In Keeping Secrets of Secondary Education

Final Reflection for Documentary Methods Ning

2009-12-17T10:54:00.000-08:00

Along with Peter I., John B, Josh A. and Chris B., I created a Ning (username: johnnystudent5472@gmail.com, password: rbeach) for our imaginary class on radio documentaries and podcasting. We wanted to create a space where students could refer to during their work for our class, and as we were working on podcasting, a Ning lent itself perfectly to the cause. Originally, a WordPress or Blogger account was considered, but despite their potential benefits, a Ning presented the same options as a blog with the inclusiveness of an actual forum/community.

The Ning we've created serves as a companion to the class. The idea behind was to fill out any possible learning gaps from the class. As such, each assignment has its own discussion page for students to share and brainstorm as well as a sample for them to work from. The assignments scaffold them toward creating their own radio documentary and/or podcast, of which we have five full examples ready for them to listen to and use as inspiration to create their own.There is also an option for each group to create a group profile on the Ning for their peers to look at for updates and information. Essentially, our efforts were for the Ning to become a collaborate learning community where groups are updated on everyone's work and they have plenty of models to carry out their assignment.

As teachers, we would exist as moderators and sources of encouragement. Rather than take a direct role in the Ning, we set it up to exist as a place for students to interact, not for us to regulate and direct. With the goal of working towards our Podcast Faire, every student is reminded of the end-result of the project while being provided touchstones along the way.

Although I will probably not use this Ning in my classes, I see a lot of application for it in the future. I love the idea of a self-contained community where students can join in and simultaneously show off their tech savvy ways and further their learning. There's more and more to keep kids online from Facebook to Youtube, so to take advantage of that screen time with a Ning seems an obvious choice. I'm not sure which classes I would use the Ning for, but I do know that it will inform my teaching decisions, knowing that such a resource exists.

Comics and Movies, oh My!

2009-12-16T23:22:00.000-08:00

Well, in reading the assignment for today, I was immediately (and predictably) drawn to the graphic novel aspect of the day. There are plenty of “comic movies,” and a large number of them – in addition to adapting the plot – take directly from the comic art to create scenes. One movie in particular is 300. Obviously there was an added advantage, as Frank Miller was both the writer of the comic and heavily involved in the film. Other films that borrowed heavily include both Christopher Nolan Batman films (from Miller’s Batman: Year One and Alan Moore’s Killing Joke) and two works from Alan Moore: V for Vendetta and Watchmen. Interestingly, Moore refused to be involved in any way with the movies, going so far as to allocate his royalties to the artists. It’s only fitting that the Wachowski brothers and Zach Snyder respectively created slavish recreations of the comic panels.

In tying the movies and comics together, it would help to juxtapose the two different mediums. Although the movies would never replace reading the graphic novels, they would go a long way to serve as transition and entry points into discussing the texts. Some examples below:

Music and Me

2009-12-16T23:11:00.000-08:00

I started and stopped this post many times, because I wasn't quite sure how to approach it. OVer the course of my life, music has always played a fairly large role. I played it on a daily basis from 5th grade on, I turned to it to help form an identity in junior high, to it to express an emotion I could not in high school, and used it as a soundtrack to my college career. I kept approaching how to talk about what it meant to me and what I enjoyed listening to, but nothing felt exactly right.

In the end, I decided to re-post something I wrote early in college for a writing class. It's fairly over the top and wrought with hyperbole, but it encapsulates perfectly what I felt about music at the time, and what I still do some days. As you read, listen to the music I'm writing about. That's what it's there for.

A Suite in Four Seasons

For me, the seasons will always start with spring and end with winter. I suppose it can be likened to a cycle of rebirth – the birth of warmth leads to the decay of it – but that’s not all that there is to it. I have been alive for almost 23 years, and for about half of that time, I have identified myself more or less by my musical choices. The seasons have defined me almost as much determining my day’s activities as much as my mood. It’s an endless cycle, and a fascinating one. Each year we go through the same motions, and without much exception, the same emotions. This is probably not a coincidence.

