#what I hear and therefore the recording ends up out of sync with the *actual* audio
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leejeann · 1 year ago
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My toxic trait with music production is that I only ever use Bluetooth headphones, even when recording, and therefore every clip I record (so all my vocals) has to be adjusted to account for the slight delay it causes
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logical-little-lies · 5 years ago
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Your Boyfriend’s Cute- Little Vlogs (pt.2)
a/n: I love the fact that this is already receiving support on tumblr and here, and I posted the first chapter like less than twenty four hours ago! it's giving me lots n lots of motivation to brainstorm the plot to this story. just so yk, it's boutta move FAST (aka: lots of timeskips).
chapter summary: Virgil and Roman go to Patton's house for the first time, and Virgil starts to realize why Roman has a crush on Logan. Also, Patton and Virgil film a video for Patton's channel.
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Virgil exited the Hot Topic with an extremely positive attitude. He had hit send on a list of things he wanted Roman to get for him, and he was ready to meet Patton. The mall was an outdoor mall, so he quickly scanned the 'workers only' parking spots for Logan. He spotted him, in a dark blue t-shirt that read 'Eldenridge Bookshop' with a little book logo on it. Virgil caught himself admiring Logan's body and face from afar, before snapping out of his (slightly gay) daze. He waved, catching his attention. Logan smiled warmly, and Virgil crossed the parking lot.
"Hello Virgil," Logan held his hand out, and Virgil shook it lightly.
"Very professional," he teased, smiling to show that he was just playing. Roman was right. This man was definitely cute. Logan chuckled.
"Yeah, that's what Patton said," Logan opened the door to the passenger seat on his car, motioning for him to get in. Virgil climbed into the vehicle, the door closing behind him.
Logan walked around the back of the car, getting in on the drivers side. "Buckle your seatbelt, honey," Logan instructed, following the directions himself before starting the car. Virgil did as he said without question, willing himself to stop blushing at the casual use of the word 'honey'.
"How far do you live?"  Virgil questioned after a few moments of silence. Logan had pulled out of the parking spot, making his way to the exit of the outdoor mall.
"About ten minutes. Roman wanted to be there when you met Patton, but no doubt, we'll beat him there. Patton's waiting at home,so I'll just record it, yeah?"
Virgil nodded at Logan's words. He had a very caregivery tone, in a stern, but soft way. He could understand why Patton liked him as a caregiver, and why Roman had a crush on him. "Sounds good to me," Virgil smiled.
"So, how was work?" Logan turned onto the main road, tapping his finger against the steering wheel.
"Good, just another day of selling twenty one pilots merch to twelve year old wanna-be emos," Virgil shrugged, causing Logan to laugh lightly.
"I'm guess you used to be one of those emo kids when you were younger?"
"Bitch, I still am. The only difference is that I'm technically an adult."
"Language!" he scolded lightly, speaking in a playful tone.
There was a few beats of silence, Virgil taking the opportunity to look out the window and admire the beautiful weather. "Patton's very excited to see you, he has so many ideas for stuff to do with you."
Logan and Virgil continued on the conversation, distracting Virgil from his excitement for the time being. Suddenly, Logan turned into a neighborhood, and onto a small side street. The two-floored yellow house Virgil saw in many videos was at the end. There were flowers in the front yard. Patton sat on the front porch, and he jumped up when Logan entered the driveway.
"You stay here until I motion you out, I want to make sure I catch this on video," Logan put the car in park, pulling his phone out of his pocket and getting out of the car. Patton awkwardly stood by the door of his house, Logan holding up his phone. Virgil unbuckled, excitedly jumping out of the car when Logan made the motion.
Virgil almost tackled Patton to the ground when he hugged him, jumping into his arms. Right then was when Roman pulled into the driveway behind Logan's car. "I can't believe this, you're actually...here, i-it's crazy."
"I know kiddo, I'm happy to see you too."
Patton held Virgil in a tight hug for at least a minute straight, running his fingers through his hair. Patton was slightly chubby,wearing a very soft light blue sweater. Therefore, he was very cuddleable. Roman and Logan made sure not to interrupt their moment, not speaking until they finally pulled away.
"I'm so happy right now, you have no idea," Virgil smiled, turning and approaching Roman, hugging him.
"Yeah, and this little emo here doesn't get this excited unless he regresses. He tries to keep up his angsty  exterior, but he's really just soft."
Virgil playfully glared at him, pretending to be mad at him for the silly teasing. "Come inside," Patton was quick to open his door, welcoming the couple into his home.
"Like I say whenever we video chat, your house is nice as hell," Virgil admired the home.
"Yep. There's so many rooms that we have a normal bedroom, the little bedroom that you see in most of my videos, and a set of extra rooms. Seriously, this place is perfect," Logan sat down on the couch as Patton spoke. Patton disappeared, going up the stairs.
"Where's he going?" Roman pondered, sitting on the couch near Logan.
"Probably to grab the vlogging camera from the little bedroom," Logan replied as Virgil sat down next to his boyfriend. Virgil could've sworn he caught Logan's eyes lingering on Roman before he spoke again.
"Uh, Roman, how are you?" he stumbled upon his words lightly.
"Good," Roman smiled. Virgil saw Patton stop at the bottom of the steps, holding a small camera.
"Logan, is it okay if me and Virgil hang out upstairs? You guys can do whatever you want down here..find some common interests or something."
Logan gave Patton a look Virgil didn't get the chance to decode, automatically fixing his face when Roman looked at him. "That sounds good to me. I get that you guys have known each other forever, and I understand if you wanna spend some time alone," Roman smiled at Patton softly.
Patton came over, grabbing Virgil's hand and pulling him up. He didn't let go, leading him up the stairs. Neither of them said anything until they were in Patton's little room. "First of all," Patton closed the door behind him, moving to pull his tripod out of the corner of the room, "Your boyfriend is cute as hell. Like I knew that before but seeing him in person just confirmed it."
Virgil laughed, "We're all so gay, I swear to god. Your boyfriend is cute too, at least Roman thinks so."
"Roman's poly right? Logan and I are...kind of why I left Logan down there, he's lowkey been crushing on Roman since forever," Patton motioned Virgil over, patting a spot on the edge of the bed, facing the tripod he had set up. Virgil took his spot, watching Patton attach the camera to the setup.
"Yeah, Roman's polyamorous. And that's funny, because Roman has a crush on Logan too," Virgil revealed. The two of them looked at each other and did a fangirl-ish squeal that only best friends could successfully do in sync.
"So, what are we doing for the channel?" Virgil questioned, motioning towards the camera.
"I figured we could just talk about like, how we became friends and stuff. This how thing feels unreal, and I kinda want a video to look back on so I remember how I felt during all this."
Virgil quickly agreed, and without a word, Patton started the camera.
"Hey Kiddos, welcome to my channel: eat a second cookie! Today, I have my friend with me. I've talked about him on my channel before, but this is the first time I actually have him here in person. Please welcome, Virgil!" Patton spoke in an enthusiastic voice, motioning towards Virgil, who waved awkwardly. There was a beat of silence before Patton nudged him.
"Here's where you plug your tumblr and stuff," Patton instructed, breaking the silence.
"Oh," Virgil laughed at himself, "Uh, follow me at anxiousbabey on everything."
Just like that, the two filmed an unscripted video, talking about the first time they talked, telling quite a few stories. It all lead up to the end of the recording, where they talked about how they met.
"Now that we know we live so close, hopefully he'll be on my channel lots n lots. Right, Virge?"
Virgil giggled, nodding a bit. "I hope so! I'm really glad we realized this, I'm so happy y'all have absolutely no idea!"
"Well, I guess that's all for today kiddos! Bye princes, princesses, and enby royalty, please check out my tumblr and instagram, all under eat-a-second-cookie!" Patton held out the word 'cookie' so that his statement rhymed. He finished closing out the video, turning off the camera.
"Y'know, I've been waiting for the day we'd get to finally film a video together."
There was a second of silence before Virgil engulfed him into a hug. "I feel like my life was good before..and now it's perfect. I'm so glad this happened," Virgil mumbled.
"Let's go check on my nerd and your boyfriend," Patton caused Virgil to laugh, taking his hand softly and leading him down the stairs. Virgil didn't know why this act of affection made him blush, because he knew Patton was just generally affectionate, but his cheeks were definitely burning.
"Hey, Vee," Roman looked up from the laptop him and Logan were watching something on.
"Did you guys film anything?" Logan questioned softly, pressing the spacebar on the laptop and closing it.
"Yeah, just a video about like our friendship," Patton shrugged, taking his spot next to Logan. Logan automatically wrapped his arm around his shoulder.
"That's surely gonna be an adorable video," Logan praised, and Patton smiled lightly. "So, you guys are welcome to stay for dinner, or even spend the night if you want to."
Patton nodded in agreement and excitement with Logan's statement. "Ro!" Virgil tapped his shoulder lightly, tilting his head, "Stay pleasee?"
"Is that your little voice I hear?" Roman teased, causing Virgil to pout lightly, shaking his head.
"Awe! I think it is," Patton cooed, "But, can you guys stay, pleasee?"
"I don't know," Roman sighed, "Virgil has work tomorrow."
"Okay? And I can give him a ride in the morning, seriously, you're welcome to spend the night."
Virgil gave puppy dog eyes, pouting to convince his carer. "Stop with the pouty face, I was gonna say yes anyways," he sighed, causing Virgil and Patton to cheer.
That night was gonna be fun.
A/N: There's gonna be a timeskip, like a one-month type gap, where the four leave the awkward stage and they're all kind of close. I don't wanna write all that out and I WANNA GET TO THE GOOD PART.
Tag list: @stimmingsides @smollilsanderssides @novacloudcat @analogical-agere @fairyhuman2000 @aphandgflover @softastarlight @littlesapphygem @softflowerinmyheart 
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vyvesvi · 4 years ago
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i don't mean to annoy by being in your inbox every time ytsn breathes but any thoughts on we are young and super a warning ahead?
omg i’m never annoyed by this stuff, esp bc i usually don’t get to talk about them much!
let’s see... (warning: i tried to stay positive but failed. also this got long afff no pressure to read all of it lmfao)
we are young - controversial opinion: this is their best concept (to me in this moment, i could decide something else tomorrow lmao). the choreo isn’t bad and the song is catchy, even though the production quality of the studio version leaves a bit to be desired (it sounds tinny and not super full to me?). my main disappointment is with the live stage (...this is becoming a trend) where they messed up...kinda a lot. i feel like mistakes are normal but the ones they made were just incredibly noticeable and it’s telling to me that the camera angles couldn’t really hide them. the styling was awful for the most part but the concept was cute and i feel like zy is a lot more comfortable with long hair tbh.
super a warning ahead - i actually really enjoy the song! i think the way that they draw out some of the lines sounds a bit odd but the production and everything is much better than we are young. the reason why i put we are young above this one is because of the concept idea is general. like this song...doesn’t really go anywhere? like its...sweet? but not really interesting. the styling is sooooo much better, but the choreo is pretty boring, very give and take. I don’t mind a simple point dance because they have the potential to be iconic, memorable, and easily imitated, but the rest of the dance could’ve been a lot more interesting. but then again, they weren’t in sync in the dance performance video so like...idk. i feel like live performances are one thing, but prerecorded content should theoretically be better because they can do it in multiple takes? i don’t want to judge them *too* much but that is one are where i think they have been struggling (and i didn’t really expect it at all?)
so nothing that’s gonna make me unstan but it’s clear to me that their preparations were rushed. i wish they would like. take a month or two to regroup. i don’t want them gone for that long but if these are the performances that we’re getting on their current preparations i think it’d be for the best.
i also don’t think they’re making use of their strong vocalists (xilin, wyj, znx, and czx). like 4/7 are main vocal material and they could be doing a lot more with that. of course the issue is that the remaining members aren’t really comfortable with rapping and are (comparatively) weak singers, but they don’t make use of xiening or yifan’s dance abilities well either. i’ve said this before (and i’ll try not to hammer it in too much because it’s a pretty biased opinion) but watching zy do dance breaks with or after xiening is like...tragic. like idky they’re setting her up so bad but they need to stop TTTT
as a group they also kinda lack stage presence together. like individually most of them have pretty solid presence but idk what happens when they’re together bc they don’t really sync up?
//edit: okay at this point i decided that i was maybe being too harsh so i started analyzing the debut stages and mvs for rocket girls/hjsn and the9. it didn’t help and ended up being a ramble so feel free to skip lmfao
ytsn & hjsn: bc hjsn debuted with 8 members (minus already debuted meiqi and xuanyi & main vocal zining) and not their full 11 they’re kinda comparable to ytsn as they are now. while ytsn’s styling is somehow better, hjsn’s sync and energy, even taking into account their members who aren’t great dancers, is kind of on a different level (partially biased though, despite that fact that i’m not fully a stan they’re my number one pick for most balanced gg of all time). i’m going to guess that even though they’re produced by the same company that their teams and company philosophy regarding management is completely different. the choreo quality is quite different and ytsn seems to favor debut rank a lot more. of course, meiqi and xuanyi were featured very prominently when they came back but the formations weren’t as stagnant as ytsn’s seem as of now? both groups are similar in that their main dancers (mengjie and xiening) ranked relatively low and therefore didn’t get to show their full ability very often. also an important difference between hjsn and ytsn is that hjsn’s main rapper is kind of legendary and was well known for her ability before the show so. there’s not really a comparison there (for the record though, i like curely’s rapping i just think 1.) it’s a waste given her vocal ability and 2.) she hasn’t been given really long verses because while she has talent she’s not “a rapper” in the typical way).
the9 & hjsn: idk if u watched qcyn2 but i decided to watch a bit of it since i thought it was kinda interesting that the two final groups would be debuting at the same time. to compare the two...ytsn’s vocals are stronger and i think that’s generally accepted as fact. like yuyan is really good but they put so much pressure on her (personally i think anqi and shaking could share the burden but idk). other than that everyone else is a subvocal and/or rapper, so by default the9 wins the rap category. oddly enough, because there are so many rappers they can’t have those longer satisfying verses because they have to share the lines, which impacts their....impact for lack of a better word. there’s kinda no other way to do it without everything being super uneven so i get it though. that leaves dance and stage presence. i think that individually anqi and xiening eat everyone else alive, but comparing group to group...the9 wins for their sync alone, but notably ytsn has performed more and have one more song with choreo. i don’t know i would say that they’re super uneven in presence, but i do feel that because of the number of members with previous stage experience in the9, they are more comfortable performing. 
for fun i once took the 16 members of the9 and ytsn and redistributed them into more balanced lineups of 8
team one:
yuxin - vocal, lead dancer 2, sub rapper 1
anqi - lead vocal, main dancer
yuyan - main vocal 2
keyin - main rapper
keran - lead rapper
curley - main vocal 1
yifan - vocal, lead dancer 1
zhaoyue - vocal, lead dancer 3, sub rappper 2
team two:
yijin - main vocal 2
zhuoxuan - main vocal 1
xiening - main dancer, sub vocal 2
nene - lead vocal 1
xueer - sub rapper, lead dancer 1
esther - sub vocal 1
jiaqi - main rapper, lead dancer 2
xiaotang - lead rapper
i lowkey stacked the first team with both centers, anqi, and keyin but whatever
anyways based on how i feel about the other debuts i kinda think im being mostly fair to ytsn? especially because i think they’ll grow a lot as a group over the next two years. i’d be a lot more concerned about their vocals if that was the problem because that’d be the hardest thing to fix but they don’t have to worry about that!
anyways i’m gonna cut myself off here because this has turned into...a lot but if you have thoughts definitely share them, i’d love to hear!!!
