www.changethis.com
Rendall's "Freak Factor" provides the audience with advice on how to embrace their inner-freak. And by that I mean he tells us that our flaws, the things that make us freaks, are also what can make us successful if we take the right approach. There were three specific suggestions on how to do this that stuck out to me:
Forget it: Don't try to fix your weakness
This piece of advice was not my favorite, but I still think it is interesting. In many cases it is true. If you have a physical flaw, or something that you were just born with that you consider a weakness then I agree that it is not worth the struggle. That is just the way you are, and that is when you go on to the other steps about embracing it. However there are some weaknesses that you can improve on. For example, all throughout my life I was an athlete, and in high school I was really serious about field hockey. I played the position of goalkeeper, which is one that requires quick implications of many different skills. Every practice I would identify a weakness of mine and work on it all practice too improve my over all play. I think this goes well into video production, because if my weakness is steadiness of the camera then I need to practice that. If I have a motor skill issue with my hands that causes them to shake, that is obviously a flaw that I cannot fix so in that case it would be best to forget it. So I both agree and disagree with this advice.
Focus: You can't choose both
What this piece of advice is saying is be really good at something instead of being kind of good at a lot of things. He uses WalMart, K Mart and Target to create a very good example for what he means. I really like this piece of advice. I think that everything kind of boils down to this. For example, going to college. We pick a major, which should be what we think we are best at or at least a strength that we've chosen to focus on so that we have one area to market ourselves in. It is not ignoring everything else, it is just an emphasis and I think that emphasis is important especially when it comes to business and getting jobs. When I begin to look for internships and jobs, I am going to have to find what I am best at within my field and really play it up. Saying that I am the best concert videographer in my class is way better than saying I am kind of talented at videography, editing, and directing.
Fit: Find the right spot
The comparison drawn in this piece of advice is the story of rudolph the red nose reindeer who had to find a place that was right for him and his bright red nose. So instead of trying to hide or flaws or improve them, find a place where your flaw is a strength. I really like this piece of advice because I think it sort of applies to my life. I am very ambitious, and I like constant change. Where I grew up in Delaware is one of the most static locations I know. Most people who grow up there never leave, and stay in the same house their whole life. With my personality I was obviously in the wrong place. The world of media is every changing and will always keep me busy, so I found my fit within that world. And for this reason I am now going to college in Ohio to pursue a career in media.
As far as my own strength and weaknesses, I still have a lot to explore. I do know that I am really good with people and organizing people, and with that I have good leadership skills. Creatively I am really good at taking something, and turning it into something else. Which brings me to my weakness, I am not that great of just coming up with an idea out of the blue.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Reflections on Gaming Presentation
The first of two things that I don't think our group got across quite as well as we wanted was the plot line of our individual game. Honestly, our group never got to meet up as a whole so I think our individual ideas of the plot line weren't all developed and what was developed in each of our minds was a little bit different from each other. So when we tried to explain it I don't think the audience could really grasp what we weren't quite grasping ourselves. We definitely should have spent more time with that, and developed a better way to explain it. Another thing we didn't get across is excitement to play the game. Once again due to a lack of organization and meeting I think that we didn't really were able to sell the idea as something that exciting. Our presentation was too much of stating facts about the game, and not enough salesmanship. Something that I think we did well is explain the technicalities like rules and mechanics, because the concept of our game was pretty simple to explain and there are enough games that are similar and well-known enough to make comparisons to.
Goals were fairly easy to explain, and I think that is because it is kind of the most important part of any game. If there aren't any goals then there isn't really a game. And for this reason I think that our group and every other group had to thoroughly understand their own goals and in doing so it was not too hard to explain them to the audience.
Mechanics was a topic easily covered in our presentation because the mechanics of an escape the room game is as simple as clicking on the screen. So we did not have trouble explaining that, however I think that mechanics in general have potential to be difficult to explain. For example if you were trying to verbally explain the mechanics of an average console game like The Legend of Zelda without actually playing it, the audience would probably not grasp the concept so easily because of the various controls used.
Objectives were fairly difficult to convey to the audience, because once again we were a bit unsure of the specifics of the plot line ourselves. We had a vague idea of the individual requirements to escape the room, but not weel enough to properly convey them to the audience.
Rules were a mix of hard and easy to explain. Since there aren't really rules per say it was easy to say "there aren't really rules," but that statement in itself could have been confusing for the audience because most games do have rules.
Goals were fairly easy to explain, and I think that is because it is kind of the most important part of any game. If there aren't any goals then there isn't really a game. And for this reason I think that our group and every other group had to thoroughly understand their own goals and in doing so it was not too hard to explain them to the audience.