These albums are selected not just because they remind me of an aspect of the seasons, but because for all intents and purposes, this music is the season for me. I wanted to write and reflect on these albums, less as a way to convince you the reader to listen to them, and more to inspire you to consider your own. We start at the beginning of the seasonal cycle…

Spring

Streetlight Manifesto - Everything Goes Numb
“We are the few that won’t say nothing right/We are the footsteps fading into the night/Nobody cares and nobody stares with such conviction and I say/I never wanted this, no one ever wanted this/But they gave it to you so you might as well be proud of it”
- “We Are the Few”

At the risk of attaching a grand idea to a relatively standard climate change, spring is the season of hope. The mottled shades of winter’s gray are slowly replaced by browns, tans, and eventually greens. It starts slow, as the snow melts and suffocated grass is revealed. Green starts even slower, daringly jumping forward before being chastised by a late frost. Eventually, green takes its course and the gray frost is gone for another season. Both temperatures and temperaments climb, and spring begins its rise.

Coming out of the dark winters, spring has only truly sprung when I get to drive with my car windows down. This is a vastly underrated experience: It means that internal heating is no longer issue; it means that it is not yet hot enough to waste gas on AC, and it means that you are confident and hopeful enough that the weather will not betray you. When you roll down the glass between you and the world, the world will once again say hello.

When I lived in Moorhead, this often happened with snow on the ground. It made for an interesting contrast some days, but never changed the experience. In other, more normal places, this is not necessarily the case. Driving with music loud/driver proud is my preferred method of springtime travel, but it’s for more reason that simple elbow tanning. Ultimately, window-down driving is the culmination of spring’s hope: It releases you from winter’s restrictions; it gives you a glimpse at the yet untold wonders of summer.

Seasonally, spring is driving with my window down. Musically, driving with my window down is Streetlight Manifesto’s Everything Goes Numb. Nothing but bar singalongs and dirty horns, the album is twelve tracks deep. And the horn lines are dirty. With two sax players doubling duties (alto/tenor/bari) and trombone and trumpet in the mix, one of Streetlight’s shining qualities is the way that their horns can take over a song and never feel forced. Too many bands try to shoehorn in a trombone or two for a certain effect, and it only ends up sounding pathetic. Whether by experience, luck or divine intervention, Manifesto’s sound stops just short of shrill egotism at brash brass. Spring always seems a little breathless and determined to me, and that’s pretty much the most accurate description of SM available.

This brings us to the real reason you’re reading alliterations about trumpets: Streetlight in the springtime. It’s rare to happen upon an album that doesn’t have a weak song, but even rarer to find an album that swaps favorites. My favorite track from the first summer (“If and When We Rise”) was not the same from the next (“We Are the Few”) is not the same as now (“The Big Sleep”). The range is of the band is somewhat limited to “na na na’s” and big key change bridges, but the lack of stretching space actually belies their true strength: epic choruses and crashing horns don’t really need variety, they need a niche. Streetlight may not have created it, but they’re certainly nurturing it.

So when I’m driving through snow melt on poorly maintained streets, the excitement of warmth and promise of summer makes everything go Numb. My window is rolled down and my throat is slowly hoarsening while I simultaneously try to whistle the trumpet part and invite pedestrians to sing along. Streetlight Manifesto captures the essence of springtime hope thoroughly in raspy phrases and repetition. I can think of nothing I would rather be doing than singing “Na na na na” at the top of my longs and the beauty is that in the freshness of spring, it never gets old. Hope springs eternal.

Summer

Saves the Day- Stay What You Are
“Despair can ravage you/If you turn your head around to look down the path that’s led you here/’Cause what can you change?/You’re a vessel now floating down the waterways/You can take your rudder and aim your ship/Just don’t bother with the things left in your wake.”
-“This is Not an Exit”

Summer has always been the penultimate season for me. All other seasons seem to lead to it, and nothing can shoulder three seasons worth of anticipation. As a result, it always feels like a disappointment. It’s simultaneously a time of supposed accomplishment and a season for reflection.
For students, summer becomes the embodiment of achievement. It’s the longer days at the end of tunnel, and the epitome of anti-school: warm, open, and long. For former students (the rest of us), summer just seems to hold shadows of the hope we used to treasure. Where it was once a bastion for carefree recklessness in our youth, it now becomes a reminder that we can never go back.

Stay What You Are speaks to the idea perfectly. The album title refers to the same feelings that I get when I watch a sunset at 9:30 pm: nostalgia and regret. I’ve had this album since its release in 2001, and it has been one of the only musical constants in my life. It was there for my first taste of tobacco, my first sip of alcohol, and my first camping trip that combined the two.