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harringrovelove · 6 years ago
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Something Solid: Part I
A HARRINGROVE SUMMER OF LOVE HEADCANON
At the beginning of summer, school’s out (finally!) and the gangs all together, constantly using every bit of freedom to hang out: swim at Steve’s pool, ride their bikes, D&D, watch movies- you know, getting to be kids in general. The first part of the summer is marked by Billy apologizing to Lucas (my theory is after the events of last season Billy realizes it’s up to him to not become like his dad and therefore starts making an effort to be different), being a protective brother to Max- something she finds at times annoying and at other times endearing in a way she has always wanted from her brother, and Billy slowly but surely being accepted by Max and her friends- especially El. She has been oddly supportive of Billy from the beginning- of course Max knows why. This leads to Steve and Billy, the natural chaperones, spending more and more time together. Awkward and barbed at first, this quickly subsides over, basically, it’s more enjoyable to be getting along than constantly arguing. Plus, because Steve doesn’t give a shit what Billy thinks, Billy’s antagonistic antics are usually unsuccessful.  
So Billy & Steve’s summer is spent together, at first by circumstance, sometimes swimming with the kids or even D&D- Billy was reluctant at first but is now well and truly hooked thanks to Dustin (Dustin & Billy have their own nerd-bonding when Billy lets Dustin borrow his small -and secret!- but coveted comic book collection). And when Steve & Billy aren’t chaperoning, they start doing their own thing together like playing basketball- turns out they make a perfect team when Billy isn’t antagonizing Steve. Surprise surprise, these two dummies actually enjoying spending time together when they both let their guard down.
Of course various Upside Down things occur (nothing truly major) that lead to Billy finding out the truth about Hawkins & El, who is slightly in shock at first, a little disbelieving, but lets face it, Billy’s seen his share of monsters and these Upside Down creatures are just another breed to him. These monsters, Billy thinks, are easier to deal with- they aren’t disguised on the outside like people can be...like Neil. He deals and proves strangely dependable to group and Max. (Although clearly Steve and Billy are finding kicking monster butt together both thrilling & therapeutic).
No real danger, but there’s some solid stray demo-dog take-downs where they both have each other’s back and come out on top. Of course when Billy and Steve fight together they are magically in sync, almost like a dance; a monster-ass-kicking dance.  The few times the kids & Nancy + Jonathan were present to witness the Billy & Steve dynamic it just kind of stopped them in their tracks, staring as the two boys demolished 4 demo-dogs together. When it was over, Steve & Billy, high on adrenaline, laughing and breathing heavy, looked over after high-fiving and noticed their friends staring, clearly clueless to how they appear: “What??” Billy and Steve say in unison. “uhhh, nothing, good jobs” are uttered as the group re-calibrates, no one sure how to explain it. Steve slings an arm of Billy’s shoulder, and vice versa as everyone heads to Hopper’s cabin for post-monster fighting ice cream and eggos.
For Billy and Steve, what started out as against-their-will bonding turns into real authentic friendship and then some: Billy confides in Steve the abuse he endures by his dad, and Steve admits to being haunted by the trauma surrounding the Upside Down and having to go home to an empty house every night. Billy gathers that Steve’s preppy rich-kid image couldn’t be further from the truth and Steve realizes that Billy isn’t the jock asshole he pretends to be.
Sometimes, when one can’t find the other, they know without question that they can find the other at the edge of the world (the rock quarry), and so will drive out and quietly keep the other company against whatever monster is haunting them that night. (It’s here at the rock quarry one night that Billy, unable to look at Steve, apologizes in a thick voice about that night at the Byer’s when he nearly beat Steve to who knows. And it’s here that Steve realizes that he’s already forgiven Billy, and even though Billy doesn’t think he deserves forgiveness, Steve makes it known…gently grabbing a now silently-crying Billy, holding him till he stops struggling and says “you’re my best friend.”)
And because I’m a slut for friends to enemies to would-be-lovers, these two are falling deep for each other without admitting it to themselves, let alone each other. And because Neil is Neil, he eventually gets angry about something random and takes it out on Billy- Billy gets cut/injured along his torso, and when he arrives at Steve’s (because going to his best friend’s house when he’s hurting is more comforting that he can bear to think, let alone say), naturally Steve has him sit with his shirt off at the kitchen table while crouching down to tenderly clean up Billy’s injury. Cue Steve feeling extremely protective over Billy + wanting to destroy Neil, and feeling heat in a way he can’t give words to because Billy is here, half naked in front of him, so close he can smell him and it’s dizzying. Cue Billy being frozen by the intimacy of being truly cared for by his best friend and feeling warm everywhere because having Steve’s hands actually touch him is awakening something (love!) in him that scares him.
“Guess this is what I get for being an asshole for all those years” Billy rasps jokingly to lighten to the mood. Steve stops breathing for a moment and maybe gets too intense, but he can’t help it, with Billy as he grabs his hand and makes him look in his eyes, saying shakily “This is wrong, Billy, what’s happening to you is wrong. But you’re not. You’ve done bad things, but you aren’t bad. Do you understand, Billy? You are not bad.” And it’s so intense that Billy can only dazedly shake his head yes as he tries to blink away the tears stinging his eyes. Steve nods briefly before going to back to cleaning Billy’s injury, and both are silently thinking I can do many things but being without you is not one of them.
This is the first night Billy stays the night- he sleeps in the guest bedroom right next to Steve’s and this becomes a frequent occurrence for Billy to stay over when he’s able to or can’t go home.  A few weeks later he’s sleeping over in the guest room (after the kids went home Billy & Steve drank Steve’s dad’s whiskey and played records and jokingly insulted the others taste in music) but gets woken up at some point in the night by Steve having a nightmare. When he rushes into the room- both of them in their little basketball shorts- Steve is already sitting upright on the edge of his bed, breathing heavy and mortified that he woke Billy up with one of his screaming nightmares. Billy crouches down in front of Steve, gently makes Steve look him in the eyes – they are so close they are sharing the same breath – and tells Steve he has nightmares too. Billy quietly tells him about his nightmares about his mom, his dad (doesn’t mention that losing Steve is now a feature in his nightmares now), and says, almost without thinking, that spending time with Steve helps his nightmares. That Steve can call him anytime he has one, anytime it gets too bad, that there’s nothing wrong with being scared of the big empty house and the monster that could be in the pool outside. That Steve is not stupid, and that he’s not bullshit. That Steve takes care of everyone all the time, and Billy gives a little huff of a laugh and nudges Steve’s knee when he says “so I’ll have to look after you”, trying to play it off like a joke and not like the promise it is. But Steve’s eyes glisten slightly in the dark as he softly says back “And I’ll look after you.”
Soft touches, shared glances, and brief blushing smiles become all too common between them in the weeks that follow (they try to rationally explain this away to themselves when they’re alone- that the other couldn’t possibly feel the same way, that they don’t want to lose the one real best friend they have by confronting feelings they’ve both never felt before). Of the short time periods they are not together- when Steve’s parents show up for a night or Billy has to stay home overnight because Neil- a void is felt by the other’s absence that both Steve and Billy start to admit (only to themselves, of course) feels painful in a way that nothing ever has before. That when they are together it feels right, feels solid. That the other feels like home. Like something they’ve never ever had before And it’s only when they are alone at night, in bed, thinking so loudly they are sure someone can hear them, will they acknowledge their biggest secret: that they are in love with their best friend.
END OF PART 1!
Part 2 coming shortly, but this is just a headcanon I would love for someone to take and turn into a full-fledged fic- that would be my dream! I just don’t think I can do it justice but if you want to take it on, just let me know, I would be thrilled! 
I had to re-write all this because it disappeared- honestly, I just don’t know how to Tumblr sometimes, but! this is the first thing I have creatively written for this website and it’s all because of my favorites who are my inspirations in this Harringrove fandom- you all are seriously amazing and beyond talented! I re-read your guys work consistently and it brings me such joy so I wanted to share my headcanon idea with you guys. Tagging my inspirations: @lymricks @toast-ranger-to-a-stranger @pizzacast @gothyringwald @flippyspoon @marsza @highon85 @lemonlovely @granpappy-winchester You guys are amazing!
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daddy-bean-boy · 6 years ago
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Final Evaluation on The TrovPod Audio Project
Firstly with this project we were given the task of creating audio. The audio had to be of our own making and include some kind of sound effects in it that we could represent visually. 
We chose to take the structure of a podcast for our audio. This way we could record us talking and cut it down into bite size entertaining pieces. We had to draw inspiration from places to get ideas of what a podcast is like. This meant we needed to research about them. Luckily I listen to a few podcasts and this meant that I already was familiar with the structure quite well. However a problem with this is that obviously it’s a podcast that I would personally listen to meaning its an empirical idea of what a podcast is like. This meant I needed to think about others. I like a more rambling podcast that has funny improvised conversation. A stark contrast to this was a organised and structured podcast which was a lot less familiar to me. This Is why I thought while recording we could use questions to bring out more organisation to it. Alternatively we could of had scripts that would have been pre-written for us to read out.  This would have meant we would of had a head start knowing what sound effects would be made for the conversation and what we would have to animate. However an issue with this is that you lose out almost all the chemistry of open conversation with each other. Which loses a podcasts charm. I drew a lot of inspiration for the podcast structure from an old podcast called the “YogPod” which was two close internet friends, talking over a call and getting funny quizzes off the internet to do on each other and would often end in funny moments. The animation style I took inspiration from a YouTuber called “Odd1sOut” who has a simple animatic style that he uses to tell stories, which I felt was a good way you could tell the stories in a podcast.
With the planning that we did, there was separate planning methods for either end of the project. For example the podcast recording itself meant we had to book out the sound studio so we could all sit round the microphone. I got an app that had questions on it that we could as each other. For the actual sound effects that were made, when we cut down our 30 seconds of the podcast we decided what parts need sound effects and wrote down on a “dope sheet” what time those sounds were needed and for how long. We then borrowed a marantz recorder and sad in a quiet room while we recorded the sounds that we would later layer and compile together. This worked well as we made all the sounds ourselves and if they didn't sound quite right, we could use some sound effects in premier to alter them. Next production, depending on what we do, I think It would be important that you know exactly where the sound effects are needed. This is because when we recorded we were just having to assume what sound effects would be needed in the conversation and put them in. This sometimes meant when we animated, we would have to animate to make sense of the sound effects rather than the sound effects making sense being there. However I think it works well despite this being my original thoughts. Before animating, we all made quick story boards that would give a good guide line for the timings of the animation and the key scenes that were in them. This meant that you wouldn’t have to make up while animating what you think it might look like. Sometimes it would take a long time to make the story board look like what it does in your head and getting married to an idea can mean you will spend too much time trying to capture it.
 When actually recording the podcast, we had one central microphone that we sat around and spoke into. This seemed like it worked as we were all picking up when we listened on the mac. However when it came to recording for an hour we found that some of us around the microphone were a lot harder to hear. This was because the mic didn’t pick up evenly on all sides as it was only meant for one person to talk into. This meant that me, who was seated behind the microphone wasn't picked up well at all, which we didn't realize would be the case at the time. This meant that when editing the audio I had to mess with volume to make me sound a bit louder. The same went for Travis. If we were to record in a similar fashion another time, we would have to all sit facing the front of the microphone and try to squeeze in front all of us as best we can. The hardest part of actually recording the audio was trying to remember how all the equipment worked. However, getting on and practically doing it, really teaches you how it all works. This means next time we’d be much more prepared to just get in and start recording. The room was very sound proof for the recording studio but unfortunately we recorded our sound effects separately in a open room which left for a lot of resonance with some of the sound effects, meaning they sounded far less crisp that the conversation itself.  The animation itself however was an enjoyable process. I’ve had a fair bit of prior experience using the software “Animate CC” therefore this was the go to software I used. I really wanted to push what I knew with the software. I’ve done simple character facial expressions, syncing and slight movement, however I’ve added a lot more things happening at once, Including background animations of apples. I even added a small transition where Freya says “Jesus” and I feel like it just add’s more to the style the animation was going for. A challenge was staying consistent with the style and making sure all the animation appears as though it were in the same universe. I tried to keep with bold and pastel colours for all the characters for a start. I kept them within a simple style so that when crating new assets it wasn't like drawing a whole new scene. That way I could stay in the time frame. I even did 50 seconds instead of 30 because I felt it was more appropriate and pushing the expectations even if slightly.
Next time I work on a large project like this I need to keep myself organised from the beginning. As I started making more and more assets within the animation I found myself having to organised all the layers into folders and cleaning up random key frames that had been left open. Luckily all of this was great practice to know how next time it will work a lot more effectively. I’m really glad how the end product that we added together was a real display of all our different animation styles, what parts of the podcast we found funny and what we like to see from animation. This means next time we’ll know what we can expect from each other. The most challenging thing in the whole process was dedication to the animation process. Even though we made an animatic it was still a dreadfully long process. Taking 8 hours for 20 seconds of animation.
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benwillismedia · 4 years ago
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Week 12
So, this week was a cool week of hearing from the people who created/curated the collections that we are messing with, to see their opinions on our work.  A common complaint that Nick from ACMI had was his annoyance with adding additional noise and scratches onto already aged footage, but like we didn’t do that, but also I don’t see the problem behind it even if we did, audio isn’t magically unaffected in real life due to degradation. Like if you have a screwed-up VHS copy of a Toy Story, I can say from experience, buzz and woody look and sound screwed up in certain parts. Emulating this is fine in my opinion. BUT ANYWAY, stuff actually important to Chloe and my project, ‘Indoctrination’, Ben (yes another ben, the best name) said how he liked the fact that our glitch effects weren’t just white noise and boring, so that was cool. He also pointed out visually, that he liked how the glitch effect and also how the world that is rotoscoped, doesn’t effect the protagonist, and basically its about how the world around the protagonist baby distorts, when in reality it’s his brain that’s distorting his reality. This was all encouraging, and basically, we just wanted to push that idea going forward into the final week. I basically want to vary the atmos textures and make the transitions of them fading away a bit more prominent, just to further drive that point home, not only visually, but just stronger sonically.
Nick also said we have a strong visual design and concept but felt like it needed more of the ear pod/iPod motif throughout the video just to drive home the ‘indoctrination’ of the kid. So basically, this week has been both of us trying to get some sort of 3D model ready to implement into the video. We started with Blender and modelling is fine, but from previous projects I knew it was a pain doing all the compositing in Blender rather than just importing a model straight into After Effects with the PAID plugin, Element 3D (so basically this was a dead end because it’s like expensive af).
I watched this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRJsojJ-La4 on someone modelling an ear pod, but I basically gave up on trying to make stuff for 3D as I had a ton of other stuff going on this week outside of this class and this was gonna take a lot of time that I don’t have. Also, we decided against doing a straight copy of Apples earpods just to avoid the whole copyright thing to keep it generic, but still a nod to “hey these are earpods but not, *wink*”.
And then we PiVOTed once again, because that was too hard, so Chloe went through Turbosquid.com to source some stock 3D models of generic iPod related models. It was also at this point we decided on a phone rather than motion tracking earpods on the kid, as it would look janky given the time we have, compared to a static object motion tracked to the environment and scene. Also, the fact that the earpod would be in the foreground on the kid would REALLY draw the eye to any poopy animation and keyframing. SO basically, we going for that subtle approach, which still conveys the point effectively in our opinion.
