-23.4-

Recently I've been addicted to this online drawing site Iscribble. The site allows one to draw and or chat with others in real-time.

This is a painting I made that I'm pretty proud of. Iscribble's controls are simple (aka it doesn't have an undo button), and this is mostly on one layer.

-22.4-

I realized that I haven't finished my reflection on the acting workshop with James III, yet, so I will do so in two separate posts. One will be for the purely Shakespeare acting, the other will be for the improv workshop.
Shakespeare:
We moved on from Sonnets to small scenes. The actors that were in the musical did their scenes from The Taming of the Shrew, and the rest of us did small scenes or monologues from The Tempest.
Before all that, we did an interesting exercise on "O's." I think doing the warm ups was my favorite part of the workshop, but this was my favorite exercise.
For the exercise, we got a card with an emotion on it. We had to say "O" with that emotion, while the others guessed what we were acting out. I liked it a lot, because you could say "O" with such emotion that you could probably hold a conversation with someone just by saying "O!"
A similar exercise was when we said a line from a Shakespeare play in different ways. We all got a line, then James told us how we should say it ("Say it like there's a baby in the room, and if you wake it up, it will never stop crying!") I enjoyed both warm-ups. It was fun to really put yourself into your emotions.
Back to the Shakespeare. The people in the musical worked on a Shakespeare scene, and I was put into one of the Tempest scenes with Emily and Lex. We read through a couple times, and got the general part, since James explained it to us beforehand, but some details of the scene confused us (What is a moon-calf?)
Finally, we both presented. I tried really hard to let go, and I was happy that the others watching us got the plot (a success)!
Overall, it was an enjoyable workshop. I felt even closer to the "actors" in STAC, and I learned that sometimes you need to let go and focus on the feelings behind the words instead of the actual words themselves.

-21.4-

I was watching the new episode of Sherlock, and the sequence of Sherlock trying to identify a face (especially this shot) reminded me of Kontroll.

Maybe the director was influenced by Kontroll?

-20.4-

I will blog about many things, including our Waiting for Godot trip, but for now I'll show this:

My Mom originally showed me this and explained some of the context of the authors, especially how Joyce loves to play with words (She also said that Joyce was a quiet man, and wouldn't act like this at all.)
Today, after STAC when we were watching the clips of Beckett plays, I now get that the close-up of Beckett's lips is referencing his play "Not I!

-19.4-

On channel 13 they are showing a program, "Broadway Shows: A Jewish Legacy."

At one point, the people on the show were talking about how the making of "Fiddler on the Roof." The writers were having trouble making the show more relatable. They asked a director for help, and he kept asking the writers, "What is the show about?" The writers kept describing the plot, until one guy said "Tradition!" The director approved.
From this snippet, I was reminded of our discussion in STAC regarding what a piece "is," and what a piece is "about." It's funny how sometimes it's hard to see what an art piece is "about," even in the professional world.

-18.4-

Over the weekend, I took a tour of Denison (a small, liberal arts college in Ohio), and I must say...if you want to convince me to go to your college, just introduce me to the cinema house (And have a good bio program, small classes, band, and low cost that also helps!)
I've never visited the film building on a college tour (sadly, most of the college tours opted to show the football field instead of the art buldings) and the first thing I saw was a huge (about my chest height), old-fashioned, camera from the early movies. It got me excited, because I've only seen those in "The Artist," and "Hugo."

It looked something like this

Although the camera was only for display, a film major showed me some old technology that still was in use.
Like the photography class in Herricks, the Denison film class starts with the basics before going digital: they shoot and develop film with traditional techniques.
I haven't paid much attention to traditional film making, but seeing all of the different machines people had to use gave me a new appreciation for how quickly we are able to shoot and edit film today! For example, the film major took me to a room where an old film editor was. She gave a brief overview of the process, and mentioned how hard adding sound was to the movies (Most graduates used the machine for silent films, because adding sound was that hard!)
Although I'll probably stick with digital, it was fascinating to see how people had to film in the older days.

http://denison.edu/get-to-know-denison/cinema-house

-17.4-

A few weeks ago I attended the Gold Cost Film Festival's "Great Shorts 1."
I attended "Great Shorts 2" last year, and was looking forward to another great viewing of short films, and I was disappointed.

