I helped organized and participated in a Christmas Parade for the town of Greencastle, Pennsylvania on November 23rd. Verstandig Broadcasting was in charge of organizing the parade and getting the floats and participants in position. I was on scene at around 7:30 that morning and did not leave until around 11 the same morning.
I was tasked with helping arriving participants find their position in the parade. There were several participants that showed up with more vehicles than they had registered to bring and therefore took up more space than they were supposed to. This resulted in a very crowded and chaotic street before the parade even started. Once the parade began moving, we made sure all of the participants moved out in their designated positions and that they walked or drove at the appropriate pace. Once all of the other participants had gone, the 104.7 WAYZ van and the 101.5 Bob Rocks vehicle (Bob Force One/BFO) drove right in front of Santa's sleigh which was the final display of the parade. I rode in the BFO along with Manic (Crazy Bob) and threw candy out to the children. It was a great time.
On Wednesday October 30th I attended the showing of a French Horror film. This took place a little while after the French discussion table I had attended. It was held in an upstairs room in the Rams Den building.
Though I do not remember the name of the film, I do know that it was a very interesting experience. I was amazed by the fluidity of their speech. To hear such a romantic language spoken in such harsh tones and in such fearful tones was very unique. The subject matter of the film was not bad but it is difficult to really appreciate the full nature of a film without first being immersed in the films origin culture. That being said, I was still on the edge of my seat from this thriller. At points you got so swept up into the action that you forgot to read the subtitles and just focused on what was happening on screen. Their actions portrayed what they were thinking and feeling better than their words could. I believe this is why they say you should watch television and movies from the culture of the language you are trying to learn because it can really give you a context for which to place the words and phrases.
I attended a second French Discussion table on Wednesday October 30th. It was held at the Blue Moon Cafe here in Shepherdstown. This discussion table was a lot less formal and I actually got a chance to really talk to the French students without it being refereed by the professor.
I introduced myself and they introduced themselves in turn. I asked them to tell me what it was like to study French and they told me of the difficulties as well as the easier parts. Having studied German myself for two semesters I related my experiences with that to theirs. There were some structural issues with the languages that we found to be similar as well as some cognates (words that sound similar and mean the same thing in two languages such as destroy and destruir, the first is English and the second is Spanish.) Overall I found that learning French can be conceptually easy but to execute the pronunciation and sentence structure properly can be quite difficult.
On October 21st I attended a French Language discussion table at Mellow Moods here in Shepherdstown. I am personally not a student of the French language but I have always been very interested in foreign languages.
I am at far right being washed out by the sun
The discussion table started with the hosting professor wanting to go around the table and have everyone introduce themselves in French. I heard two people go before me and just mimicked their words and pronunciation but substituted my name and what I do. They were especially interested in the my being a voice actor. It opened a discussion about all different kinds of foreign languages and accents. I quite enjoyed it.
Treading lightly across rooftops to stalk your unwary pray waiting for the right moment to leap from the shadows above to plunge a hidden blade into the enemy of free will. This is just part of what happens during one of the most successful games to come from Ubisoft. As I stated in my previous blog, I will be covering the development of the game series Assassin's Creed. To really understand how Assassin's Creed came to be, you would have to look into the history of Prince of Persia.
Playstation 2 game cover image
Prince of Persia was a game centered around a young warrior prince that sought to impress his father. His army attacked a city and within the vaults of the city the prince found a legendary dagger that allowed the wielder to control the very flow of time with only himself being aware of what had happened. He unwittingly unleashes the "Sands of Time" which turn everything around him into mindless monsters doing the bidding of an evil sorcerer. You play as the Prince and try to turn back the sands of time and restore the natural balance to the world.
The story for that particular game was original and interesting in and of itself. What was remarkable about the game was the beginning of the "sandbox" and "freedom" style of playing. This basically refers to a game in which almost every object is capable of being interacted with. The player was able to run along walls and to interact with things that you would not normally be able to interact with. The fluid motion of the Prince's fighting style and parkour abilities were also very appealing. A Ubisoft team began to develop a sequel to the game Prince of Persia: Assassin which later evolved into a much darker and more historically accurate game which became Assassin's Creed.
