Just drawing your attention to these folks
Improv Everywhere
They perform large scale, what they call, "pranks", which I call little gems that shine in a sea of social effluent. There's a whole series of brilliantly crafted scenarios, many of which are purely designed to bring a bonefide moment of happiness to someone.
Truly great. And a nice change from the usual prank of some drunk guy getting kicked in the nuts.
I think that this one might be one of my favourites.
Saturday 14 February 2009
Thursday 12 February 2009
Architecture Stuffs
I'm kinda taking a break from work, but need to keep thinking about it, so I thought I'd write it all down.
My Crit last Friday was both helpfull and soul crushing, which is basically the calling card of one of my tutors. First he destroys you, but then throws out a couple of scraps for you to grab hold of; A life-line, so that you don't drown in your own tears.
(That's something else. He seems to think I'm on the verge of suicide because he's always telling me not to look so depressed. I am not depressed! This is my thinking face! It is devoid of expression!)
Anyway, overall he said my individual ideas were strong (interesting Past/Present/Future thing we had to do, challenging site location etc) but I needed to be more specific in my analysis of the area and try to link my ideas together.
So, as my Past/Present/Future was all about the Cinema of Finland (the project is based in Helsinki) I'm linking cinematic techniques into my site analysis, starting with generic ideas like Size of Shot (Establishing Shot - overview of site, existing typologies and programmes etc. Close up Shot - texture analysis over the site area. Long Shots - Exploration of specific important views that I want to maintain/enhance) and then in the actual design stage consider lighting, filters, Mise-en-scéne influenced by local film producers like Aki Kaurismaki (Who I'm starting to really like even though I haven't even seen one of his films yet).
Hopefully this'll work out... There's a lot more linkage between my ideas now, with what could be a really good overlying theme that I didn't think of at all before for the "Guide Book" we need to produce that will accompany the project.
Well, we'll find out in tomorrows tutorials. Round table discussion :( There's always some jerk who shows everyone else up.
Monday 9 February 2009
About Blogs
You might think that in a blog, a person reveals who they really are. I would say that they reveal a lot less of who they are, and a lot more of whom they want to be seen as. Thanks to internet anonymity you can be a more confident person, a funnier person, or a sexy teen girl who is actually an old man using the screen name ‘xXhotgurl66Xx’ [This is a cliché].
Want to see this in action? Whip out a camera in any given social situation and watch everything change! Depending on the person and on their blood-alcohol level they will perform a variety of actions, including but not limited to:-
Blush
Fidget awkwardly
Talk louder and more intelligently (pretentiously), pretending not to see camera
Be a dick
Lift up shirt and scream
Personally I like to hide away and shut my mouth, lest I say something retarded that will be uploaded to Facebook within the hour.
The advantage of a blog is that it’s not live. At the moment, I am writing this in MSWord due to my crippling fear that one or both of the two people who actually might read this will pick up on a spelling error and ridicule me for the rest of my natural born life. All because I said my favourite desert was pudding (It’s actually Gobi). Of course, there are problems with using a word processor, like when my friend thought it would be a great idea to spice up his Personal Statement using synonyms. This is fine in moderation, but when you start using it for every other word, with each one meaning some subtly different, it does tend to turn your work into some kind of Shakespearian mind-fuck. ‘I am a durable proletarian’ is not the same as ‘I am a hard worker’.
So I guess that’s all I’m really saying with this terrible post. People pretend to be something else, but that’s basically what most of us do all the time anyway, right? I mean look at me, I write like a I’m a 16 year old, but I’m actually a 25 year old golden haired Adonis with too much money to know what to do with it who just wants someone to love me for me.
Ladiiies?
I’m thinking of writing a blog about blogs, and then later someone can write a blog about my blog about blogs and we can make the universe explode. Together. As one nation.
Want to see this in action? Whip out a camera in any given social situation and watch everything change! Depending on the person and on their blood-alcohol level they will perform a variety of actions, including but not limited to:-
Blush
Fidget awkwardly
Talk louder and more intelligently (pretentiously), pretending not to see camera
Be a dick
Lift up shirt and scream
Personally I like to hide away and shut my mouth, lest I say something retarded that will be uploaded to Facebook within the hour.
