what do you mean radio project? I'm talkin' about website!

I know that my fellow band members have all written this weeks blog about our newest upcoming project, our radio project. However, I have been wanting to write this blog about the final product of my film memory website project. If you saw my last website displaying memory work compared to my new film memory project, you would think two totally different people did the projects. You would have never guessed that I did both. It looks as if a child made the first one because of how generic, plain and sloppy it was. This new one, as it seems to me, looks outstanding. I learned newer skills and improved my already existing skills to create a sharp-looking and more advanced website. Just looking at the homepage it is apparent that my website making skills have become more advanced. One factor that makes this website better than the one before is video clips. I added video clips of the movie I was analyzing along with a few clips of my self from high school. Although this was an easy task once it has been learned, it appears on the site to others as very advanced. At least, this is the way I feel it appears. On my first website project I did not use columns, but, for this one I did use them and it cleaned up and made my website look neat and more professional. Also, I feel like I mastered the idea of "textual voiceover." At first I did not have an idea of how to do it, but while working on the site, I discovered ways of making it work. Another factor that made my newest site better than the last is my use of photoshop. I got a lot better at using the program photoshop and was able to make my altered pictures really neat looking. Overall, This project dominates my last one. 

-Coulter  

Raido Project?

We have now begun to work on our final projects for the class. Our band has decided to do a radio project, which explores the different view people have. We will mostly be focusing in on the individual versus the media, and the individual versus society. We want the project to bring together many different elements, including sound effects, music, and distortion. Here are my ideas for how the radio program will play out. Now I don’t actually expect the project look much like the ideas I am lying down here, because we are so early on in the planning process, and this is more of just a brain storming session.
I see the program opening up with a fake advertisement, (a real one would be cool though, I could always use extra money). Then we transition into Ryan as the narrator talking about society or the struggle against society or something like that. There should be music playing in the background, during this part. After that I really don’t know what we should do to move into the part where we are coving our own topics, or even how we want to cover the topics. Do we want it to be us just talking, or do we want to present it in a covert way. Like people on the street talking, or like we are hosting a call in talk show and each of us calls in, or maybe some even more creative way. Anyway that important that we figure that out, because other than that we have a fairly good of idea of what we are doing in the project. We know we want transitions between our pieces that include, some sort of indie rock, some clips of people like Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh talking, and we want to use trippy effects on all of it. We should probably meet at some point this weekend to finalize some stuff, and write our project out line. Remember we also have to talk about our presentation, and the website we have to make. Does anyone know what we have to even do for the presentation? Like what are we supposed to talk about for that half hour. Anyway we have a lot of work to get done, and like no time to do it. So I will end with why I have a radio for my picture this week. It’s because we are doing a radio project. J
-Michael

The third meaning was the topic of discussion this week in class, but most of my time was spent working on my project, and the band presentation both of which are due Monday. My project is on the Shawshank Redemption, a movie that I have seen many times and is one of my favorites. It is a movie about a man, who loses his old life, only to form a new one where he truly found happiness. The Shawshank Redemption had many themes that related back to the text that we have read so far this year, which made it a good choice for my project. I found a lot of connections with Chorus of Stones, which is the text that we most recently finished. As for my band partners, Sam did her project on the movie Clue, which was one of my favorite games as a child. Her site plays with both elements form the game and the movie, which creates a fascinating adventure for the mind. As for Ryan he did his project on, well I am not sure exactly the movie, but the site is very interesting. He seems to be playing with the dream world versus the real world.
The other major project due Monday is our Band Presentation, which is on the “Grain of the Voice”. “Grain of the Voice” is a theoretical text by Barthes that explores what lies beneath the singing voice of an individual. The text is an expansion on the subject of the third meaning, showing how it exists outside of images. This text in particular is especially hard to understand, since it builds on the other texts that come before it. You can really break down the text into four different sections. There is the part about no longer using adjectives to describe music; there is the grain of the voice, Genosong and Phenosong, and the Lied vs Melodie. We plan on using examples of different music to explain the different elements that Barthes talks about. One of the most interesting things I took away from the piece was the idea that music was getting too commercial, and that the ever increasing move towards perfection was not necessarily a good thing. It’s the happy mistakes that make music interesting; it’s the imperfections that make a song great.
Anyway it was a busy week, but hopefully I will get everything done well, as for my picture I choose a piano, in honor of “Grain of the Voice”. While the text is on only the singing voice, you can expand it to all music.

As Sam mentioned, I too have had to watch my movie a countless number of times.  And given the heavy, existential themes of Waking Life, this was not exactly healthy for my morale.  I feel like the final outcome of my website really reflects my struggle to deal with such disturbing thoughts, and how I tried to sort through it all in my head.   It was not an easy process. It took me a lot of thinking and sleepless nights watching the movie and sifting through its many ideas, trying to find an order in it all.  Yet I feel that the outcome was worth it, for it resulted in a project that I feel to be much more genuine and personal than the last.  I especially feel like the art on the website really mirrors how I felt while studying the movie, and the close-up picture I took of my face still bothers me when I look at it--I feel like it's another face looking back at me, one that is troubled and restless.

