Blog assignment 4A

Here is a link to an article that we read for class.  In this article Seth Godin discusses seven layers of reinventing yourself.  He begins the article by saying that our culture pushes us to be average and tells us how to lead average lives and that something needs to be done to break this "Brainwashing".  Then Godin presents his seven layers which are: Connect, Be Generous, Make Art, Acknowledge the Lizard, Ship, Fail, and Learn.  For this assignment we were asked to discuss two of the seven layers.  One that we choose and the layer about acknowledging the lizard.  The layer that I chose to discuss is Connect.  This layer is about how with the media today it is possible (and important) to connect with the entire world through different types of media.  I think that this is very important because I have been raised to believe that the most important thing you can do in the world is know a lot of people and that it isn't what you know it is who you know.  Connections can help people get jobs in the future and can help your chances at things a lot.  This layer relates to this blog that we have to write in many ways.  First of all it is on the internet for anyone to see and can connect me with anyone in the world.  This layer can help people with their various art forms in many ways.  First of all it can get them seen, from there it can be passed from person to person until virtually everyone knows about it.  The layer titled "Acknowledging the Lizard" is much different from the other layers.  It talks about the "Lizard Brain" which is something inside of all of us that keeps us from doing things that could potentially embarrass us.  This one is actually very interesting to me because I agree with it very much.  Sometimes the main reason that we do assignments for classes or refrain from doing to things that we really want to do is because we feel that the teacher will be angry with us or nobody will like what we are creating.  Godin says that we have to acknowledge that the lizard is there in order to listen to it, and do things we need to, and ignore it and follow our own feelings.  This is seen many times in my blog because I hate to hear the sound of my own voice but we have to record ourselves several times but I do it anyway for the grade.

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Blog assignment 3A (Demo and written exploration of cover songs)

The song that I chose for this assignment is "With a little help from my friends."  For anyone who does not know this song it was originally written and composed by the Beatles and was shortly after covered by Joe Cocker.  Here is a link to the Youtube page with the beatles version and here is the version by Cocker. The Beatles version came out in 1967 while the version by Joe Cocker came out only two years later in 1969.  For this assignment we will compare and contrast the two songs using two of the three topics given in the assigment.  These are lyrics, melody, and the overall music quality.  The first thing I will be talking about is the lyrics of the songs.  After listening to the two songs as well as looking up the lyrics for both on lyrics.com I found that while both of the people singing the song even though they both sound very different in the end both of the songs have generally the same lyrics.  They may change a little from time to time, especially during the live version by Joe Cocker, but the same main lyrics and in both of the two versions.  The second of the three topics I have chosen is the music quality, which is classified by Rhythm,  Intensity, Pitch, Timbre, Speed and Organization.  The rhythm of the version done by Cocker is much slower and soulful.  The overall tempo is much slower which brings the rhythm down a lot, while the Beatles version is faster paced and funner.  The Intensity of the Cocker version is very loud.  It's almost as if he if yelling the song instead of singing it.  The Beatles version is the exact opposite, it is quieter and easier to listen to.  The pitch of the Beatles song is much higher than the other.  They use guitars without distortion which makes them generally high pitched and the singer has a higher pitched way of singing.  The timbre of the cocker version is a lot more complex than the Beatles version.  There are a lot more layers to the music.  They use heavier guitars and the singing is loud and intense.  The Beatles on the other side have fewer layers that go together better, making their timbre a lot simpler.  Then there is the speed of the two songs.  The Beatles song has a much faster tempo than the Cocker song.  It's beat and tempo move a lot faster.  The Joe Cocker version seems to be a lot faster because of all of the layers that you can hear and because he yells a lot of the notes instead of singing them clearly like the Beatles did.  However if you listen closely to the overall speed of his song you can tell that it is actually slower.  Like most songs that are soulful, Cocker drags out almost every note that he sings.  This slows down all of the instruments being played and therefore the whole song.  While the Beatles version has the same number of lyrics it only lasts around two minutes and forty-five seconds.  Cocker's version with the same amount of lyrics lasts over five minutes because of the tempo and the way that they drag it on.  The last of the things to talk about in the musical quality is the organization of the song.  This means whether the song is ordered or if it is chaotic.  This is big in these two songs because they are both on opposite sides of the spectrum.  The version that is more ordered is the one that was made by the Beatles.  This version was very well put together.  It seemed as though every note was right where it was meant to be and the song flowed nicely as it went on.  The Cocker version on the other hand was very chaotic.  The layers of all of the different instruments seemed almost improvised.  They came in randomly and had different solos which distracted from the singing and made you focus on different things several times.  The way the lyrics were sung also made it chaotic.  Cocker yelled a lot of the lyrics which gave it a more chaotic feel than the Beatles who nicely sang the song.  After listening to these two songs I have decided that I like the Beatles version a lot more.  I like cover songs a lot, especially ones done by Led Zepplin, but the original of this song was much better.  The tempo was nice and faster.  Also the instruments sounded a lot better that the heavier ones used by Cocker.  I like the soulful way in which Cocker sang the song but in the end I think that the original by the Beatles just went together better than Cocker and his band.