The advantage of a blog is that it’s not live. At the moment, I am writing this in MSWord due to my crippling fear that one or both of the two people who actually might read this will pick up on a spelling error and ridicule me for the rest of my natural born life. All because I said my favourite desert was pudding (It’s actually Gobi). Of course, there are problems with using a word processor, like when my friend thought it would be a great idea to spice up his Personal Statement using synonyms. This is fine in moderation, but when you start using it for every other word, with each one meaning some subtly different, it does tend to turn your work into some kind of Shakespearian mind-fuck. ‘I am a durable proletarian’ is not the same as ‘I am a hard worker’.
So I guess that’s all I’m really saying with this terrible post. People pretend to be something else, but that’s basically what most of us do all the time anyway, right? I mean look at me, I write like a I’m a 16 year old, but I’m actually a 25 year old golden haired Adonis with too much money to know what to do with it who just wants someone to love me for me.
Ladiiies?
I’m thinking of writing a blog about blogs, and then later someone can write a blog about my blog about blogs and we can make the universe explode. Together. As one nation.
Tuesday 3 February 2009
TV Openings
I miss lengthy TV openings.
A lot of shows now do that very short title burst, like Lost. In Lost though, it does work, as you have a great cold open, followed by a series of events so improbable and confusing that you need as much time and information as possible to unravel its mystery. On the other hand, every episode of Battlestar Galactica seems to have two openings. One to talk about the events of the past few episodes, and then followed by the main title which tells you pretty much everything that's happened since the very beginning of time. Let's be honest, if you didn't know that there were robots who kill humans and blew up some planets and now everyone lives on big ships fleeing from said robots then you probably jumped into the series a little too late.
I am, at this moment, watching the opening of Deadwood, and that is the sexiest opening I've seen in a long time. It's so well composed that combined with the quaint yet exciting fiddle music, you get the same feeling of enthrallment from one damn fine looking horse and some glittering gold as you do from bearded men hacking pigs apart and other men pulling teeth from their own mouths over the communal water trough. I feel certain that they could have put in a disturbingly close up shot of a heavy set man with a newspaper on the toilet and nobody would notice.
Also, at the end, the mighty fine horse turns out to be a ghost. This is awesome.
Another great opening is for Dexter; the serial killing vigilante, not the small boy genius who owns a laboratory (although the combination of those two could make for some great TV) (OK I just realised that that would be basically Batman). Anyway, the opening for Dexter is great, not only because of the obvious murderous connotations in his morning ritual, but also because of the great use of high speed camera, because everyone loves high speed camera. Fortunately, however, the creators decided against having Dexter stand underneath a large water balloon as it is popped,
or shoot a melon.
A lot of shows now do that very short title burst, like Lost. In Lost though, it does work, as you have a great cold open, followed by a series of events so improbable and confusing that you need as much time and information as possible to unravel its mystery. On the other hand, every episode of Battlestar Galactica seems to have two openings. One to talk about the events of the past few episodes, and then followed by the main title which tells you pretty much everything that's happened since the very beginning of time. Let's be honest, if you didn't know that there were robots who kill humans and blew up some planets and now everyone lives on big ships fleeing from said robots then you probably jumped into the series a little too late.
I am, at this moment, watching the opening of Deadwood, and that is the sexiest opening I've seen in a long time. It's so well composed that combined with the quaint yet exciting fiddle music, you get the same feeling of enthrallment from one damn fine looking horse and some glittering gold as you do from bearded men hacking pigs apart and other men pulling teeth from their own mouths over the communal water trough. I feel certain that they could have put in a disturbingly close up shot of a heavy set man with a newspaper on the toilet and nobody would notice.
Also, at the end, the mighty fine horse turns out to be a ghost. This is awesome.
Another great opening is for Dexter; the serial killing vigilante, not the small boy genius who owns a laboratory (although the combination of those two could make for some great TV) (OK I just realised that that would be basically Batman). Anyway, the opening for Dexter is great, not only because of the obvious murderous connotations in his morning ritual, but also because of the great use of high speed camera, because everyone loves high speed camera. Fortunately, however, the creators decided against having Dexter stand underneath a large water balloon as it is popped,
or shoot a melon.
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