What makes this different from an album like Everything Goes Numb is the amount of anticipation present. Streetlight Manifesto’s entire approach is a sort of anticipatory chest-thumping, while Saves the Day is already rocking their chairs reflecting on it all. It’s cynical, reflective rock about being cynical and reflective. Not a new concept, but one that works all too well. Within the canon of STD’s work, this album takes a on a greater meaning. On either side of the album chronologically, STD albums were frenetic punk affairs; the time for reflection wasn’t really at hand. Why they took a break with whiskey and cigarettes is beyond me, but nevertheless appreciated.

As I’ve written before, my favorite kind of summer night involves tobacco and sunsets. This album is playing in the background, and although the fall (and then winter) is coming, right now is just okay. I can smile wryly about yesterday and tomorrow, but as the crickets chirp and my pipe wafts, I can handle bittersweet today.

Fall

godspeed you! black emperor – Lift Your Skinny Fists like Antennas to the Heavens
“We used to sleep on the beach. Sleep overnight. They don’t do it anymore. They don’t sleep anymore on the beach.”
- GY!BE, Interview: “Sleep: Murray Ostril”

I discovered GY!BE in the spring of my sophomore year of high school, during the first band tour I ever took. We were in Tennessee, and I bought the album off of a Tower Records “employee favorites” shelf. My life was never the same. I had only read about them in a vintage issue of SPIN, and then only briefly. Their music was described as “orchestral rock.” To be honest, it didn’t even register with me. But when I spotted the double CD, it didn’t matter.

Outside of the usual classical suspects, I had never heard any music solely without lyrics. The concept of long-form music without vocal support blew my mind (I didn’t even know who Pink Floyd was, much less Yes and the bunch). The entirety of Lift Your Skinny Fists is 4 pieces over 2 compact discs. The longest suite is twenty-three minutes long, and the shortest clocks in at eighteen.

The album opens with quiet, almost imperceptible guitar tones flowing over one another. Cello and violin join in just as quietly, and they build and burn until the 3:11 mark. At that point, marching snare and bass kick triumphantly look ahead. It continues to build until, inexplicably, it all crashes down around itself. Right at the point of the supposed climax, it ends early and wallows in its failure with half-tuned strings and broken musical thoughts.

This equates all too perfectly to fall. Fall is summer’s endgame; what happens when all of the planning and excitement gets too far ahead of itself and is crushed by the first blizzard. Yet in spite of the impending winter, fall is my favorite season. It speaks the most to change, and yet is the most reliable. During fall, temperatures will drop. The leaves will change color and drift lazily, and plans will start to have “If…” in front of them.

That uncertainty is what drives the fall season, and what makes Skinny Fists a fall album. After the climax fails at its peak, it tries again to regain itself. For seven more minutes music builds and sways. Right at its most frantic and faithful, the music changes once again. The drums go from rollicking to rambling, the guitars start to wander around the spectrum and the strings are suddenly dissonant. The song is the musical equivalent of the fall from hope to despair. It ends with half-hearted drums being hit, and as the sounds fade, one can almost see the last leaf drifting to the ground.

As the album progresses, the uncertainty intensifies. Shaken after the hopeful opening salvo, the next part starts to sample wartime interviews over reluctant piano. Fall is the season of change, and so the album progresses. Over the next two pieces, despair is treated first like an annoyance and then like a disease. In the third movement titled “Sleep,” an interview with a Coney Island resident reflects the changing of the times. “We used to sleep on the beach…they don’t sleep on the beach anymore.” The change is here. By the end of the suite the band is raging against the it. Rapid drum fills and feedback fill the air, and even though it’s futile to try and stop the yellowing of the leaves, they try anyway.

Fall also serves the idea of acceptance. Winter will come whether or not we want it to, and with will be a host of new ideas and feelings. The best one can do is to embrace and delve into the change. On their last piece, GY!BE takes a traditional folk song and slowly changes it, leading to a sudden and joyous outburst. As the outburst dies down, it fades into echoic synth. Although there is another brief interlude, acceptance via long tone wins over, and the music fades into winter.

Winter

MONO & World’s End Girlfriend – Palmless Prayer/Mass Murder Refrain

Winter is one long haul. Like summer, it’s the culmination of three season’s worth of emotions. Unlike summer, the sum of those emotions generally equal dread and depression. A lot of people equate winter with death, and it’s easy to see why. Most of the trees lose their leaves after they literally die and drop to the ground, the grass is smothered beneath snow, and water turns to ice; turning a source of life into a source of danger.

Still, the defining characteristic of winter for me is not what is gone, but what is coming. Living in Minnesota, winter often feels like a journey or trial. We undergo winter in order to celebrate everything else. Scenically, it’s the same day over and over again. Our character is defined by what we make of it, and where we go next.

