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Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Stand By Me

For unit 3 of my Ollywood class, we learned about post production, and mainly everything they add to the movie after everything has been filmed, CGI, film score, sound effects, and different approaches to movie reviewing. For the action project we had to create a podcast on a movie of our choice and I chose to do Stand By Me, because of how good and impacting it is on the audience. The purpose of his was to learn another approach we could use in reviewing a movie that we watched, and I thought it was super useful to me.

Script:

Hey everyone! Thank you for listening to my movie review channel, today I will be doing a movie made based by Stephen King’s book The Body, Stand by Me, a drama made in 1986!

I will be reviewing this movie through the generic approach, which mainly focuses on comparing it to other movies that are in the same genre and maybe movie concept.

I compared Stand By Me  to  The Breakfast Club, because they are both dramas that talk about how a group of  kids go on a small adventure and come out a different person. But both of these films  also took very different approaches to tell that story. The Breakfast Club focuses on a group of kids, who are not friends serving Saturday detention together and happening to find themselves in an adventure while Stand By Me follows a group of close-knit friend who seek out an adventure to pass their time.

These two 80s drama are similar in that they both talk about kids trying to deal with there parents and, trying to find where they belong. Through their adventures, the kids from The Breakfast Club and Stand By Me, learn more and more about themselves and each other.

Stand By Me is narrated by older Gordie Lachance who is writing a book about this summer adventure in Oregon. The movie starts with Gordie walking through his town and meeting up with his friends Chris and Teddy. Chris is the leader of the group and is known for being part of the bad family in the town. Teddy was similar where he was known for his father who almost burned Teddy’s ear off and was known for being crazy.When he enters they are playing cards and smoking and joking around. Then their friend Vern came in saying he had big news he overheard these guys talking about a dead body. The group end up going on an adventure where they share happy and sad moments. Each member of the group end up learning about themselves through their friends. In this adventure they had a lot obstacles but they were able to overcome them and come out as different people.

This movie in general was very well done. The film -editing was very well done. The whole movie used dialogue referent to cut back and forth between the present as Gordie was writing the book to the past, showing what he was writing about. The scene in which film cuts were used most effectively was when Gordie was in the little market buying snacks and they used a thought referent film cut, to flashback to a memory Gordie was having. The scene shows Gordie standing at the cash register and the cashier was talking about his brother, Dennis who passed away. The scene cuts to Gordie having a flashback of their family having dinner and his father only talking to Denny and ignoring him. I liked how this cut was used as a symbol of what Gordie’s life was like before and after that happened.

The film score was amazing in this movie, and I loved it because it might not be memorable but it fits so well with the adventure.  The composer of the film took simple songs and made it a fun kind of road trip song. My favorite scene was in the beginning of the film where the guys were hanging out in their tree house playing cards, smoking, and joking around, and Rockin’ Robin played to set a very nice and calm mood.I loved that scene!

The sound effects were also very well done and were used perfectly to make me feel like I was right there with them. The best use of sound effects was when they were crossing the bridge and the only sound you could hear was the rumbling of the train. As the train got louder, it really built up the suspense of the question, Are they going to make it?. That sound made me scream, “Run!” throughout that entire scene.

There was no CGI in this movie, I felt like if they used it the movie wouldn’t be real or as good as it was. They very well with out and it made the set they used was very well done, just like in The Breakfast Club, because they didn’t use CGI and that made it so much more real for the audience.

This movie gets 5 out 5 stars, because it used such a great soundtrack and how they used that music to seem adventurous when the song isn’t. Also the set design and everything was so beautiful and it could not have been redone.

Watch Stand by Me now and let it take you on the journey it did for me and just wait to be amazed!


Thank You for turning on my channel!

Monday, January 12, 2015

Matters & Manners


For the third unit of my Five Faces class, we looked at taking all the faces (Seer, Observer, Alchemist, Fool, and Sage) and using them to make a service project. For my idea, I thought it would be nice to make a comic strip that jokes about world matters so that it can raise awareness of those topics; also on the back I would put a website that someone could go to in order to learn more about the subject and possibly donate to those organizations, which were the Natural Resources Defense Council and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (organizations that help with world matters). I had a lot of different views on this service project, because when I started it was very frustrating as it was hard to figure out where I should put my comics without breaking the law. I found that putting them up in just random spots, like Starbucks poster boards and in Red Eye and Chicago Readers, was not really getting people’s attention. So on the second day I decided to just go to Starbucks and wait for people to come in and sit down so I could go up and talk to them. Some being really confused and some being super energetic. I liked the Starbucks I went to, because it had a lot of college students there who really understood what I was getting at. On the other hand, regular adults were either really confused or very interested about it. This surprised and pleased me because it reassured me that were going to look at the websites.  

NVA "Service Drawing" 2015. GCE
Now with this project I had to incorporate all the five faces. The picture above shows my Seer face, as I visualized the before, during , and after. For the Observer I went to popular places where people sit down or wait for something, like a grocery store and Starbucks, and once there I would hand out my cartoons or put them on poster boards. I made three comics in total and I basically made 75 copies of each. The public will benefit from my comic strips because with them they might start thinking about the world matters and how bad or serious they really are. Also on the back I would give a summary on the subject and a website they can use to help with the topic. I will use the Fool and humor to catch people’s attention, then I will interact with people to see their views on the matter. My main inspiration was Family Guy and how they have some knuckle-biting humor with certain world issues, and with that they get me thinking and wondering about that matter. I started thinking what if this same effect will happen with other people and not just me? A lot of people would protest and be forceful, where as I used my humor to grab the people's attention. I also used the Sage, by making it simple and fast to read, very straight to the point. If it gave a title to this project I would be Matters and Manner. I say that because it talks about big matters and acting upon it would show that someone has manners in some way.