Interesting work this week further creating my character, Jack Neff, and bringing him to life a little bit more. I added to Spencer Scott’s song “Donnie’s Zen” on a fun theme music hybrid assignment. I added depth to Jack’s back story with the old postcard assignment. I did the whistling song assignment as my character, … Continue reading Week 8 Summary →

I already used this piece from Spencer Scott for his character Donnie Rawley in an assignment this week, so I thought it would be a good one to choose for these posts. I’m a reasonably active musician, so I naturally love the hand-craftedness here. The Eastern influences are awesome, and the subtle, relaxing qualities of … Continue reading This is Cool: Donnie’s Zen →

This is the can’t get it out of my head assignment worth 2 points. I was thinking about my character, Jack Neff, and what would be the sort of song he would get stuck in his head. Being an aspiring writer who finds little success, I though this song would work perfectly, but that’s all … Continue reading What Kind of Writer? →

This is the postcards from the past assignment worth 4 1/2 points. This is a letter from Jack Neff’s past that he carries around folded up and tear-stained in his back pocket. Years ago Jack’s fiance, Malinda Sparkle (Sahar’s character’s mother who I’m making up), wrote this letter before leaving the city and abandoning him … Continue reading Breaking up with Jack Neff →

This is a piece that I’m playing off of from Spencer Scott called “Donnie’s Zen.” It’s for the theme music assignment worth 4 points. I really liked it when I heard it, and I thought it would be cool to do a jam-session approach with these character mash-ups.  At first I also wanted to play … Continue reading Jack Neff Jams with Donnie Rawlen →

This is how I use Snapchat…shhh don’t tell anyone.

Radio show:   Daily Creates:  

Well here she is. After a lot of group confusion and lack of responses, I was unsure of what to do with all of my ideas and preliminary content I had created. With some of the original members breaking off and others going incommunicado, I had no choice but to construct a show on my … Continue reading Noir Buzz-Featuring the Tapes of Jack Neff →

Another week, another reflection. I organized into a radio group a on the later side, but am in the Noir Buzz group. We intend to incorporate darker tales of celebrity gossip into the lives of our characters. We’ll likely make at least some portions of our show a talk-show format with our characters. It should … Continue reading Week 6 Reflection →

This is my promo poster for “Noir Buzz,” a radio station that focuses on the latest shady doings in the headlines. From celebrities to our characters, to fictional interactions between the two, the station will be a hybrid of actual current event gossip and sensationalized retellings of those events with our characters along for the … Continue reading The Noir Buzz Promo →

This is the make it 800% slower assignment worth 3 points. This was an interesting experience. I had no clue just how long the process would take for a lengthy piece, or how massive the resulting file would be. It took about 2 hours to process, and I ended up with a 4 GB behemoth … Continue reading Scoring 800 Percent →

This is the dialogue mashup assignment worth 4 1/2 points. This was another really fun one. I knew I wanted to do something with the “you talkin’ to me?” scene. It’s just too perfect for this sort of assignment.  I love the awkward tension that builds throughout. Initially I really wanted to get a Joe … Continue reading Bueller? →

This is the movie voice machines assignment worth 2 1/2 points. I had a ton of fun with this. I knew it was an assignment I wanted to work on right away when I read the description, but I wasn’t sure what character to try and tackle. I quickly realized that finding uniform sound clips … Continue reading Bad Service on the Death Star →

Yet another interesting week with a bunch of fun activities. I talked a bit about the Big Lebowski, “slacker noir,” and my personal comparison of the film’s similar political nature to Chinatown. I also love Blade Runner and Double Indemnity, but there isn’t time for everything. The design blitz was a fun bit of time … Continue reading Week 5 Summary →

This is the scene poster assignment worth 3 1/2 points.   I decided to keep my Taxi Driver theme running strong, though I actually tried to challenge myself a little bit more this time. For a project from last semester, I had set my computer to take a screenshot of the film every other frame … Continue reading More Taxi Driver →

