Documentary Analysis

For this post, I decided to review a New York Times Op-Doc entitled "The Black Vote for Gay Marriage".

This short documentary examines how the African American community feels about same-sex marriage.  Towards the beginning, it shows that many blacks do not support it because many are very religious, and therefore follow the writings of the Bible which say that marriage is between one man and one woman.

It features B-roll footage of African Americans protesting against same-sex marriage, and this made me VERY angry.  I support gay marriage because I don't believe that its the governments job to tell people who they can or cannot love.

Also, not everyone believes in the Bible, so why should it be the basis of our laws?  Have the opponents of gay marriage ever heard of separation of church and state?

Another type of B-roll footage it has is people singing a petition against Question 6 at the protest.

In addition, it includes interviews (a type ofA-roll footage) with blacks who oppose gay marriage, such as Reverend Delman Coates of the Mt. Ennon Baptist Church.  Coates explained how Question 6 was able to get on the referendum ballot (the Civil Marriage Protection Act was passed, but the opposition got over 100,00 0 signatures).

Another interview in the documentary is one with Pastor Derek McCoy of Maryland Marriage Alliance.  McCoy told why African Americans began to protest Question 6: they felt the need to act when they say that the "definition of marriage" was being "threatened".

In my opinion, this is BS.  The Bible should not define marriage, marriage is being united with the person you love, no matter the person's gender.

One thing that I liked about the documentary was that included B-roll footage of prominent African Americans discussing their views on gay marriage.  Al Sharpton said that gay marriage is an issue of a civil rights, and President Barack Obama said that he supports same-sex marriage.

Another thing I liked was that it has some interesting camera angles, such as footage of people singing the petition against Question 6 from the point of view of the edge of the table.

I also really liked how it has interviews with a black gay couple, to provide a contrasting point of view against the opinions from the beginning half of the documentary.


Overall, I would recommend this documentary because it can help you see the issue of same-sex marriage from both points of view.

Here is the documentary:
The Black Vote for Gay Marriage
7 minutes and 2 seconds
No Rating

How to Make Text Look Cool in Photoshop

Hello all!

Today I changed the title of my blog, and added a new banner, which I created in Photoshop CS5.

I decided to make today's post about how you can make text like the one you see in the banner.

This tutorial should work in Photoshop CS2 and above, but if not, then I apologize in advance.



First, you'll need to create a new image.  In case you're brand new to Photoshop and don't know how to do this, go to the File menu and click New.  The following window should show up:

In the "Name" field, you can type a short name for your image, but it isn't necessary.  I chose to name this file "Sample Image".

You can also make the width and height of the image virtually whatever you want, but for this example I made my image 640 x 480.

Next, type some text.  If you're a newbie, go over to the left hand side of the screen and click the little "T" icon.  Then, click somewhere on your image and start typing.

You can use the multitude of options towards the top of the screen to alter the appearance of your text.

I typed the word "Hello", just to be arbitrary :> You may notice that a new layer appeared in your Layers Panel when you typed the text; this is critical to the next step of the process.

For our third step, double click on the layer that has the text, and the following window should appear.

The rest is all up to you - play around with the options in this window until you find something you like!

I tend to use the Bevel and Emboss; Contour; and Texture options the most because they make your text look almost 3-Dimensional.

This brings us to the end of our tutorial.  I hope you enjoyed it and that you found it helpful!

As a side note, you can do this with any kind of layer, not just text!

Thanks for reading! :)

My Dogs!

As you've hopefully realized by now, I LOVE animals.

I have seven pets: 3 dogs and 4 fish.

For today's post, I thought I'd show you guys my lovely dogs.  Maybe I'll write about my fish in another post, but not today.

  

This is Buddy!  In this photo, he's laying on my bed.  We adopted him back in August 2004 from our local humane society.  At 63 years old (in dog years, of course), he's the oldest of my pets.  We're not exactly sure about his breed, but we think that he may be a cross between a Black Lab and a German Shorthaired Pointer, as seen in the pictures below.

