Wednesday, November 9, 2011

blog #9

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

David Rendall's The Freak Factor is about overcoming your weaknesses and looking at them as positives. Instead of trying to fix everything, learn how to see your weakness in a positive outlook. He says that every weakness leads to a strength, and all you have to do is learn what strength it is. Such as if you don't like working in groups, then work by yourself and start your own business. I think his ways of overcoming weaknesses are valid but I don't think you need nine of them. The three that I agree with are 3. Flawless - there is nothing wrong with you. I agree with this because if people just sit and look at their flaws, that's all that anyone else will see. When I was little my parents said that I had a flaw of being left handed, but later on in life I figured it out it made me unique, and gave me a very big advantage when I picked up pitching.
The other one I agree with is 4. Don't try to fix your weakness. A lot of people thing that they have to improve upon their weaknesses or else they will just plague them forever, the time that you spend trying to fix your weakness, you could learn how to strengthen your strengths or find a strength that goes along with your weakness. My weakness in sports is that I have arthritis, but I never complained about it because there's nothing you can do about it. The only thing you can do is learn how to work past it.
The last thing I agree with is that you cannot do both. I liked the example that they used with Wal-Mart, K-Mart, and Target. You can be well rounded, but not at everything or else you'll just be mediocre and no one wants that. K-Mart tried to have low prices and high end products, they ended up being mediocre and filing for bankruptcy.

My strengths in my field of video production would be editing and learning the do's and don'ts of filming, that's why I want to be a director. My weakness is writing, that is why I am not trying to be a writer or producer.

blog 8

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


In Seth Godin's Brainwashed, he talks about seven ways to reinvent yourself. The first layer you must overcome is stripping your public school learning that trains you to do factory work the rest of your life. You must learn that instead on the teachers telling you "sticking out was bad" in school, it really is a good thing in the work industry. People who blend in to the mass group will be the ones working in the factories the rest of their lives. The people who stuck out are now the Steve Jobs and Barack Obama of society.
You also must realize that you have the freedom to do what you want. Society trains us that to be happy you must have a stable life, to have a stable life, you must make money, and to make money you must have a job. That is not necessarily how it happens. I know bums that are a lot happier with their life than someone making millions being a CEO of a company working a 9-5 job.

One way to reinvent yourself is to connect. This is my favorite one because my parents say "if you ever want to get a job, you better delete that Facebook of yours." In actuality Facebook can be a good tool to network with people and share your work. Facebook isn't all about uploading drunk pictures and posting derogatory statuses. It can actually help your career.
Be generous is talking about the economy. When people give, they will eventually get back, it's all in good karma. It's all about being generous and not expecting something back. People will remember that.
The next step was make art. The more art you make the more ideas will come to you. If you don't make art, then how are you going to get any further with your career as an artist. That is like telling a student not to do his homework.
The next step was the acknowledgement of the lizard. The lizard brain is the part of the back of your brain that tells you to be safe and caution. The lizard brain also gets angry if you are laughed at. This is why you are afraid to take chances and put your artwork out there because you don't want to get laughed at. You need to first realized you have a lizard brain, and then ignore it.
The next step was ship.Ship means how available you're going to make your product. If your customer needs your product the next day and you are able to ship it within that time frame, you will be more successful and maybe even make more money. If you can't get your products to your customers in a timely manner, they are more likely to go find the product from someone else.
Fail is the next step. You learn from experience, especially failure. Something my mom always tells me is "you have 20/20 vision when you look at the past" which means you learn what exactly you will do next time not to make that same mistake.
The last step is learn. Even if you completely all of your schooling you are never done learning. You learn from your everyday experiences and mistakes so technically you're never out of school.

These layers have applied to me in my assignments this quarter. The first layer of connect really applied to this class because I only knew one person in my lab and everything was group projects. I ended up connecting with all of the class while collaborating over projects.
The second layer of be generous applied to this lab because sometimes when I put more effort into a project than my parter, I didn't complain or even care. It also did come and pay me back later on in the quarter when I could only work on part of a project, my partner helped me out a lot with that.
The third layer of make art applied to this course because every week we were presented with a challenge to make something artistic, even if it was something that we had little experience with. Also, no matter what your art looked like from professional looking projects to chicken scratch, everyone appreciated every different skill level of art.
Acknowledgement of the Lizard was something that I really overcame in this class. The first class I was dreading presenting my project because I was afraid of what people would think, then every week it got easier because I didn't care what people thought anymore.
Ship was in this class because our projects were expected to be presented every Friday, and it was very unprofessional if we did not turn them in on time and we lost points.
Fail happened in this class to my first project. Even though I didn't actually fail the project, I thought I did terrible on it, and after that project I learned what the standard was going to be in the class and never made a poor project like my first project again.
Learn was a part of this class because every week we learned new things such as using Garage Band, iMovie, and Pencil. Even though I know Final Cut Pro and thought iMovie was a breeze, I still learned about it even though I thought I wouldn't.

blog #7


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl0JcK4-Dx0&feature=related

I think the theme from this scene could be diactic with the message watch who you're messing with. At the beginning of the scene we think that Phillip Vandamn is a threat to Roger Thornhill, but by the end of the scene the table is turned and Thornhill is a threat to Vandamn because Vandamn was not careful and Thornhill figured out everything he was doing. Now he is threatening to go to the cops and get Vandamn in trouble.

The lines in the scene are virtual in the scene and the lines are kept the same in the frames and between each frames. The lines are very straight, vertical, and do not change much. The shapes are also the same in the frames, very square and never change. The space is deep with all the people in the room but very limited because the camera cannot capture anything but inside the room. The rhythm is very slow throughout the scene because they are acting very calm. Vandamn and Thornhill are talking very slow, and if you notice they are in an auction room, but the auctioneer is talking very slow as well, which you never hear auctioneers talking slow. There is very limited movement during this scene. The only moving during the scene is at the beginning, when Thornhill exits the cab and walks into the building, then leaves at the end of the scene. Most of the movement in the scene is eye contacts. The character's eyes are always shifting during the scene.

Most of the lines, shapes, and movement have affinity in theme in this scene where they all stay the same. I would say the whole time during the scene you would be using conscious thinking. The tension builds when Thornhill starts calling out Vandamn and it gets released when he mentions how he would be safe with the police and walks away. The text within the scene is the literal words that the characters are saying, and the subtext is at the beginning of the scene, Vandamn has his hand around Eve's neck symbolizing that he has his grasp on her and he is in control over whatever she does.