Narora

From the previous design not much was changed, only certain things were added to help convey our message such as, tape around the mouth of Marilyn Manroe.

Throughout the process of creating this mural there was a lot of thought that went into it. We, as a group, did not begin any design until we fully understood the idea we were trying to convey to the viewers, which in this case would be the Rick Hansen student body. We began to look at some examples on the internet for inspiration, which brought us to the idea of propaganda posters. By doing some research on propaganda art, we realized that a lot of work goes into the meaning of the poster rather than the visual style, which is one of the reasons why it was so effect throughout World War I and II. We decided to incorporate propaganda style into our mural to display a message about reading. In terms of the art style, we decided to incorporate both retro and post modern design. Our idea was going to focus around an open book, seeing as it is very symbolic towards imagination and creativity, as well as being appropriate for the library setting. After taking the photo of the book we began to experiment with the design, whereby we came to the conclusion to have a retro design on the left page and transition to post modern on the right page of the open book.
The message we were trying to go for throughout the mural, has to do with censorship. Society has put themselves in a situation where they have banned all good, meaningful books leaving us with book that have nothing to say about life and the world we live in. The overall message revolves around society’s censorship causing literacy to take a huge tumble. Literature in today’s society has become meaningless as a result of individuals lack of free speech. This message was something that stood out for us, because we realized that when authors do write good books, they either get banned or unfortunately get put in jail.
We understand that this might not be the greatest mural to have in a library but it is something that we believe to be true. It is a mural that we hope to catch students attention and also to get them thinking about the books they are restricted from reading and why. The design posted above is just the process work; the final design will be posted shortly after the critique.

Over the weekend I was going through a lot of you tube videos, which is when I stumbled upon this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6y2oV8zXww

The video is about a guy named, Steve Oatway who creates art with the junk around him. His house is full of this junk he considers art and in every room there is a specific theme that follow each piece of art. I found it interesting how he was able to use pipes and wires to create art that looks like something you would see in a museum. Steve not only created art with this junk, he was also sending a message to others around the world. The message is basically telling us that you can always make something out of nothing and that rather than littering or throwing stuff in the garbage you can do something better for yourself and the world.

This video posse the same question in one of my previous blogs and that is if you spend nothing when creating art does that make it worthless? If I create an art piece with paper and a pencil does that make it any less important than someone who spends thousands of dollars on his piece? Steve shows artist how to be resourceful and creative with the things around you, even though it may not be the medium you are comfortable with. Art has come a long way from what it use to be many years ago, to what it is today. It seems like anyone can be an artist no matter what kind of status you are and Steve proves that through his junk art. Junk art has become a name or genre of art and it seems like after Steve people began conserving there junk to do the same.

This topic is continuing on from last week, where I was talking about technology and how it is harming our lives. This week in the Globe and Mail there was an article talking about e-book and how they could potentially ruining literature as well as the purpose of having books. It was only a couple of years ago, when people could only retrieve there books at a near by book store. In today's society people are able to retrieve there books over the internet. What people fear most is that books will become obsolete and will later not exist. The feeling of holding a book will no longer remain, but is that what reading is all about? Does it matter whether you read a hardcover book or not? Or whether the book has a cooler cover? Since when did books become a fashion statement? It is kind of funny how if you ever go to an old persons house you will always see stacks and stacks of books making it seem like it is a decoration piece. Do people fear reading will vanish or just the decorative style of it?

In some ways they are right when they say that e-books should not become the primary source of reading because if that were the case, you could guarantee a great decrease in literary skills from future generations. When you combine a skill like reading with a device like the i-pad you will definitely notice a difference. Having text on an electronic device can be both a good and bad thing, depending on how you look at it. The good thing about reading on any e-book device is that it is more convenient and space friendly. Rather than carrying thousand of books around with you on a bus or to class, you can store them all on one hand device, allowing for easy access. The bad thing about e-books is that fact that it can become to complex from some users. Those who have been reading book for there whole lives and never going near technology, maybe forced to for the first time. In that case it maybe hard for them to navigate themselves to reading a book or even turning on the device for that matter. The other problem with making e-book a primary source of literature is the fact that if anything ever goes wrong with the device, you are left with nothing to fall back on.

I am not saying that e-books are bad or that they should not exist but what I am saying is that making e-books a primary source of literature would change the world of reading and readers. If you put literature on a device like the i-pad, you are basically tempting kids to ignore the book and play the games on the device. E-books will also push the older generations away from novels due to the complexity of some devices.

Advantages:
-Easy access
-Easy storage
-Adjustable towards standard (ex. font size)
-convenient
-In some cases it is free
-Easy for research (search key words)

Disadvantages:
-Hard to use
-result in technical difficulties
-Hard on the eyes (screen resolution and light)

If I were to choose between and e-book and a regular book, I would have to stick with the regular book, at least for now. This is because I feel comfortable having a book in my hand rather then a tech device. Maybe in the future if the e-book becomes more advanced and dedicated I might switch, but only for certain things like research otherwise when reading novels I will always prefer a book from an i-pad.