Palmless Prayer… is a single 75-minute sonic idea divided into five parts. Simply titled “Trailer 1” through “Trailer 5,” on a quick listen it could sometimes be a struggle to identify any “Trailer” as unique from any other. This is not unlike winter. As this is the last season for me to write about, you probably know it’s no coincidence.

Like winter, the first Trailer is fairly depressing. The musical ideas are presented through a combination of MONO’s trademark soft-LOUD!-soft aesthetic and World’s End Girlfriend’s ambience. The result is a string-heavy piece that relies less on the noise it makes and more on what it doesn’t. It opens with a drawling, monotone cello that seems to be bowed forever. Slowly and surely, more string ideas are introduced, but immediately the listener is aware that time is not a factor here. Not unlike winter, the song is far less about presenting an idea, and more about building a foundation.

As winter wears on, it becomes clear that like every winter, there is no quick solution. The only true answer to the end of snow season is to wait for it. This same idea applies to Palmless Prayer. Most of the first two trailers are quiet and droning, hardly inclined to develop a melody. Instead, they set a fairly melancholic tone for the last three trailers.

The beginning of “Trailer 3” is akin to the first signs of winter’s end. For the first time in a half hour, guitars start to sound apprehensively. As they grow bolder, it’s a bit like the first warm spell. The strings and guitars swell together, coalescing into a reserved yet hopeful anthem. Punctuated by sharp strokes on piano, the rhythm crashes together in reserved triumph, simultaneously celebrating a momentary relief from the sorrow and the knowledge that it will return.

And it does. The anthem winds down, the piano plays sadly on, and the strings accept their fate once more. The first thaw brings about this feeling in everyone: “When it dries up” is a common phrase. Then of course, the snow falls again. The piano at the beginning of “Trailer 4” is resolute. This is the time. This time, it will melt. It’s joined by a steadfast cello, and the hope begins anew.
Eventually, the snow will melt. It could break my heart many times before doing so, but it will melt. And indeed, “Trailer 4” rises towards its end only to fall down again. “Trailer 5” picks up the torch one last time, slowly building a theme where it had failed in the past. As snare enters at the one hour mark for the first time, you can feel the sun rise.

The melody, spurred by snare and string, starts to whirl faster and faster. Electric bass starts to support the spins, and the drums get faster. With ten minutes left, there is a palpable sense of anticipation. The bass gets heavier, the guitars get loud, and the strings spiral.

The last ten minutes of the piece are undoubtedly the loudest, but they are also the most meaningful. The theme repeats itself over and over, and with every repetition it gets louder. This is a perfect parallel to the end of winter. We wait and wait, and eventually, spring is born again. On each repetition, the song draws to a louder close, with strings at all octaves rising in chorus. The relief at the end of winter, the end of the struggle, so thick you can taste it.
As Palmless Prayer comes to a quieter, happier close, I remember the first time that I actively wanted winter to end, and the hopelessness of it not happening. When it finally does, it brings about relief so strong that you can’t help but feel lighter by it. MONO and World’s End Girlfriend capture that perfectly, and the best thing about it is that their hope and mine are only similar in idea. Spring is here once more.

Documentary: I Bleed Black

2009-11-19T15:35:00.000-08:00

The documentary I decided to talk about today is called I Bleed Black, a film that follows the University of California-Santa Barbara Ultimate team in their quest to win a national championship. UCSB is the most successful college Ultimate team in history, performing a three-peat in 1988, '89 and '90 and again in '96, '97, and '98 with multiple finals appearances. This documentary follows them in 2000-2001 from tryouts to the end of the season.

In following the team, the filmmakers manage to capture a significant amount of emotion by focusing on the small core of veterans that make the team's big decisions. Although it's always hard to discuss how "truthful" the emotions and behavior of documentary actually are, the team is fairly invested their team. They never address the cameras, and although the speeches in the huddle are sometimes a little overly epic it all feels natural.

The team is full of characters, and there are easy sub-plots to follow during the team's efforts. There's a nice balance of off- and on-field coverage, with the on-field coverage especially doing a nice job of highlighting the sport's strengths. As Ultimate is still a relatively unknown sport, the director accented it well, selling it as something worth fighting for and adding legitimacy to his work in the process.

I would recommend this to anyone to watch, partly because I want to introduce the sport to everyone but also because it holds its own as a story worth watching. Well-known sport or not, the struggle and triumph is real and it carries the film.