Chloe’s next plan was to use the dynamic link feature of Cinema 4D with After Effects. Cinema 4D was just a pain to navigate apparently, so she tried to navigate that, while I watched a couple of tutorials on how to actually use the software (as I’ve only used Blender before), but I kind of gave up on that too.
AND what we have settled on, is Chloe took a pic of her phone and motion tracked it onto the background of the footage, which looks sick, especially with the clean masking she has done. I think its really effective despite how subtle it is, but I think the fact that its such a foreign and modern piece of technology juxtaposed to the old footage, its like enough to make it stand out and be recognisable, and then establish that conceptual connection to the corruption of the baby and its indoctrination.
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AS FOR SOUND, Chloe adjusted some of the timing of the video, so I had to adjust some of the sound cues. I also spent a lot of this week going through recordings of Chloe’s nephew, and finding recordings that actually sync to the visuals and the baby on screen. I ended up finding a balance between using some of my own recordings from last week for more subtle mouth movements by the baby, but using Chloe’s nephew for the more animated laughs just to give it some more authenticity (I know I am still a baby, but my voice has changed somewhat over the years).
https://youtu.be/kph62LISRms
As for “The Way Back”, I worked on creating some more edits in the audio to sync up with some of the smaller visual edits. Basically 1:05 was the big one, where I low passed and distorted the audio to give some sort of extra motion in the audio, mirroring the energy of the text, “VIRUS”, that appears on screen.
https://youtu.be/kDSrQ4MgcPQ
Also I finished my work with Margaret for her project this week through creating a victory screen looping score which used same elements from both the in game score and the menu score, and made a sort of chill version of the in game soundtrack just to give the players a rest after fighting each other for money for 2.5 minutes. This also plays into the dynamic range thing where they need a rest from being pounded with a barrage of sound from the final 30 second intense score. I basically slowed down the BPM and made it more chill musically.
https://soundcloud.com/benjamin-willis-409703317/victory
Apart from that, we listened to François Tétaz (WHO I found out lived in Geelong, like i currently do, and worked at Faggs mitre 10 which just so happens to be on the street “WILLIS place”, therefore he is basically my long lost uncle, just like Bruce Willis)
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and Richard Grant on Wednesday and heard a lot about the ins and outs of the music industry and what it takes to succeed. The main takeaway I got from that was just how to sort of diversify your income streams as well as well placed gambles. I loved hearing about how writing a hit song, or just how royalties in general work as a passive income stream. Not having to worry about pressure to find work all the time is probably ideal, where a passive income like that would take away some of the stress of work that is like less passive income. Also knowing when to give up some short term money now, and working for less for a period of time to put more effort into something that might have greater longer term benefits, whether that means earning more money due to polishing a product longer instead of pooping out a project and moving on as fast as possible, considering royalties again. Also considering that goodwill and loyalty and reliability as well as just getting experience with collaborators may also be worth taking a lesser cut, to have a longer-term sort of benefit in forming those relationships and getting that experience. Anyway, that was the main takeaways that I need to consider going forward into my career and it was amazing to listen to François and hearing his wealth of knowledge.
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yutaya · 7 years ago
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Things About the Be More Chill Revival (Nov 12, 2017 performance)
This actually got really long so I’m putting it under a cut. Warning for Be More Chill spoilers below, I guess.
Before the show and during intermission they were running tweets from the audience on the backsplash
In the program there’s a spread that’s like yearbook photos with in-character photos and quotes
This is just an Exit 82 theater thing but on the wall were the heckling muppets
When Jeremy’s Theme started the silent “oh my god oh my god oh my god is this really happeninggggg” emanating from EVERYONE IN THE THEATER was physically palpable
Every time a new scene or song would start or when a character would enter the stage the crowd would cheer
Jeremy does not bump into Rich trying to escape the girls prompting the “don’t touch me, tall-ass!” line and the “boyf” writing. Instead, Rich actively seeks out Jeremy and shouts the line about not touching him, even though Rich is the one who just ran up and grabbed him from behind completely unprompted.
Rich also runs straight over to Jeremy’s chair when he enters play rehearsal even though Jeremy’s not even looking at him to start shaking him and humping his chair.
An interesting thing: Jake and Rich do not seem to be the same kind of friends here. In the 2015 version, we saw them greet each other coming in opposite directions down the hallway with a high-five-low-five sort of custom-bro-fist-bump, semi paralleling Jeremy and Michael’s secret handshake later in the same song, and start talking about the weekend or previous day or w/e and Madeline. However, in the 2017 version, much like Rich just ran up to and instigated the "Don’t touch me!” interaction with Jeremy while Jeremy wasn’t paying him any attention, Jake just walks right past them and Rich is the one who runs at him from behind, calling out the “Yo Jakey-D!” greeting and weaving his way into Jake’s space to get Jake to look at him. It definitely brings to mind the whole “Rich is a sad suicidal loser who wants to be a part of the It crowd so he got a Squip but honestly he’s still stuck on the outside looking in and even when everybody is talking about him and what happened to him and what he would want if he were here nobody even bothers to fucking visit him in the hospital - the first visitor he sees is Michael but Michael is only there for Jeremy and is an anti-social headphones kid so Rich has to wait for Jeremy to wake up to have someone to ask about what people are saying about him at school” thing
I know everyone ships Rich/Jake because best bros or something but honestly the person Rich seemed to devote the majority of his attention to in this version was Jeremy haha
For the first “Christiiiiiiiiiiiiine” part of More Than Survive, rather than loads of super Extra twirling and stuff by Christine, she was doing things like wiping her mouth with the back of her hand - things that normally might not be considered super attractive and highlighting how she’s super special in Jeremy’s eyes when other people would just see a random person.
She does get SUPER excited later when she sees the play sign up sheet though. Slams her hands on the wall to stare hungrily at it, dives to the ground to rifle through her backpack for a pen, and Jake lifting her up while they do contemporary dance poses lasts for the entire time Jeremy and Michael are singing her name.
When Jeremy has the verse about “why can’t someone just help me out” he legit sounds like he’s about to cry
On his way out after inviting Christine to the mall later, Jake pauses while passing Jeremy and lets him know that “Someone wrote Boy-Eff on your backpack” in the same sort of sweet considerate way that Christine did during More Than Survive. This is interesting because it 1. Shows Jake being kind (directly after putting him in a situation that might normally paint him as the love-rival-therefore-enemy - but, oh, fuck, no, he’s nice) and 2. implies that Jake does not know about Rich bullying Jeremy. See: Rich and Jake might not actually be close friends^
In the bathroom, when Jeremy says “aren’t you gonna wash your hands?” Rich walks up to him and pointedly RUBS HIS DIRTY PENIS HANDS ALL OVER JEREMY’S FACE AND CHEST
In Two-Player Game, Jeremy is standing up for the “favorite person” line, so Michael also stands up and walks over to tuck his head against Jeremy’s shoulder while mocking him. Jeremy shoves him away and Michael just stays with his body locked in the same position and lets himself dead fall onto the beanbags
Michael dabs during one of the first “cool in college” lines and it’s like “wow you ARE a loser”
They did this dorky pseudo dancing that was like amateur fighting moves like jump kicks and karate chops, and at one pint they were leap frogging over each other? dorrrrrrks
In the transition from Two-Player Game to the mall to go buy the Squip, Mario runs across the stage and does the little Mario jump like to hit a block and get a new item
By the way, Jeremy really does look SUPER awkward on Day 1. His striped shirt I thought was weirdly over a long-sleeve shirt even though the pattern didn’t lend itself well to that, but then it turns out they are one shirt?? It’s like that on purpose??? The Eminem shirt + vest combo really does look a lot cooler on him after that.
His body language is SO AWKWARD it was all very Evan Hansen
At the Payless, the drug dealers are these two goths so instead of the “sooooo Wolverine, right?” line it’s “soooo My Chemical Romance, right?”
The goth twins are speaking in unison in creepy computer voices and circling Jeremy and like - touching him while he squirms uncomfortably much like later during Do You Wanna Ride
They give him the entire shoebox for the one pill? Which I guess makes it less “???” for Rich to have the shoebox in his locker later”
When Jeremy is jerking around and yelping at the mall, Christine is asking what’s wrong, Jake is recoiling and someone (Jenna maybe? Our seats were really far away we couldn’t see anyone’s faces just their bodies) is recording, but when he escalates to screaming in pain they all just... get freaked out and run away? Leaving him alone on the floor even though he’s CLEARLY in major distress.
The squip stands with a very wide stance, like the standing version of taking up three bus seats. It’s a very obvious contrast especially in his first scenes to Jeremy in his hunched and close-legged position. When not standing, the squip is either crouching in a very predatory Gabe Goodman “I’m Alive” sort of way or lounging in a somehow very cool careless bad boy sort of manner.
When Jeremy is reciting the Squip’s story about Madeline and the shirt to Brooke and Chloe at the mall, he is making all the same arm gestures etc that the Squip is making - though more awkward in execution.
The “Hey Hamlet” actions were HILARIOUS. He literally collapsed over the table, then threw himself onto the floor like Draco Malfoy.
In Do You Wanna Ride Brooke and Chloe are basically dirty dancing on Jeremy and he looks SO UNCOMFORTABLE like he’s about to die and not in a “wow this is too hot my brain will explode” way more like an “extremely fucking terrified” sort of way
Brooke really drew out the “Pi~i~i~i~i~i~i~ink~i~ink~i~ink ~i~ink ~i~ink ah-Berryyyyyyyyyyyyy” riff for forever it was hilarious
Syncing with Rich’s Squip in the More Than Survive Reprise is... really really creepy? It gives of an extremely ominous mind-control sort of vibe like Rich is just Jeremy’s Squip’s puppet
In More Than Survive, everyone was dancing around Jeremy and he looked super awkward and uncomfortable - in the Reprise they do the same dance but this time Jeremy is dancing in sync with them all too.
The electric shocks seemed like they were happening extremely frequently in Act 1? Practically every 5 seconds in some scenes like literally every time Jeremy went to make some move or say anything or pause for too long or think anything at the Squip himself at all.
During Guy I’d Kinda Be Into the Squip talks for Jeremy a LOT. Basically everything he says and does is the Squip there.
When Jeremy does his whole Squip-assisted flawless recitation of his Midsummer part when Mr. Reyes tries to call him out, Brooke is so overwhelmed by his hotness that she drops her script. It just clatters to the floor while she stares at him.
The WARNING WARNING WARNING after Guy I’d Kinda Be Into Squip-controlled walk out is super robotic. A very distinctively robotic walk.
In “Upgrade” the Brooke and Jeremy scene is super sexual??? The Squip puts Jeremy’s hand on her boob while she’s talking. Jeremy draws it back and the Squip just puts it there again. Then the Squip makes Jeremy pull Brooke up against him in a very sexual sort of position. Jeremy jerks back and the Squip just makes him do it again. They end up doing this whole thing with lying on top of your partner holding them down, and then the person on the bottom flips the positions so they’re on top now, and it continues a couple more times so they’re rolling around on the ground with the Squip in control of Jeremy’s body the whole time, and it ends with Brooke straddling Jeremy and thrusting her hips with her head thrown back before he sits up and starts making out with her with her hips still going in his lap. It’s kind of a prolonged making out, too, complete with like... roaming hands by both parties.
Christine’s line “still I’m not sure what I should do” when Jake is asking her out is very clear and is presented like a soliloquy-type narration to the audience about her own feelings rather than as dialogue to Jake, before she agrees and he kisses her.
Some guy in the audience started moaning in distress preemptively shortly before Jeremy’s “optic nerve blocking: on” line
People around me were gasping at that line so maybe there were some people who didn’t actually know it was coming. Or they might have been superfans overwhelmed with emotion. Judging by the rest of what I was hearing from the other audience members the entire time, it’s probably the latter.
For the “optic nerve blocking” scene, Michael is standing alone on the upper level, where the Squip usually is. After Jeremy chooses to turn it on, the Squip walks up from behind him and touches Jeremy directly, wrapping his arms around Jeremy's shoulders - it’s the first time that the Squip is on the ground level alongside Jeremy and the rest of the people instead of alone on the second level just watching over all of them.
The moment Act 1 ended the audience EXPLODED into noise. It seemed like everyone simultaneously turned to their seat mates to start screaming about things. My brother was like “It’s been a long time since I’ve been in this sort of young teenage fangirl filled sort of environment.” Haha
At the Halloween party Rich is FULL OUT GLITCHING. His head and limbs keep jerking like a machine with a wrench in the cogs and he’s repeating “it’s Halloween” like a skipping record
The way he’s glitching here near the start of the party is very similar to the way Jeremy’s Squip starts glitching after the alcohol. It’s like the alcohol making Rich’s Squip glitch causes Rich to glitch in exactly the same way - like after 2 years his body and voice is just a manifestation of his Squip’s movements and words - like he IS the Squip and there is no Rich at all.
In Act 2, Jeremy really is just... walking and standing so much more confidently than Act 1? He looks extremely much more to be a normal, attractive guy. It’s very obvious in scenes when he’s talking to Michael, because we saw them having conversations in Act 1 where Jeremy was relatively comfortable since he was with his friend, but it’s still such a marked different in his body language and even the cadence of speech after having the Squip for a couple weeks. Again, it was very Evan Hansen vibes.
“What kind of slut do you think I am?” Chloe asks, while draping herself over the bed and pointedly spreading her knees and thighs open at Jeremy
Once the Squip makes Jeremy drink Chloe’s alcohol, the way it starts jerking around instead of being smooth for the first time is still pretty cool and collected / in control looking somehow - it looks like when a video chat is lagging and instead of smooth movement you get a series of jumpy still frames, but the person isn’t in distress or anything.
When Jeremy tells Michael to “Get out of my way. You Loser,” he literally shoves Michael aside with force and walks out, not slowing or looking back once as Michael crashes into the bathtub. Michael just...stays where he fell for the entire first part of Michael in the Bathroom
At the end when he’s in prime screaming mode he sings “it sucks you left me here alone” instead of “it’s sucks he left me here alone” - directing it at Jeremy directly
Christine talking about breaking up with Jake - she mentions the cheating but also outwardly calmly (remember she has mad gigantic feelings about most everything in reality) lists other reasons such as “we just don’t have ANYTHING in common”
When Rich is freaking out about needing Mountain Dew Red, he is glitching like crazy and he is only asking for the Red when he’s facing one direction, as if he has no brain activity when jerked into the other direction, but is repeating the request on a constant loop, it’s just that we can only hear it when he’s on the one frequency. Jeremy and Christine see him in obvious distress with his head like banging clearly without his control against the wall, which must hurt, and they just???? laugh at him?????? What the fuck, kids, why do you all keep abandoning each other in distress in this musical.
Jeremy and Christine actually have really great chemistry though I was like “wow ok I can ship this.” They make you feel it.
When Rich’s WARNING WARNING WARNING goes off he marches out of there in the same robotic way that the Squip marched Jeremy out after his own WARNING alarm after Guy I’d Kinda Be Into. This is further highlighted by the way the Squip marches Jeremy out in the exact same way a few seconds later after reviewing the footage from the evening.
During the Smartphone Hour there were three backup dancers in shiny clothing during the beginning verses with Jenna, Chloe and Brooke, like the old singers used to have.
When Jenna and Chloe sing the chorus that “Rich set a fire” the stage lights go red, orange, yellow and rippling like fire
After the fire, the Squip is full supervillian attire - Black Cloak, LED lights, the works. I couldn’t see it myself because I was too far to see anyone’s faces, but apparently also he gained digital face makeup here?