The lovely little dog you see in the above photo is Jessy!  We adopted her on August 21, 2009 from Lucky Dog Animal Rescue, and I was the one who picked her out.  I made a great choice - she's affectionate, funny, playful, and a sweetheart all around.  For a long time her breed was a mystery, but recently I did some research and found that she's probably a Golden Sheltie: a cross between a Golden Retriever and a Shetland Sheepdog.  Here are photos of these two breeds:

This cute beagle is Lulu, the smallest of my 3 dogs.  We adopted her in April 2010 from the beagle rescue BREW - Beagle Rescue, Education, and Welfare.  My dad met her at the vet.  He was in the waiting room with Buddy and Jessy, and a woman from BREW was there with Lulu (who was then called Chutney).  Lulu came over to my dogs, and stood up on Jessy to say hello to Buddy.  The woman told my dad that the beagle was up for adoption, so he told us later that day.  Lulu has a TON of energy, as most beagles do.  Because of this, we have to keep her in a cage sometimes because she gets so wild.  We're not sure whether she's a beagle or a beagle mix.  One theory we have is that she's half beagle and half Jack Russell.  Here are photos of these breeds:

Documentary Idea

In Media class, I'm going to be making a documentary soon with a group of friends.  We brainstormed quite a few ideas, but there's one idea that really sticks out in my mind as something that I really would like to make a documentary about.

The topic is, fandoms, which, according to Wikipedia, are "subculture[s] composed of fans characterized by a feeling of sympathy and camaraderie with others who share a common interest".

My original idea was to make one exclusive to the furry fandom (see this post), but Abir suggested that we make it about fandoms in general.

I interpreted this as devoting a portion of screen time to three or so fandoms.  Some fandoms I have in mind are:

• The furry fandom
• The Dr. Who fandom
• The Sherlock fandom
• The Homestuck fandom

I believe that these are good choices because they'd be very easy to find people to interview about them.  To be more specific, I am a furry and thus can easily set up an interview with a few local furries. There are also tons of people at Blair who are members of the other fandoms I mentioned, a few of whom are very close friends of mine, so it'll be very easy to get interviews with them.

There are three people I have in mind to interview if my group decides to follow through with this idea.    I'd ask two of my friends, both local furries, if they'd be willing to let us interview them.  Both of them have a fursuit, and I'm hoping that we'll be able to incorporate that into the documentary.

On the left is a picture I took of one of my furry friend's fursuit, and on the right is a picture I drew in Photoshop for my other furry friend.

My good friend Melissa, who goes to Blair, is a member of both the Sherlock and Homestucks fandoms.  She's very introverted, but I'm hoping that she'll want to come out of her shell for an interview.

If you'd like, please leave a comment below to tell me what you think about my ideas.  

Thanks for reading! :)

November is the Best Month - Capture the Fall Video Challenge

For my Media class, I was assigned to create a one-minute video of what fall meant to me.  This was the end result.



I must say I'm quite proud of this!

It features clips of Hurricane Sandy (please note that I wasn't happy that there was a hurricane, but I find the rain to be calming when it's not too heavy), my birthday balloons, presents, cards, and cake.  My birthday is today, November 11th!

I shot all of the clips with my iPhone 4, and brought them into iMovie.  There, I trimmed them down and added effects (I used the Romantic and Vignette effects the most).  Finally, I added a relaxing, soothing, dream-like piece of music to create a calm mood, as well as title slides.

I really like the end result!

Note: I will be getting an iPhone 5 soon!  That means that my videos for school will be better quality now.  I'll be going to the AT&T or Apple store at my local mall this Thursday to go order my new phone.  It will probably take about a week to get to my house, but I really hope that one that is white in color and has 64 GB of memory will be available for me to take home that night.  In any event, I'll have a long weekend to play with it during Thanksgiving break!

Ciao!  Thanks for reading! :)

I Think Different - Do You?

We've all seen those ads -- the ones with the two people, one representing PC and the other representing Mac.

Which do you prefer - Windows or Mac?

Personally, I prefer Macs.  In my opinion, they are generally superior to computers that run Windows.  Also, Apple, Inc. has a very interesting story behind its success.  Please allow me to give you a bit of background.

The whole thing started with two friends - Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs.

Together, they created the world's first personal computer, the Apple I.  It first went on sale in 1977 at a price of about $700.

Today, the Apple I is next to impossible to acquire, as so few were originally produced.

In that same year, the Apple II was released.  Making its way into the homes of average families, it became a huge success.

