Lord of the Rings Final

The Lord of the Rings trilogy (Fellowship of the Ring, Two Towers, and Return of the King) is an intense epic adventure, directed by Peter Jackson. Watching these movies in Media Communications, and watching the commentary of Fellowship of the Ring has sharpened my concepts of movie editing, and filming as well. Learning about the characteristics of an epic, you can easily see them within The Lord of the Rings. The qualities are Hero, Guides, Courage, Vast Landscape, Supernatural Forces, and in media res. All of these epic qualities are shown in the three movies of The Lord of the Rings. It clearly has a hero, Frodo, and many other sub-heroes (Aragorn, Gandalf, Sam). Frodo has a certain task, to carry the one ring to the Mountain of Doom to destroy it. He is tested in many ways to see if he is worthy to carry the ring, going through many perilous things. This hero has guides that lead him. In an epic, a hero usually always has a guide or guides to lead them on their quest. Frodo is guided by the Fellowship, mainly by Gandalf the Grey. When the Fellowship splits, he takes on a new guide, Gollum. However, it's not so easy to see that Samwise Gamjee is Frodo's main guide the whole way. This hero is also especially courageous, or has special qualities in which no one else does. In Frodo's case, it is his purity of the heart. He is selfless, and caring, and not greedy and evil. Another quality of an epic is the vast landscape in which they will cover on their journey. Frodo travels all the way from the peaceful, serene Shire, to the evil, barren, blackened landscape of Mordor. Meanwhile, the other members of the Fellowship travel to Rohan, then Helms Deep, and more places. Epics also have supernatural forces that act upon the hero/heroes in either good or bad ways. The good supernatural forces that help Frodo are Gandalf, the elves, the Ents, and at the end, the Army of the Dead helps Aragorn fight the war. Frodo, however, has many evil supernatural forces acting against him. The Uruk-hai, Orcs, Saruman, Sauron, and the ringwraiths fight against the good. A big characteristic of an epic is the courage and bravery that each hero or guide possesses. In my opinion, Aragorn has the most bravery.He fights a war for his friends, knowing he has other duties to be done. He is fearless going up against ten thousand with only five hundred. Nonetheless, Frodo has the most courage. He carries the ring, the ring in which no one else can possess without risk of harm. He travels almost alone to the one place that no one wants to go, Mordor. Even though he is fearful, he strides on through the danger and overcomes the burden of the ring to achieve his goal. That, in my eyes, is courage. The last quality of an epic is in media res. This means that all of the action, and the story, take place in the middle of the bigger story. In The Lord of the Rings, it starts 2500 years after the making of the rings. In the beginning, a war was fought over the one ring, and the ring was lost for thousands of years until a hobbit found it. The ring corrupted this hobbit, until a new hobbit found it, knowing this person as Bilbo Baggins. Bilbo brought the ring back to the Shire, in which the first movie starts.
The Lord of the Rings is a great epic trilogy that should be taught in many media classes everywhere. One can really learn about the characteristics of an epic, as well as filming techniques, editing techniques, and themes or morals. This trilogy really shows the theme of courage, and good vs. evil. As the good battles evil, and courage prevails, it shows the world that all you need is a pur

Epic Swords

Yay for Commentary!

Watching the commentary of Lord of the Rings has its advantages and disadvantages. There is much more background information and a bunch of interesting knowledge that they talk about. Although we don't get to actually WATCH the movie with full audio, they still show the movie scenes, and talk about what they were going for and what happened during the scene, as well as how they shot it, and what is special effects and what isn't. To produce the small image of the hobbits to normal people, they mostly filmed two background images together, making the hobbits look smaller than normal, and the normal people looking larger than they actually are. They also filmed a few fight scenes using CG and stuntmen, and they told us all about how it happened. Watching the commentary really makes me want to watch the real movie. :]

Rocky Paper Scissors

This short film was one of the cheesiest and dorky films I have ever seen. They play a parody of Rocky, where the main character is a washed-up RPS (rock, paper, scissors) player, who used to be the best. A guy finds him 'throwing', and tells him he can teach him to be the best. They practice and train, alongside audio of Eye of the Tiger by Survivor. It's a cheesy training, along with some comical scenes. After their long and hard training, the main character is ready to face 'TJ', the best RPS player in the world. The trainer says no, but he goes anyway. Showing up on the gazebo in Lawrence, KS, they stand face to face and 'throw down'. TJ is defeated, and the main character is now the best in the world.