They really played up the computer effects in The Pitiful Children and The Play - in voices especially. Final Boss Jenna Rolan speaking at Michael at The Play sounded like full computer and not human.
Jeremy’s choreography during The Pitiful Children is super still. He gets shoved to the ground and he just stays frozen there looking up at all the dark squip figures dancing around him. They put him on the staircase and he just stands motionless, staring into the distance while they spin him around and the Squip cradles his head. At the end he lifts the shoebox above his head, but he’s mirroring the Squip’s actions again, like at the mall back before Do You Wanna Ride.
During the Pitiful Children also the Squip keeps putting his hand on top of Jeremy’s head with his fingers splayed like a puppet master. It’s not above Jeremy’s head, it’s resting directly on his skull.
When Jeremy is arguing with his dad before the Pants Song, Mr. Heere has JUST said he’s grounded and scolded him about taking the car (to Jake’s party) and Jeremy just. Very pointedly. Picks up the keys, jangles them in his dad’s face, and says “I’m going out,” like wow fucking slay.
Michael is shredding his Jeremy mementos instead of burning them, presumably because it’s easier for him to carry around a coffee can calling it a shredder than to pull a full Eliza Hamilton and set a fire on the stage (and burn down the house). Mr. Heere still tells him to stop sitting around burning incense though - because of the joint Michael was smoking while shredding all his stuff.
In the play when the Squip activates Jeremy’s kung fu mode to fight Michael, they stage it like a fighting video game with Jeremy enacting ridiculous combo jumpy moves while Michael basically does roll dodges and a cute fighting video game remix of one of the BMC songs plays in the background. I don’t remember which song it was now though.
The Two Player Game reprise involves Michael leap-frogging over Brooke and Chloe and jumping onto Jake’s back and just sitting there for a bit while Jake spins in circles
Michael does not get attacked by Final Boss Jenna? She’s standing on the 2nd level. After tossing the bottle to Jeremy Michael kind of just stands in the same place for the rest of The Play unmolested.
It doesn’t really seem like the Squip actually physically stops Jeremy from drinking the Red? The sound that we’ve been hearing so often this song when the Squip is controlling people isn’t present there. He just yells “you don’t want to do that Jeremy!” and Jeremy just. freezes. and asks why. Like he’s been so conditioned to listen and obey the Squip at this point that even when he’s actively trying to work against it he still knee jerk follows instructions.
The squipped people (except Jeremy) all had LED lights on their shoes during Pitiful Children and The Play. Christine has them too, but when she comes out into the middle of the zombie horde acting normal near the end of The Play, the main stage lights are on so it’s not really noticeable until the reveal that she’s Squipped too and suddenly her shoes are flashing.
The choreography for Guy I’d Kinda Be Into involved Jeremy and Christine slow dancing while everyone walked around them in a circle. They have the same choreography during the reprise, with the obvious implication that because everyone is Squipped now Jeremy can have the exact scenario he was fantasizing about earlier and this time Christine does like him instead of Cho Chang Jake
Everyone shrieks wordlessly and then collapses except for Michael whose yell is more like “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH FUCKKKK!!!!”
After everyone collapses and Michael is standing there terrified the Squip is the only body still moving. He is dragging himself over the fallen bodies of the students as the lights go black.
In the hospital, Rich has NO movement. The full body cast doesn’t even allow him to turn his head to look at Jeremy when’s he’s speaking to him.
Michael does not pull the curtain to hide Rich from view as if that would do anything to stop him from hearing everything they’re saying. It’s not like Rich can so much as turn his head to look at them anyway.
In Voices In My Head, Christine is the one who surges forwards to kiss Jeremy, who is shocked for a second before getting with the program. They stand there and make out for an extended period of time while everyone else cheers and continues singing the song
When the Squip tries to call out to Jeremy he isn’t on the ground level where Jeremy and Christine walk past him. Instead, he stumbles his way along the upper level, where everyone except Jeremy and Christine are lined up, and they all sort of jeer at him and shove at him as he passes like one of those really uncomfortable ending scenes in teen movies where the bully walks down the hallway having everyone in the entire school shove at them and having milk or something poured on them and such in a reflection of one of the main character’s opening scenes.
There was not much dancing in this production at all, which makes sense considering this was only for 1 weekend.
I went to the talk-back too so I will write some about that after getting some sleep
I will try to add to this list if I remember anything else.
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flyingvgroupca · 5 years ago
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What NEVER to Publish on a Real Estate Company Site or Blog
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You're thinking about starting a blog, podcast or vlog. Weeks and months pass by, and you’re still no closer to your goals. You want to be heard. You have a message, and you’re anxious to impact the world with your real estate listings, findings, insights and experience, but… I know... You don't want to look or sound unprofessional You don’t have enough time to dedicate to a regular content marketing schedule You don’t have a budget to outsource this process or have not even considered doing it You don’t know where to start, or what to talk about first Let’s face it. Every real estate business needs a website, and every website should have a blog. (1) But most don’t. (2) Or they’re not regularly updated. (3) Or their content is uninspiring and dull. That’s where YOU come in! Here’s what I mean. We both know that nobody likes to read average articles, stuffed with keywords, and posted on a poorly designed website. If you’re reading this, then you already know your real estate business requires: (1) A pro website design You’re losing money and trust if you go with an average, ‘me too’ website look because... A professional website design reflects your real estate brand and vice-versa. So, it has to reflect a color combination and layout elements that are in sync with your real estate company’s mission, core team values, and principles. (2) An SEO blog setup with Wordpress (preferable) Wordpress is ideal for real estate websites because you get a fast, secure, and easily manageable platform to future-proof build and grow your real estate business. (3) A series of high-quality and highly relevant articles AND blog posts, meant for both humans and Google. If your website is the KING, then your content marketing is the QUEEN. What is high-quality content, and how can you ensure that you create more impactful content even when you lack time?
The Secret to Creating Content of Value as a Busy Real Estate Agent or CEO.
Transform your real estate agency into a micro multi-media agency. Here’s how to accomplish this: Start by producing micro-video content. This less-practiced method saves you plenty of time because you don’t have to manually type in new content. The simple solution is to jot down some ideas, create 3 slides, and expand on the pillar concepts, while you record your screen and speak. Imagine this. 10 minutes worth of recorded video can provide you with enough content for multiple blog posts and short email follow-ups. You can load these into your autoresponder service or CRM to convert prospects into leads, and transform leads into customers, via email and SMS, for many months to come. Here’s what you need to do: You can simply answer the most common and frequently asked questions from your target audience while recording yourself with Screencastify, or other screencast recording platforms. They’re so easy to use and make you look and sound professional, without costing an arm and a leg. The free version has some limitations, but you’re ready to go within seconds to start broadcasting your way to the top. This video content may include questions on what to consider when processing approvals for loans, searching for a house, or even buying a new apartment in your city or county. You get the idea, but you know your audience better than I do, so you’ll know what their requirements are or what key topics to focus on. Prepare a list of the most common questions that prospects might have about your service and listed properties, within the realm of your specific Real Estate location. Here is one simple and proven tool (website) that can help you come up with quick ideas for your top FAQ list: visit Quora. With Quora, you can search for questions and the results will show the responses of others. You can identify the related questions, and get an idea of what people are asking.
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Next, record yourself for an hour at the beginning of each month, and answer all the relevant questions. You’ll have enough content for 30+ days to post to your website or blog. You can take this idea a step further, and hire a VA or have someone from your team distribute this content to your YouTube channel, as well as engage with prospects via Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. The best invention ever is social media. If used correctly, it can capture attention your target market attention and start significant conversations. All you have to do is hit the record button, and start sharing your screen and slides (you can find lots of slide templates online for free).  Ultimately, these amazing video messages will be your best lead generator and traffic machines. Here are some amazing additional content ideas to help you create premium video content and blog posts to attract your ideal audience. Using these, you can convert prospects into leads, and turn leads into customers - for many years. 100+ Topics and Ideas for Your Real Estate Blog 72 Rock Solid Real Estate Blogging Ideas With Examples 25 Best Real Estate Blog Ideas & Examples (Expert Insights) 7 creative ideas for successful real estate blog posts Real Estate Blog Topics You Can Write About in Less than 30 Minutes Your video content should encourage and entice your prospects to join your lead magnet, and subscribe to your mailing list. This is where most real estate marketers fail miserably. They have their website, location and phone number listed in the video description, or at the end of the video presentation. However, they lack a lead capture offer, or button in the video itself. So, they get stuck, unable to comprehend why their video marketing generate only minimal or no results. However, setting up this lead gen machine doesn’t mean your done. Most automated email campaigns fail, due to multiple reasons. I’ll cover one of the most important ones next.
Here’s why the standard follow-up ‘drip email’ strategy is exceedingly ineffective, and how to create high-converting emails for your real estate campaigns instead
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Plenty of these emails are written in an extremely professional way but lack a personal touch. Drip emails are automated and really reduces you to feeling like a number in a mailing queue. If you are sending these emails, the person on the receiving end will not feel any warmth or love, and will definitely know that no-one took the time to craft the message with care. With the rapid development of automation and artificial intelligence, you need to separate yourself from all the other real estate professionals, while using the same technology.
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Here’s how to make this strategy work for you instead, and increase your chance to bond create trust, and forge new relationships with leads, from day one, week after week, month after month: Stop trying to be perfect. Consider the tone of the email, and create it to sound like it’s meant for a human, instead of creating a mechanical ‘do this, or else…’ demand that will just end up in the ‘deleted’ folder or recycle bin. Therefore, your prospects should feel respected, and not like their intelligence is being underestimated. Use very short, personal email messages. These friendly ‘letters’ will create a personal connection with your prospects or previous clients. This will exude an aura of ‘they care about me’ and would encourage the person to respond, attend your event or refer a friend, colleague or family member. Here are some examples of brief and friendly email messages you can model that actually have a chance of receiving that “tell me more!” reply:
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You can also send out these messages via text / SMS to further build trust and remain in the mind of your prospects, for longer than those from your competitors. Long gone are the days when real estate CEOs and agents wanted to sound like a big corporations whose only intention was to impress and ‘close the sale’ as fast as possible. What happens if people still don’t respond? Or, how do you reactivate previous clients or lost leads? What is the secret, really? The answer may surprise you. It is so simple, yet you rarely hear that real estate agents use it with any significant results. Here’s what I’m referring to...
How to Bring Real Estate Leads Back from the ‘Dead’
The tips I’m sharing with you to help revive leads that have point blank refused to move forward with you before, are often overlooked by most real estate professionals since they are more interested in generating new leads, instead of taking care of lost opportunities. That goldmine sitting right under your nose can be your most precious asset. Call them. As simple as that, it works wonders. In the conversation, you should always share how you acquired the lead, whether from Trulia, Realtor or maybe Facebook. This will remind the lead that they once inquired about buying a home, finding a location, etc. Be ultra-specific, relaxed, and don’t hide the context. This may lead you to responses like, ‘Already bought a home,’ ‘Still saving my money for a down payment,’ or ‘Fixing my credit.’ With these clients, there is a possibility that they will buy, dive or unsubscribe. It should be noted that there is a small fortune to be had if the follow-up is done right, with a proven strategy on paper, and kept consistent. That’s the KEY. What to do if bad things happen. Like for e.g., … It often occurs that the lead does not pick up your call,  in which case you should leave a voicemail. Despite their busy schedule, the lead might find time to listen to your message and act on it. Voice mail messages can make or break your lead gen campaign. That’s why it is so crucial for you to spend a few minutes, maybe half an hour to perfect the irresistible voicemail message, as well as additional follow-ups. Over time you’ll get better and learn to structure these messages more naturally, while improving your response rate as you advance through life and business.
Private message (PM) leads on their most active social media platform.
Some individuals are faster to reach on Twitter, or Linkedin, while others may prefer Facebook. Take advantage of all platforms, go ‘fishing’ where they can easily be found. Testing  your message across all these different channels will help you make an informed decision, while eventually perfecting your approach. This method will help you address the fast-paced life of leads and everyone else.  If somebody is active and ready to go, they will reach out to you. If not, there are enough leads for you to consider, and you’ll never look back.
What to say in order to catch the fishes and profit from leads:
Offer time-sensitive or exclusive information that is not available on the top sites or in the local markets. This will pique their interest since everyone would like to be the first to acquire the information before it is distributed to the rest. Be a natural ‘actor,’ improve your role playing, and show passion when delivering your messages, one person at a time. If you know someone who does not know what to do with their list of ‘dead’ leads, you may consider buying the list from them, and apply the above tips to win and/or revive some of these back into your funnel.  Or, you can partner up with them, and create a joint venture where you split the profits from all revenue generated. Sounds like a win-win situation, right? There is money and opportunities in ‘dead’ leads. Get out there with a simple, and consistent plan. Use the best CRM available for real estate and follow-up extensively. Here are some more drip email & follow-up ideas: 17 Best Real Estate Email Templates & Scripts (I simply love the 2nd idea!) 14 Real Estate Email Templates to Use (Hubspot knows their game) 10 Real Estate Email Templates for Building Leads & Selling Listings (you may want to pay close attention to the very first template because it usually gets the highest response rate) 10 Real Estate Lead Conversion Emails (don’t overlook the first two examples) From learning about…
What NEVER to Publish on a Real Estate Company Site or Blog
You’ve discovered how to rapidly create high-quality content, using the 10-minute micro-video formula. More importantly, you learned how to properly follow-up with prospects and leads - even during busy days. This is one of the best ways to stand out in a crowded, busy, and mechanical real estate market. Remember: make it your #1 goal and vision to transform your real estate company into a micro-content multi-media agency. Thank you so much for reading What NEVER to Publish on a Real Estate Company Site or Blog. We really appreciate it! If you have any questions about our article, or can suggest any other topics you think we should explore, feel free to let us know. Be sure to sign-up for our newsletter to receive monthly emails on all of the latest trends and happenings in the digital marketing space. You will also receive our FREE E-Book with the Amazing Marketing Tools for Powerful Business Growth. Sign-up below! Also, if you received some value out of this article, please share with your friends or colleagues, or leave a comment/question below. We really appreciate you reading our blog and every share/comment means the world to us and allows us to continue producing valuable tools to help you grow your business! Share this PostAbout the Author
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Robb Fahrion Facebook Twitter Google+Robb Fahrion is the Co-Founder and a Partner of Flying V Group. He is passionate about helping businesses grow using the power of the internet. Robb graduated from Chapman University in Orange, CA and currently resides in Costa Mesa, CA. Robb enjoys writing about digital marketing, helping his clients turn their dreams into reality, and is a HUGE Mike Trout fan. The Best Strategy to Increase Traffic and Leads to Your Real Estate Website without Any Referrals, Facebook or Paid AdsNovember 25, 2019What NEVER to Publish on a Real Estate Company Site or BlogNovember 19, 2019Real Estate SEO Tools Exposed: SEMrush vs Ahrefs vs MozPro Review (2019)November 11, 2019
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spaceorphan18 · 8 years ago
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Finding Kurt Hummel: The Break-Up
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Masterpost
4x04: The Break-Up
Alright - time to rip off the Band-Aid.  It’s been four and a half years, and I think that’s been ample enough time to revisit this episode with a clear head and an open mind.  
This episode, though, man.  It split an already fracturing fandom in half, and it really never recovered.  And I think stories about fandom and what went on at the time really out does the story here itself.  