It spawned several more innovations in the Apple II series, including the Apple IIc (1984) and the Apple II Plus (1979), both of which are shown below.

If you look on eBay, you'll easily be able to find one of these.  Many of the available computers may even be in working condition!

The year 1984 was a major milestone for the company.  On January 24th, the Macintosh went on sale.

The reason why it was so special is that it was really the very first computer that used a Graphical User Interface (GUI) (as opposed to typing commands on a screen to get the computer to perform tasks, users could simply click on an icon to make it do things) that was available to the average individual. 

Here's a video of Steve Jobs introducing the product back in 1984.

I've used one of these computers before, except the memory had been upgraded back in the mid 1980s. It belonged to my aunt, who used it for work.  Her's was one of the first 25,000 ever produced!  Unfortunately, the certificate stating this is gone.

  This little computer, which only had 128 kilobytes of memory, would eventually be improved upon again and again until Apple reached the advanced Mac computers of today.  Such computers include the iMac, the MacBook Pro (with which I am writing this blog post), and the Mac Mini.  All of these are shown below.

In more recent years, Apple has expanded to creating other products.  Most notably is the iPod (2001), which revolutionized the music industry forever!

The iPod family has expanded so much since the product's original introduction.  Below is a picture of an original iPod; next to it is a 2012 iPod Touch.

Two other notable Apple products are the iPad and the iPhone.

You might be wondering - Grace, do you have any of these Apple gadgets?  The answer is yes.

I own a MacBook Pro (2010), and iPhone 4, an iPod Touch (2nd generation), an iPod Nano (2nd generation), and an eMac (2004).  The eMac was originally my father's, but he let me have it, although my ownership of it is only nominal, when he received a MacBook Pro in October 2011.

I hope you've learned something from this post!  Hopefully, I didn't bore you too much ;)

Thanks for reading! :)

Pretty Landscapes I'd Like to Draw

You probably don't know this, but I love to draw!

I mostly draw cartoon/furry animals, but as of late I've decided that I'd like to start drawing a variety of things.  What sounds the funnest to me is drawing landscapes!  I just think nature is so beautiful  and I'd like to be able to capture the beauty in my artwork.

Allow me to show you some landscapes that are similar to what I'd like to draw:

Aren't they pretty? :)

Thanks for reading!

A Crazy Idea

(Note: Please read my previous post before reading this one.)

Here at MBHS, our mascot is the "Blazer".  You may ask, "What is a 'Blazer'?"  A Blazer is basically a devil.

The school has a mascot costume (they have two, actually), but they aren't seen very often.  I've been to two major football games, the first game of the season and the Homecoming game, and they were nowhere in sight.  It's a shame, I would've loved to have seen them.

About a year ago, an idea came to me.  What if our school had an additional mascot costume, one that was a fursuit?  This is the concept I came up with:

His name is Blaze!

The ears sit back on his head so that they look like devil horns from the front.  As you can see, he carries a pitchfork, and has a devil-like tail.

I would dance at sports games to get the audience engaged, and possibly attend meetings/freshman orientation, etc. all while in suit.

After I while, I abandoned the idea, thinking that it was weird.  But now, I'm considering reviving it and actually going through with it.

I originally intended for the character to be male, but I've decided to make it female if everything works out.  I also envisioned it as a fullsuit, but now I would rather make it a partial.

I am currently in the process of creating new concept art.  I will eventually submit it to the principal, and see what she thinks about my nutty idea.  

If she approves, then there is the question of where the costume will come from.  I most definitely cannot make it myself; I tried to make a costume head once and the understructure came out so bad that I just couldn't finish it.

Although the final decision would be up to whoever is in charge of the mascot costumes, I might suggest a small company called Fursonalized Creations.  Their costumes are very inxepensive (Blaze would be $445), but are visually appealing.  This is their most recent costume head, Rockit the fox. 

Thank you for reading! :)

What's a "Furry"?

If I told you that I was a furry, you'd probably have no idea what I was talking about.  Right?

A furry is what you'd call a member of the furry fandom.  In a nutshell, the furry fandom is a subculture of people who like cartoon-like animals.  By "cartoon-like animals", I mean animals that walk on two legs, like Bugs Bunny.  Furry is different from other fandoms such as those of Star Trek, Star Wars, and the like in that they do not "worship" someone else's creation (i.e. a movie or TV show).  Instead, furries create their own characters, which others in the community are fans of.  Are you confused?  If so, then it's ok!  It'll make sense in just a second.

