Day 22

Today is where we show our videos.  Somehow I manged to do most of the documentation earlyish (as in on the weekend) so there is just a little bit left to do - where are we going to show the video and will Brad show up?  He doesn't so I delete his slide.  Arron says put the movie at the end.  I want it closer to the start, but don't want to argue.  George says it should have been even earlier then where I want it.  Oh well, live and learn.  And learn I did.

All the videos from all the groups were great.  We then break up and form new groups for the next assignment.  I grab Nahum since I know he can program and isn't Arron.  Arron would be fine, but I am trying to work with new people.  Hopefully Arron is ok with that... in the end our whole team winds up in different groups.  I am working with Carlos again for the 3rd time... oh well, Carlos is cool :-)

Day 19

We talked about two movies, Resident Evil and Tomb Raider, that are based on video games.  We found out why the end of Resident Evil was good and why the end of Tomb Raider was bad.  Basically Tomb Raider ignored all the things that were set up in the opening when it came to the end.

We have a new paper to write, I am doing the opening of a video game, where we need to set up things that would be able to be used in the game, specifically the climax.

The programmers had a meeting after class, where we each went over what we knew, what we wanted to get out of the project, and what we don't want to see.  We have a bunch of people that "know" C/C++, only 3 of us have web programming experience.  We want to all learn, and we all want to feel useful.  We decided to use Meteor, a JavaScript framework for both the client and server that uses MongoDB.  None of use know how to do all of that, so we are all on an even foothold, and we will all learn.

I did up a quick prototype of a login system and then stole a chat client demo.  It worked!  It was very simple... awesomesauce!

After that I learned how to edit a movie...  and I did a good enough job that we are not going to throw it away :-)

Day 15

Yah I am sick.  Sigh.

Finished watching Magnificent Seven just before class started... eep.  George went over that and Seven Samurai.  We then did our synopsis of them... oops was meant to be in the other order :-)

Class ended early, after another NFB film... a movie made of things from the cutting room floor.  Bizarre, but I can see the random movie idea working :-)

After that met with the Projects 1 team where we interviewed Larry and Kim to find out their requirements.  Then we came up with an idea and showed it to them and confirmed that it passed the "it doesn't suck" stage :-)

Deborah and I worked on it on the train, she wire framed it up so we can show it to people in the morning.

Day 11

Visual story up next.  This class is so far out of my experience that it is fun.  I have not got a clue what I am doing :-)  I understand it, but I am in total learning mode.

We start the day with a game from Kim: Every Day The Same Dream.  Do we have agency?  Yes we do!

We go over endings and beginnings.  We watch part of a Bond film for the ending.  We watch part of Apocalypse Now for a beginning.  We watch the start of Assassins Creed (I forget which specific one) as well as some other games and movies.

Lunch.  Interview someone for projects (not telling you who!).

Now we do 3 line stories - beginning, middle, end.  We pick 2 lines... "A man takes hallucinogens" and "man meets bigfoot" and then have to give a synopsis for a story for sci fi, romantic comedy, spy, and a few other genres.  As we do each one we get better.  Iteration from Imrov and Projects from this week.  Synchronized... I love it.  We keep practising things in different contexts.  Finally we come up with our best story.  End scene (day).

Well not quite.  Maria, Deb, Vincy and I all take skytrain home together this time (another reason I got behind on blogging!).  We decide to practice the 60 second random talking from Monday.  Iterate. Iterate. Iterate.  I die twice, we all do.  I think someone made it over 60 seconds and Maria made it to 57!  Me, still at 15 seconds before my mind draws a total blank.  Iterate. Iterate. Iterate.

Get home and do homework.  Go to bed early... have to get up at 5am for hockey practice.

Day 7

Today was visual story day., specifically we looked at Blade Runner.  We watched the first act with George stopping the movie frequently and talking about different things.  Story is cool.  Interconnected story is cooler.  I had no idea so much went into the visuals of the story, just little things in the background.  I also had no idea that story making was so messy and seemingly random.

Note to self: tie that in with Richards report on the book I am reading... which is due tomorrow.  Note to self: get writing the report - only one index card in length thankfully.  That book broke my brain, I want to finish it out of interest now.

After lunch we sat in a large circle while Gwen, who apparently is the only person there that has neat hand writing (yay Gwen!) got to write on index cards (do I see a theme?  Nah probably just random... hmmm note to self: get some index cards) a story that we, guided a lot by George, came up with a story.  The backdrop was the London Olympics, specifically Canada winning bronze.  We decided i was not a romantic comedy (where the world pushes two people together) but a comedic romance (where the world keeps two people apart) (see I learned something :-).  The neat thing was writing each bit on the cards, and then seeing the ways that the cards have different elements tracked on them (the element of messy data that ties in with the book).

My group for Projects is happier with meeting tomorrow at 6:30 for the Futureshop/Metrotown trip.  That is great since now I can be on the train (which I am now) and going to do the stuff with my family (work/life balance achievement).  Tonight is a lot of writing - Richards index card and get Patricks stuff out of the way (a letter, draw my ideal house, and write about my walking in video (which I forgot to grab off the only accessible from school computer network share... d'oh!).

Note to self; don't forget things.

We also have bee brainstorming on the movies... including getting a potential person to be our Sirified voice :-)  Yay Sarah!

Day 3

Visual Story time! Watch a short movie, Zea, from 1981 which is an art film.  Ok... what have I gotten myself into?

Learn about narrative, plot, and story.  Zea doesn't have that... well it does depending on what definition you use.  Seriously, what have I gotten myself into?!

Watch another film, La Jetée, which is done with still pictures and a voice over.  WTF have I gotten myself into??!!one!

Ok calm down and just go with it.  Why not, perhaps this is what the improv course is for :-)

Next we get our project, the essence of which is create at least 4 films based off of stills that are connected someway, such as theme, colour, character, etc... the trick is that the films will be watched in any order.

Self organize your teams, and probably a good idea to have a writer, a photographer, an effects person, a sound person in each group.  Oh and there needs to be some interactive way to show the films... well I guess that would be me so at least I have something I can do beyond "act" :-)

Now comes chaos, we get a group of 5 people with the skills we need, sort of, we don't have a "real" writer, but that might be ok since we are going for a non-linear story anyways, if you don't have to break out of your way of doing things it might be easier?  Well I'll go with that anyways :-?  But the chaos is that we now have two projects going on at once, and nobody is coordinated, some meet about the stuff from yesterday, some from today, we are 39 people in about 12 different teams now, the constraints on time show up pretty fraking fast. We are also trying to communicate over Facebook which is not ideal.  Time to plan.

Speaking of planning I have to get on with my journal for impov, come up with story ideas for tomorrow (not that I can meet that group tomorrow, because I am meeting with the other group tomorrow), and think about branding.  We did manage to focus on branding a bit - we decided that we would make a company that develops interactive software to help people with learning disabilities.  Now that we have a focus we need to think about why we are doing that, how we would do it, and what it is we do.

Argh!