Carnival of Souls

Recently we watched a film in class, called Carnival of Souls. The movie was made in 1962, and filmed on only a $17,000 budget. The writer based the story around a setting of an abandoned pavilion, which the writer had seen and thought was creepy. Filmed about a girl who is dead through the whole movie, but doesn't know it. She sees a dead man while she travels to Ohio for her job as an organist, and visits the abandoned pavilion, where she sees him again. The writer decided not to have much slaughter in the film, for it wasn't supposed to be a normal horror film. The movie was basically the very first zombie movie, in that she sees so many dead people at the 'carnival'. Also filmed with less dialogue, the movie was mostly based on actions and visual effects. The director of the movie had a film crew of five, and filmed in Lawrence, Kansas and in Ohio. Also, the director starred as the main 'zombie guy' in the film.
This movie ties in to modern films, such as The 6th Sense, and The Others. Although Carnival of Souls was filmed so long ago, and is one of the first of its kind, it still played a big part on starting a trend of new horror films. The writer was not expecting the amount of fame that his movie would get, so long after it was made.

YouTube to Blogger

Steps to Upload a video from YouTube straight onto your Blog.

1. Have your YouTube video uploaded already.

2. In the right column of the YouTube video view, there will be a URL then Embed. Click on the text that is to the right of the Embed box, and a section will drop down. Check ONLY the middle box, choose your color scheme, and click the smallest size (all the way to the left, 340 x 285).

3. Copy all of the text within the box to the right of Embed, and then open a New Post within blogger.

4. In the New Post window, click the Edit Html tab to the top right of the text window. Right click and Paste the text you copied into the window.

5. Put your title in the top box next to Title:, and then choose PUBLISH POST. You are done, view your blog.

Halo 3 Podcast

My Second Podcast over Halo 3.

Shooter Podcast

My podcast over the book Shooter, by Walter Dean Myers.

Looking Good!

Pretty soon you will learn how to link pictures to more content. That way visitors can click on an image to get more info about it. Click on the Oskie Bear.

Keep up the good work.

Working With Audacity

If you choose to work with Audacity, it is very similar to garage band. The same concept of recording audio and encoding it is present. When recording with Audacity, after you have recorded your audio and are ready to finish, choose File: Encode as WAV.



This will save the audio recorded to the computer as a .wav file.



After you are finished with this, you can find the file (probably on desktop) and play it within iTunes or Quicktime. If needed, you can drop this file into garage band and work with it there, too.

Audacity for Mac OS X

This link should open the download for Audacity 1.2.5
A window will open, it is downloading the file.
When it is done downloading, double click on the folder and open Audacity.app to run it.

Pulitzer Prize Photos

The Boston Fire photograph me struck me as a tragedy caught in the moment it happened. The lady and her child were photographed falling from a collapsed fire-escape, down to the ground. Miraculously, the child survived. The lady, however, did not. This picture made me feel the terror and danger of building fires, and the safety that is required to save lives. If that fire-escape had held on, the fireman would have rescued the two girls, saving a life in the process. It pains me to know that this tragedy could have been prevented.



Welcome Home symbolized the return of what Americans had been waiting for. Six years the Prisoners of War (POW's) were kept in a North Vietnam prisoner camp. This picture portrays a moment of happiness, a moment of a long-awaited return to the families struggling without their fathers. Welcome Home struck me deeply in emotion, almost as if you could feel how much they had missed their husbands/fathers. To miss someone for six years, it had to be emotionally crushing. The look of pure happiness on the faces of the families of the returned POW's, shows how incredible a moment this photo captured.
Ragga :]

Death of A Marine

On August 14, 2009 in Helmand, a southern province of Afghanistan, Lance Corporal Joshua M. Bernard was fatally wounded by a rocket-propelled grenade that blew off one leg and severely injured the other. While laying on the ground injured, an AP Photographer, Julie Jacobson, captured the images of Bernard lying below two soldiers helping him. Jacobson later decided to publish the photo, deeming it portrayed the 'grimness of war and the sacrifice of young men and women fighting it'.
Her reasons for publishing the photo were securely defended by the Associated Press, who also agreed that the image needed to be shown to the public about the reality of the war. However, Bernard's father argued against the image being published, saying that it was 'disrespectful to the memory of my son'. He argued that the image was too graphic, and also held the support of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Gates wrote letters to the president of the Associated Press, strongly asking him to reconsider publishing the photo. They later reconvened, but came to the same decision of publishing the image.
On a personal note, while I respect the wishes of Bernard's father and mother, the image does convey a strong reality in war. However graphic the image was, the public needed to know the true situation. The Associated Press also does have the right to produce the image, anyway.
Ragga.