I will say, though as an aside, that season 4 was meant to be a new and fresh series -- the introduction of the Newbies symbolizes that.  The whole idea of makeovers symbolizes that.  And hitting the self-destruct button on all the popular couples was a symbol of that.  From what I can tell, the writers wanted a fresh start with season 4.  
And while I like season 4 (more than season 3), and while I think that Klaine needed some actual story, I don’t think the mentality that the show needed to start over was the best one for the longevity of the show.   However, there’s another time and place for that discussion.  I’m mainly focusing on the story itself here.  
Anyway, it’s funny to me -- that there really isn’t /that/ much Klaine in this episode.  Just enough to do the damage it did, and shake up the the couple -- who never really fully come back together until the end of the series.  It’s a fascinating and frustrating arc - and here we go..... 
Some Introductory Notes
Before we get into the Kurt stuff -- something I need to add.
The paralleling of Finchel.  One thing that does outright frustrate me is that Klaine doesn’t get to be their own story.  No, Finchel and Klaine have very different things going on within their relationships, I get that.  But the thing is -- Finchel gets meatier things to do.  I understand that they’re the A-Couple, and that the show wants to do more with them, therefore they get better development.  But selfishly, as a Klainer, throughout the season it’s difficult seeing Finn and Rachel get developed conversations while Kurt and Blaine get a watered down version of a similar thing.  But more than that -- this is one time I wish Glee wasn’t so hell bent on paralleling all their stories -- because everyone’s stories work better on their own, not being tied to someone else’s. 
I would say Brittana had it easier being a more individual story, but they were neglected for a long, long time after this, so you know, issues everywhere, lol. 
Brunch
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Before we jump to Kurt --  Blaine and Brittany are lamenting about their relationships in the opening sequence.  Blaine talks about remembering when every day felt like Valentine’s Day.  And that’s where I think that both Kurt and Blaine fail a little bit.  Relationships are not always going to feel like Valentine’s Day.  Sometimes they’ll be hard.  A lot of times not.  But sometimes yes. And this reliance on how everything is perfect -- how everything is their storybook romance -- is what does them both in.  It doesn’t allow for either of them to make mistakes.  
We open Kurt’s story with him cooking breakfast -- and is in a relatively good mood.  Oh, bb, the fact that you are so unaware of what’s going to happen in the next few days makes this even more heartbreaking.  
I need to note that Kurt wore earplugs to bed -- as he did probably did in high school cause he did not want or need to hear any of /that/.  
But anyway -- Kurt senses there’s some major drama about to happen in Finchel land, and he has no desire to be any part of that.  He’s gonna go sneak off to the park and watch drug deals, lol.  
BTW - during the next Brittana scene, there’s some Kurt shade, as Santana talks about how improbable it was for Kurt to get the internship.  The show knows, sometimes, when it’s being ridiculous.  And as I said in the previous episode, it’s not about realism.  It’s about the character story. 
Call Waiting
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While Kurt’s gonna somewhat fuck this moment up  -- I’d like to point out that he’s the one who called Blaine.   Also - Blaine’s pic of Kurt is Kurt’s student election campaign poster.  
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Alright - so this one little scene has a lot packed into it.  
First of all -- you can tell they’re at least trying.  They have phone dates, that I assume they both set up.  But I’m guessing that Kurt -- being caught up with this crazy new job, and having to take care of phones for Vogue.com, probably is keeping him understandably busy.  
Yes. This scene points out that going out in the real world after high school is different.  You have more responsibilities.  And things that were important in high school seem smaller when you go off to college.  
Blaine, however, is still a year behind, and still in that world that Kurt left.  And Blaine is not handling things well on his own.  As he says often -- he’s a bit lost, and unsure what to do on his own.  But this is also where the fear of losing Kurt comes to head.  Blaine’s insecurities and self-doubt are all rolled into one, and couple that with Kurt being carried away with this new life brings Blaine to the (incorrect) conclusion that Kurt doesn’t need (or want) him anymore.  And that his relationship is done.  
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Kurt misses Blaine.  There’s a lot in his facial expressions that show he really does.  When Blaine lists off all the things he misses doing with Kurt (note - the implication that they both miss the emotional and physical parts of their relationship (my god, they’re allowed to mention they have sex)) Kurt is right there with him, frustrated by the situation, too.  
But I think the thing that is somewhat missed during these break-up discussions is that Kurt isn’t exactly handling all of this well either.  Kurt trying to express to Blaine that with the absence of NYADA he has to find some direction, and Vogue.com might be that opportunity that he shouldn’t miss, isn’t exactly the easiest conversation.  (Not to mention that Kurt doesn’t seem to do well in general when Blaine gets overly clingy.)
Also - Blaine’s looking for some kind of comfort, and instead Kurt’s hanging up on him to get the latest gossip from Joan Didion.  Not cool, Kurt.  
But -- as I’m sure I’m being a broken record -- neither is dealing with this long distance stress well.  Blaine is under the impression that the worst has happened, Kurt has forgotten about him, and his relationship is over.  Meanwhile, Kurt is ignoring the issues as much as possible, believing these things will all magically work out.  Nope to both. 
Also - Blaine’s ILU as Kurt hangs up.  Ouch. 
Haunted
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Alright - so this is the part that’s hard for me to untangle because we’re in Blaine’s brain here -- and I’m not always the best a figuring his head out. 
Blaine’s singing this duet with Finn -- and it’s about the two of them feeling out of place and out of sync with their significant other.   And Blaine’s haunted by the Kurt he sees in his head - this vision of Kurt from when they first met (Vision Kurt is wearing the same outfit from Never Been Kissed).  There was a time, in Blaine’s head, when everything was perfect and man he’d like to go back to that time so he can feel okay. 
But interestingly, Vision Kurt is season 4 Kurt, too.  A Kurt who has changed, and is not the same person that Blaine used to know.  He’s almost this foreign entity that seems like he’s judging Blaine. 
So, here’s my interpretation (which Blaine stans can correct me on if I’m totally off).  Through the circumstances of his life and his type of personality, Blaine craves emotional validation and is the type of person who needs to be told (and told again) that he’s valuable and needed and wanted and worth being with, etc. And Kurt used to feed that emotional neediness on a regular basis when it was the two of them and they did everything together. 
Now that Kurt’s gone, Blaine is not getting that reassurance on a regular basis and because of that he feels lost.  He tries reach out to Kurt (as shown at the beginning of the sequence) but Kurt’s not there.  So Blaine decides to take the easy path (the dark side!!) and find someone who will quickly fill that validation.  And this is where Eli C and the cheating comes in.  Maybe if he can find that intimacy with someone else he’ll be able to feel better -- and it will help take away the sting of feeling left behind by Kurt.  
It’s also a rash decision, btw, one where Blaine clearly didn’t think it all the way through.  Because it’s really going to blow up in his face.  But -- here’s my thing, there are a lot of things that go into this, and it’s even more complicated, I think, than I’m giving it credit for.  But I’m going to move on and get back to Kurt, since it is my Kurt meta.  I’m hoping that when I do the podcast, lots of smart Blaine fans will help me untangle this further. 
Callbacks
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So, I guess Kurt decided it was fine to go play third wheel with Finn and Rachel, lol? But anyway - Kurt’s getting all dressed up to go sing at a bar.  I don’t know much about clothing meta, but I’m sure someone can discuss the purpose of black and red in the wardrobe.  Not to mention, I read something about the usage of mirrors in this episode, but I don’t remember what.  
I will say -- I never thought about the name Callbacks before, but I think it’s intentional - not just because of the connotation to the theater world, but because this is a callback to the good ole days for Finchel and Klaine.  And yet, it’s not the good ole days anymore. 
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This is totally the face of someone who is unhappy their boyfriend showed up unexpectedly.  (Actually - the longer I stare at it, the creepier it gets, lol)  
Also - remember that meme of people who bring foliage to the loft means bad things? Blaine brings roses -- this is not going to be good. 
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I don’t know what’s with me and taking ridiculous screencaps.  But I love Kurt hiding behind his flowers.  (He’s actually smelling them.)  
But man - I mean, best night ever, right? His boyfriend is there unexpectedly.  (And they share a kiss -- why does stupid Rachel have to interrupt that?)  His brother is there.  They’re gonna go singing.  Best night ever, right? 
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They go to Callbacks, which is so, so pretty.  I love all the Christmas lights.  
And, oh Kurt.  He really just doesn’t get it.  He’s happy Blaine’s there and they can start making their New York memories.  He does see that Blaine’s sad -- he’s obviously but not blind.  But he has no idea that Blaine’s been struggling to the extent that he’s been struggling.  Kind of like in Dance With Somebody.  Kurt sometimes doesn’t get it until Blaine spells it out for him.  
And I would like to state right here that while I do think its both of their issues that lead to this break up, while I do think Kurt was (unintentionally) being neglectful of his relationship -- as Blaine says himself in DWS -- ‘talk to me, tell me you’re unhappy, but don’t cheat on me.’  And I didn’t bring that up to throw back in Blaine’s face (I kind of hated that when people did that) - it’s more of -- this is a lot more difficult when you’re on the other side of the fence.  
And these two have always had issues with communication.  Tell each other your feelings you stupid boys!!! 
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Oh Kurt -- you’re just in such a happy place before all this goes down.  
Blaine, as he sits down at the piano, says he’s going to sing a song -- the same song he sang when he first met the love of his life.  A song that has become very much their song, and is representative of this fairy tale romance they have going.  And look at Kurt’s face -- he’s over-joyous that Blaine’s singing this song.  He loves this.  He loves that it’s supposed to be a romantic overture yet again.  
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There’s a lot of love and reflection on Kurt’s face as Blaine starts singing.  
And this might be a good place to talk about a misstep Kurt has within his relationship.  Blaine has been all these wonderful things for Kurt.  His prince, his knight, his first kiss, his first love.  They’ve shared so, so many intimate moments together.  But -- Kurt sometimes has trouble seeing Blaine as a real boy -- one who isn’t perfect, who won’t just wait around for him when Kurt needs him, who has troubles and issues and is going through something a bit bigger than Kurt understands. 
But this song -- this break down that Blaine has is the first time Kurt really, really gets to see first hand that his relationship is not fairy tale perfect.  The illusion is coming apart. 
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This scene, this rendition of Teenage Dream, is one of the most powerful and heartbreaking scenes in the entire show.  (I mean, Kudos to Darren Criss for this -- I think it’s one of his best acted scenes in the show.)  It’s ironic in so many ways, as the performance just goes off the rails. It’s fascinating how Blaine just breaks down -- he is no Disney prince here.  He’s a slobbering mess, rushing through the whole thing because it’s all too painful.  And man, how many of these lines are just plain ironic now?
And the longer it goes on, the more Kurt knows that things are wrong, that something is terribly, utterly wrong, though there’s confusion in his expressions as well.  What the fuck happened? He doesn’t know.  But this isn’t the Blaine he’s used to.  And he doesn’t really know what is going on. 
Not Really a Walk in the Park
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You guys remember when this scene was filmed, and there were people who witnessed it first hand (why did they shoot this in public?) and that was a sucky night for fandom? At least Chris and Darren seemed to have fun, lol. 
Anyway -- I need to bring up American Horror Story for a second.  Why? Because at the time Ryan Murphy was writing the first season of that.  And in that season, at the beginning, the husband cheats on the wife, and the scene where the wife confronts the husband is almost exactly verbatim this next Klaine scene.  It, like, freaked me out when I watched it -- and then I checked the dates and that AHS episode was written before this.  
This whole cheating thing is a trope that Ryan Murphy goes back to again, and again.  I don’t know why.  But I feel like that framework should be kept in mind when discussing RM’s projects.  I can’t not look at it in that light.  And while we can talk about legit reasons as to why Blaine decided to cheat -- I feel like it can’t be stressed enough that this is also a trope that’s indicative of Ryan Murphy -- and that he has a tendency to write all his couples this way.  And that cheating in RM’s world is somewhat a different thing than cheating in the real world. 
But on the bright side, that AHS couple worked it out in the end.  And so will Klaine. 
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Getting back to the scene.... 
When we start out, there’s a physical distance between the two of them.  They’re not holding hands, Blaine has his hands in his pockets.  Kurt’s unsure how to act.  I’m guessing this relationship has never felt this awkward for either of them.  And Kurt can’t avoid the inevitable forever -- so addresses the subject straight on.  
Kurt’s so nervous as he asks Blaine what’s going on.  He can feel it, feel that this is not going to be a fun conversation.  
And then Blaine says he was with someone - and the bottom just drops out completely.  Because out of all the things he was worried about -- Kurt probably never thought that Blaine would say that. 
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Oh man, do these two know how to hurt each other in the worst ways.  
To Blaine, removing the emotional intimacy has been the worst.  But to Kurt -- removing physical intimacy has always brought about his insecurities.  As we’ve often talked about, touch is a huge thing to Kurt.  He doesn’t let anyone in, he doesn’t let just anyone touch him.  And here’s this boy who Kurt’s let in, and having that connection, not just that emotional connection but the physical connection - where sex and love are intertwined and where Blaine being close to him was not only Kurt’s way of knowing he was valuable but Kurt showing how vulnerable he can be, of letting Blaine into his heart, is incredibly important.  
And here Blaine says that no only has he had that physical intimacy with someone else, but he shared something Kurt considers sacred with a person who doesn’t really matter.  (Kurt is first fearful that it was Sebastian -- someone who has always brought about Kurt’s insecurities.  But having it be someone faceless.  Someone who doesn’t ultimately matter is almost worse.)  
And this just shatters Kurt.  The person he thought he loved and knew more than anyone else in the world, he doesn’t know any more.  Because never in a million years did he ever think Blaine could hurt him so deeply. 
The temptations line by Kurt is really interesting here.  Did have Kurt have other people hitting on him? Maybe? Maybe not.  But this goes to Kurt believing that his relationship would be fine without tending to it.  Kurt’s fine with commitment.  There could be one guy, there could be fifty.  He loves Blaine, he’s with Blaine, that’s all that matters.  And he’s secure with that.  But, love and relationships are more than just believing everything’s going to be okay as Kurt finds out here.  
I’ve seen this comment floating around, and I agree with the assessment -- usually the show lets Kurt pretty cry.  Kurt’s break down here is not pretty.  It’s downright ugly crying.  (And this is where I give Chris kudos for his acting.  Damn, I can’t imagine going to that place take after take.) 
Anyway - it’s fascinating that everything changes from this moment forward.  No more fairy tale romance.  Welcome to the adult world kiddos. 
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So -- instead of extending the argument -- we move into the song Don’t Speak.  Which was, apparently, Darren Criss’s suggestion. Thanks Darren. Lol. 
It works well for this group of singers -- it’s heart-wrenching and works well for both of these couples.  It’s not a personal favorite, because this song depresses me to no end, but it works. 
Breaking it down a little -- 
Blaine sings: 
I really feel That I'm losing my best friend I can't believe this could be The end
That stands out to Blaine’s headspace.  It’s not just about the romantic relationship -- it’s the fact that the friendship isn’t intact as it once was either. And I think that’s a huge element that they both miss throughout this break up. 
Kurt (with Rachel): 
It looks as though you're letting go And if it's real, well, I don't want to know
It’s interesting -- because Kurt, when things get emotionally difficult, had a tendency to not deal with them head on.  Not until he’s forced to, really. 
Kurt and Blaine: 
Don't speak I know what you're thinking I don't need your reasons Don't tell me, cause it hurts
This is the chorus and the main point of the song.  Neither of them really want to deal with it because it sucks.  It’s literally the worse.  And yet -- you have to eventually deal with it anyway. 
