Blog Assignment #9: Freak Factor

http://changethis.com/manifesto/show/45.02.FreakFactor

This article is about embracing our weaknesses as an integral part of who we are and using them to discover and enhance our strengths, or even turn those weaknesses into strengths in the right situations.

4. Forget It: Don’t Try To Fix Your Weaknesses

While I think the idea that our weaknesses are a part of us and that we shouldn’t always try to overcome or get rid of them, I don’t think that this is always possible or a good idea. Sometimes we have no choice but to face and force ourselves to try and “fix” weaknesses. Not all of us are good at everything we had to do in school or in work in order to get by, and while we may be able to focus on our strengths by finding the major we want or the job that fits us, there will still be times when our weaknesses will get in the way and make us miserable. As I said, I like the idea that our weaknesses are a part of us, but this article makes weaknesses sound like they can always be a good thing if we just go about things the right way. But we’re not always happy with keeping our weaknesses. I am a creative person, but also disorganized, which the article illustrates as the associated weakness with creativity. My room is a mess and it’s difficult and tiring for me to clean it. However, I don’t like to go in there because the messiness stifles my mood and creativity, and because of how disorganized it is I can never find what I want or need when I need to. I want to have a clean room so I can organize things the way I want and pursue my creativity in an environment that works for me. In this way, I don’t want to just ignore my weakness.

5. Foundation: Building On Your Strengths

This point, I believe, is fully true. It is important and helpful to build on what we ARE good at, and when we find what we really enjoy and/or excel at, we can get lost in it for hours and enjoy it since it comes naturally and doesn’t drain us the way forcing ourselves to do something we don’t want to does. And the more we do it, the better at it we become, such as the example Professor Williams showed us early on, in that it takes 10,000 hours of experience in a given area for us to reach the point where we truly excel at it.

9. Freak Factor: Putting Your Quirks To Work

For the most part, I agree with the points listed in this area. However, one stands out to me as brazenly impossible. This being the part that tells us to “engage in permanent procrastination,” that is, stop doing activities we don’t like altogether. This is a terrible idea. We ALL have to do things we don’t like at some point, and will continue to have to do so for the rest of our lives. It’s an illusion of modern society, based on convenience, that we can achieve a life where we don’t have to do anything but what we want. If I were to focus totally on my creativity and create something great that could make me rich and me a position in society, but I didn’t show it to anyone or talk to anyone because I prefer to keep to myself over being social, it would just sit there and become nothing at all. I really want to learn, but I don’t especially want to go to classes every single day or do all my homework. If I just stopped doing homework and stopped going to class, then where would I be? I think Rendall is completely ignoring one important fact in this article: sometimes we have to engage in our weaknesses in order to advance in our strengths, or to just get by in life. As he said, we all have limitations, and not all of us are going to become famous or have the luxury to ignore anything that doesn’t play into our personal strengths.

As for my own strengths and weaknesses as per concerning the creative process, I’m still in the process of discovering them. However, I’d say that a strength for me is the ability to focus on one creative thing for hours at a time (such as drawing, digital editing of media, etc). I’m also good at figuring out how things work, or when I can’t figure out by using it, finding resources that will help me to do what I want. This goes for computer programs such as the ones we used in our projects, like Garageband and Pencil. Both of these strengths went into my animation project. Everyone was having difficulties with Pencil, my partner and I included. However, I was able to find ways to understand what the problems were and get around them, and had the patience and focus to quickly animate while dealing with those problems. For my weaknesses, I’m not so sure. I want to say that socializing and working in groups is a weakness of mine, because it has been in the past and for most of my young life. However, contrary to Randall’s article, I have slowly been overcoming that weakness for a long time, and now there are times when I have no trouble socializing and maintaining my position within a group, and other times when I do have trouble. I also procrastinate, which is a weakness that Randall apparently doesn’t consider a weakness in his article, but has been a problem for me on many occasions- such as with these blog assignments.

Blog Assignment #8: Brainwashed

http://changethis.com/manifesto/show/66.01.Brainwashed

“Acknowledging the lizard” is about acknowledging that a part of us is deathly afraid of making fools of ourselves and being laughed at. By letting it control our actions, our creativity is stifled. We must acknowledge the lizard so that we can ignore it.

The “Connect” lever is about how today’s economy and world has access to social media that brings us closers together and takes us farther across the world than ever before. Where we grew up isolated, we can now reach just about anyone. We must take advantage of this ability to connect.

The “Be generous” level is about giving before we receive, or without the traditional idea of ‘I give this and you give me that.’ We can create and give away our creations to support others or just get ourselves out there, and through supporting each other this way we can all profit from it.

I think that, while these blog assignments are occasionally thought-provoking, they are assigned in the traditional school-fed way and many if not all students today treat it as such. They are assignments that could possibly be done on paper or in a way that didn’t involve posting them publicly to a blog, which may give the illusion that we are “connecting” and “being generous.” However, the only people likely to see these blogs are our teaching assistants, and we are not being generous, we’re just trying to turn in assignments in order to receive a grade so we can pass the class. That is how school works, similarly to jobs and receiving money. More money from a job is roughly equivalent to better grades in school, and in our “brainwashed” way we will do what is necessary to achieve it without always fully putting ourselves into what we do. Write blogs, receive credit. For us to take advantage of the “connect” and “be generous” levers with our blogs, we would have to be placing them somewhere truly public, where others are sure to come across them and read them, not a freshly made blog that no one is likely to even stumble across, let alone read. But for us to do so would require acknowledging the lizard as well, since we may not always want others to see how we respond to these assignments. However, even in this case the receiving a grade incentive is still there and possibly the only reason we attempt these blog assignments. That may be something we just have to live with for a while yet, while our education system catches up to today’s advancements- if it ever does.

