While we’re talking star wars, lets talk star wars

I found the article by Henry to be quite interesting actually. His theory on Tarantino and Star Wars boggled my mind because hypothetically if Quinten was involved I don’t know how good Star Wars would be anymore. As a film major I say that because I have noticed that Tarantino is quite the unique filmmaker to say the least. Personally I don’t like all of his work; a lot of it is sporadic, confusing, and I don’t get where the narrative is supposed to lead me to believe or understand in his work. So filming a star wars film might not be his best move, I think we should leave that to J.J. and the gang.

Anyway though I wanted to talk also about the how this theory of being obsessed with a particular movie/tv show, book, etc. I think the course of a persons obsession with a particular piece of media, regardless its form, has to do best with how well he or she relates to that media. For example, lately I have been overly obsessed with a show called Shameless, a Showtime series that has its first 6 seasons on Netflix (the seventh season is currently being aired weekly, and I hope they have begun to work on season 8). I am so in love with this show and not just because the main character Fiona (played by actress Emmy Rossum) is so damn beautiful but because the overall tone and mood of the show is very in your face, raunchy, vulgar, and, ultimately, virtually realistic in todays society. I relate to this show so heavily because I share some of the same ideals and characteristics that the characters on the show do, aka I am vulgar and very real and in your face as well. Thats just me. So therefore the narrative I create in my head from watching is one of more empathy and I can relate to rather than just learning from it or being surprised by its content (even though that is how it started out for me when I first began to watch and thats normal).

Furthermore, in regards to the reading something in particular stood out to me when reading Henry. That was is notions on viewer consumerism. The theory of how a movie or a movie franchise can be so overwhelmingly popular that it sells itself and by selling itself its consumers do much of the promotion and give it a lot of the publicity it needs to sell more in boxoffice or on DVD without having to rent out a billboard on the highway or pay for a promotion add. You wont find a single person in your neighborhood who doesn’t love star wars and therefore has some kind of star wars paraphanalia. Like a mug, a t-shirt, a toy lightsaber, a lunchbox, or anything else. We the viewers are the first form of promotion, as long as we don’t violate copyright laws, then we are not so much anymore and that is where the line is drawn in the media world.

Group Progression

So far my group and I hav made some progress on the road to creating the video and writing the paper. We have already divied up the topics of the for writing the paper among us based on the particular parts of the video we are focusing on or a specific skill we specialize in and will be going for in the video. We have also established what type of video production we want this to be. We have a heavy focus on making a good portion of this video a sort of “first-person experience” video with a good amount of gopro footage of the Career Services building, the jounry to get to the career services building, and footage of the office itself. We have also completed the storyboard and have been working on the details of our script and what role each of us will play on camera as well as behind the scenes.

With that in mind we have also met some hurdles as a group lately. One of our biggest problems, ironically, is trying to find the time to all work on the project together. Due to busy schedules not matching up we have struggled to all get together and start filming. Another was deciding exactly what aspect of Career Services we wanted to focus on and therefore portray in our film. We want to make sure that the topic is both one that we like and can properly and accurately portray in our video.

Some tools that have been offered to us in class that we have talked about using are Audacity, Screen-o-matic, Soundcloud, and iMovie. We feel these assets will provide us with just about everything we need to make the best movie possible. But in all honesty I would still rather get my hands on a premiere pro subscription to edit the film.

Creative Commons, bruh

This day in age making original content to put out in the world is a hard thing to do considering there are so many other minds out there conjuring up the same idea, or something dangerously similar. Originality is the key to a successful artist, whether it be on a professional level or a group project for your Strategic Presentation class. I do not think my group members and I will have a tough time being original but we will have to be careful not to seem to similar to anything else created or use something the wrong way and run into legal problems.

First we would need a fresh song to play in the background and personally I am a big fan of upbeat instrumental music. It is a great filler for spaces in films/tv shows that need a little something extra to either compliment the mood/atmosphere or simply keep the audience from falling asleep during the scene. Using the CC search I came across a track on sound clould that I think would be great to use in our project:

I really dug the vibe of this song, I twas warm and inviting and I could visualize it playing in the background of some of our scenes.

Then I found an image using CC of an angle I want to use in the “mock interview” scene that my group and I are going to do. Pretty standard but I figure you have to know the basics before you can go and start getting super duper creative.