Game's poprtrayal of actual Auditore Family
One of the most important aspects of the Assassin's Creed game series is that it is one of the most historically accurate games on the market. Sure there are games that refer to important dates in history such as war games, but none have really allowed you to meet historically important figures that actually lived and died on the exact dates as portrayed in the games. Sure there are some creative twists here and there but for the most part, all the characters you meet in history actually existed. Including one of the most important characters to the series, Ezio Auditore de
Firenze. The Auditore family is a real family from Italy and the game incorporates some of the actual Autitore family diaries in the game.
I never knew how Assassin's Creed was originally created before now. I always thought it was years and years of writing a story before it was actually bought by Ubisoft. It was in fact inspired by one of Ubisoft's other games but that does not make it any less original and incredibly unique. I am looking forward to learning more about how the rest of the series was developed and what makes it such a continuous success.
I have always found the idea of game design to be very interesting. The fact that some franchises are able to become so popular has got to have something to do with how they are designed and not just the company that develops it.
First Madden game from 1988
There are some franchises that have gained so much popularity in their
Newest Madden game for 2014
early years that they really don't have to change much to keep people interested. One of the best examples of this has to be the Madden NFL games. They began in the early 90's and have been one of the most successful games to ever be developed in the United States. The only thing that really changes from year to year with these games are the players for the different teams. Every couple of years they will make an advancement in the interface or different features of the game but they don't really change that much from year to year and still sell millions of copies.
I would like to take a look at a game series that has had tremendous success but is totally unique. A game that has had no predecessor before the release of the first of the series. A game that was built and developed from scratch and has had enormous success world wide. A game that has been so successful it has spawned it's own cult following with die hard fans as well as millions of fans across the globe. I want to find out how they came up with the idea for the game first of all. That will only be a small part. What I would like to focus on is the development of the story for the game and how the designers were able to make it work.
With this in mind. I have decided to research the origins and development of the Assassin's Creed series.
I have just recently started to read a couple different graphic novels. I tend to not read them for various reasons but have decided to give them a try. I have been surprised at how much I am enjoying them. A friend of mine started me reading them and I am glad that he did. Up until now I have only been reading for pure entertainment and stayed around things that I could relate to or that I was comfortable reading. I am about to change all of that though with the comics I will be starting in the near future.
The first comic I will be reading is Black Hole by Charles Burns. This book is set in the 1970's and centers on the life of some high school students. It tells a story about a plague that is passed among the students which leads to murders. The reason I am going to read this graphic novel is that it is a story which is a metaphor for high school life. I want to see how the author develops the story and what specific aspects he uses as metaphors. I like reading metaphors but I don't usually read stories about young adults or teens which will be a change for me. The story also has some gruesome and horrific art and ideas which I usually stay away from but I will try and keep my mind open as I read the book.
The second graphic novel I will be reading is Blood : A Tale by J. M. Dematteis. This story is really out of my comfort zone because it is about a vampire. After the Twilight debacle, I tend to give a very wide berth to anything that has to do with vampires. The story line seems intriguing though. It varies depending on which review you read between the idea that an ancient king is told stories of a vampire by a strange spirit to the dying dreams of a king about a vampire that exists but does not exist. I'm going to read it because I'm curious to see how a story can be told which such differing ideas about what really happened and yet be called one of the greatest graphic novels to come out of the 1980's. It is also said to have some of the best artwork in a comic and I'm interested to see how the artist portrays this wild and fanciful story in a visual capacity.
The third, but not last, graphic novel I intend to broaden my horizons with is Finder : Voice by Carla Speed McNeill. Again, this is a new direction for me as the story centers around a medieval combatant competing for knighthood. I usually don't read stories like this because my little sister does nothing but talk about medieval times and read books and watch movies and write stories all about an over romanticized, fanciful, ridiculous period of history with no regard for how brutal, uncomfortable, and disgusting the era actually was. However, I am going to try and set my prejudices aside and read the story with an open mind and try and learn something from it.
I have always thought that producing a music video would be cool. This semester, I have the opportunity to make a music video. I have done tons of audio editing of music and vocal clips as well as putting together several songs into a medley. I will still get a chance to do just that, but I will also be adding a visual aspect to it. I am not very good at using video editing software so I'm hoping that this experience will help me become a better video editor because editing music and video together to make them sync is a very important skill to have.