Yet I feel that this project has been very important for me--it has greatly affected the way I observe and produce any medium of art or literature.  This, as well as our study of the Third Meaning, has completely opened up my understanding of art and given a great insight into what I should be doing as a musician myself.  As I am currently forming a band here in Gainesville, I find that I am already applying many of the ideas and themes that have been discussed in class, as well as Waking Life, into the music I make.

From the moment I started my project on Waking Life, I had a vision of exactly what I wanted my website to accomplish, and overall I am very proud of how it turned out.  Everything from the aesthetic of the pages to the images that I used were exactly as I had imagined.  This is another way that this class overall has really benefited me: I feel that with this class, my ability to actually flesh out the artistic ideas that I envision has grown.  From the the picture you see at the top of this blog to the website I have created, I can say that I actually have the ability to successfully form the artistic works, and therefore also convey the messages, that I want to--something that I have always struggled with in the past.

And as for the radio project, I already have some ideas, although I feel like I have yet to be struck by an overall vision.  But I am sure that the things we will study in class will help spark such an idea.

--Ryan

Friday Night Lights

For this weeks blog I have decided to write on my web site and its progress. The picture above is the cover of the film for which I have chosen to do my film memory work on. The reasoning for this decision is because whenever I watch this film it takes me back to my high school years of playing football. All of it's hardships and tough over comings in which high school football attains. It was some of the best years of my life thus far, and every time I see this movie it gives me that feeling again. It is hard to explain exactly what that feeling is because only I can understand it. It is a feeling that is not to be able to explain. I feel like with this web site project I am having more fun creating and playing with all of the tools of the web program. I seem to be a lot more intrigued and interested in my memory work from this specific film. This project has opened my eyes in ways i never thought possible until upon doing this project. It has opened my eyes in a way in which it is impossible for myself to try and explain on paper or verbally. One thing that I am really excited about showing on my web site is little video clips all throught the linked pages. I did not do this on my last project and I am excitred to see reactions to them. I also have made this site way less generic as I had made my last project. I feel this recent project looks a million time better and a million time more interesting than my previous project. I still have a ton of work to do on it before it's deadline on monday, but, so far I am very proud of what I have accoplished.

I've decided to write my blog tonight since this weekend is going to be jam packed with other work.. seriously love the class Kate, but I will be cursing ENG1131 these next fews days as projects role together with deadlines approaching. I was glad we all got together to talk Wednesday morning. I think it gave our band the opportunity to discuss and fine tune critical theories Barthes envisions here such as the role of the adjective, pheno/geno song, and the "grain." Confidence in our understanding of the text will definitely help in assembly and presentation of our interpretation. I haven't focused much on the band project the past few days though.. sorry guys. I feel like every step forward I take in this film memory project I take a secret passage way 3 steps back!!(Im doing my webpage on CLUE)How many times did you all watch your movie? I probably have watched CLUE ten times now. It actually got to the point where people were banning it from playing in communal rooms. Watching it so many times really helped instill a sense of the filmic qualities in my creative consciousness though.My photoshoping and HTML skills have improved enough to provide some more ease in conveying an aesthetic to match my ideas which has been helpful. Still it seems that I am constantly having to re-save and upload pictures and the entire process is just monstrously time consuming. I hope you all are having more success and enjoyment. Does anyone have any ideas for a final project? I bet knowing so much about the grain of the voice will help us with all the theoretical radio stuff. Ryan had mentioned the possibility of playing the keyboard. Maybe at our band meeting Sunday we can start to talk about some ideas to explore. It seems like a very broad project

Roswell

Upon completion of viewing Roswell, It was easy to see why Kate had assigned this film. Like La Jetee, Nuit et Brouillard, and even the Shining the short documentary-esc film broaches ideas about memory, identity and even childhood. The cinematography of Roswell was unique in its amateur style. Simple animation and trick photography maintain a simplistic style well suited to the tone. There was a childish quality to the movie itself that centered on the life and journeys of a Starboy. Is this meant to be Bill? In Nuit et Brouillard we know that the director was himself a victim of the concentration camps. Does this closeness provide a deeper insight into the story? It seems in the case of Nuit et Brouillard the message is that we can never understand, even those who were there can not remember the real, the vividness, the horror of the Holocaust as it happened. In Roswell however, Bill invites the audience to join in his amusement and opens doorways to unconventional theories that may be some comfort in this universal condition of loneliness. These overwhelming emotions such as isolation are not only a planetary sentiment; even "aliens" experience them. I empathized with Starboy, the interstellar wanderer, searching the cosmos for his lonely letter-writing lady. Starboy is not the enemy; he is on our side against time. The difference between Starboy and us though is that he can escape it. Can you and I escape time? The film is nostalgic but is still mostly encouraging that, yes we can. Bill Brown makes us believe we can do whatever we want.. like make UFOs fly. So simple it is to see when your eyes want to. Perhaps it is through imagination and believing that we are able to escape the cruel experiments of time and hang onto our youth.