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Blog assignment 2 (Howl)

This is a sound clip I made of myself for the class reading a section of the novel Fight Club to represent a howl like what was talked about in the article that I summarized earlier

Blog assignment 2 (Flaum article Summary)

Here is a link to an article by Johnathon Flaum called Find your howl.  This article is about finding ways to express yourself and things that make us who we really are.  This article begins with a story about a pack of red wolves.  These wolves were extremely endangered and were kept in captivity in order to keep them from dieing in the wild.  After a new generation of these wolves were born they were set out into the wild to see if they could adapt.  They were as normal as could be except for one thing, they did not know how to howl. Without their howls they felt vulnerable because they could not be feared.  They all wanted to return to captivity.  All except for one named Mumon.  Mumon hated captivity because he was simply handed food instead of hunting for it like he wanted.  He left the others and went off to find food.  He came upon a deer that gave him advice about how to find his howl, after which he killed and ate the deer.  Later a group of birds came to finish the deer carcass and also gave Mumon advice.  He then received a jolt of energy and ran for days and days shedding what he had been before and becoming what nature had intended him to be.  He then came upon a farmer that shot him and put him into a trance where he saw a tribe dancing around a fire.  He entered the fire and began to howl.  When he awoke from the trance the tribe had become his pack and he was standing on a rock howling.  His pack answered his call and howled with him.  The point that Flaum is making here is that we have to escape everything around us in order to find our "howl".  By spending time alone in the forest Mumon discovered what it was that gave a wolf its howl.

Blog assignment 1B

This link will leads to an article called “14 Ways to get Breakthrough Ideas” by Mitch Ditkoff.  In this article he discusses how it is that people get ideas when they are creating things.  He starts the article by saying that ideas don’t simply come to anyone who wants one.  He says that we have to actually want the ideas and strive to get them.   Ditkoff points out that ideas are not created, but are already out there and just need to be discovered by those with the means to find them.  The larger part of the article has fourteen tips for getting breakthrough ideas when creating.  One of my favorite of the fourteen ways is the last one.  This way is suspending logic.  He explains that we seek altered states in order to escape from our daily lives and go to back to when we were children.  Back then ideas flowed into our heads without effort.  Logic did not matter and anything we could possibly think of made sense because we were never taught that it didn’t make sense.  The reason that I like this idea the best is because it is what I like to do when I am creating things.  I think of myself as a pretty childish person and this way is great for me.  While usually that is considered a bad thing I think being childish in a major like mine is a good thing.  Video production majors are pushed to be as creative as possible and there is no one more creative than a kid.  They suspend logic every time they imagine anything and that is how new ideas can be discovered as easily as possible.  The second of the fourteen ways that I liked was number ten “Hang out with diverse groups of people.”  Ditkoff says that because most of us hang out with the same group of people every day the ideas that are available from that group can become stale.  There is only so much that the same people can give you.  Therefore if you were to branch out and start to hang out with people outside of your normal group of friends you may be able to get new ideas from the experiences that they offer you.  It’s not to say that you shouldn’t hang out with a different person every time you feel like doing something.  It’s simply saying that you should give yourself a break from your normal group to switch it up every now and again.  I personally like this way of thinking because I have used it.  I like hanging out with my normal friends.  I get ideas from them every time we are together.  Although it never really seems to get stale, I am not constantly getting these ideas.  When I branch out a little bit more and get together with some of the friends that I have not seen for a while it always turns out to be a good time.  Whether I get my breakthrough ideas or not being with a different group of people is just good to do whenever you can.  One of the fourteen that I particularly did not like was number five “Fantasize”.  I think that this is just the basic point of all of the other ones.  It’s not exactly a good tip to give regarding this subject because if you have not even been fantasizing then you haven't even been trying to get ideas in the first place.  Fantasizing is where ideas come from in the first place so it doesn’t make sense to label it as a “breakthrough” way to get ideas.  After the end of each one of the 14 ways to get ideas Ditkoff poses a few questions that can help you to set up an activity to get you started with using one of the ways.  The question posed at the end of the fourteenth way to get ideas is: “What can you do this week to suspend practicality, logic and rationality in service to birthing your big idea?”  Since I am older now and don’t do things  like play with action figures or dress up like something crazy I would have to resort to something a little more adult.  One thing that I like to do in my free time is play video games.  While playing the games I can just try hard to immerse myself into the world of the game.  If I can suspend logic and pretend that the game is the real world I may be able to get some new ideas for something that I need to work on in the future.