Shooter

Walter Dean Myers has broken the barrier with writing about a young, past-the-edge teen, named Len. In the story, a number of police investigators question Len's friends, Cameron and Carla. The writing is in question-answer format, telling the events leading up to, and the events during, a tragedy. The police learn through questioning, that Len was severely picked on in school, and was taking multiple drugs to suppress his anger and depression. Len, Cameron and Carla call themselves "outsiders". Basically meaning 'rebel', but with other ideals that include clothing changes, and non-conformity. Len's dad works at a firing range, and Len loved to shoot. Eventually he took Cameron and Carla there to shoot with him, and they were getting used to it too. The police came to realize that because of the trauma in the life of a young teen, actions were taken that are irreversable, and tragic.

Photo Manipulation

Recently, we researched altered photos on the Net. Most images were broadcasted by television, some by magazines, and some just in competition. Ethically, is it wrong to alter an image? My opinion is yes, only if you do not label the image as being altered. Changing how something is seen, is changing what it represents. An example is this first photo. This photo is made to look as if Haiti is in horrible condition, with the ground being a muddy brown, the sky looking dim, shadows looking darker than usual. Colors are bright and dirty, and things seeming pretty slummish. But, this sparked the interests of the Danish Photo Contest judges, and they asked the author, Klavs Bo Christenen, to submit the RAW-version of the picture. The second photo, the RAW-version, is way different from the published photo. He had added shadows, darkened the picture altogether, brightened colors, changed some, even. The picture was sharpened, and slightly cropped as well. Largely, the ground was made to seem twice as dirty, and the sky twice as dim and intense. Christenen had taken the retouching too far on this image, and it was wrong to do so without stating the fact so. Ethically, this was wrong.
Ragga. -_-

Edge of Hope

I'm sitting here on the edge of hope
Looking through my cosmic telescope
At a world looking back at me
From the wrong side of eternity
And the only clue that my poor brain finds
Is a world I've already left behind
I've already left behind
I've already left behind..
Ragga?

HTML Code

[OMG] After about twenty minutes of messing around with the HTML code on my template, I figured out a few things.

First: I learned how to make your background image ANY image you want.
Second: I learned how to change any color or font of any part of your page.
Third: I learned how to make the body of your page transparent so you can actually SEE your background.
Fourth: I learned that you can pretty much adapt anything on the page to how you want it.

After reading this, and you have questions or comments, ask me in class or at school. I will explain this, and if you have any questions about modifying something, I will show you. HTML code is NOT that hard to understand, you just have to get down the basics.
Ragga. :D

The Long Journey

Good job Reece!
You've taken your first step among many in carving out your little niche in the Digital world.

Work

Work is boring. Short blog, short point. Gahh.
Ragga.

She Loves Me :]

Okay, so good news. Curran realized I was upset about the lead role part, and she decided she didn't want me to be uncomfortable about it. So she told me she would talk to her teacher about getting the other role, sparing me from having her kiss Jon. She really does love me. :]
Ragga. <3

The Play

Well, something uneventful happened today. Somewhat disturbing to me, but I guess these things come up once or twice. My girlfriend, Curran, signed up for the school play today at her school. So you see, that means she has a role. Apparently, there are only two roles left, and one is the lead role. The lead role, however, would lead her to having to kiss a guy named Jon. I'm somewhat upset and uncomfortable. But, hey, what's a relationship without obsticles?
Ragga.

Mobile Blogging

So, I have found a cool feature of Blogger. It's called Mobile Blogging. Yes, that's right folks, I'm on my phone for this post. Study Hall seems the perfect time to be testing out new features, so yeah. :]

Oh, and I found this because I went to the website and tried to post, but my phone wouldn't let me >.< Ragga.