carries on in the background. The source code then rapidly changes into green numbers that fly across the screen at breakneck speed. A code seems to be being broken. Someone's relieving someone from a duty. A man named Morpheus is mentioned, someone seems worried that the line isn't safe, et cetera. We've all seen the movie.

Anyways, after this title sequence, cops go into a room and chase down a strangely dressed woman. Our attention is drawn to her here. At this point, we are already trying to figure out if she is the good guy or the bad guy--it is our nature as action movie and Hollywood fans to want to know who we should be rooting for throughout the film. But it is early in the film yet, so we shift our attention elsewhere, knowing that we will find out who the good guy is and who the bad guy is very soon. We're Americans--we don't wait. We'll get the hero spoon fed to us eventually.

'MURICA!

 So eventually we meet Neo/Mistah Anderson, and we know that he is our protagonist. Most people generally associate protagonist with good and antagonist with bad, but that is not always the case. So on goes the movie, and suddenly we get to the blue pill/red pill scene. Neo chooses the red pill, he goes through his metaphorical rebirth, and then the real story of good and evil begins. The entire time that Neo is in the "real world" with Morpheus and Trinity and the rest of the gang, we as an audience are told that where Neo came from is called the Matrix and that machines are controlling us and using our bodies as source fuel for them. It is here that we meet our "bad guys". We then classify the movie into this: The good guys and our protagonist Neo are fighting against the evil robots that are controlling our minds. But wait--there's a double agent. And a bunch of actual Agents. Are they good or evil? 

The Agents, the Mr. Smiths, seem evil to us. They want to wipe out the human race with information from Morpheus so that we won't be a nuisance anymore, but they are doing it so that they can leave the Matrix because they hate it there. Morpheus tore Neo, Trinity, and two others out of their hibernating state of bliss to show them the "true" world. Though this seems like an act of bravery and liberty, how to Trinity, Neo, and creepy goatee guy feel about it? Creepy goatee guy obviously hates it since he tries to return to that state of ignorance. Morpheus himself is kind of shady. He's recruiting all these people to save the human race because that's what he thinks is right. But what if we shouldn't be saved? Wouldn't that make him evil?

Agent Elrond is all I saw the whole time

Throughout the movie, we can't be clear who is evil and who is good. We want to classify them, but it isn't clear enough. Everyone has double motives from the creepy goatee guy, to Morpheus, to the Agents. Good guys are evil and bad guys are good. We can't really distinguish evil from good due to the pure amount of subject matter present in the movie. That is why I think that "The Matrix" was an interesting movie with a different kind of good versus evil--it reads as a simple sci-fi/action adventure, but the good and evil struggle is actually what we are watching the whole time. 

GIFs of the Day

Metacognition: Mashup

I'm not going to lie--when I first heard about this project, I was really, really not looking forward to it. I saw it as yet another pointless assignment that makes no sense and probably won't pertain to anything we're actually doing unless we totally bullshit every "connection" we find between our "Jane Eyre" sources and the media sources. I was dreading it. I despised it. I didn't even know what it was.

My opinion of the project got slightly better after we went over what we were actually supposed to do, but I still wasn't feeling it. I absentmindedly pondered writing essays, creating a Prezi doc, or doing a poster, but none of them sounded terribly exciting.

However, my inspiration comes to me from the strangest places. That night as I watched Nostalgia Critic, an online movie critic who reviews bad old movies, and one of the funniest and best critics I've ever had the pleasure of watching, Inspiration came to me in this form:

At this point, I realized that I could have a lot of fun with this assignment because I could play to my strength: movies and video. The next day I paired up with Ruhi and Sebastian, and the adventure began.

Despite the Critic's inspirational speech, things still went terribly wrong at first. We were pretty disorganized: one of us was traveling, one of us had rehearsals, one of us had tech, one of us got sick, one of us had plans, one of us was going to visit the Pope--the list goes on and on. We were all busy and didn't really know how to collaborate with each other. We only really had five days too, which is way too short to actually do a large in-depth project with three people. Eventually, Monday rolled around and we still didn't know what we were doing. 