Blog assignment 1A: Who influences me as a creative person?

One thing that I most enjoy doing in life is watching movies.  Any movie will do with me and I’m not one who would usually discriminate against directors or actors.  However one director that I admire greatly is Danny Boyle.  You may know him from his movies 28 Days Later, Sunshine, and Trainspotting.  These three movies happen to be some of my favorites and in creating these these films he has used several of the binary terms that we have discussed in our Media and the Creative Process class.  It is because of his use of these things in his films and the great way that his films are presented that make me like them so much.  I strive to be able to make movies like his sometime in the future.  One example of his use of these terms is in this clip of the movie 28 Days Later.  This clip is a good example of Tension and Release.  This is when the director takes something familiar, adds something different and then returns to the familiar.  Frank becomes angry because when they arrive at the army base they find that there is nothing there.  In his anger he hits a scaffolding that drops a single drop of blood into his eye, thus infecting him with the rage virus.  The next few moments become very hectic.  He yells at his daughter to stay away from him as he transforms into a monster.  Then Selena begins to yell at Jim to kill him and tension builds and builds as Jim approaches the homicidal monster that Frank has now transformed into.  Then the release finally comes.  Several soldiers come out of the forrest and kill Frank.  This ends all of the tension and returns everything to normal.  Another term that is used in the movie Trainspotting is Contrast and Affinity.  This means that it explores the similarities(affinity) and differences(contrast) between things within the work.  This clip shows the similarities and differences between the heroin addicts that are shooting up in a Scottish apartment.  Everyone in the apartment awakes to the same thing, a woman crying and yelling hysterically about something that no one had found out about.  They all get up from their spots on the ground and go over to a room and see that the woman’s baby had died while they were all just laying there on the ground getting high for days.  This is where a contrast in the characters comes in.  They all go into the room and stare down into the child’s crib.  All except for the woman who is walking quickly from room to room crying still.  Sick boy, who is actually the child’s father begins to cry and yells for someone to say something about what has happened.  Renton who is the narrator of the story stands there thinking about how bad this all was and about how they had finally found out who was the child’s real father.  Spud simply stares into the crib blankly and is unable to say anything.  This is where the affinity of the characters is displayed.  Renton finally follows Sick Boy’s orders and breaks his silence to say “I’m cooking up.”  He exits the room and starts to prepare a dose of heroin for himself.  Seeing what he is doing the woman stops her crying and sits down next to him for a dose of her own and the others all follow in his example.  The only one who does not follow is Sick Boy who stays near the crib crying.  This shows the contrast that while the others think that drugs are the most important thing, he can see that they have done something truly horrible by letting this child die while under their care. The third set of terms that are seen in one of his movies are Active and Didactic.  These two terms have to do with the theme or meaning of the work.  Active means that the audience can make up their own minds as to what is happening in the story.  Didactic means that the writer or director tells the audience what is happening in the story.  This clip from his movie Sunshine demonstrates the use of these very well.  The ship that they are piloting towards the sun is running out of oxygen and Kappa is checking the computer to make sure that they will all be able to make it their to perform their duties.  Upon doing so he finds that there is one extra crew member than there should be and that the identity of this crew member is unknown.  This is an example of an active theme.  Neither the audience or the characters know who this new person is and that leads the audience to make their own assumptions as to who this person will be and what he is doing on the ship.  Kappa goes to the observation room to seek out this person.  He finds that he is the captain of the last ship that had been sent to the sun and that he was responsible not just for their ship breaking but also the deaths of all of the other crew members.  This is the didactic part of the theme where you learn exactly who this person is and what he is doing on their ship.

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