Source - http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/personal-tech/gadgets/review-homegrown-kobo-hits-the-shelves/article1551370/

Have you ever noticed how the number of comedy movies is decreasing? Is it because society has lost all of its humor? Or is it just because the comedy we once knew has been distorted into something we find stupid?

This weekend while returning my last week movie, Memento (2000), I decided to pick up another movie that I could watch with my family. I was in the mood for a comedy movie so I wanted to get suggestions on some of the latest movies. It was funny how I ended up meeting the same guy as last week who suggested I watch Memento. We began talking about the movie and how we both felt about it, which is when I asked him about some recent comedy movie that he thought would be good. I couldn't believe how long it took us to find one, which got me thinking about the comedy movies of today. I realized that most comedy movies are based on the stupidity of people of society. When someone falls, we laugh, when someone gets hit by a bus, we laugh. Are we taking the stupidity to far? It seems like most comedy movies of today are not as funny as they use to be.

I use to be a fan of comedy movies, but now looking at the 09/10 line up I am very disappointed at what we have come to. These are just some of the movies I have seen, which I felt do not even deserve to be placed in the comedy section of any store:

-Superbad (It was just bad)
-The land of the lost
-Year One
-Grad Night
-Baby Geniuses
-The whole "American Pie" series
-A whole lot more.....

From some reason the comedy movies of today are either romantic comedies like, Valentines Day or stupid comedies like, Superbad.
It has been a long time since I have seen a very good comedy movie. In my opinion you can tell if a comedy movie is good when you have the leave the room because your face is turning red. The most recent good comedy movie I have seen would have to be Hangover, just because it was something I could somewhat relate to. While talking to the employee at Blockbuster he told me about a comedy movie that people have been renting out quite frequently. He told me to check it out and give him a review. The movie was called "The goods" starring Jeremy Piven, who is known for his appearance in the TV series "Entourage,” which is one of my favorite shows. The movie on the other hand was horrible... It was basically about a guy who is good at selling cars and how is hired by a car agency to help them sell cars. The comedy in this movie was plain stupid and plot in my opinion was too simple to drag on for 1 hour and 50 min. This movie was great example of the kind of comedy movies that have been coming out for the past year and it seems like no one is man enough to tell them to stop. I cannot tell you how the movie ended seeing as I fell asleep half way through, but one thing I can say is that if comedy movies keep coming out the way they are, the genre "comedy" will no longer exist.

While we are still in the filming stage of our assignment we realize that the deadline is creeping up on us, which is why we decided to conduct both at the same time. While Naeem and I film, Awcro and Josh will begin cutting and editing scene which we have already filmed. The filming process is something we are struggle at the most, which is why we are in this position. The majority of our scenes has already been filmed and is currently waiting to be edited. There is one major scene which is still pending to be filmed and that is the party scene, which is the hardest to conduct. The reason for why this scene has still not been filmed is due to the cast co-operation. We cannot seem to find a time when everyone is available to come over and act as if they are having fun at a party. This scene is very important toward the overall plot, seeing as this is the event where both main characters make contact with each other. It is also the scene where we transition perspective from main character # 1(Neeraj) to main character #2 (Naeem). This scene is planned to film this week and once that is done we can push our focus towards the editing stage. We, as a group, realized that no matter how much you schedule something; there will always be an event or an obstacle that will stop you from staying on time.

The editing does not seems to be an issue at all, seeing as we know which scenes need to be kept and which ones need to be deleted. We are also watching tutorials on how to do advance editing on Adobe Premiere, such as lighting and color saturation to make the video seem as if it were done in a studio. We have also been trying to figure out how to create a montage on Premiere because it is something we wanted to use in our video to give it that "wow" factor. I think that putting a lot of time into editing can be the key to a successful video, because it shows how much time you really put into making it. Editing can be very helpful in some cases especially when certain scene need to be brightened. Due to the fact that we did not have any professional lighting we are relying on Premiere to help up get that effect without ruining the overall picture.

There is going to be more that one editing stage for this video. The reason for that is because we need to view the video several times after the first editing stage to see if it is well worth submitting. Our goal is to finish the editing a week before it is due, this is so that we can view the video every so often to see if something is missing, or even if certain scenes need to be redone. Having one week of time to make changes will be necessary to make sure that our video is polished and ready to submit.

The video is posted on you tube.com the link is listed below. Check it out and tell me what you think. The video is no where near done, there is still a lot of editing that needs to be completed as well as a lot of scenes that need to be added. We could not upload the whole video because it was too large of a file (4 GB) so we decided to just show the first 5 mins of what we have done.

link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyA7zpAyFJM&feature=player_embedded