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! :)