Typically, when one joins the fandom, he or she will make up a character that represents them.  This is known as a "fursona"; the name is a combination of the words "furry" and "persona".

Here is a picture of my own fursona.  Her name is Zee, and she is a wolf.  She's the main character that represents me in the fandom.  It is commonplace for fursonas to have atypical colors and markings.  In fact, the majority do.

One is not limited to just creating a character that represents them self - they can make as many characters that are not necessarily fursonas as they want!  There are no restrictions.

About 20% of the fandom chooses to obtain something called a "fursuit".  This is a costume of their fursona/character that is similar to a mascot suit.  Here are a few pictures:

As you may have noticed, some fursuits are simply a head, paws, and a tail, while others are full body costumes.  The former is known as a "partial suit", and the latter as a "fullsuit".

Some furries make their costume, while others commission them from a maker.  Some popular makers are Made Fur You, Don't Hug Cacti, and Mixed Candy.  They can charge anywhere from $100 to $5,000+ depending on the character and the skill of the maker.

Furries tend to wear their fursuits at furry conventions.  The most popular of these is Anthrocon, which is held annually in the city of Pittsburgh.  It typically sees about 3,000 attendees.  A few other popular conventions are Midwest Furfest and Furry Weekend Atlanta.

Only about 20% of convention attendees own and wear their fursuit at the convention.  Those who don't go "fursuiting" may sell furry-related artwork or products of their own creation, or attend furry-related panel discussions.  It's really quite an interesting experiences to go to one of these cons.

I bet you're thinking that this is all so weird, and that these people are freaks.  I'll admit, it is a bit weird, but I think it's pretty neat.

Thanks for reading!

Dystopian Trailer Posters

As a project for CAP, we were assigned to get into groups to create a movie trailer for a dystopian plot of our own creation. It was my job to create a propaganda poster that my be used in the trailer, as well as a movie poster.

Here they are:

This is the propaganda poster.  It uses the techniques of Glittering Generalities (using powerful, loaded words) and Non Sequitur (making an argument that does not follow the premise).  The Glittering Generality is the word "Freedom", and the Non Sequitur is that education does not necessarily equal freedom.  We might use this in our trailer, but I haven't talked to my group about it yet.

This is the movie poster I made.  It features an image of a diploma and a graduation cap, overlayed with a Matrix-like image.  In the background, there is a picture of a 19th century classroom in Auckland. 

I made these both in Adobe Photoshop CS5

EDIT 10/3 - Title updated to "Student A45"

5 x 5 Video Project

Edit 9/26 - New version of video uploaded, had to block out a curse word

This is my 5 x5 video project for my Media and Film Production class.  The object was to record 5 seperate videos, approximentally 30 seconds in length, cut out all but "that perfect 5 seconds" for each, and compile them all into one, 25-second video.  All 5 clips needed to have a common theme.

I chose school as my theme.  I just love the interior design of MBHS, so I decided to record clips of some of my favorite parts of the building.  Here is a list of all the clips I recorded:

• Arriving at school in the morning
• Looking down into Blair Boulevard (the main hallway)
• Blair Boulevard
• Looking down on Blair Boulevard from the main staircase
• Leaving school in the afternoon

 I used my iPhone 4 to record all of these clips.  It records video in 720p HD at up to 30 frames per second.  I used iMovie '09 on my MacBook Pro to edit my clips.  My clips are a bit shaky, so I tried to stabilize one of them using a special iMovie function, but it came out looking distorted.  I just decided not to stabilize any of them.  I exported the whole video in HD, with a size of 1280 x 720.

Overall, I am fairly pleased with my project.  I just wish that I would've kept the camera still while recording.  Also, I don't like how the first clip is very quiet, and the next is loud in comparison.  The sudden increase in volumes sometimes startles me.  I don't really know why the last clip looks distorted; it probably had something to do with the way I was holding my iPhone.

An idea I have for our next project is to record videos in which the audio is some random people's conversation.  We could take several of these clips and edit them so that the out-of-context quotes sound comical.