So, we decided to break the group up partially, as our schedules just wouldn't work with each other. And then there were two days left. On Tuesday, my partner and I met at my house and planned everything out and made a flow chart and everything until we both had to leave for various rehearsals. We were still disorganized, but at least we had a plan--a glorious plan.

We essentially decided to make a video mashup highlighting the effect of individualism on the status quo. And when you hear status quo, what do you think of? THAT'S RIGHT: HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL.

From there, we jam packed that thing with every pop culture reference, every movie, every TV show, and every quote that we could think of that expressed that theme. There were a surprising amount of them--they show up everywhere.

We used clips from the Critic's video, a scene from "Wreck It Ralph", some Harry Potter, and even some Doctor Who. We interweaved them with our own comments, "Jane Eyre" stuff, and even "King Lear" clips. It was like skipping down Memory Lane surrounded by singing flowers, cartoon characters, and Jane Eyre--it was freaking awesome. We filmed all our original stuff Wednesday morning and everything looked wonderful.

Then, the Fire Nation attacked things came up and my partner and I couldn't finish the project together because we were both at rehearsal until late Wednesday night. I worked and worked on my laptop, editing clips together, downloading files, and piecing all of our hard work together; I seriously operated a spotlight with one hand and video-edited with the other. I started to run into problems: the school network was slow and I couldn't torrent any videos, files were too large; the screen was freezing. Alas, it was too late, and 9 O'clock flew by before I even registered that the thing was due. I texted my partner, who in turn emailed Mr. Allen, and I resigned myself to an I-am-staying-up-til-the-wee-hours-of-the-morning-because-shit-needs-to-get-done night. 

I got home at ten and worked non-stop until one in the morning. I not only recorded the Jane Eyre quotes, but I also spliced scenes from "Balto" with dis-attached audio and attempted to make a source page. I felt terrible. I finally uploaded the thing at about two in the morning, and then finished my other homework by four. It was not a fun day. No me gusta. 

So, yeah, the work was awful. We stayed up forever working on it, the thing wouldn't upload for like an hour, it was a pain trying to make our schedules work, and the time limit didn't help. But the finished product was something to be proud of, in my opinion. It was funny at all the right times, it had some of our favorite movies and videos in it, and it really fit with the theme. I think we succeeded in doing what we tried to do, and that's all I could hope for at this point. 

I really did do a 180º turn around with this project. I really enjoyed working with my partner, and I think that we made something great.

GIFS of the Day

Metacognition: Writing My Short Story

When I started writing my short story, it was 1AM on a Monday. At the time, I was tired, bored out of my mind, sick, and didn't really want to do the assignment at all. I kept trying to find "rich ideas" or whatever, but I couldn't formulate anything worth turning in. At 5AM, I finally decided to write out one of my better prompts and go with it. I didn't edit or formulate. I didn't even look at the rubric. I just wrote.

So, I turned that one in and forgot about it. I wasn't exactly thrilled about doing it. I generally like story writing, but I couldn't find a muse with this specific assignment, so writing it wasn't fun for me at all. I was just disappointed with it. When draft two came back, I still didn't really know what to do with it. I kind of messed with the end and added dialogue, but that's it. 

Step three brought about the biggest change. I actually had a story going on, at least, even if I didn't like it. It had a general flow, a main character, a setting, and actual dialogue and a sloppy plot. I still wasn't proud of it, but it was all I could bring myself to do. I contemplated rewriting it or completely starting over with a new story, but procrastination mixed with actual lack of time had me trying desperately to fix the original.

Step four was important too. I rewrote a lot of it, added some dialogue and such. I tried developing the characters, but I don't think it came through. In step five, I rewrote nearly everything: new dialogue, new characterization, a new addition to the plot. I was happy at least that it was a story. I wasn't really that happy with it, but it had to do. 