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Kurt (with Finn): 
Our memories, well, they can be inviting But some are altogether mighty frightening
This is interesting -- I think it’s that the memories aren’t as comforting as they once were.  For Kurt -- everything he once believed was true and good is now tainted, and how do you look back on that fondly? Right now he can’t. 
Blaine (with Rachel): 
As we die, both you and I With my head in my hands, I sit and cry
Oh, Blaine -- this speaks to his helplessness at this point. 
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Hey - remember when we wanted Klaine in bed together and they gave us this? FU RIB! 
I actually really like the cinematography out in the park.  That shot with Blaine and Kurt lined up but not actually facing each other is pretty powerful - as it shows where they are now in relation to each other. The stuff in the beds, eh, not a fan of the split screen stuff.  Plus, oy, Finchel-ness.  
I can’t really imagine how the rest of the night went, tbh.  I’m shocked Kurt didn’t kick Blaine to the couch.  But I can only imagine there was a lot of crying, and a lot of not facing each other, and little to no sleep.  And then Kurt left and went into the other room to think.... 
In Mourning
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I’m guessing Kurt’s been in that chair for a long time.  He tells Finn that he feels like he’s going to die.  And that six months ago, he would have never guessed this would have happened.  Well no -- you never thought this was going to happen at all.  It’s called life, and life is throwing curveballs.  
Kurt’s waiting up for Blaine -- but later Blaine will say that he left without Kurt talking to him.  What gives?  Well -- Kurt’s so hurt, and so shattered, and it’s a lot to process and take in and I can imagine that even though I think Kurt wants to yell and scream and fight, he’s also emotionally exhausted.  What does he really have to say in right this second? You can’t undo things that have already happened, nothing is going to magically make it all feel better.  So yeah -- I can see Kurt wanting to say so many things, but in the end, it’s easier to just let Blaine go.  
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I read some great meta once, and I wish I had a source to back it up, that Kurt doesn’t feel like Kurt here.  And someone wrote about why.  Because Chris usually plays Kurt as poised and controlled in his actions.  And none of that is here.  But this is a Kurt who is emotionally raw and defeated.  He’s just kind of in a state of existing. His heart is broken, his world doesn’t make sense anymore -- he’s just there.  (Man -- I’ll have to see if I can find it -- cause whoever wrote it, wrote a much more eloquent analysis than I ever could.) 
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If this episode wasn’t already depressing enough -- consider this....  This is the last time Finn and Kurt have a scene together.  And it’s a little chilling when you think that Kurt’s wearing black, and telling Finn goodbye as he leaves the loft quietly.  Obvious, I’m texturing this on in hindsight.  But it’s already a bittersweet moment.  It’s heartbreaking when looking back. 
I always wished they did a little more with Kurt and Finn as brothers than what they did.  But I’m, weirdly, glad they had this little moment as their last scene. 
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I have to mention here that we go back to McKinley for a while because Newbie/Jarley drama.  And here’s my thing -- this feels so, so jarring compared to the rest of the episode.  Glee season 4, when not talking about the newbies, kind of goes back to that season 1 adult grittiness.  And all the emotions and break up stuff feels like it’s apart of that.  Stopping midway to do a story about high school students most of us don’t care for yet (or ever) is frustrating -- and really highlights the disconnect between these two different kind of stories.  
Also a note about the Left Behind thing.  I get that this is supposed to be a realization of the theme -- being left behind by someone, as Finn, Blaine, and Brittany are all feeling that.  But did we have to waste so much time with it being a literal thing? 
Also, meanwhile there’s mild trouble with Wemma.  So they get in an argument.  While I’m glad they didn’t break up, yet again, it’s obvious they just wanted to stick them into the final group number.  We could have done without the newbie stuff and had Wemma get an actual story for it to make more sense. 
A Metaphor
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Well -- by the time Kurt gets back to work, he’s his composed self again.  Something small that fascinates me -- Kurt’s staring deeply at this note from Blaine, and when his coworker Chase comes in, Kurt jumps a little, startled that his thoughts have been interrupted.  And then Kurt closes off.  He doesn’t give Chase details about what happened, he doesn’t even make eye contact.  Kurt goes inward while he hurts, and takes pain on his own.
He tells Chase:  
Kurt: I’m okay.  I’ll be okay.  
He’s already entering this defiant mode.  He wants to be fine -- he wants all the pain to stop and not to be able to think about it.  Of course, he’s not.  As much as he wants it to, the pain of this break up is deep, and isn’t going to magically go away.  It’s going to take a lot of time and a lot of healing before Kurt really is fine.  But meanwhile, he’s going to try his damnedest to present himself as fine. 
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Kurt trying to be fine while trying not to break down crying.  Oh, bb.  
Also this exchange: 
Chase: Is he cute? Kurt: The cutest.
You don’t magically fall out of love with someone when these things happen.  (Not that I wanted Kurt to do that -- but I’m just trying to show the complexity of the situation here.)  Yes, Blaine hurt Kurt very deeply.  But Blaine also loved Kurt very deeply, and Kurt loved him very deeply, and those feelings are very intertwined.  And I feel like that’s an important comment to make -- cause it’ll come back later.  But also because, Kurt can claim he’s fine all he wants, that doesn’t make him actually feel fine.  
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So someone might yell at me if I don’t mention the flowers.  Yes, yes, they’re a call back to Asian F -- when Kurt gave Blaine flowers.  Red and Yellow mean friendship and love and a deep connection. Oh, a stab in the heart for sure.  
But -- there are two other big things (that irk me a little) that I need to point out before we leave this scene. 
First of all, Blaine’s note.  I kind of hate it -- because it feels juvenile and belittling of the severity of what Blaine did.  The note doesn’t feel like Blaine, and I just don’t like it.  
Secondly -- it took me forever to figure this out, but Kurt throwing the note away is a metaphor for Kurt dumping Blaine.  That’s when the Klaine v.1 ends.  With a metaphor.  And it bugs me.  Because both Brittana and Finchel get dialogue -- actual scenes that show that their relationships are over.  And Klaine gets a metaphor.  
And no, I don’t know what I would have wanted instead.  And in some ways, Klaine gets better things.  Their story is the one that gets the most development in season 4.  They’re the first ones back to each other.  They get way more focus than Brittana will ever get, and more interaction than Finchel. Their relationship is the least dead? But I suppose there’s that lingering feeling, that I suppose isn’t that fair to say, like the Tongue Tied montage -- I wanted Klaine to have just a little something more.  
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Kurt isn’t in the episode again until the end.  But before I get there, a couple of points. 
1. When Blaine returns to McKinley he chats a little with Finn -- and Finn (understandably, I may add) berates him for hurting Kurt.  But my heart breaks for Blaine.  Because Finn has come back home too, but he has a support system -- he has his parents, and Will and all the kids look happy to see him.  Blaine is alone.  Really alone.  Oh, bb.  I’m glad you get Sam soon. 
2. Brittana -- I like the scene that they get at the end.  It’s funny, as much as they leave it open ended (this isn’t an official break up) I always felt like it was the most definitive break up of the three. In fact, until they actually got back together in season 5, I thought maybe the show was done with Brittana for good.  (I have to wonder how much fan involvement had something to do with them getting back together.) 
3. Finchel -- I have many thoughts about Finchel. Idk - if you guys are interested, I’ll write up a post.  Long story short - I like their conversation (minus a couple small things) at the end and they were definitely /done/ for a long time.  (The weren’t supposed to get back together until the end of the series.)  
Back to the Start
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The ending group number is The Scientist.  And, well, damn, if this isn’t the perfect ending song for this episode -- as it really does well to encompass all of the issues among these couples.  (I suppose, though, it helps when the show purposely gives these couples similar issues and themes to work through.)  It’s an incredibly heart-wrenching and effective performance.  
This song is a reflection of better days and how easy it can be in the beginning and harder as it goes along.  (It’s about a lot of things, I’m simplifying)
But Kurt’s verse: 
I was just guessing At numbers and figures Pulling the puzzles apart
Well, FU again RIB -- as obviously this is a nod to the line in Teenage Dream about being each other’s missing puzzle pieces.  
I should also mention the flashbacks, as there was an uproar about this -- which I don’t believe was unjust.  Finchel and Wemma (who don’t really even have a big conflict in this episode) get a flashback to their first kiss, while Klaine and Brittana noticeably don’t get kisses but other moments.  And with Klaine I sorta by, since that was back to their start.  But still -- if you’re gonna show couples kissing, show them all.  C’mon, Glee.  Don’t piss us off even further.  Klaine’s first kiss would have worked just fine here. 
But anywya... But man, if there isn’t some juicy Kurt-related stuff to sink my teeth into.  Because this is just ‘the incident’ -- and now we have all the repercussions. 
No one ever said it would be this hard Oh, take me back to the start
And thus, the show has officially hit the reset button.  Welcome to a new world, guys.  It’s not gonna be easy.  
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assimkamukafmp · 7 years ago
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FMP
For my final major project I decided to create a title sequence for one of the games I’ve been playing lately, Fortnite.
Fortnite
This game took the world by storm, it popularity grew drastically since December 2017, currently it is the most played game passing its predecessor, ‘PUBG’ and rivalling the popular ‘League of Legends’. Fortnite is incredibly popular and it’s easy to understand why, the cartoony, goofy/silly design of characters combined with competitive gameplay will draw in all most any gamer.
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The game is has two modes, ‘Save the world’ and ‘Battle Royal’, they’re like two separate games. Battle Royal is the one that placed this game on the radar and it’s what people think of when they hear the name Fortnite. 
I decided to make a title sequence for the Battle Royale game mode. When you first launch the game there is something called a ‘season pass’ that you buy to receive skins and in game cosmetics as you progress, the higher the level the higher the reward. The first reward you get is at level one and it is the ‘Spaceman’
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This is basically the noob skin that new players get when they first start the game, but when they reach level 100 which is the highest level they receive ‘The Reaper’ Skin which is based on ‘John Wick’, everyone also calls it John Wick instead of The Reaper.
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I was playing the role and I decided to go all out, I slicked my hair back, wore a shirt and a tie, but I thought that adding sunglasses was great touch to make it look more “special agenty”.
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Design choices
Inspiration
Gunsmith Cats - The main thing that inspired me and made come up with doing a silhouette based project in the first place is a title sequence for an called “Gunsmith Cats”. I just loved the silhouette style and how the executed it, the sequence would cut from silhouette to character drawings to give of the shadow effects. I also loved how the idea that there is no base, there is no floor or sky set in place, anything could be the sky and the floor, and I noticed that about a lot of silhouette title sequences. 
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After deciding that I wanted to make a silhouette I went back and looked at other title sequences that were silhouette, and you can't talk about silhouette title sequences without James Bond Casino Royal title sequence
Casino Royale - This title sequence really destroys the environmental settings, there is literally nothing set for the majority of the title sequence, it is as if it’s happening in space. But the thing that I took from it was how they animated their guns and have them go of without anyone pulling the trigger.
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I implemented that into my work
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Archer - the final title sequence that I looked at which was 100% silhouette based was “Archer”, I LOVED that show, and my favourite thing about the title sequence is that the whole sequence follows a ball, and it put to use to reveal something about the character, from being used as a bullet to being used as a pearl on a necklace.
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Silhouette title sequences were often used in spies, secret agents type of shows and thats why I knew it would work for my final project.
Before I even started recording this project I knew that the main colours that I wanted were blue, yellow, black and white.
Blue for the silhouette
Yellow to fill the rotoscoped objects, like the sunglasses and the tie.
Black for the environment 
White for things such as the floor, bullet and the clouds
These were the colours often used.
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When I started editing, I realised that having the gun rotoscoped a different colour from the characters silhouette didn't look as good as I thought it was, so I decided to not roto the gun, just like the do in the archer opening sequence which is also a silhouette based sequence, but I roto the tie instead because I want to give more detail instead of leaving it as a empty silhouette like Archer’s title sequence. 
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With the Archer title sequence they focused more on giving detail to the background than the silhouette.  
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I came across the idea for rotoscoping the glasses came from a title sequence for an anime called “gunsmith cats”, the focused more on the character details and the objects more than the background, I also took the idea of having a cat-walk path from them.
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Music
Looking at these title sequences I decided to go with jazz, I liked how it was used in Gunsmith Cats and Archer, I also looked at other animes and I liked how jazz fitted in these title sequences, things such as Baccano and Cowboy bebop.
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I liked the way the music synced up with the images, and when I think about these shows I can link them back to fortnite, the sense where they are serious but are also goofy and cartoony. In the process of looking for music I also came across the CowBoy Bebop title sequence which was also a silhouette based title sequence, but it was to late to draw any inspiration from because I had already started my project.
I considered going with something like rock, like Casino Royal did, but I just couldn’t see it fitting with the concept.
In the end I decided to go with a Cowboy Bebop track called Tank, it was either it or Rush, but I felt like tank was more up beat and fit my narrative more, which is fun action.
Relating things to the game
For this title sequence I didn't want it to be completely random, I tried to relate all my decisions back to the game, starting of with the colours, like I mentioned earlier the game’s main colours are blue, yellow, black and white and I stuck to that except from two occasions and I will explain why later.
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When you first start the game the players are in a bus that’s up in the sky, then they chose to jump and sky dive to the ground where they will then scavenge for equipment. So I wanted to start the title sequence of with the abnormal idea of a flying bus, since that is where the game starts. The sequence starts of with a close up of the bus making it seem that the bus is on the ground, but then a cloud appears which is the transition revealing that the bus is actually in the sky.
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The clouds clearly are based of the Chinese old art, I like how clouds and the sky is drawn in Chinese art, it has more details than the average cartoon looking cloud. 
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I rotoscoped 3 clouds from this image, I also rotoscoped the shadows and lowered the opacity to give extra details to the clouds.
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Then I just duplicated the clouds and flipped some horizontally and some vertically to make them not look like obvious copies.
I was wondering how I was going to pull of the skydiving part of the game, I didn't know how to make it look as if there was parachute coming out and keep the energy and the momentum of the sequence.
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so instead I decided to focus on the skydiving part and have it look as if I crashed into the ground ready to f@%k some stuff up.
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The thing that makes fortnite unique is that it could be played many different ways, you can take a lot of a paths and still win, since the ending point in the game is always different, also there are many different play styles that you could play, you be aggressive or passive. I portrayed this through this image
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There are many different trails and paths leading into different directions, many of the players are looking to acquire the gun in the middle, the scar, it the best gun in the game and it gives you an advantage agains the other players. This is one of the moments where there is a different colour in the sequence, its rare to see this colour in the sequence just like how the gun in the sequence is hard to come across by.
The second time where I used unusual colours was for the lama part, the lama piñata is a rare item to come across in the game and its sort of a troll item as it gives you ridicules amount of loot, plus it looks silly, so I decided to put it in the hype part of the sequence.
Problems
This was by far the most complex sequence I done, it involved green screen, rotoscoping and motion graphics, the amount of things that went wrong are countless, first I want to talk about the keying being corrupted, this happened multiple times and one actually slipped in the final cut due to the lack of my awareness.
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I solved this problem by cutting the footage and like extending certain frames that weren't affected by the corruption. 
Some problems with keying would've been due to the lack of lighting in the green screen. I found that if I don't use hue/saturation and instead use curves, it would be better to deal with low exposed pieces.
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then I just rotoed the shadows on the floor.
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The problems I faced with the motion graphics side was the fact that I miscalculated the size of the comp and therefore some animation if not all, are super fast, this effected the text to.