Dystopian Trailer Critique - "The Matrix"

"The Matrix", Larry and Andy Wachowski, R, 1999

In this film, humans live in a simulated world known as the Matrix, but a group of revolutionaries, led by the charismatic Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne).  Morpheus seeks to recruit Neo (Keanu Reeves); he believes that he is "The One" who can help them.

This trailer is exemplary of the dystopian genre because it successfully lays out the synopsis of the film in such a way that the components of a dystopia are easily identified.  It is also exemplary because it clearly establishes that the film has a theme of technological control.  For example, Morpheus says that, "The Matrix is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth."  One characteristic of a dystopia is that information is restricted.  In this case, "the truth", which is that the government is exploiting human beings for their bodys' energy, is the information being witheld.

Another example is that the style of the text suggests technology, there is a bit of electronic music, and several clips of technological devices.  These all contribute to a technological undertone, which in turn makes it obvious that the film involves technology.  From there, viewers can assume that this dystopia is an example of technological control.  I plan to use styles of text and video clips that suggest a theme of education for my dystopian trailer, since my plot involves the decimation of American education.  In addition, we will use dialogue to establish the plot's dystopian elements.

The Case of the Missing Whatchamacallits

This is a short film that 3 of my classmates and I recently created.  We were told to make a 20 second video in which two people were having a conflict.  Watch as Connor accuses Mr. Hat & Vest (portrayed by Jordan) of a crime!

For our first video, I think it came out quite well!  We didn't have very many technical problems, and our group worked well together.  All in all, our first taste of making and editing video (using Final Cut Pro) was successful!

"Preparing Students to Learn Without Us" Article

I chose to read "Preparing Students to Learn Without Us" by Will Richardson.

Here is the link to the original article: [link]

I thought that this article was pretty interesting.  I like idea of every student choosing his or her own curriculum in school.  However, I think that it might be pretty difficult to pull off, since everyone would be doing something completely different.

One thing that I found surprising was when the article mentioned a student made a connection between British literature and football.  He found that the knights were masculine and athletic, just like modern day football players.

A few topics that I'm interested in and would like to learn more about are:

• Drawing/painting
• Photography
• Writing
• Video editing/recording
• Computer graphics

My annotated version: [link]

"The Matrix" Movie Review by the NY Times

I decided to use "The Matrix (1999) FILM REVIEW; The Reality Is All Virtual, and Densely Complicated" by Janet Maslin of the New York Times.  You can find it here.  The vast majority of the review consisted of literacy aspects, but some of it was also allotted for cinematic and dramatic aspects.  While Ms. Maslin gives the movie a generally positive review, it was difficult to find actual examples of her directly giving praise.  She revealed just enough of the plot, although she discussed it rather vaguely, to grab someone's interest, but not so much as to give away the ending.  As stated in my annotated version (you can find the link at the bottom of this post), the author uses a praising tone when discussing the film. 

For our quarterly movie review, each of us should have a choice about whether to work individually or in groups of 3-4 people.  Each group will choose a film to review, and watch the movie over the weekend (therefore the assignment should be given towards the end of the week).  Then we'll write our movie reviews, keeping three aspects of a film in mind.  On the following school day, everyone should bring in a draft of their review so that we can peer edit them.  We should highlight each other's drafts, as we did today in class with a movie review online.

You can find the version the movie review that I annotated here.

My First Blog Post

Hi!  I'm Grace, and I'm currently a sophomore in the Communication Arts Program at my school.  Unlike most of my peers, this is my first year at the school, I transferred here after spending my freshman year somewhere else.  I am extremely glad to be here.

In case you're wondering, I named this blog Grace the Brony because I'm a brony - someone who likes My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

I'm very excited to begin my Media class this year!  In the past, I've worked independently on a few AMV's (Animated Music Videos).  These are basically mashups of one or more animated movies/TV shows set to music.  I haven't been making very many lately, but I hope to start up again soon.

A few years ago, I took a summer course in computer animation at a community college around where I live.  A friend and I made two short stop-motion animations using toys.  I was the person who came up with the ideas!

I have a few ideas about how we can use our blogs this year:

• Sharing and collaborating on our film projects
• Submitting ideas for class projects
• If someone is having trouble with something related to filming or editing, someone can make a tutorial to help them and put it on their blog