This is the budding entrepreneur assignment worth 2 points. At first glance, this bottle of wine may not seem like anything out of the ordinary. Oh how wrong you are, petty peasant! This is the finest accent wine, fresh from the gardens of the Stephanus Rechtorus vineyard. What’s accent wine, you say? Accent wine is … Continue reading The New Thing in Wine: Accents →

  This is the create your own DS106 wallpaper assignment worth 4 points. Here’s my wallpaper! With these sorts of things I always start off small, almost get finished, then spend way too much time trying to perfect some tiny aspect I don’t like. Then after I curse the name of GIMP for a few … Continue reading A New Paper for the Wall →

This is the recommended one story/four icons assignment worth 2 1/2 points. This is a fun assignment, though I suspect my creation won’t offer up much of a challenge for potential guessers. At least I certainly hope not! This should be an easy one. In the off-chance you’re curious and can’t figure it out, I … Continue reading Fantastical Four Symbols →

I thought this project might be more unnatural than it was. I was surprised at how much more visually compartmentalized the world became when I started looking at everything from a design standpoint. Though I did find a number of posters around Fredericksburg that certainly demonstrated various elements of visual design, I found that many of … Continue reading Design Blitz! →

The Coen’s the” Big Lebowski” has long been one of my very favorite comedies, transcending genres and tones to stand as an entirely singular sort of film. Somewhere along the line I’ve heard it referred to as “slacker noir,” but I’d really never held the film in the same class as traditional noir, such as … Continue reading The Big Lebowski: Noir? →

Another interesting week. I played around a bunch with Taxi Driver for my assignments this week. That was a ton of fun. I love that I was able to act out the famous “You talkin’ to me?” speech for the line remix assignment, of course substituting “me” for “him.” I also used the film’s theme … Continue reading Week 4 Summary →

I think I’ve made my love affair with Taxi Driver pretty clear already, but here I am using it again. I instantly thought of the theme music by Bernard Hermann for the assignment. I spliced it up in a few places and I think most of them are fairly clean, though there’s one in particular … Continue reading Radio Taxi →

This is the line remix assignment, worth 3 points. This idea immediately came to mind when I read the assignment. It’s a pretty natural transition that sounds surprisingly similar to the original.

This is the required sound effects story assignment, worth 3 1/2 points. I’ve never done anything like this before, and I don’t think I realized just how far one can push a story with sound effects alone. The hardest part was determining a topic. I struggled for a while and didn’t know where to begin. … Continue reading Someone Just Left →

This is the solo vocal trio assignment, worth 3 points. I do a good bit of guitar playing and singing in my spare time, and I’d been listening to this classic today so I thought it might work well. I forgot how long the gaps in vocals are. That’s the biggest problem here. It just … Continue reading Blackbirds →

Crazy times for me are finally at an end. I think I’ve driven more the last two weeks than I have my entire life. I can’t wait to have a fresh week. Anyway, I did have some interesting, fruitful discoveries this week that involved quite a bit of personal photography discussion. My favorite bit was … Continue reading Week Three Summary: Shadowy Times →

I love film, but does that inherently mean I love photography? Well, yes and no. I’ve been interested in landscape shots for as long as I can remember. I used to have my parents buy me those disposable cameras as a kid when we went on vacations so I could snap pictures of everything. I’m … Continue reading A Shaky History with Photography →

I had a hell of a lot of fun collecting different shadow photos throughout the week. Basically any time something caught my eye, I snapped it. It was more natural than I would have thought. The only one I “staged” more or less was the tennis racket for my Venetian blind effect. The others I … Continue reading A Shadowy Safari →

This is the What’s in Your Bag assignment, worth three points.  

This is the Classic Album Makeover assignment which calls for a visual rethinking of a famous album cover. It is worth 2 1/2 points. I’ll admit, I bet everyone thinks of this album cover for this assignment. It’s simple, iconic, and has been interpreted beyond belief for seemingly hundreds of years.  I made a point … Continue reading A Flipped Side of the Moon →