Mechanics was a topic easily covered in our presentation because the mechanics of an escape the room game is as simple as clicking on the screen. So we did not have trouble explaining that, however I think that mechanics in general have potential to be difficult to explain. For example if you were trying to verbally explain the mechanics of an average console game like The Legend of Zelda without actually playing it, the audience would probably not grasp the concept so easily because of the various controls used.
Objectives were fairly difficult to convey to the audience, because once again we were a bit unsure of the specifics of the plot line ourselves. We had a vague idea of the individual requirements to escape the room, but not weel enough to properly convey them to the audience.
Rules were a mix of hard and easy to explain. Since there aren't really rules per say it was easy to say "there aren't really rules," but that statement in itself could have been confusing for the audience because most games do have rules.
Reviews of other Heroes and Villains
Grace's Blog
Grace has posted the animation but not the pictures of the super heroes, so I am going to focus on the movement of the characters. Escobar is a super hero reincarnation of Charlie Chaplin whose enemy is the Krooked Cop. The Krooked Cop's movements are very rigid and headstrong. When he sees Escobar in the animation he just goes right for him without a second thought. I feel as if his describes his character, because to me he seems like those cops in the movies who just go all out toward something, and for that reason they often end up tricked by people like Escobar. The contrast between the two characters is very evident by their movement because Escobar is very smooth with his movements. He is relaxed, and simply twirling his cane while he waits for the Krooked Cop to come closer. The information that we receive about the characters through there movements adds a nice subtext to what we see in the stationary characters. The animation does a great job of creating weight, especially when we see how the cops head gives when he is hit by the cane and then falls to the ground. The overlapping action is done very well, especially with Escobar's character when he is winding up to hit the cop. Something that the animation is lacking a little bit of followthrough, the characters just kind of stop.
Haley's Blog
The super hero-villain combo for this animation was Nerd Boy and Sorority Girl. They took a very subjective approach to who is who because either could really be the hero or the villain. Nerd Boy is the supposed hero, but he always seems to try and save the wrong person and in that way ends up ruining things. So it is up for interpretation whether he is good or not. There is affinity between the two characters in the shapes that are used to create them, but there is contrast in the colors. Nerd Boy is predominantly blue and sorority girl is pink. This difference in hues very representatives of the genders which are very important to these particular characters. Both the saturation and brightness don't seem to have been a concern when creating the characters, because they are basically the same with both. However maybe this was to put emphasis on the fact that they are both good and bad.
Izzie' heroes are not up.
Grace has posted the animation but not the pictures of the super heroes, so I am going to focus on the movement of the characters. Escobar is a super hero reincarnation of Charlie Chaplin whose enemy is the Krooked Cop. The Krooked Cop's movements are very rigid and headstrong. When he sees Escobar in the animation he just goes right for him without a second thought. I feel as if his describes his character, because to me he seems like those cops in the movies who just go all out toward something, and for that reason they often end up tricked by people like Escobar. The contrast between the two characters is very evident by their movement because Escobar is very smooth with his movements. He is relaxed, and simply twirling his cane while he waits for the Krooked Cop to come closer. The information that we receive about the characters through there movements adds a nice subtext to what we see in the stationary characters. The animation does a great job of creating weight, especially when we see how the cops head gives when he is hit by the cane and then falls to the ground. The overlapping action is done very well, especially with Escobar's character when he is winding up to hit the cop. Something that the animation is lacking a little bit of followthrough, the characters just kind of stop.
Haley's Blog
The super hero-villain combo for this animation was Nerd Boy and Sorority Girl. They took a very subjective approach to who is who because either could really be the hero or the villain. Nerd Boy is the supposed hero, but he always seems to try and save the wrong person and in that way ends up ruining things. So it is up for interpretation whether he is good or not. There is affinity between the two characters in the shapes that are used to create them, but there is contrast in the colors. Nerd Boy is predominantly blue and sorority girl is pink. This difference in hues very representatives of the genders which are very important to these particular characters. Both the saturation and brightness don't seem to have been a concern when creating the characters, because they are basically the same with both. However maybe this was to put emphasis on the fact that they are both good and bad.
Izzie' heroes are not up.
Video Joke Comparisons
Contrast and Infinity is used differently in each video as well. It is used mainly with the characters. In the first video there is a sharp contrast between the parrot and the repairman, because the bird is not even a real bird. It is a picture. Part of this was not being able to use a real bird, but the contrast also alludes to the realistic nature of this video in contrast to the other. In the other there is an affinity between the bird and the repairman, because they are both acted out by humans. This adds a comical quality to the video that is characteristic of slapstick. Text and Subtext is used very similarly because all of the dialogue is displayed very clearly as text. So there is not much subtext to it. Where it differs between the two videos is that in the second video the ending is not as spelled out as the first video, so the audience has to read more into the subtext of the video to get the joke.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)