Today's blog post is short because I don't have much to say about this assignment. I think I did alright, but I lacked inspiration for the majority of it, so I don't consider it good work of mine at all. I do like my voice, and I think it comes through in places, but I really believe that the story itself is cliché, uninspired, and boring. My one highlight was planning out my characters. Both were semi-based on people I know with a couple characteristics of myself, so I grew pretty fond of them even if my plot sucked. 

That's all. I apologize for the abruptness of the blog, but I really don't have much else to say about it. 

GIFS of my working process:

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

Step 5

An Inconvenient Truth: Academy Elitism

(Daylight Savings is making me grouchy, so this is going to be a bit of an angry post. Sorry guys!)

When I was in the hall the other day, I ran into one of my friends who I hadn't seen in a really long time. We exchanges pleasantries and such, and caught up a bit on each other's lives. Just normal friend stuff. Yet, as always, when people ask me what I've been doing, it inevitably leads to Academy. Here's an inkling of our conversation:

 

Friend: Hey, so how's Academy?

Me: Pretty good. Long, as always, but it's fun.

Friend: Geez. I honestly don't know how you do it.

Me: Do what?

Friend: Academy! You guys are all geniuses. I swear, if I had half the brains that you do--

Me: It's really not like that. We're like an honors class that has students from North and South and has a bit of a different curriculum.

Friend: But don't you guys all have like 5.0s and do debate?
Me: Not all of us. Yeah, some of us do, but I wouldn't do debate if you paid me, and I have like a 3.8 GPA. 

That carried on for a while and I had to keep telling her that we aren't a race of super smart aliens from a far away galaxy that learns through osmosis and rules the universe through mind control. It was kind of disappointing, though, because that sounds awesome. 

I've been getting crap like this from people since I got accepted into Academy, and I'm 99.999993% sure that the rest of Academy has heard something like this from someone at sometime. Teachers, parents, and a whole lot of students, seem to jump to the conclusion that every single one of us in Academy is some sort of super genius. Don't get me wrong; some of us are, but not all of us are diehard  debaters with 5.0s that play five instruments and run professional law firms in our basements. We just have this crazy reputation that we are. It's not all good stuff either--a lot of students think we're arrogant and self-entitled because of our being in Academy, and then they say that we really aren't that smart either. I don't know how it started, but it's spiraling out of control. It can't help that we're locked away in separate rooms learning all by ourselves for three periods every single day. It's like educational isolation. Kinda creepy if you ask me. We never get to do anything at our schools either. I know for a fact that Southies miss almost all assemblies and meetings. Plus, half the time we miss the morning news.

What surprised me the most is how teachers are almost worse than students with the whole ACADEMY-YAY-speil. Some teachers don't really care at all, and that's awesome, but some teachers go out of their way to claim that we're smarter than not only most classes, but the teachers themselves. It drives me crazy. I didn't join Academy to be put on a pedestal and revered as smarter than teachers and honors students alike. I joined because I thought that it was a cool program with a different approach to learning. I get it, we're all smart, but so are a ton of the kids at South and North. We're not really any different from them, and we're certainly not "better". 

You're probably wondering how I came to really thinking about this. I know that we've only just started to read "Jane Eyre" but I remember one of the intro conversations we had about it in English sometime. In that conversation, we talked about how Jane is angry with her social standing and how social standings determined a lot back in Jane's time. I guess I sort of paralleled it with my frustration at how we're either seen as pompous and arrogant with no real talent, or insane super geniuses who spend all their time doing homework and cuddling with their history textbooks. No one really sees us as we really are. We just get the title "Academy" slapped on us, and suddenly we've been sorted into a category of dull high school chatter and serve as another source for drama and gossip amongst bored teenagers. Jane is sort of stuck in the same place. People don't actually get to know her, they just judge her because she's an orphan with no money from a poor family. 