I hate most politicians but this is a classic dialogue sequence shot reverse shot angle that I can see us utilizing.

Finally I wanted to give everyone a look into the kind of footage I want to capture using the Gopro one of my group members is providing. I will be using a head cam to capture the POV shot that I have been dying to do for so long now.

Now granted this is video of a swat team doing a home raid and not going into a building to great the front desk of a career servives department but it gives you the idea of the kind of POV shot I want to capture for this video. Watching you cant help but be engaged by the footage and even feel like you are a part of it.

I am excited!!!

Group Project: Creative Direction

Well, my group and I chatted briefly at the end of this weeks class and discussed our plan for going about the video. What started out as making a groupme so that we could stay in constant contact turned into talking about what kind of video we wanted it to be. Taking the “first-person experience” approach seemed like a general consensus among us. I also suggested the use of a Gopro to capture some footage I want to take of the career services building and office for the project as well. I may also be able to get my hands on an actual camera and audio equipment from another class of mine so that we have more options than just our cellphones and earbuds. I think the approach we take towards the filming and editing process of the project will be a smooth, in the moment one. I see know reason why we would need any lighting equipment, natural lighting tends to look and work the best typically and if time permits I can even see us getting creative with the type of shots that we take. Collabing on the editing process should also be fun. However, I hope we can get our hands on some better editing software than iMovie

Top 5 Midterm Blogs

Here we go!

1. James Given’s Blog –> https://nflhistorylessons.wordpress.com/

I really liked this blog because of how much work he put into the topic he was writing/making a video about. I am an huge football fan and an avid game watcher during the regular and post season and I found it really interesting to see the evolution of every teams logo throughout the years in the NFL. I also liked the set up of everything on the site itself. It had readable fonts, pictures to go along with what he was talking about, and the content was actually something I really enjoyed learning about. Great job on the blog!

2. Isabella’s Travel Blog –> https://bellastravelguide.wordpress.com/

I must admit, at first I found the homepage of the blog to be very confusing, as I was looking for the midterm video, but alas as I clicked on the links she provided I was astounded by the depth of interest she took in her topic. Traveling is something I wish I had the opportunity to do more of growing up and it is certainly something I plan to do in the future when money is no longer a factor. Her blog posts were well put together, easy to read, and I could relate to some of the destinations and adventures she talked about to my own experiences with traveling.

3. Kaylee Stroup’s Srat blog –> https://sksorority.wordpress.com/

Being a member of Greek life myself I found this blog to a breath of fresh air because she really made some great points about the reputation and stigmas about Greek organizations and how most of them are stereotypical and not true. Greek life is about way more than just hazing, partying, and binge drinking, whether Fraternity or Sorority, and I related to a lot of what Kaylee said on the topic. Also, the layout of her blog well complimented the topic at hand, the colors and pictures etc etc. Awesome blog and I am glad that somebody chose this topic to talk about.

4. Julia Motis’s blog –> https://jkmediasite.wordpress.com/

I got a  very “techy” feel from this blog the second I clicked the link and before even scrolling down. To my surprise the topic was surrounded around media and more specifically LinkedIn which is something I have a basic knowledge of but have been meaning to learn more about. After watching her video and reading her post I must say that I am way more knowledgeable now on LinkedIn and the powerful tool it can be for sure. Very useful blog.

5. Nikisha’s Travel Blog –> https://onegirlbigworldweb.wordpress.com/

I think I am a sucker for travel blogs because this is the second one in my top 5 lol. I really like hearing about the adventures people have outside of New Brunswick, or even their hometowns, because it reminds me that while we are all students at this school our lives do not revolve solely around Rutgers.. This blog was really good and I enjoyed reading her content. The blogs design is really inviting and easy to navigate as well. Her midterm video reminded me that I have video footage of my own from the places I have been to that I want to edit and make a huge montage out of. Nice blog.

Woo Hoo!