I have decided to do the song 5:33 written and performed by Strike Out Kid. This is a local band featuring several students from Shepherd University. They are a pop punk band that perform songs that relate to high school and college students while still attracting older fans.
I am still trying to come up with ideas for the video. I might try and so some double exposure work of the band performing. I might try and create a story line for the song to relate what the song is about with a couple shots of the band performing. I also might create a story in color using tinting and filters on a camera or in the editor in order to create a certain mood for the viewer. Whatever I end up doing, I hope it turns out well and I will definitely enjoy the experience.
Maus is a graphic novel by Art Spiegelman. It depicts a families escape from the Nazi's and the different obstacles that entailed. It portrays the main characters of the family as mice, the police and medical staff as pigs, and the Nazi's as cats. The character depiction is an entire discussion in and of itself because of the ingenuity but I am only going to focus on one aspect of it. I am going to discuss something that was brought to my attention by Scott McCloud.
Scott McCloud is the author of Understanding Comics. He has made comics and graphic novels very accessible to the intellectual which is a revolutionary endeavor. From a semi early age, I always thought that comic books were for nerds and children. My journey through the Shepherd University communications department has definitely changed my opinion but not so much as Scott McCloud's book. It shows the intellectual and academic value of reading and understanding comic books as well as foster a growing appreciation of their entertainment value.
One of the aspects that McCloud discusses is Sequential Art. This refers to the ability of the artist to add body to a scene or to tell an entire story, simply by putting images together as shown in the image to the left. This can be done by putting hundreds of images together to explain very minute details, or by putting just two images together and giving a sense of the action. Maus is full of examples. It would be very difficult to portray every aspect of the story in Maus through images, but the artist is able to shorten the space drastically by strategically placing images in the story line. One of my favorite examples is when Lucia comes to visit Vladek and in the space of two frames goes from having a standing conversation to grovelling on the floor. The intriguing part is that the story is not slowed down or made more confusing at all. In fact it gives a sense of the urgency that she feels and makes us feel for her as a character. The artist's ingenuity is phenomenal.
Dream Weaver is a web development tool created and published by Adobe for Mac and PC. I have used this tool to develop a website all about voice acting. The site contains about 25 pages of content with 2 or 3 links to external sites with a couple YouTube videos as well.
I think Dream Weaver is a great tool. I like the simplified coding aspect of it. It also has predictive tags which makes it that much easier to develop the page. I recently discovered that it also has templates which makes it even easier to develop the site. It allows for a more professional looking site without doing so much coding work. One of my favorite features that it provides is the ability to automatically update all the links to the entire website if you change something on the original template. If you've made a mistake on the original template and based most of the site on that flawed template, it would usually entail having to go through every page and making the necessary changes. Fortunately, using the template feature, you can make the change on the original template and Dream Weaver will update all the links and make all the changes to all the other pages automatically.
The only thing that I don't like about Dream Weaver is the amount of training it takes in order to learn how to use it. It takes quite a bit of training in order to be able to use the tool effectively. Of course, that is the case with many new software today but there are other programs that are much simpler in their navigation and usage. Aside from that, the program is very efficient and a great development tool.
All University level classes have a syllabus. Some even require you to read them. Most of the time however, students simply find out what assignments are due and then let the syllabus gather dust or forget about the web page it is found on. The syllabus is supposed to be a guide in how to succeed in the class. Professors are to blame just as much as the students however because they only put the bare minimum requirements for a syllabus to pass inspection. It can be frustrating if one is looking for information on how to do a specific assignment or has a question about grading procedures.
In contrast, the syllabus for COMM 333 (Music Video) covers every aspect we would need to cover in the class. It not only tells us how to succeed in the class but also shows us how to succeed in our careers by giving valuable information.
For instance, it has a section specifically on how to write blogs. This is of course valuable information since the modern community will read a blog about as much as they will read a magazine article. This means that a blog should somewhat resemble a magazine article in its presentation as well as the aesthetics. However, an advantage of having a blog be on the internet allows the publisher to include media and references easily by hyperlinking and posting videos.
Another section in the syllabus covers creative and creative thinking.
This not only comes in useful in the class but also in other aspects of
your life and career. There are many institutions that require you to
think critically but they never tell you what that statement means. This
syllabus covers it extensively and gives examples on how to do this. It
is a resource that I can use many times in the future no matter what
the endeavor may be.
