After workshopping our choose your own adventure short film, we have collected some suggestions to enhance our video. The major suggestion for our film was to make the jazzercise scene better by dressing up in a leotard or by having an exercise video that helps illustrate the action of the story. Since Mike wearing jeans is critical to the humor of the scene, we decided to discard the suggestion of wearing a leotard, but we think having video of Richard Simmons would help make the video funnier. Some of the other suggestion were to insert music, which was already our plan but some of the suggestion for placement were helpful.

Also, our classmates gave some very helpful suggestions for the ending of our video. Some of the suggestions included Mike arriving successfully to class and Stephanie canceling the presentations saving Mike from impending doom. Another suggestion included Mike showing up to the wrong class. We like the first suggestion and may include some kind of Bollywood dance scene at the end.

Since workshopping, we also ran into another problem. IT FINALLY SNOWED. Luckily, we only shot one of our outside scenes, and we are currently brainstorming for either reshooting or somehow figuring the scene into Mike's drug induced adventure.

Interactive Media Blog #8

I'm at the point where I won't be able to discuss the reading, but I will post a video of a mashup that I find interesting, and then I will discuss the reading at a later date. The video mashup that I decided to post was one of Green Day's Boulevard of Broken Dreams and the Oasis' Wonder wall. I put these together because when Green Day produced the album American Idiot, there was much controversy over whether they had stolen guitar riffs from the band, Oasis. This song mashes the two together and lets the listener decide for themselves.

And for the hell of it, here's Kermit the Frog singing Johnny Cash's version of "Hurt"

Interactive Media Blog #6

I have never had a podcast before this class, as my thought can be condensed to a blog/probably should never be shown to the public. But after going over these two readings, I could see myself getting into this whole fad. The one soucre of media that I am most interested in is film, but the structure of setting up a podcast is much like preparing a film, except for the fact that I can be as ugly as I want and still have people interested in my podcast as long as I can act well. "Seek out podcasts that capitalize on the audio feature by providing dynamic dialog, intereing sound effects, and musical elements that will engage learners. They should hold the attention of listeners and motive them to ask questions, practice, or take action," (Pg. 2). As an amatuer film maker these are the things I hope to accomplish with my films. At Fort Lewis, these podcasts could have both constructive and destructive potential. If there was a website where students could host their own podcasts, it could open up a whole new way for us to share information about school and campus locations. On the other hand, it could be used as a gossip corner, or students who think they know about a subject and actually hav no idea what they're talking about could put up incorrect facts. I think there are little to no differences between a podcast and a radio show, they both have advertisements, they must have intriguing dialog, good music and sound effects, and they both either tell a story or try to infrom through audio.

Interactive Media Blog #5

Ray Bradbury could beat L. Ron Hubbard in a fight any day of the week. Now that we got that out of the way, Mars is Heaven would be a very interesting piece to turn into a radio show. First of all, the narrative structure would need to be drastically altered in order to bring in an audience that doesn't need as discriptive of a story as Bradbury has set up. The story itself would have to remain intact, but the detailed description of the houses and church would have to be shorter. The way I would construct the narrative would be by turning most of the dialogue into sililoquies, the inner thoughts of Captain John Black as he encountered the beings of Mars. There would be some parts that would need to be cut so the show would not drag on longer than it should, parts such as “In the living room of the old house it was cool and a grandfather clock ticked high and long and bronzed in one corner. There were soft pillows on large couches and walls filled with books and a rug cut in a thick rose pattern…” (page 331). I think the funnest part about turning this into a radio show would be choosing the right sound effects to stick in when necessary. There are many possibilities for sould when turning a Sci-Fi story into an audio file.

Merry Meringues

INGREDIENTS

• 4 egg whites
• 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 pkg. (4 serving size) JELL-O Brand Lime Flavor Gelatin
• 1 pkg. (4 serving size) JELL-O Brand Gelatin, any red flavor

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 225 degrees F. Beat egg whites and cream of tartar in small bowl with electric mixer on high speed 5 minutes or until soft peaks form. Gradually add sugar, 1 Tbsp. at a time, beating on high speed until stiff peaks form.
2. Drop tablespoonfuls of the egg white mixture onto baking sheet covered with parchment paper. Sprinkle each meringue lightly with dry gelatin powders.
3. Bake 50 minutes. Turn oven off. Prop oven door open slightly; let meringues stand in oven for 1 hour or until completely cooled.