Blog Assignment #6: Animation Deconstruction

I chose to use two stills from the animated movie, The Secret of Kells. The topics I’ll be comparing are color and movement. To contrast the two, the first image uses a larger variety of hues, and while there is some saturation the colors are primarily lighter. On the other hand, the second image is very dark by comparison, the background completely black. The colors are limited too; aside from the main character, teal is virtually the only color used, in varying shades and brightness. Toward the center of the second image the colors are brighter, creating the illusion of an eerie glow. As far as color goes, the two images have very little in common. The biggest thing they do have in common is that they primarily contain cool colors. For movement, both images create an illusion of movement. In the first image, Aisling’s hair appears to be blowing in the wind, and the line her hair creates is paralleled by the tree branch she is perched upon. In the second image, there is a distinct downward movement, due to Brendan’s positioning and the creature above him. The creature’s teeth are quite literally arrows pointing diagonally doward and at Brendan, drawing our attention to him and his downward descent, as well as his precarious position between the jaws of a monster. The lines behind him emphasize his movement as well, as they are parallel to his descent, yet at the same time could be seen as going in the opposite direction, drawing him straight into the creature’s mouth. The second image contains much faster, emphasized movement than the first one, and the movement in the second image is on the vertical plane, creating that sense of falling and urgency, while the first image’s movement is on the horizontal plane, creating a calmer, more balanced image. As such, the images are similar in that they both contain movement, but contrasting in that the movement contained moves in completely conflicting directions.

Blog Assignment #5: Storyboard Imitation

The first shot is aligned so that we are looking directly at the side of the 180 degree line, and the following two shots remain on the same side of it, as well as change what we see dynamically, which follows the 30 rule. First we see a side view of Tulio and the thug, then a close-up of the dice, then a top-down view of the thug as he tries and fails to make the dice change position. The fourth shot also remains on the same side of the 180 degree line with a medium shot of Miguel and Tulio. The last shot, however, is a wide shot of the main gambler and the other gamblers around him, and the camera seems to be sitting directly on top of the 180 degree line, zooming away from the gambler as the other characters on screen turn to look at the camera. The rule of thirds seems to be well implemented through all of the shots, except, again, for that last one. I suspect the director sort-of-almost broke the 180 rule and ignored the rule of thirds (centered object of focus) in order to emphasize that all of the attention is being turned on to Miguel and Tulio, who due to the previous shot we know are position directly behind the camera, across from the gambler they were dealing with. Because the shot is moving away from the gambler, it is therefore moving toward Miguel and Tulio’s position, and the fact that all the other bystanders turn to look at the camera as it moves back really focuses the attention on those two. If the shot had been placed more to the side in order to accommodate the 180 degree line, the feeling of focus on the two main characters would have been much less poignant, and the zooming out wouldn’t have fit either, as we’d end up feeling like we’re moving in a random direction rather than toward Miguel and Tulio.

Blog Assignment #4: Song Deconstruction

Original song:

Cover:

The song I chose was Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) by Kate Bush, and a cover version by Placebo. To contrast the two, the original song had a much more soulful, hopeful groove, while Placebo’s version was much more relaxed. While the instruments themselves were similar, the digital effects used on them different greatly, being much more affected in Placebo’s version to make them soft and muted. Placebo’s version used recognizable piano as well, while Bush’s version used only keyboard-like or synth sounds. Bush’s version sounded like it had more depth due to a louder intensity in general, although it’s possible that both songs had a similar amount of instrument layers. As for what was similar, both songs had a similar repetitive drum beat throughout virtually the entire song, and both occasionally used chorus-like background vocals. The melody and structure were very similar as well, the main difference being the lower intensity of Placebo’s version, though the organization of the song itself was primarily the same. Overall,  Placebo’s version remains faithful to the core beat and melody of the original song, but gives it a much more soft-spoken, almost eerie feel. As for which I like better, I like both versions in their own right, but I prefer Placebo’s version. I like 80’s music just fine, but that 80’s sort of overly bright synth feel is a little too much for me sometimes. Placebo’s version doesn’t have that problem, so I could listen to it in any mood. I also enjoy the way that the slow, soft-spoken feel of Placebo’s version almost grabs your attention and makes you think about the words more than the strong, forceful vocals of the original. Kate Bush’s original version has powerful emotion in it, like a prayer directly to God, but Placebo’s feels less like a prayer and more like it’s speaking to the listeners themselves, as if to say we have the power to stand in each other’s places.

Blog Assignment #3: Reflections on Sound Design

http://youtu.be/WGN1F6HEE1Q 

(Transcript can be downloaded here. It's in HTML format because I couldn't find a way to export to PDF in Celtx.)

This scene uses a number of subtle sounds to create a certain atmosphere for the scene. The sounds were all mainly diagetic, while the music was all non-diagetic (excluding Miguel’s lute playing, as we could see when Tulio was annoyed and stopped him.) The listening mode was mainly causal, however there was at least one moment where a semantic sound was used (Tulio’s face smacking into the guard’s chestplate sounded more like metal on metal, and him “whipping” out the small dagger- it literally sounded like a whip), and one where a referential sound was used (Tulio’s landing at the end of the scene augmented with a “honk” sound.) Space is represented through the sound as well; one shot cuts to a distant angle for a couple seconds and the sounds of the duel change timbre, gaining more echo and a slight hollow sound. The gasps and cheers of the crowd maintain a relatively low intensity throughout the scene, providing a flat ambient “background” sound.  Overall, the scene doesn’t incorporate a huge abundance of sounds, but the ones used are used very effectively. You can even hear light shuffling of feet as the characters change stance or the soft crinkling of paper as Miguel gestures at Tulio with the map. Subtle, but effective.