Midterm Analysis/Group Collaboration

The midterm was not as hard as I thought it might be to be honest. I actually liked that I could choose my own topic to make the video on and that while we had basic things that had to be done to receive full credit I was also happy that I had the chance to edit it and put it together in a fashion that I liked and felt would best suit it. The paper was a tad more difficult for me just because of the structure and what needed to be included but otherwise that even was not that bad. The topic of my video was something that I have a lot of interest in and I was glad that I was able to share a piece of information with someone who might not know all the details behind true cinematography (even though I only got to explain one or two topics briefly in such a large field of interest). Furthermore, I look forward to working in a group on the final video project we have to make for Rutgers Career Services. Working in groups is something I am not shy to at all. Collaborating with fellow peers towards a common goal tends to reveal the true colors, and work ethics, of all of those members involved. In “What is Collaboration Anyway” Hyde explains a phenomenon in working collaboratively that worried me, he noted that “collaborative action can have more than one intent, it can also have more than one repercussion” (Hyde 29). He continued the thought by mentioning that “a single collaborative action can imply different and even contrasting group associations” and that “this group identity crisis can undermine the legitimacy of collaborative efforts altogether” (Hyde 29). Basically what I believe Hyde to mean is that when working in a group different ideas are always naturally flowing and the opinions of said ideas from all members are as well and sometimes can lead to confusion and conflict over what ideas should carry over into the final draft. This is a something I have dealt with in the past and I believe the only way to solve such a problem is to keep a professional, open line of communication between all collaborators so that ideas and opinions can be disputed reasonably until compromise is made. I feel as though my group and I will be able to do just that.

Video Editing – Finally something I am used too, sheesh

Heyyo! What is up guys this is Darius comin’ at you for a another week of homework. Finally we did something that I really like to do and I think I am pretty good at: Video editing. To be honest I didn’t always like to edit video, when I was making my short film last semester it was easily one of the biggest headaches when trying to get together the final cut. It took hours and hours and a few sleepless nights for me to not only learn how to video edit intensely but but to get my movie to be exactly how I wanted and always imagined it. To be even more honest, I absolutely hate iMovie. Compared to the other editing softwares I have used like Adobe Animate and Premiere Pro this software was confusing, to simple, and a pain in the ass. It doesn’t help that I am not by any means an avid Mac user. The only apple products I know how to really use is the one that fits in my pocket. I feel much more comfortable with the other softwares I mentioned, despite how they are way more expensive then iMovie. For being free iMovie isn’t terrible but I just wasn’t impressed. If I was able to use Premiere Pro on this video and really spend like a few hours on the editing I could have done a lot in 2 minutes. But nonetheless here we are and there my video is above. I chose the two eportfolios because I really liked Kekai’s drawings and artwork and to be honest Jack’s eportfolio on photography was the best one I could find with a google search. The best part about Jack’s was the restoration he did on the damn near 100 year old photograph of a Washington Parade from 1919.

As far as what Bogost said in his article about games, I do agree that there are games that make you feel powerful and, in another sense, can make you feel a sense of nostalgia that nothing us can. When you play a certain game long enough or just really like it you become embedded in the characters themselves and the storyline. The experience becomes a virtual reality. I am no the biggest video gamer but when I do dabble there is a game that I love to just sit there and play for hours, its called Assassins Creed. You might have heard it because they are also in the process of editing a movie based on the game that is going to come out in May 2017 I am pretty sure. They have been filming the movie for several months now. That game is basically about Assassins who fight for their order and for the greater good (against the bad guys). It is so enticing to play; I have found myself at times waking up at at 10am, start playing, a snack break and bathroom trip later, I blink and its 10pm. Thats what good video games are meant to do.

Podcast Intro – Audio editing for the bros

Doing this audio splice and making a “podcast introduction” was actually fun. I played around with a bunch of the different tools Audacity has to offer and, on c0ntrary to my previous blog post, I have  a typical understanding of the ins and outs of Audacity. I hope you guys liked it and I hope the link above works.