Interactive Media Blog #4

This reading has helped me further develop my understanding of intellectual property fro my Wiki project in a couple of different ways. First, i have come to understand how copyright laws have the ability to be changed and manipulated over the years. "For instance, Gutenberg’s moveable type printing press brought about changes in the way we consider the nature of writing as well as authorship, laying the ground for many of our current beliefs about plagiarism and copyright. The printing press made the creation and dissemination of printed material simpler and more streamlined; ideas and therefore authors could be more easily commodified and marketed," (Vie, deWinter). Over the years, new technologies have produced new ways in which a message can be sent and received, therefor new rules must be applied to how these messages are controlled while the rights of the sender are protected. A Wiki can be a good way in which multiple writers can collaborate and put their messages together to make one large argument. One problem I can forsee with this though is the fact that all writers may not agree with one says, so communication is important when composing Wiki. If one person posts a fact, or fact as they see it, then another has the authority to edit what the other said, which in turn can cause contreversy among the group. So in the end, I can imagine that it must have been difficult for the authors of this writing to peice together all of their information if one had dissagreed with another on a certain topic. It takes a lot of team work and communitcation for more than one person to put together a Wiki.


1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup butter
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup finely chopped almonds
3 tablespoons grated orange zest
2 cups sifted confectioners' sugar
2/3 cup orange marmalade
2 tablespoons orange juice
1/2 cup sliced almonds for garnish (optional



Preheat an oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Combine the flour, baking powder, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, and salt.
Beat the shortening and butter with an electric mixer until smooth. Add the sugar and beat until combined. Mix in the chopped almonds and orange zest. Gradually add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and stir until combined.
Transfer the cookie dough to a lightly floured surface and roll it into a rectangle about 13 inches long. Cut the dough into 3 1/2-inch rectangles using a fluted pastry wheel or sharp paring knife. Place the cookies on an ungreased baking sheet.
Bake in the preheated oven until lightly browned, about 12 minutes. Allow the cookies to cool slightly on the baking sheets, and then transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely.
Combine the sifted confectioners' sugar, the orange marmalade, and the orange juice and stir well. Spread the glaze on the cookies and garnish with sliced almonds, if desired.

Interactive Blog #3

My knowledge of a wiki was more limited than I thought before I read this peice. Before, I just thought that wiki stood for "What I Know Is" and was a random fact posted by some body on Wikipedia. I now know that it is a fully costomisable web page or source of information that allows people to put in their knowledge on a subject through a quick and informal manner. One of the advantages as put by Cathlena Martin is, " ...a wiki solidifies and contains this process, archiving the students' projects online and making them available for the rest of the class to see." Instead of having a group of students present a topic in front of their class, a wiki will allow them to present said topic in a way that will enable the rest of the class to access that information at any given time, rather than having to soak up all the info. at once. One disadvantage would be the lack of authority on a wiki, when some one wants to change what's on the page there's nothing that can stop them aside from the next person who edits it, unless of course it's password protected. I guess in a wiki he who laughs last laughs best.


Cherry Dots

1 cup butter, softened
1 cup white sugar
2 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
34 candied cherries
1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)


Beat the butter and sugar with an electric mixer in a large bowl until smooth. Stir in milk and vanilla extract. Mix in the flour and salt.
Divide the dough into two equal pieces, and shape each half into a 12 inch roll on a sheet of waxed paper. Place 17 candied cherries side by side on top of each roll, and press into the roll until the cherries are centered. Mold dough around cherries. Sprinkle the outside evenly with chopped walnuts. Wrap the dough in the waxed paper, and refrigerate 4 hours to overnight.
Preheat an oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
Cut each roll into 1/4 inch slices, and place the slices onto ungreased baking sheets. Bake in the preheated oven until golden, 12 to 15 minutes

Wiki Response

There are two people working with me on the topic of copywright and music, film/visual media, and they are Josh and Jon. Jon is working on the music aspect, Josh is doing visual media, and I will be focusing my work on copywright and film. I do not know much going into this subject, but a few things I would like to find out is how does copywright apply to mainstream film compared to online videos, what exactly is the Statute of Limitations, and how is copywright for film different from other sources of media. Two links that I found so far are www.centerforsocialmedia.org, and www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.html.