Assigment Parody

2009-11-08T16:33:00.000-08:00

So, I was originally going to use the iMovie from a previous post, but instead decided to make another one. I actually enjoy making these, and so it was a nice sort of break from the grind of everything else. Both videos are parodies (or more accurately, reenactments) of the NBA's "Where Amazing Happens" ad campaign. An example is below, followed by my video. After your viewing pleasure, the analysis rolls on.

The original ad was, in this writer's opinion, fantastically done. In the grand tradition of ornate music juxtaposed with action, notable elements of the National Basketball Association are shown in slow-panning shots, detailed shots, highlighted by textual plays on the tagline "Where Amazing Happens." For example, a shot of Lebron James is accompanied by "Where Tomorrow Happens" - both a nod to the public's perception of James as the next "great players" and a subtle alignment of James and the NBA's future.

The style of the ad allows it to highlight both the majesty of the game and the stunning physical and emotional hurdles overtaken by NBA players. Alluding to upsets and feats of physical only bolster the NBA's appeal, both of its players and its overall product. Likewise, I used photographs (courtesy Lisa Steffes) from an indoor tournament Concordia's Savage played in. I also highlight certain ideas within each photograph, although in this case they are somewhat tongue-in-cheek. My goal was to exude the same element of the mysterious that the original ad did, but to play within the conventions of the source and adapt to my own ends. I think it worked.

Abstract for a Comic Superhero Movie and Teaching Activity

2009-10-29T15:09:00.000-07:00

In a world where there's no black and white, one man must make decisions that affect life itself. You've read the bestselling DC comic... Joseph Gordon Levitt is BEAST BOY! Crippled with terminal illness, Garfield Logan's parents use an untested vaccine as a last resort. The boy was healed, with a twist! Garfield Logan has the power to change into any animal he can think of. Joseph Gordon Levitt is... BEAST BOY! When his temptress love RAVEN is thrown into a coma by the demon Trigon, Logan must fight back - not just for RAVEN, but for the entire cosmos!

ALSO:

One way to introduce students to the idea of genres within film and television would be to play a four-corner activity. We would have the students stand in the center of the room. Then we would say the name of a popular TV show, i.e. “If you like Grey’s Anatomy’s stand in corner 1” “if you like The Simpsons, go stand in corner 2” ,“if you like family guy…corner 2,” “House…corner 1” etc. Once everyone had a corner to stand in, we would have them discuss:
-why they like the show(s) they picked
-what the shows have in common
-similar character(s)
-plot line
-setting
and then come up with a name for that genre (may or may not be the “name” it has been given by mass culture). We could repeat this activity for multiple genres.

Somewhat Rough iMovie

2009-10-21T22:34:00.000-07:00

Not too much to say. I went for the NBA ripoff, and I think it went fairly well. I will say that iMovie leaves much to be desired, particularly with some of its effects. I imagine this is because it's the default Mac app, and they would prefer that people purchase a specialized program. Perhaps a drawback of iMovie, but I did eventually succeed in creating something close to what I wanted. Enjoy?

Media Ethnography: rec.sport.disc

2009-10-21T22:18:00.000-07:00

Among my many professed passions, Ultimate Frisbee stands at the forefront. I started a team in college, I coach a high school team, run a summer tournament - I even fill in fantasy brackets for the college national championships (alone). All said, I'm fairly obsessed with the sport. Among its many virtues, one of the elements of Ultimate that lends itself to my passion is the current situation it's in, media-wise.

The sport is rapidly growing (there are over 600 active and registered college teams alone) and although there are media outlets covering the sport, they often are run by players and fans - thereby being more biased than one would prefer. The governing body of Ultimate is the Ultimate Players Association (UPA). Their website is ridiculously outdated, and as such, it has been left to the players and those passionate about the sport to truly grow it in whatever ways possible.

This brings me to my ethnography study. One of the oldest places on the internet to talk Ultimate is a holdover from Web 1.0: Usenet. Rec.sport.disc (RSD) has been active since 1991, and boasts over 60,000 unique threads. Honest Abe: At least a fifth of those are various spam threads - which only solidifies the group's popularity - rec.woodworking certainly isn't being hit hard with Gucci handbag spam. What makes this group particularly unique is that there is no working moderator - it works like an electronic bulletin board. You can post and reply, but there is no one of consequence enforcing the rules. In actuality, getting someone removed from posting is a long process, and there's not too much stopping them from creating a new account.

