Real News #2

Here's my second post of "Real News."
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The first news is courtesy of the Huffington Post. So... Montana never ceases to amaze me. Now all of the "moose[s] and antelope[s]... killed by a car [can] be harvested for food." This a fantastic new law, because now the animals' families won't feel that their loved ones died in vein.
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A little boy calls for help! This is pretty funny. He didn't want to go to sleep so he called the cops. Not exactly sure how that would hep his cause.

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This was an incredible shot... by a cheerleader.

Got my pants dirty!

For the one-week video project, we were given a prop to make our story about. We got a nest with little eggs glued in it, so of course, we knew right away we were going to film this outdoors, around a tree. We decided the best use of the props would be to have the nest fall out of the tree, and for somebody to catch it. I volunteered to act.

It was a very cold morning, but we already had our script made so my group went outside. With the help of the storyboard, we were very efficient, and got the filming done in about 30 miserable minutes. I dove for the nest, though the intention was not for me to catch it. Instead, it would land on my back. Since that is nearly impossible to do, we had to do the best job we could to make it look somewhat realistic. Obviously every viewer knew it didn't really land on my back, but that helped create the little hook, of me diving arms outstretched, then fading out, before the next shot where you can see where it lands.

After I had done a couple dives, my group thought that was enough, but I insisted on one more. And unfortunately, I landed it some wet dirt (I wouldn't quite call it mud). I ended up with a grass stain and a dirty pair of pants. Maybe I should have listened to my group.

I thought it was cleverly done for what we had, because while it didn't look realistic, in my opinion it was still pretty entertaining. The last shot was supposed to reassure the viewer that the whole thing is indeed supposed to be a joke. By the way, that thing with three legs that looks very much like a tripod is actually a small tree, so don't mind it.

Overall I thought this was a fun project. I didn't think we needed three hours to brainstorm, write a script, and storyboard just a minute-long video. I think if we had done the pre-production stuff in an hour and a half and the filming the other 90 minutes, people probably wouldn't have had to stay to edit after school.

Google Drive

Yesterday I discovered the magic of Google Drive. While it has been around for some time now, I never understood how helpful it is.

Before I decided to learn about Google Drive, I didn't understand how it differed from Google Docs. After all, isn't that also storing data in a cloud? The tutorial video for Drive really only described Google Docs. And in reality, it is not majorly different, but there is an addition that could be very useful. Google Docs can now be edited offline. If you enable it to do so, Google Drive will run automatically when you start up your computer. Then it will sync all data from the cloud to your computer. It does, however, keep it as a Google Doc. If you want to make a .docx file you can do so by exporting it from Google Docs. But now you can open up Google Docs offline. If you don't have internet access, Google Chrome will open up and Docs will work like normal, except that until you get internet connection back, changes won't be saved on the cloud. But it will all save on your computer and then sync with the cloud once it can.

The benefit of Google Drive is big, and I'm sure Google is still making improvements on it. I'm not to acquainted with it so I don't have much to say, but I'm loving what I'm seeing. Now I won't lose files!!

Basketball Trick Shots in Silver Spring

I do live just a five-minute walk away from Downtown Silver Spring, but I didn't really want to film myself going into the movie theater, eating a Chipotle burrito, etc. because I thought there would be plenty of videos of that kind. Instead, I put together a collage of basketball trick shots. While I don't spend much time doing shots of that sort, I do really like to play basketball. This is my hoop but it has been a popular attraction throughout the neighborhood since we got it about eight years ago.

My brother filmed this for me using a Flip Video. I recognize it isn't in widescreen, I will try to fix that for future videos. I tried iMovies '07 for my recent video for English and had a terrible experience. I felt helpless at times: clips would change lengths at will, it crashed frequently, the transitions were not good, so I went back to iMovie '06. I found this upbeat song and thought it fit well in my video.

I had some shots planned out, and many of them took a while. The bike one was difficult for me because I had to maintain an acceptable velocity to make the shot look decent, I had to stay under control (I crashed into the curb several times), and I had to catch the ball and make the shot keeping one hand on the bike. This shot took quite a while. Then there were some other tough ones like the one where I juggled a soccer ball then kicked it into the hoop. I actually made it on the first try when I was demonstrating what I would to do. Then it took five minutes to do it again. In addition to the challenging shots, the cold was another factor. We broke the filming over three days because while I might have been in a t-shirt and shorts, my hands were freezing.

Other shots were improvised. I had a stretch where I did as much and I could. That's when I did the 360-layup and some other shots.