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup rolled oats
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 1/3 cups light brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin
• 1/2 cup apple butter
• 1 cup chopped walnuts

1. Preheat an oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Grease 2 baking sheets.
2. Stir the flour, oats, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, pumpkin pie spice, ginger, and salt in a bowl.
3. Beat the butter and brown sugar with an electric mixer in a large bowl until smooth. Add 1 egg and allow it to blend into the mixture before adding the other along with the vanilla. Add the pumpkin and apple butter; continue beating. Mix in the flour mixture until just incorporated. Fold in the walnuts, mixing just enough to evenly combine. Drop spoonfuls of the dough 2 inches apart onto the prepared baking sheets.
4. Bake in the preheated oven until the edges are golden, about 12 minutes. Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 1 minute before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Hot Damn!

Well, I sure as hell didn't know what I was in for when I signed up for this class. I thought I knew pretty much all I could from being a communications major, but after going in depth with all of the readings so far I can see that I obviously still don't know what I'm doing. I see now that the original ways of learning that I have become accustomed to are growing obsolete, as new waves of technology are giving us opportunities to take in information like never before. But, with all of these new gizmos and gadgets that are supposed to be making our learning experience more exciting, it is easy to get caught up in all of it and become overwhelmed. Having to learn new things in order to learn even more new things can take its toll on a college student, and the work load that we are receiving is tough to stay caught up on while still maintaining a living budget and an active social life. So to wrap it all up, when the goin gets tough, a normal person will curl up into a ball and cry then eventually pull them self together and slowly finish their work. Wish me luck.

Interactive Media Blog #2

Takayoshi in my opinion had some what of the same argument that Daley expressed. In an ever changing world, people must change with the technology in order to keep up with every thing happening. Even though multimodality seems threatening to those who are used to more traditional forms of composition, composition itself must incorporate the new ways of conveying a message in order to remain an important part of scholars’ lives. I agree with this argument, because I believe that even though text and format will always have a place in this world, humans will always think of new ways to send a message to a mass amount of receivers, and as long as the medium is changing, one must let go of some traditions in order to keep the important ones. As for the Nardi piece, although the discussion of blogs is in some ways relevant to what we are creating in this class, the only correlation between a discussion of scholarly writing and the study he conducted that I saw was the section on blogs as commentary. In a way, we are critiquing what we read through our fancy shmancy blogs, we are drawing our own conclusions from the discussions set before us, and I can dig it. That’s all I got in me for today, go make some cookies.

Amish Sugar Cookies
1 c Sugar
1 c Confectioner's sugar
1 c Butter or margarine; softened
1 c Oil2 Eggs
1 ts Baking soda
1/2 ts Salt1 ts Cream of tartar
1 ts Vanilla4
1/2 c FlourColored sugar (opt)
Combine the sugars, butter oil and eggs, beat well. Add the remained ingredients, mix well. Refrigerate dough until well chilled (2 hours). Preheat oven to 375 F. Roll dough into balls and dip into granulated sugar. Place ona cookie shet and flatten with the bottom of a glass which has been dipped into the sugar, it keeps the dough from sticking. Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until lghtly browned around the edges.

Interactive Media Blog #1

I believe that Daley’s main argument in this piece is that in this ever changing world of ours, the definition of literacy is changing with it, but its importance still remains the same. After reading Daley’s article, I have come up with my own definition of literacy that I think can encompass all aspects of literacy, whether it be media or textual literacy. Literacy is the receiver of a message’s ability to interpret that message and form it into a concept that makes the most sense to them. For example, imagine you come across a flyer advertising a furniture sale. One way to take in this add is by looking at the prices and taking into consideration buying a new couch. One with a more skeptical point of view might see this as a corporations sick plot to push cheap furniture on people, and a bastardization of the rainforests. I believe that literacy of the screen brings us more primal feelings and emotions that print cannot. Before there was print, people had to take in information by watching what was happening rather than reading about it. “Think for a moment of the still images that have defined many important moments in U.S. history: the photo essays of the Great Depression; a sailor kissing a girl in Times Square…As icons, they no longer require any explanation for most contemporary Americans…” (Daley, 2). Although a caption can easily explain what is happening in these photos, the expression “a picture is worth 1,000 words” backs up my argument that seeing what is happening has more impact than hearing about it. That’s why as an interactive Media student, I hope that the images and sounds that I produce will have more impact than any thing I could ever write.

The Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the Sunny and the Cher

This morning I woke up on a bank in the Animas River not sure of where I was or how I got there. Upon my return to my home I noticed my room mate was gone, and I soon realized I had class, so yes, I am excited to be back. I have a few interesting classes, so far the most interesting is Women's Self Defense. I'm not sure if that's one I'm going to follow through with, but for now I need PE credits. I would like to learn how to sharpen my skills in the areas of media that I am already familiar with, and I know a bit about final cut, imovie and editing video so I suppose I can bring that to the table. So let's just take it from here and see where this class goes.

Emo Etiquette

I always enjoy a good how to video. the effects used in this give it a 1950's look while still holding onto its contemporary themes. This also had all the fundamentals of a how to video, history of the subject, steps on attaining the goal, and how to apply those steps to an evey day situation. I believe this was done very well for an amateur video. 10 out of 10, bravo.

WHY GOD?

Now I'm not sure if Sarah Palin is still at it, but in the spirit of her campaigning after the campaing, I thought it might be nice to rip on her one more time...through my blog. I love the green screen work they did with this one, and although the actress in this one was no Tina Fey, she still did an accrurat representation of one of America's silliest (and that's me being nice) goveners. All together, even though this movie made me giggle, it didn't impress me all that much. I give it a 4 out of 10.

My Spoon is too big...

Since I haven't really gotten around to posting any blogs in the past couple of weeks, this is the first to make up for that. I enjoy this because it's just none-sensical humor that (in my opinion) would be some of the best advertisements ever. I know seeing a giant banana would inspire me to seek a higher education through watching television. This one gets a 10 out of 10 from me.

Turrets Dan?

I really enjoyed watching this one. Although it is light hearted unlike my fiction film, it still has a tension to it that lasts throughout the video, right up until the end. That’s what I want with my movie, to make the viewer feel tense, like they want to watch it the whole way through. Having it go in a direction that no one expects is another accomplishment I hope to achieve with mine, just like how it was unexpected for the “killer” in this one to be a friend just trying to return an ax. I’ll give this movie a 9 out of 10, it was well done with what appeared to be a low budget.

...as a kite.

This has to be my favorite amateur music video on the internet, and not just because of the song. It reminds me of the videos that I used to make when I first became interested in cinematography. This comes off to me as a film that was made on imovie, complete with pictures that were taken straight from google images. The music in the beginning along with the meaningful imagery fools the viewer into thinking that this is going to be a song about love or angst (as long as they don't know what the title is). I noticed that it applies the rule of thirds to almost all of the shots, and switches up the shot types throughout the video (middle close ups, slow motion in parts, pans, etc). On top of it all, I, and I'm sure others, can really relate to this video; I've never been able to find a porcupine on the internet . This movie gets an 8 out of 10 from me.

I'm Adam Sandler

This video comes from a series of short movies made by an improve comedy group based in New York. All of their short films are outrageous, and they have a movie in production that promises to be just as ridiculous as their projects. The video entitled “Celebrity” is one that follows all the rules of film making closely. The two primary shots of it were a medium and a medium close-up, which all had appropriate amounts of head room and look space for each character. The use of repetition in the naming of Adam Sandler’s movies and the build up of characters amused me as well. I also appreciated the convinience store setting which made for a colorful scene. The lighting at the end could have been fixed though, that did throw me off a little. I give this a 7 out of 10.

Feel Great

The first thing that caught my eye in this video was the intensity in every one’s expressions. At first they all seem normal until their lives are made AMAZING by this one man and his nutrigrain bar. The expression on the man’s face in the beginning drew your eyes right to his, instead of the bar in his hands. The next thing I noticed was the fire hosing type camera work. This sort of filming technique made it seem as if you were with the employee who felt great, all the way up to when the whole lot of them were throwing their arms in the air screaming, “YEAH!” You can expect a recurring theme in my videos (none of them will be deep).