...Ok, I was only a little disappointed, but that was because there weren't any animated shorts (last year I remember seeing a few really creative ones.)

The shorts had extremely interesting concepts, many of them addressing modern issues. All of the films were realistic, and in a modern setting. I'll do a one-sentence summary and small, three-sentence review since there were a lot of shorts:

THE COME UP: A screen writer's quirky scam in order to get the funds to execute his film.
I wasn't terribly impressed with the plot until the end. The short was a chase scene, which cutely utilized film sets and movie props as weapons, but it didn't seem too original. At the end there was a clever plot twist (the chaser turned out to be the real thief), and this slightly redeemed the short.

THE EXCHANGE: In a world where people trade shares of themselves, an ex-girlfriend takes revenge.
The concept of this film was interesting, but the characters annoyed me; both main characters seemed not to have any redeeming features (the guy only cared about himself, and the ex was very nasty). The end, however, was amusing when the ex bought her boyfriend. I like how she flipped his break-up line "it's not personal, it's business" into "it's not business, it's personal."

DRONE: A military drone operator's morning routine.
The acting and tone of the film was excellent. The film seemed so surreal with the setting of a drone operator working alone in an office  contrasted with the setting of his target in a desert thousands of miles away. The acting of the operator was at its peak the moment the drone dropped the bomb; it seemed like a video game, but when the operator started crying you realized the gravity of the situation.

FIRST THE WORST: Two young children debate who has the worst life.
This short was too short. The concept was cute, and the acting from the two kids was amazing. I loved the electricity between them when they were arguing over who had the worst life.

POSTMODERN TIMES: A humorous look at the modern lifestyle of increasingly-omnipresent technology.
I haven't seen the Charlie Chaplin film this short was based off of, and I'd like to. A well-done satire on modern technology...I loved the scene where the woman goes to work in her home office, and has to deal with multiple video chats and telephone calls. The scene where the power goes out, and the woman and her neighbor meet each other in real life was hilarious, yet painful (both were only dressed from the hips-up, since that's the only part visible in webcams.)

THE AUDITION: A short satire about how cut-throat the auditioning process is.
Exaggeration really makes this movie. I really like how the movie comes in a circle, beginning with the woman auditioning as "clipboard woman," progressing into the woman vomiting on command, then ending with the woman introducing herself as "clipboard woman" before leaving. It was hard to watch, but the message was clear.

SEPARATE WE COME, SEPARATE WE GO: A short about a girl and a friendly grown-up bonding.
One of the darker films in the short, the acting in this movie was very good. One of my favorite lines from the whole day was something along the lines of, "A boy in my class wanted to sail to France in a frying pan so he'd be kept warm."The transition from growing up fast, to momentarily regaining innocence was done well.

TIME FREAK: An inventor becomes caught up in the minutiae of daily life...and time traveling.
This short gave time travel a fresh light, which I respect, and I loved the inclusion of humor (the seriousness of the situation becomes insidious with the movie being mainly humorous). The acting was great, the actor of time traveller character really got across the transition from a slightly nerdy guy, to an OCD mad scientist. The ending came up a little short, however, because the character of the friend is now stuck in the past since he convinces his friend to not build a time machine (but I suppose it's believable, since he did make a snap judgement.)

SUDDEN DEATH!: Two scientists must battle a disease that causes sudden singing and dancing, while dealing with their true feelings of affection.
This film was hilarious in that it was a mock musical (it vaguely reminded me of Dr. Horrible), however the plot was a little confusing. The film felt a little long at times, too. I liked at the end the cast broke off into their ordinary lives before finishing the last line of the song...the sudden jump into reality made the film even more humorous!
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After the shorts, there was a short discussion with the lady who chose all of the films (there was going to be a Q&A with the directors, but no one showed up). Apparently, anyone can submit shorts! ...Could this be a future project for STAC?