Dialogue never factored into the video. My brother was had some funny comments from behind the camera because he understandably got quite bored. I might upload some of his comments as well as some of my bloopers for a weekly post soon. Sorry my dialogue was not a little more creative.

Real News #1

This is a weekly blog post segment where I go over some of the recent "Real News."
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So... this is an outrage! I'm getting ripped off of one inch of bread. Time to boycott this business. Subway, you've lost a customer.
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Is Google Responsible for Killing a Donkey? I'm glad to see Fox is staying away from politics and giving that donkey the recognition it deserves. I'm sure its family really appreciates that act of kindness. Anyway, how did somebody get this footage? Who happens to be looking at a street view of dirt in Botswana? Anyway, the witnesses of this murder were unfortunately not able to attend Google's trial.
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Though the concept of somebody getting stuck like that is quite funny, it's hard to laugh after the experience she went through. That would be miserable to be trapped, unable to move your head for hours. Now she has a story she'll never forget.
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CBC adds a new twist to twist to the Lance Armstrong case: reportedly this criminal used rugs. I wasn't able to find the video footage of this newscast, but if I were to guess, I would say it was a typo. Most likely they were trying to give the viewer a new angle on the story, informing us that he used mugs to drink the water to swallow his performance-enhancing pills.

Speaking of mugs, would you buy one of these?

When I don't know what to do... ( Random Blog Search #1)

There is the occasional week when I have no idea what to write about. This is one of them, so I've decided to start a new series where I find a random blog and right about it.

Here it goes:

6:27 PM-- Well, I encountered my first problem. I've been to 5 blogs and they are all in other languages, including Spanish and Finnish.

6:35-- I give up!! There is so much garbage or stuff just pertaining to a person's life. I'm now going to try going to Google Blog Search and type in a key word.

6:39-- I plugged in "israel palestine documentary" into the Google Blog Search engine, not with the intention of watching a documentary, but with the hope that somebody may have reviewed one that I could later go and watch. Sure enough, I was linked to a Blog post with a review.

6:43-- I am now going to use the Diigolet to annotate this post. Haven't read it yet. Hope it's at least somewhat interesting.

6:45-- Well... it's hardly got any information. Time to return to the results page on Google and try again. I feel stupid.

6:48-- I found an article on the Huffington Post. At first glance, it looks to be a news story but I'll find out when I annotate it.

7:34-- I had to eat! But I'm back now...

7:42-- I am finished annotating! You can see what I did.

7:44-- In brief, this article talks about two Israel-produced movies and how they were so successful. The movies' techniques are very different. One was made with six retired directors of Israel's spy agency talking. They were informally dressed, but B-roll footage made the film appealing. The other was made by an amateur filmmaker with his camcorder, filming his daily life.

7:53-- Well... that wraps up this post. The process should be easier in the future now that I know what my approach is. I shouldn't have to make this into a log of my time. I did it this time because I knew I would go on a wild goose chase because I had very little idea what I was doing, as you can probably tell by my vague introduction. From now on, I'll go to Google Blogs and type in some key words related to something that interests me or just words that pop into my mind. I'll click on a link that seems interesting, glance over the article to see if it's worthwhile, then annotate it. I'll then write my post and summarize the article in a little more depth than I did today at 7:44. This post was more of an experiment. Going forward, I might do videos as well, but this is all if I don't have anything noteworthy to write about.

8:00-- I am out.

Indoor Soccer

I am preparing to go to my Indoor Soccer game at the Rockville Sportsplex. Indoor soccer is very different from outdoor, which I play in the spring and fall. My MSI Classic team finished in 2nd place last outdoor, season, but are 1 and 2 so far indoors. We are playing against college students, so our struggles are probably justified.

Indoor soccer is a way faster game than outdoor. But the main difference is the rules. First of all, there are no out of bounds unless the ball hits the high ceiling. The walls are not only used to keep the ball in play but also to serve as a way to pass. The fields are by estimate about 3/5 the size of a regulation field. The games are on fake turf and is played 6 on 6. Substitutions happen the same way as they do in hockey: during play, unlike outdoors when the play must be dead to make changes.

As you can see by the picture, the spectators can watch from either the ground floor or the second floor.

I'm mostly a field player but I do occasionally play goalie. They are both fun. This fast paced game forces me to be on alert every second I'm in the game. Also, it makes keeping possession much harder. There's rarely time to hold onto the ball and wait for teammates to get home. In a split second, an opponent will pick your pocket.

I've played indoor for five years now and the game has changed drastically over that time. For one thing, shots are much harder and with so few players on the field, players get many looks at goal. Also, players can kick the ball all the way across the field in the air.

The shortened field and the fast paced action lead to exciting and usually high-scoring games.