Also, in English we finished up with "Heart of Darkness". As much as that book annoyed me because I couldn't read it fast enough or understand it well enough, I liked a lot of the points it made. It reminded me of how tons of people thought that the white people settling the Congo was noble and good, but really it was a giant hell hole. I'm totally not comparing Academy to a hell-hole, but the white people's blind acceptance and glorification of something they really didn't know about reminded me of similar people I know. 

I know that we're all smart, and that all of us have a lot of potential. I know we do. As Mr. Morgan said last year, "You were all chosen for a reason. You all weren't just picked out of a hat." I just get angry when we're treated as superior and inferior because we belong to a different program than the rest of the school. 

God, I really am frustrated today. I gotta go to bed. Night all.

GIFS of the Day:

What If?: Directing My Own Movie

My favorite form of art is definitely film. I love the whole creative process that goes into it. Little things that people normally don't notice when watching their favorite movies are my forte, especially when it comes to camerawork, the sound mixing, and the cinematography. I make it my own personal business to dissect every film I watch and analyze the crap out of it. That's not to say that I don't simply watch movies for fun, and I definitely do, but I like to know all the nitty-gritty details.

So, during class today we watched a couple segments from "Apocalypse Now" directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Coppola is on my list of favorite directors, the top five being Stanley Kubrick, François Truffaut, Steven Spielburg, Orson Welles, and Coppola, so I was really excited about watching it. And let me tell you--Coppola never fails to disappoint. I've seen "Apocalypse Now" once before, and at that point it was 3AM and I wasn't paying attention to much. So re-watching even a couple of those scenes was great. Every camera shot that he uses is interesting; every prop he uses is made and detailed perfectly. The cinematography is gorgeous too. Examining these details, I got to thinking--what if I directed my own movie?

The first ten years of my life were spent in front of a video camera or singing on the stage. Even though in real life I hated being the center of attention, I always loved being in front of a camera or in front of people. It was only in the last five years that I became interested in the technical/backstage aspect of moviemaking and theatre, mostly because I realized that I really did not want to be in front of people anymore. For my mom's fortieth birthday, my aunt asked me to make a slide show of a bunch of pictures of my mom and her family and burn it to a disk for her. I agreed, but I had another idea in mind--I was going to film my own documentary about my mom. I cast my brother as my uncles Jim, John, and Matt and my grandpa, and I cast my two younger sisters as my four aunts and my grandma. I acted as the "strange ethereal voice in the background that gives random insight into characters 3 and 4 in scenes 1, 14, and 28". I bought a cheap $20 flip camera (it was essentially a rectangle that recorded things in 180p) that came with a crappy tripod, found an old blank DVD disc, and I got started. My early technique was very primitive--20 minute sequences with no stops, no script, no costumes, and no real plot. It was a hell of a lot of fun, but it wasn't very practical. I turned a 7-minute (edited) video in to my aunt, and she loved it. Thus, my fascination with film began.

Memories...

Last year in Academy, Sebas, Kali, Laila, and I were put on the Documentary team for our IDOT presentation. I was Team Leader, Sebas was Lead Editor, and Kali and Laila were interviewers and information gatherers. We all did a bunch of filming, both in groups and independently, and then threw what had to be six and a half hours of random footage into Sebas's computer. He definitely was our main man when it came to consolidating all that stuff into a watchable movie, but we all had a say in what went in and what we thought was important. It was during this project that I realized that I could actually film stuff for myself. I had done other stupid little video projects with my brother and sisters, most of them being parodies and little Python-esque shorts we had written in our basement. Jack was always lead man, Mid was always leading lady, and Casey was always stunt double (along with a couple stuffed animals). I was always behind the camera, and I did all of the editing. The IDOT project made me want to start writing my own plausible, well-directed and edited films and sequences.