Like any online community, there are divisive issues. RSD's stems from a division in ideologies on how to properly grow and promote the sport. There are various facets of the argument, but the chief tenet is the current rules system, Spirit of the Game. There's a detailed explanation here, but essentially Ultimate is a self-officiated game relying on player integrity and honesty. At least 75% of the discussion is based around whether or not SotG needs to be removed.

The discussion is fairly vigorous, fueled by old players with still-simmering rivalries and those that have found a medium where no one can shut them up. Heated exchanges happen from time to time: race, class, sexual orientation have all been used to sling mud, albeit by a select few. There are perhaps 4 or 5 regular voices that post/reply daily and a host of others that contribute on a weekly basis. From the core discussion, unique terms and ideas have be spawned. "Spirit zealot" is a common term used to described proponents of SotG. Likewise, one anti-Spirit commentor has been nicknamed "Toad" by the community - he is so established as Toad that he now goes by the handle for recognition alone.

Toad is one of the more visible figures within the community. He comments multiple times a day, mostly in a retaliatory fashion, hijacking threads to talk only about the negative aspects of SotG or topics of personal interest. He is routinely offensive - he recently started a thread about why there aren't more "brothas" (black athletes) playing the game. Sample: Just think if a black school picked up ulti. I'd say theyde probably dominate college ultimate just as quickly.

Probably due to a combination of lack of moderation and his tendencies to devolve into insults at the slightest rebuttal, Toad is treated as a necessary evil of RSD, one that is tolerated because it has to be. Although there have been notable attempts to circumvent his posts, in the end he resurfaces. Toad (and an interesting standard) prevails.

This brings up a conundrum: with the exception of a few posters that either agree with Toad for the conflict or their own personal ideas, RSD is united in their disdain for him. Yet, he remains. He has become the spectre of RSD, continuously haunting the boards and looking for fights. And despite conduct that would have him hauled out of many public places, he continues relatively unfettered. As I noted above, attempts have been made to haul him out. There have been start-up websites with moderators attempting to move the conversations towards a more regulated (and Toad-free) forum, and every time they have failed. I suspect that at this point, RSD is as much a cornerstone of the Ultimate community as Toad is of RSD. It represents some of the noble beginnings of the Ultimate community, and some of the not-so noble ones. Going further, it stands as the largest source of Ultimate information currently available and doesn't look to be challenged in that regard any time soon. Until the sport receives a jolt from a source not yet identified, rec.sport.disc and Toad are here to stay.

VoiceThread Entry

2009-10-15T09:52:00.000-07:00

I loved the VoiceThread program. I found myself wanting to find more images so that I could keep writing! The applications in particular for teaching are boundless. I like the idea of students being able to access slideshows or lessons built with VoiceThread for access whenever they want them. There's something reassuring in a constant reference for them to look at. From my passion of teaching comics, there's no end to using this. When we took a look at VideoANT, I kept trying to think of ways to apply it to comics. And now I have program for it.

For my project, I briefly talked about body image in mainstream superhero comics. There's a very unnatural average body that appears in superhero comics, and it's not one that appears in real life very often. It's certainly not a new issue, but it is one that require attention. In particular, proponents of comics-based teaching like myself need to address and consider the issue: it's present in some of the material I'd like to teach! The VoiceThread is below. I intend to revisit this issue when I have some more time, probably with this software. I'll post below when that happens.

VoiceThread!

Annotations

2009-09-24T00:16:00.000-07:00

Here is the link to the film annotation I did. I had some real issues with the display (Rick's suggestions unfortunately did not help), so I won't be able to embed this one.

Here it is.

Vlog Review! Woop!

2009-09-17T14:28:00.000-07:00

I took it upon myself to review Rick's 10 Ten Movie's vlog entry. One thing that struck me about the video (aside from his camera working just fine) was the relatively smooth transitions between the trailers/clips for each film and Rick's discussion of them. Initially, I was not looking forward to seeing an entire vlog entry without any video accompaniment, but my fears were quickly put to rest.

For the most part, I enjoyed the vlog, and also agree with most of the assessments (based on what I've seen myself). The only thing I desparately wished was different was Rick announcing the title of the movie before the trailer played. It was a sort of awkward transition when one movie blurb would finish, and then Rick's face would fade out into another trailer without any pretense. Barring that, I enjoyed the vlog. Looking forward to the end of year list!

Vlog #1

2009-09-17T11:49:00.001-07:00

Clearly, this was not a complete success. Try not to snort milk through your nose. Apologies to those with weaknesses to motion sickness. Next time, there will be no relying on my target digital camera