I watched a video called “Batman: Haunted Gotham – LOTD” on ChannelAwesome.com and good lord was it a trip haha. It started out with this chubby guy dressed as a what I believe to be his cosplay rendition of the character Penguin from the Batman comics and movies. He spoke in a voice to mimic the character and basically told the story of Batman and his adventures and victories in “Haunted Gotham”. The rest of the video was mainly voice over of the man talking and giving play by play of the events taking place in the tale while a series of comic strips played in a slideshow fashion. It is unclear to me whether the comic strips were something her created himself or an actual strip of comics that he just used to give a visual because the word bubbles of the characters on the strips did not match exactly what he was saying, however they did depict real time pictures of Batman and the creepy villains he was facing. It was very strange; he spoke of space snakes and Bruce Wayne being a grown man still living with his parents, Martha and Thomas, and how his parents were killed by an evil werewolf and then brought back to life in an attempt to kill Batman but Batman defeated them and yada yada yada. There was not much extravagance to the video per say, only one camera angle of the actual narrator (Penguin) himself inside a room heavily draped in Halloween decorations. The rest were just images of the comic strips fading in and out of one another. It was comical at some points but for the most part was just kind of ridiculous to be honest. I really wonder what that guys day job must be.

Listen Up! It’s Audio Editing

Being an amateur filmmaker I have dabbled with audio editing in the past. It is a technique that, while not a necessity to have, is very useful and stands out if you know how to do it well. When making my short film last semester syncing, enhancing, and tweaking multiple different pieces of recorded audio took up a lot of time but it was ultimately a vital role in the finished project and it was rewarding to learn the technique. Being a Cinema Studies major and a DCIM minor I definitely think such a skill will come in handy for a future internship or even a job. I want to eventually work on big budget films or t.v. productions and the kind of audio editing that goes into jobs such as those is very extensive and requires a lot of skill.

This particular assignment was fun because I love music, I can’t go a day without listening and I love just about all genres of music. I had briefly used Garageband in the past but never Audacity. When I made the short film I became accustom to Premiere Pro, that was the software I used to edit audio. I did a number of things to the audio in my film including splicing a song, fading music in and out of a particular scene, muffling character audio, and manipulating recorded voice audio to give it that “on the other side 0f the phone” sound. Many of those techniques were learned in class but others required instructional videos I found online, much like that of the videos we watched. All of those techniques required a lot of attention and practice in order to get it just right (and it didn’t help that I am a complete perfectionist and would not stop until it was perfect).

It is actually incredible the amount of things you can do with audio, the way you can manipulate it, stop it on a dime, fade it, etc etc. Not to mention music in specific is a huge booster to the moral of a film/t.v. show or just for a particular scene in general. Many do not understand how vital music or good audio is to the fluidity and narrative of a production, what it does to entice the viewer. If one were to watch a heart felt scene from their favorite movie once, then silence the audio and watch the same scene again it would be a different experience because music, in particular, helps to draw a specific emotion in its viewers. It makes the sad scenes sadder, the epic scenes more epic, and the scary scenes awfully haunting. It’s actually awesome if you think about it.

Image Editing

I will admit the only image editing skills I have are the ones I have used for a few years geared towards making my social media pictures look on point haha. I am not afraid to admit it. I have never been a big photoshop user; I have never really seen the point in wanting to go and cut my face out and put it on someone else body or contort a certain part of my body in an image to make it look different or anything like that. No, I strictly use filters, and the image editing tools that are given to me via the social network I am using to post it or an app or two geared towards editing images and videos. Instagram and its editing tools would be the best sum up of what I have used for years.

Below I am going to post two pictures. The first is from waaaaayy back in the day when Instagram was as fairly new to the world as I was to image editing. The second is much more current, a little over a year ago when Insta was quite more updated and my image editing skills were too.

Graduating High School

Visiting Vista Point in San Fransico, CA

Now as you can see above these images are of complete different editing styles. Back in the day when Insta first dropped I was in love with all of the different borders that each filter they offered had accompany it, as you can see in the picture to the left. The picture is also sort of dark and not quite sharpened enough, nor is their any emphasis on specific characters or features in it (I thought this was a slammin edit job back then btw).

However, in the second picture you can see a big difference. For starters there is no border (thank goodness Insta and I grew out of that phase together), the image is brighter and has a better flow of colors and styles to it. For example I made sure to pick a filter that helped emphasize the view of the Golden Gate Bridge in the background, and I tweaked the brightness, saturation, sharpness, and some other factors to make the rest of the complimentary colors in the image pop, like the red Rutgers hoodie for example. While this may still be amatuer stuff for some others, this was a big step for me when I edited this on the plane ride back to Jersey that spring.

As the days go by and the more pictures I take I find new ways to edit my pictures and my style and preference for how I want a specific image to look, or what I want it to say, is changing just as I do.

Let me know what you think!