So here I am, a Sophomore in high school with no free time, probably a life-savings of about $26, and barely any resources. How the hell would I write a film now? By film, I mean a real film--not a strange project about a German exchange student named Hans Dusseldorf who gets lost in Dominick's (That was a really early one).

"Hans Dusseldorf and the Trip to Dominick's" could have been the pinnacle of my film career.

First of all, I'd have to write a script. Writing scripts has always been a strong point in my writing skill book, so that would be no problem. Plus, my best friend is an awesome writer, so I'm sure I could get help from her and add her into my film as lead writer. What would we write about? I'm typically a comedy, drama, or action-adventure person. Romantic movies irk me unless they're full of black humor. Though if multiple people die at the end and I get to see terrible, sappy, unrealistically poetic dialogue at the end I get a kick out of it. I'd love to write a good drama. However, I know I'm not serious enough to do so, so I'd get my friend to write a hard-hitting drama about something somewhere really cool so that I could travel. Then we'd get to characters. I'm partial to character-driven plots and stories, so writing for that character would have to be spot on and the casting would have to be perfect.

I'm also incredibly lucky to have extraordinarily talented friends, so I already have a costume designer, choreographer (if needed), set designer, art designer, lighting technician, sound mixer, makeup artist, producer, and caterer (yes, caterer) in mind. I also know a large amount of gifted musicians, actors, and composers, so I'm sure that we could come up with something.

Once I had my basics, I'd probably start planning out the camera work. I won't pretend to be an expert on camera work, but I do know what works and I know what doesn't. I'd read all the books I could on film and how to frame people properly, and then I would invest in a really good camera. At the moment, I don't own any sort of good recording device, so I'd have to use my mom's little camcorder. I'd map out what I wanted certain scenes to look like, make some notes on cool things I could add in for other film geeks like me, and then try out some of those shots.

I think I could do it, honestly. If I had the time, and someone came up with a good idea and we wanted to film it, I would totally do it. It'd be a fun, awesome, creative collaboration that would be a blast to be a part of. Maybe we'll make an Academy movie one day.

Now I'm rambling, so I'm off to watch "The Graduate".

Night all.

GIFs of the day:

Blogging Around

The first blog I read tonight was the amazing Eliana's. The first post that caught my eye was her metacognition post about her poem. In this post, she outlines the creative troubles she had while writing her poem, and how she eventually overcame them by getting inspiration from her iPod and rolling with it. 

Emily HorvathFebruary 1, 2013 at 5:12 PM

Hey Eliana. I really loved your process of thinking about your poem, especially your method of finding a theme. I totally agree with you when you say that it's easy to write a poem about a sappy love story or life or death, but it's hard to write about something that is actually interesting and can come out a real poem. I had a lot of trouble finding a theme for my own poem, so I totally understand how hard the thinking process was for you. I think you did your poem very well, and that it was both interesting and well-written, as well as having really nice elements of comedy, but also very serious moments, I was completely immersed in it. So even though you may think that using your iPod as a crutch is bad thing, and it can be sometimes, I think it's great that you at least you have one thing that you know works for you! Nice job!

ReplyDelete

The second bog I read was fantabulous Ruxi's. I've always been a huge fan of her writing style, and her poetry metacognition didn't fail to disappoint. Her poem was essentially set in an imaginary scene in Europe, hence her title, "Imagining History". 

1. Emily HorvathFebruary 1, 2013 at 5:23 PM

   First of all--I loved your poem. It was well-written, interesting, beautiful, and it really reflected you. I'm glad that you chose a subject that you were so interesting in and passionate about. I personally think that is the key to successful writing. I too have perpetual writing block, so I completely get where you're coming from. But the subject you decided on was so interesting! I know how much you love European history, so it's awesome that you could capitalize on that and make an awesome poem. You were funny, honest, and true to yourself when writing your poem and your blog, and that's pretty damn cool.

   ReplyDelete
   Other blogs I checked out were:
   Nikki's
   Andy's
   Aaron's
   They were all great!