The major problem the held me back in this project was rotoscoping in general, I underestimated the time it would’ve taken me to rotoscope the glasses and the the tie, in some sequences like the dance one at the end where the tie is moving all about. I ran out of time to even add text and effects that I originally wanted to add. 
Evaluation
There is no doubt that this is my best project as of yet, I am proud of what I have accomplished on this project, especially after I didn't so well in the pervious green screen and motion graphics projects. I wanted to redeem myself, and definitely think that I have. Like, this compared to my green screen project, it just blows it out of the water. 
My favourite thing about this project is the transitions, learning motion graphics along the way and how to make the transitions work, my favourite transition on this project was the bullet one and how it looked as if it travelled towards the left.
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That being said, I also believe this piece is heavily flawed as I have mentioned above, even though this is my best piece of work I acknowledge its flaws more than anyone probably, and I know exactly how to improve in the future.
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goodneat-blog · 7 years ago
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THE MIRACLES OF A JOURNEY!
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On Sun., Oct. 8th, Rev. Changwe, picked me up at the TEEZ house (where I stay); so, that we could go over to the bush to a retreat at one of the preaching points, Lubuto, in the community of Luto.  Changwe serves several churches.  The preaching points are places where the people will gather from near-by communities and churches for a retreat concluding with a worship. The parishioners had gathered since that Thursday evening.  We drove through downtown to get to one of Changwe’s congregations, the United Church of Zambia Luangwa Congregation.  I was very excited because I had wanted to venture out to a bush area, and this was as good an opportunity as any; and it’s a worship service.
This building didn’t have any significance; its name just reminded me of a place, Afcon Medical Centers, in Philadelphia, where I was employed as a pharmacy clerk, in the late 1970s. 
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We were heading to Changwe’s church to pick-up Ba Stephen, a seminarian, who was going to preach at the retreat; he has been serving as an intern at Luangwe UCZ. I was going to assist with communion and perhaps baptist some children.  This pic is of the road outside of the church.  The entrance to the church plot is right through that opening near the red shutter/gate.  
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The next couple of pics are of several buildings on the church’s plot.
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This is the catechism class - preparing to be received into membership.  The man in the yellow shirt is their instructor.
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Rev. Changwe showed me a storeroom filled with bags of mealie meal (maize) from the farm to be given to the needy; the bags are stored right behind the sanctuary.  The neighborhood surrounding the church is a poverty-stricken urban community.  
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This is a pic of Rev. Changwe and the bags of mealie meal!
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We had picked up Ba Stephen, and were on our way to the preaching point!  This was the road leading out to the bush. 
I took a pic of this unpaved, red clay road. It was a very bumpy ride!  I am still amazed to see these red clay roads that remind me of my childhood in Beckley, W Va.  
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We have turned onto the road that led directly to the preaching point.  We had to avoid a sunken area of the road.
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The road had become very narrow; almost the width of the truck! A parishioner, who may have walked from a very far distance.
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The people were gathering outside of the plot of the place of the retreat and the worship service.  Many had been here for a couple of days attending the retreat and meetings.
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Some of the people gathered under makeshift tents to ward against the sun. It was interesting to see how they had made these tents to protect themselves from the sun.
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This and the next pic were of the various churches’ leaders gathering for a church council meeting. 
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The ladies and men in the next several pics wearing red blouses and red suit jackets are members of the Men’s or Women’s Christian Fellowships (MCF & WCF) at their various churches.  
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The meeting was called to for a couple of reasons.  One of them was to hear from members who had been suspended from their respective congregations, and were seeking to be forgiven; thus, restored to the congregation. They had been suspended because they were living with their mates in an unblessed and/or unrecognized by the church marriage situation. This conduct wasn’t recognized/acceptable under the denominations’ doctrine and by the congregation.  Not wanting to embarrass anyone, and for their privacy, I didn’t take pics during those proceedings, 
It was an interesting process; Stephen translated for me (the best he could).  The persons seeking restoration and the leadership’s councils were questioned by Rev. Changwe.  It appeared that the bottom-line was to hear, listen and sort out their circumstances, and to discern or hear a sense of remorse for behaviors, as they sought forgiveness from God and the congregations’ leaders.  All but one couple was restored.  Apparently, it was everyone else’s fault that they were living in their current situation; however, there was not condemnation - not that I felt or experienced.  In my opinion, it was handled with love and compassion for reconciliation of the body of Christ; actually, I felt the Spirit of God in that place!
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Another reason for the meeting:  These are young people, who had finished their catechism classes at their respective churches. Some are being baptism for the first time, and others were baptized as infants.  They had been answering Rev. Changwe’s questions or had just collectively recited the Lord’s Prayer; in order, to be found ready to join their churches’ memberships. They had also shared the ministries that they wanted to be a part of.
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A couple of the youth appeared to be lip-syncing the prayer, this young man was caught.  Therefore, Rev. Changwe had him recite the prayer by himself.  He struggled but he passed!  Of course, some of his buddies laughed at Rev. Changwe’s comment about him lip-syncing.
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After the meeting, we were led outside to the worship service.  I heard songs of praise being sung while we were in the meeting.  
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In this pic, I caught the rear of one of the choirs who led us from the meeting’s room singing as we processed to the makeshift chancel area under a tent of straw and bamboo poles.  The young men in the white shirts were pulling up the rear of their choir; they returned to their makeshift tent.  The person to the far shadowed right of the pic was Ba Stephen (the seminarian serving as an intern at Rev, Changwe’s church).  He was the preacher for the day.  He attends The United Church of Zambia University. 
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Ba Stephen was standing in front of the pulpit; those are the leaders standing behind, under the chancel area’s tent.  On the far in the white robe and red stole was Rev. Changwe, the presiding pastor of these parishioners. They hadn’t seen him in 8 months.  He is appointed as pastor to several different churches. 
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This and the next several pics are of the leaders (the people in red are members of the Men and Women Christian Fellowships (MCF & WCF), the parishioners, girls brigade and choirs.  
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The young ladies in the blue and white were the girls’ brigade.  One of the choirs was directly behind them to the left in black and white.
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This pic was of the Women Christian Fellowship (WCF) choir.  Below is a link of their song in Bemba. This was the first choir to sing; they were singing during the collection of the offering.  The song was about “them wanting to be the children of God.”
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mnjiItpev4XjlDa3gUd1FIwABmhWsBn2/view?usp=sharing
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In this pic I wanted to show the luggage up in the center of the pic.  The parishioners had traveled far, and many had been sleeping on mats outside or inside the church.  
Below is a link to the choir that was dressed in the black and white who were standing behind the girls’ brigade under the makeshift tent.  The song was regarding giving/offering: “There’s no shame in the house of God. It is just according to how God called you.  You don’t come to the house of God emptied-handed.”  
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lozygXHHybatcdQFFBan445LXYTKFLeH/view?usp=sharing
Below is a link of another choir that was dressed in rust and purple shirts.  If I can paraphrase their song:  “The way of God, Christians is not easy.  The Words of God are difficult and hard. They are thorns, mountains, and valleys. So, if you’re not strong, you can’t manage. There are temptations, trials, and tests of the devil. Be strong so that you may enter into everlasting life.”
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DN011gf76CGTWD-cKQxV7Iw-xqh9ZBjP/view?usp=sharing
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The baptismal basin. 
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The young people who were to be baptized or to join the memberships of their churches are lined up in front of chancel area.  
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The other end of the line.
I didn’t take any pics of the actually baptizing. I was assisting with the water.  The right hand of fellowship was extended to these young people.
The link below is of a choir dressed in blue shirts who were standing under the makeshift tent near the chancel area.  They sung just before the baptism.  There song was asking God to: “Hear our cry, oh God; Hear our prayers, oh God. In my ways there is Your favor, oh God.  Upon thy children is Your Favor”
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gKWlEvWnqaPBZAuBT89WqT3n0_sFcQ4k/view?usp=sharing
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This is a pic taken from the side of the women, who had come forward and lined-up for their children to be baptized or dedicated.
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This is the other end of the line with a frontal view.
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This is the opposite end with frontal view, of the mothers and babies.
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Rev. Changwe asked for the fathers of the children to come forward and stand with their families. This pic shows Ba Mildred’s parents, who had come forward to have her baptized.
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These next several pics were taken and the video was recorded by Rev. Changwe of me baptizing Ba Mildred and the prayer of dedication. 
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Ba Mildred was asleep when her mother placed her in my arms; however, like all babies, she began to squirm as I touched her head with the holy water.
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What a glorious morning!!  This was my first baptism in the Motherland!  My second baptism, ever! 
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Below is the link of me rendering the prayer of dedication for the other children.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Lb5vgKJ_FWopWNm_nn11emDJP2mBehP7/view?usp=sharing
Later, we learned after the service that many of the parents misunderstood the act of sacrament of baptism and the dedication; they too had desired for their infant or child to be baptized.
Below is the link to the choir who led us in the procession (the choir I mentioned earlier).  There song was simply:  “I am happy to be in the House of the Lord. There is no place like Your Place.”
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gwwBmoO4Z3NdvgclkHsQFoEwd1sSQInj/view?usp=sharing
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More pics of the leaders sitting under straw and bamboo chancel area. 
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Rev. Changwe preparing to present the members who had been forgiven and restored in that meeting.
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This is a pic of those who were restored to their congregations.
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Communion is being served; there were 4 stations.
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The next few pics of are some of the adults and children sitting under makeshift tents during the communion.  If you look toward the back of the pics you’ll see bags and suit cases along the straw and bamboo walls.  Many had slept on the ground or in the church.
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The gentleman sitting on the far left was the one from that couple who didn’t receive restoration because they blamed everyone else for their unblessed marriage/living together circumstance.  
Young children standing on church’s porch. 
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On the left parishioners sitting under tent. There are suit cases and back packs on the ground near them. On the right, ladies at the end of one of the lines for communion.  They are wearing chitenges with different African patterns.   http://pocketcultures.com/2010/05/19/chitenge-zambian-fashion-essential/
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This pic is of Ba Stephen (on left) and Rev. Changwe (in white robe).  The leaders had moved to serve communion. 
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After the service, we were taken to a room in the church to be served a meal, which was prepared by some women of the WCF.  This is how it looked when we came out of the building.  
As Rev. Changwe signed communion cards and baptism/dedication records, I walked around.
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What a huge difference!!  Many of the people were sitting around eating.
I noticed that there were some women behind this chancel area.  I recorded what they were doing.  Let me share it with you, check out the link below: 
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1If8Lu-voJ72hyUeJ4Zp3MB9ZSI0dFmKV/view?usp=sharing
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Tents were being taken apart.  The woman in the red blouse had gathered her suit case and was leaving.
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These next few pics are of some of parishioners leaving by that narrow road; others had gotten in buses and trucks.
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I laughed and told Rev. Changwe that he had made that road we had traveled to and from the preaching point. Dead center of this pic and in front of the truck, was this large hole; as if it was a sunken ground.
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This is of one of the police compounds we went through heading back to Rev. Changwe’s church. She is one of the police officers.
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This police officer came out of that building to ask Rev. Changwe to pray for him; he kneeled for the prayer.
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Rev. Changwe praying for the young police officer.  
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On the road, we came across some children rolling in the red clay, dirt, as to dirty themselves to just jump into the water below.  Children will be children!!  Rev. Changwe, Ba Stephen and I laughed at the idea that they were rolling around in what had to be hot red clay - 
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Just to cool off in the water!!
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They appeared to be having a grand time!!
When we returned to Rev. Changwe’s church. The some of the younger boys of the boys brigade were rehearsing.  They were so adorable: check them out at the link below: 
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WoENa80C1XAxFykxcTssnlHhhsTyA6l0/view?usp=sharing
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The next two pics are of some of the older boys in the brigade rehearsing on the porch of church; and some of the others were having a meeting on the side of the building.  The woman on the right is one of the officers for the girls brigade.
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Below is a link of the older boys being drilled by Rev. Changwe.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yfiEeRKXXJY2ZrmGjxcoWJ9nhws4xmo1/view?usp=sharing
FROM Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church (MAPC):
 To comment, click on the date of the post or the title.  Once the page specific to the post loads, you should be able to see a comments box at the bottom of the page. 
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louiecrookfw-blog · 7 years ago
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LIMBO Trailer (re-dubbed)
Introduction
This blog entry details the development procedure I went through whilst designing the sound effects for my LIMBO trailer.
My given assignment was to download the original LIMBO game trailer, remove all audio from the video and produce my own take on the trailer’s audio design. The original trailer doesn’t use sound effects for every action that would usually produce a sound e.g. the rope snapping or electric saw spinning. I decided to create as many sounds as I could possibly make; using the equipment I had access to. I managed to create 12 unique sounds in total. I created these sounds using sound recorders and various materials provided in the university Foley suite.
Some sounds effects I wanted to implement into my trailer, proved too challenging to create myself. For example; a fly buzzing, crows cawing and glass smash. Instead I downloaded a few sound effects from websites like freesound and YouTube. All sourced sound effects used during the creation of my trailer have been credited and referenced. These references can be found at the bottom of this blog post, also I attached the list of references at the end of my trailer remake.
Genre / Music
For my LIMBO trailer I decided to go with an action/adventure genre. I decided this because the trailer itself is quite an action packed video, with various obstacles and many deadly encounters. The original trailer has quite a dark feel to it and I really liked the simplicity of the sounds used. It also did not feature any music, instead it uses a distorted sound effects and deep rumbling sounds that gradually pick up pace as the trailer comes to an end. I thought it worked really well and built up good suspense within the trailer. By seeing this used in the original trailer, I knew that I wanted to create a similar effect.
The first thing I decided to do was to look for an epic suspenseful soundtrack that fit in with what I was going for. I wanted the soundtrack to be quite chilled, even slightly sad before going into an epic fast paced finale. Originally I was going to have voice overs for the protagonist; the idea was that he was a lost child at the start of the video, crying and helpless whilst a soft backing track is played. But as he buckles up the courage, he tackles obstacles with no fear, and with that the music picks up the pace and changes the entire mood of the video.
The piece of music I used was: “Sunder” by Really Slow Motion - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzDPIrEiS-U
I drew inspiration from this poem I came across, I felt as if it was a great representation of how the music transitions from dark to light. Along with that, I also thought it represented how the character at first was unsure of his surroundings, scared and empty. However the realisation of what he must do to fight the obstacles of life kick in, and hope is restored.
“In the beginning there was darkness...Death, the absence of life, was the order of the universe.
Then he outstretched his hand, and light flowed into the cosmic dark.
What was formless took shape
What was dead became life
What was empty was filled
Time began and eventually Time will end... Or will it? The greatest battle the human soul can rage is the race against the great beast known as time. The inescapable foe that will not be placated nor denied its just reward.”
Sound Creation
To create the sound I used the Foley suite which had many materials and props to choose from. Here is a list of how I created the 13 unique sounds I did:
·         Running on Grass – Walking on the spot in piles of cassette tapes
·         Climbing ladder – Tapping metal pole in rhythm
·         Lever (cog turn) – Typewriter mechanism turn back and forth
·         Tyre bounce – Vacuum cleaner tube hit with block of wood
·         Wood creak – leaning on floorboards
·         Rope snap tension – post it notes being flipped
·         Metal creak – metal pole dragged across tiles
·         Boat Drag (consisted of three separate sounds) – brick dragged across ground, metal pole dragged across ground and wood dragged across ground
·         Slide – sandpaper across floor
·         Character jump sound effects – My own voice
·         Character landing – jumping up and down on ground
Editing / Software
To edit my LIMBO trailer I used Sony Vegas Pro. I have experience in using Sony Vegas and have edited videos for YouTube in the past; this made the whole editing process a lot easier for me.
My first goal was to ensure that the song chosen would be on beat with the video. I did this by watching the video over in Sony Vegas and each time the screen switched to a different scene, I pressed ‘M’ which places a marker on the timestamp. After that I played around with cutting the song up to fit in with the beats, this made for a nice effect that really transitioned the video from a slow paced quiet setting to an action packed, upbeat and epic trailer. I also decided that it would create a nice effect to have the beat drop of the music track, in sync with when the in-game character pulls the lever back. After the lever pull part of the video, the trailer’s clips become more action packed and fast paced; therefore the transition of the music track dropping creates a really nice effect and change of mood to the video.
Once the music track was in place and was looking flush with the video, it was time to add some of the sound effects I had created and sourced from others. I decided to input the sound effects in order to ensure I didn’t miss any from start to finish. Most sound effects that I used within my trailer were edited further in Sony Vegas. For example, when recording the sound for walking on grass, the original was far too slow paced to fit in with the character’s footsteps. Accordingly I used a feature of Sony Vegas to speed up the walking sound effect, to do this you simply hold control and drag the audio clip to the desired pace. For the characters voice effects I used my microphone at home and acted a jumping sound. My voice was too deep to fit the characters appearance, so I used a pitch shift within Sony Vegas to create a more high pitched voice to fit that of a young boy.
The only challenging part of the project was getting the correct levels of sound within the trailer. At the start of the video, the music is soft and fairly quiet; therefore sound effects were easy to hear over the soundtrack. However, as the video progresses, much more upbeat and loud music is introduced. As I was adding my sound effects into this part of the trailer, I found that the music was completely drowning out the sound effects and I was not able to hear them. To fix this I had to play around with the decibels of each sound effect, some I even turned up to the maximum and you were still not able to hear it over the soundtrack. To fix this I added another effect which allows you to raise the decibels even further, this sorted out my problem.
Even though we were told not to touch the actual video footage, I decided to change one slight thing. At the end of the trailer, the spider is just about to kill the character but before you see it happen the LIMBO logo comes up on screen. When editing, I realised that that part of the trailer did not sync up well with the ending of my music track. So I cut the LIMBO logo out and moved it around 4 seconds further along than usual. This was purely so as the logo came on screen, it would sync up with the beat of my music soundtrack and created a nice effect for the end of the trailer.
Conclusion
I thoroughly enjoyed working on this assignment, even in spite of how tedious it can be creating original sound. The most challenging part of the assignment was thinking of ways to create the sound effects needed for the trailer. A sound effect to mention is the ‘rope snap and tension’, at first I thought I would have to just source the sound effect from the internet, however a we found that flicking through post it notes created a great tension sound, similar to that of stress being put on a rope until it breaks. I would have liked to have been able to implement only self-made original sound effects within my trailer, however some sound effects proved to be too challenging and time consuming to create. The editing of the project itself was not much of a challenge; I was able to complete it quite efficiently due to my experience with video editing software.
 Final Trailer:
youtube
 Referenced Sound-Effects:
Crowes - Blimp66 04/09/2016:
https://freesound.org/people/blimp66/sounds/353432/
 Metal hit - Newagesoup 24/02/16:
https://freesound.org/people/newagesoup/sounds/337831/
 Sounds from lake - Owl 26/05/12:
https://freesound.org/people/Owl/sounds/156525/
 Bee flying - SoundMary 22/07/13:
https://freesound.org/peop|e/soundma ry/sounds/194932/
 Rope snapping - Sound Effects (YouTube) 01/07/16:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruta rEwlkhE
 Snapping - lnspectorJ 17/08/16:
https://freesound.org/people/lnspectorJ/sounds/352203/
 Water sound - Lisa Redfern 07/08/12:
http://soundbible.com/2032-Water.html
 Electric saw - Mainswor 26/04/13: https://freesound.org/peop|e/mainswor/sounds/186SSS/
Old metal swing sound - Karlis Stigis 28/10/12 https://freesound.org/people/karlis.stigis/sounds/168640/
 Walk - Hitmount 09/09/15:
https://freesound.org/peop|e/hitmount/sounds/321583/
Glass Smash - lnspectorJ 26/04/16:
https://freesound.org/peop|e/lnspectorJ/sounds/344265/
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dvprebekahbrierss-blog · 8 years ago
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Week 6: October 24th.
Sound
What is sound and is it important?
90% of motion picture is made up on sound. A video is an audio-visual production. Just like the name, audio comes first and without it the video wouldn’t be the best it could be. It is absolutely vital that you get the sound right for a video as without good sound, the video could go from professional standard to amateurish and sloppy. A slick and neat soundtrack can commonly hide the cracks in your images from the viewers attention. Therefore it is vital to plan the sound in the video just as carefully as it is to plan the images. There are different reasons for sound to be used in a video production such as: To simulate reality To add or create something they isn't there To help create a mood. A good example of sound importance is how the audience could be viewing your work via YouTube, the image might be reduced to a couple of inches wide, but the sound will be always be as big and powerful as the computer speakers it’s watch upon. It is exceptionally important when recording video shots using a handheld mobile device as it can leave you with images that are so small and the Sound needs to be greet to help to keep your audience’s attention. There are a few different types of sound that can be used. Using computer editing software, to possible to layer them in, adjust volumes and sync images to particular sounds. Using ‘J-cuts’, allows you to lay in a couple of seconds of sound of one clip over the end of the one before, therefore leading the audience attention into the visuals. It’s also portable to use a sound bridge to connect different sequences of images.
Foley sound
The foely process was created by Jack Foely. It's a process set and complete On a Foely stage. This stage will include many objects in which natural sounds can be made from. These sounds are then matched with the video sequence and added in. For example it will have several different floor types and from here the foely artist with watch the video sequence then decide upon what type of floor he will record the sound of his footprints on to match the video shot. However not always are the sounds relatable to the object used to make them. For example breaking bones can be made using the breaking up of carrots and vegetables. Or slaps can be made using raw meat. Foely sound is basically making your own sound effects that sound like natural sounds.
Diegetic & Non-Diegetic
Diegetic Sound-(actual sound)
Diegetic Sound is sound whose source can be seen on the screen or has been implied to be present in the action occurring in the film. Diegetic sound is any sound presented as originated from source. Diegetic sound can be either on screen or off screen depending on whatever its source is within the frame or outside the frame. Another phrase that is used for diegetic sound is actual sound Diegesis which is a Greek word for “recounted story”.
Diegetic sound is very commonly used when someone tells of a visual story. Diegetic sounds are those sounds that the on-screen characters live through. For example, in Star Wars, throughout the cantina scene, the audience is treated to a Bith band playing a likable tune. It takes place in the cantina and the characters can hear it, so it meets the requirements to be classed as diegetic sound. Even so, as the action progresses within this scene the diegetic sound even drops in volume and clarity, just as it would in real life. This gives a very more realistic feel to the not so realistic scenes.
Diegetic sounds are those that connect to something observable on screen, and can also be heard by the characters within the scenes. This incorporates dialogue and the sounds of objects/things on screen.
Dialog
Dialog is the sound of the characters talking while on screen. Usually to one another.
Ambient Sound
Ambient sound is also known as natural sound. It is the sound we hear in the background of a scene. For example when a character is walking down the street, we can hear passing cars and other people walking by. This is reduced in volume and placed in the background to give a more realistic and reliable feel to the video shot.
Non-Diegetic
Non-diegetic sound is basically all of the sounds that the audience hears but the characters cannot hear. This ranges from narration, to mood music, to sound effects.
Narration
Narration is the sound in which is made my a person recording a voice over. It is when w voice over can be heard but the person who is speaking can't be seen themselves. A good example of this is the use of documentaries. We can hear the narrator speaking however we cannot see them. What we can see is images or shots in relation to the topic in which he is speaking of.
Soundtrack
This is the background song or music which is added to the video in the post prediction stage. Adding a soundtrack to images is an art form. Music creates mood and atmosphere, often by manipulating the emotions experienced while viewing. Music can be classified as either soundtrack. This is very similar to 'Score' only score being an original piece of music created just for that video.
Below is a short clip in which i feel describes the difference in the sound types very well. It also shows the use of these sound techniques in some well known films.
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Figure 54. Diegetic and Non-Diegetic Sound Video,  Josh Hanson, 2014. https://youtu.be/H_4hOY-9nKA
The use of both Diegetic and Non diegetic sound.
Sometimes, an audio component serves as both diegetic and non-diegetic, or even converts from one to the other. For instance, when a movie character presses the play button on an iPod, we as an audience can hear the song alongside the character. However, as the camera pulls back to show the actor jogging away, the music becomes a part of the soundtrack without us even realising it.
Another example of this technique being used is within the TV show Glee. Each episode contains music built around a central theme or artist. Throughout the show, it’s common to see a character sing a song in different areas of the school. Over the sequence of the melody, it becomes part of the soundtrack to other happenings occurring in other areas of the show. Towards the end, the song transforms back into a diegetic part of class where the singer can be seen finishing off the song. I am a big fan of Glee and therefore now that I know what diegetic sound is, this was a TV show that stood out most to me and really described what Diegetic sound meant.  
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Figure 55. Diegetic and Non-Diegetic sound use in Glee, Fox TV, 2011.  Youtube.  GLEE 2x01 - Telephone (Lady GaGa). Fox TV. 2011.  GLEE 2x01 - Telephone (Lady GaGa) (Accessed  https://youtu.be/K1-jqPXGTSQ 
Why to use Diegetic and Non-Diegetic sound.
Diegetic sound is just an additional tool to help tell a story. The transformation technique is a common method to draw in the viewers’ attention and give them interest in the scene. By varying the role of music in the scene, you engross the spectator and delicately comprise them into the action. Alternatively, you can pull the viewer out of a scene to separate them from the story by also using this transaction method.
More old-style sound effects and Foley are another way to leverage diegetic sound. For example if shooting a battle scene for a project but unluckily you don’t have mass amounts of actors needed to portray a battle scene but do have a field, some dark clouds and a group of extras that can be reused alongside close shots. However the final outcome still doesn’t look realistic or packed as much as possible, with some reused extras and some sound effects to substitute for real diegetic sound, such as shouting, screaming, chanting and so on, it can make an empty scene seem more filled.
Lastly, diegetic and non-diegetic sound can be used to toy with the viewers. Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick and Woody Allen are famous directors who have used narration as a tool to deceive the observer, making them think one thing when something else was actually transpiring in the background.
A great example of a movie in which uses this technique is the film The Notebook directed by Nick Cassavetes. This film is narrated by an older man, who regularly tells stories to an elderly woman. In-between narrating the film, it shows sequences of actors playing out the stories in which he is speaking of. The viewer gets so wrapped up within this story in which Noah is telling, by the end of the story when he reveals the story was in fact of himself and the lady he is reading to, the audience is mesmerised as to how they missed it when really it was all down to the fact that his story telling and the manner in which the film was directed caught your attention without you even realising that you had be transferred to another world. Almost as if you were included in the story he was speaking of. This is one of my most favorite films i have watched and i now believe that the use of narrative non-diegetic sound is one of the factors that has made it so.
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Figure 56. Trailer for The Notebook. 2004. Nick Cassavetes. https://youtu.be/S3G3fILPQAU
Diegetic and Non-Diegetic sound Task:  Berberian Sound Studio Inspired Camera Work.
“Listen to audio folder and start to create the pre-production material. At this point approach the audio first and try to design a 30 second audio sequence in the Adobe Premiere timeline. The point of this is too use the audio folder as a foundation for the visual ideas. Synopsis will be the first part so agree on a story. As agreed with the group, shoot the video and then put it into the video timeline (your audio will already be there as you should have this done first) REMEMBER:Once complete export and link it to your blog explaining the process of the task.”
For this project i worked alongside Rachel. We worked together to create a short horror themed clip that fitted to a previously chosen soundtrack in which we also worked together to create. Below shows the Pre-production of this small project.
Synopsis The theme for this short project is 'Horror' and the idea behind this short film clip is of a character who is woken from a deep sleep to chiming of a clock in which he doesn't have. When he is woken, he hears the singing of children coming from outside his door. He follows this singing to find out where it's source is coming from only to wish he had stayed in his bed. Through this video project, we hope to show our understanding of sound use within video production. We want to show the important link between sound and film when narration or dialog is absent.
This video consists of three soundtrack clips from the film 'Berberian'.We choose these three clips as we believed they were best suited to the theme of 'Horror' and would be easy to film scenes to. The film is edited to be in black and white as we felt this added a very vintage horror effect to this trailer.
Storyboard
We created a storyboard showing the shots and ideas in which we had. This was to help with shooting the video by keeping us on the correct track (prevent us from becoming distracted or sidelined) and also to make the video process a lot quicker for us. 
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Figure 57. Storyboard example 
Shot List
Below shows a screenshot of the shot list in which we created. This too was to save us time and effort when shooting our desired shots. 
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Figure 58. Shotlist example 
Video 
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Figure 59. Horror Inspired video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2yhqHhCl0Q
Figures
Figure 54. Diegetic and Non-Diegetic Sound Video,  Josh Hanson, 2014. https://youtu.be/H_4hOY-9nKAReferencing
Figure 55. Diegetic and Non-Diegetic sound use in Glee, Fox TV, 2011.  Youtube.  GLEE 2x01 - Telephone (Lady GaGa). Fox TV. 2011.  GLEE 2x01 - Telephone (Lady GaGa) (Accessed  https://youtu.be/K1-jqPXGTSQ
Figure 56. Trailer for The Notebook. 2004. Nick Cassavetes. https://youtu.be/S3G3fILPQAU
Figure 57. Storyboard example
Figure 58. Shotlist example 
Figure 59. Horror Inspired video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2yhqHhCl0Q
Referencing
Importance of Diegetic and Non-Diegetic Sounds in Film | The Artifice. 2016. [ONLINE] Available at: http://the-artifice.com/importance-of-diegetic-and-non-diegetic-sounds-in-film/. [Accessed 24 October 2016].
So The Theory Goes. 2014. Understanding (Diegetic and Non-Diegetic) Sound - So The Theory Goes. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.sothetheorygoes.com/diegetic-and-non-diegetic-sound/. [Accessed 24 October 2016].
Diegetic and non diegetic sounds. 201. Diegetic and non diegetic sounds. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.slideshare.net/AshiqAjith/diegetic-and-non-diegetic-sounds. [Accessed 24 October 2016].
Videomaker.com. 2015. Diegetic Sound | Videomaker.com. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.videomaker.com/article/c4/15797-diegetic-sound. [Accessed 24 October 2016].
Diegetic and Non-Diegetic sound use in Glee, Fox TV, 2011.  Youtube.  GLEE 2x01 - Telephone (Lady GaGa). Fox TV. 2011.  GLEE 2x01 - Telephone (Lady GaGa) [Accessed 24 October 2016].
. 2013. . [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/sound.2012.0037. [Accessed 24 October 2016].
Trailer for The Notebook. 2004. Nick Cassavetes.  Youtube.  The Notebook Trailer. dvdmajestic . 2004. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3G3fILPQAU&feature=youtu.be [Accessed 24 October 2016].
Diegetic and Non-Diegetic Sound Video,  Josh Hanson, 2014. Youtube. Diagetic and Non-Diagetic Sound.  Josh Hanson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_4hOY-9nKA&feature=youtu.be   [Accessed 24 October 2016].
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