Fallen Beauty

My sister, whom I haven't seen in a month or two, was in town last night, and we went over to my friends house for a party. She didn't stay long, I think her and her friends felt a little out of place considering they were all 18 and everyone else at the party was like 22 or older, but it was still good to see her. I was dressed up like a pirate and she was dressed up like a thug. We then went to the bars in costume and had an extra hour of time out because of daylight savings.

This morning I woke up and looked at my clock and was concerned when it said 1 pm, but then I remembered daylight savings and it was only noon, so I was relieved, as I have had to do quite a bit of work today. It was such a beautiful fall day today that I had to take some pictures on my way up to studio. Below are some images of what campus looks like in the fall, quite wonderful, surprisingly.

Frustruated Update...

People in this freakin town don't care about anything anymore. Below is a little exerpt from my sketchbook:

"This University is dead. No longer do we care about liberty and freedom, now all we care about is our own selfish desires; if we can get this project done in time then we can go drinking. No one cares about actually learning anything anymore, only about getting our professors off. We are a product of our society, so I cannot justifibly get too pissed off at individuals."

I have tried to get people to help me out with filming and the like, but everyone around here is all talk and no walk. They talk of all these grand ideas, but NOT ONE is ever put into action. I wanted to push this issue and expose this group and their fradulent activities, but no one CARES. All we care about is our insignificant lives and a pointless model that we have to make in a pointless class for our pointless future. No one here has a clue of what they want to do with anything once they get out of school, they are just going to go and live in the suburbs and work for a mundane firm making mundane architecture, because they DON'T CARE. Well, I care; I'm down, but I'm not out.

Babies are selfish

So for the past three days the extreme right wing pro-life group, Justice For All has been on campus with their huge, grotesque anti-abortion propaganda. I don't have a problem if they want to protest, as it is their constitutional right to do so, but this kind of stuff is over the top. Hitler and Stalin used blatant propaganda to alter their message and try to persuade people to follow them, and good old Tammy Cook is doing the same. So, later today me and a friend are going to go film a 'documentary-esque' film about these people and interview Ms. Cook and see what happens when she is put to the grinder. Updates later...

Part II

On Monday I started my second and final studio project of the semester. The last project focused on Mies Van der Rohe's courtyard house prototype, and this new project expounds on this idea. Our entire studio[14students] has been given a city block in which we broke up into 14 plots of land, each boundary being a 12' tall wall. We are to design some sort of commercial space using the courtyard house prototype as a basis for our design. This basically means that we have to design a work space for an artist, musician, architect, brewer, etc...bascially anyone who wants to work but doesn't do retail. I have decided that I am going to design a recording studio and I am going to use sound as a major element in my design. There was a guest lecturer on Monday who talked a lot about sound and showed some of his work in which he merges sound and video into one, each determining what the other does. He talked a lot about the future of music and how it will probably start to involve all of the senses, not just sound, and I found his work to be quite stimulating. Then, later that night we had a very good debate at Belly's, talking about a lot of stuff, and the lecturer/artist was one. When I got home I had a lot of ideas running through my head and I wrote a lot of them down and determined that I want to try to use sound to enhance my spaces and to relate all of my spaces to each other. I haven't quite determined exactly how I am going to do so yet, but I've got a few ideas that I am going to try out.

Yesterday I went up to the Rec and played raquetball/squash with one of my friends. Well, they were out of raquetball equipment, so we played raquetball with squash equipment because we didn't know how to play squash. It was interesting, to say the least, and it made me really tired last night. Today I am quite sore, especially my left[swingingarm].

Weekend

Well, the film is done and I can relax now. I had a little bit of trouble exporting the final film on Friday morning, but it all got taken care of before it was due. At 2:30pm we had our semi-critique, and had two professors come in and basically just watch our films and talk about what they thought was good and what they thought wasn't. It was pretty generic criticism, and they didn't really say much about mine, which could be good or bad, depending on how you look at it. Personally, I was disappointed with how mine turned out, I felt that the colors were too harsh, a lot of my shots felt rushed, and I didn't really develop much of a 'look' to it. I did some work on it yesterday after the crit, tuning it up and such, and I think that I am going to do some more work on it this weekend as well.

Monday we start a new project which will build upon this theme of the courtyard house that we have been dealing with all semester, and as of now I am going to be designing a music recording and production studio. I have been doing some research on studio design today, but I would like to find some case studies which I could study in more depth.

Tomorrow is going to be just as exciting as today I imagine, because for the past two weeks I haven't had any time to do my normal maintainence duties (laundry, groceries, etc), so I will be cleaning lots of stuff tomorrow, yay me!!!

the end is in sight

Hopefully by the time I come into studio tomorrow I will have all of my shots rendered and ready to throw into Combustion. I only have one 3DSMax shot left to render and I am just about done with my Poser renders. I may actually get a decent amount of sleep tonight!!! Tomorrow I have to spend most of my day editing, as Matt my studio professor wants our films by noon on Friday so that we will have them all on a DVD by our crit at 2. I am not quite sure how we are going to have a critique on these films, as we feel like first year film students with the architectural knowledge of the 5th year students that we are. We know what we want to show, but we don't have the technical knowledge on the computer and the theatrical knowledge of movie making. It will be interesting, that is for sure.

So about an hour and a half ago 4 of us from studio walked down to Radina's to get some coffee and as usual we saw my old roommate, Aaron, at the back table; I swear that he lives there. It was funny because he had actually brought up trace paper and pens and was drafting IN Radina's! We were all quite amused at the quirkiness of Aaron presenting itself to us in such a fashion.

I'm on the homestretch!!!!

Production takeover

I am currently involved in a massive take over of the CAPD computer lab. I have taken several computers hostage and I am using them to render for my film that is due on Friday. I have tried several times to have overnight renders go, but for some reason the program will never work, so I am behind a bit. Hopefully, this takeover will allow for me to get back on track. We shall see...

away she goes...

My girlfriend moved to NYC today. I was visiting her in Wichita Wedensday evening through Friday evening, skipping several classes admist that time. It's ok though, because it was worth it as I will not get to see her until probably Thanksgiving. This past month has been a blur of emotion and time, as I have looked forward to every weekend upon which I would get to see her; now this will no longer be an option, and hopefully it will allow me to focus more on my work. I am currently up in studio, and I hope that this will be a much more common occurance now that Niki is gone. It was tough to say goodbye, but suprisingly not as tough as I thought it was going to be. I know that I will see her soon, as time seems to go so fast nowadays, and that I will be able to talk to her on the phone and when I graduate I plan on moving to NYC to get a job. I know a few people here in Manhattan[littleapple] who are interested in moving there as well, so I will have several roommate options. Still, it will be tough, I am not doubting this. I told myself many times that I would not get into a LDR, but I believe that she is worth it. I have had my fair share of good times here in Manhattan[littleapple], and a lot of the stuff that used to appeal to me doesn't seem to be as big of an issue in my life anymore. Things change, people change, and I honestly think that my experiences in England had a large part in this thought/attitude transformation. Anyways, I took some pics of another beautiful Kansas sunset on Wednesday evening, so here are some roadshots.




border="0" alt="" />

gorilla film time

This past weekend was fall break, and my girlfriend was in town, so I didn't get much work done in studio, obviously. I came up yesterday and began working extensively on my gorilla film that is due tomorrow, and progress is naturally slow. Currently I am trying to get all of my shots into Final Cut Pro HD [gotta <3 the Mac], while rendering on my PC. Woohoo for multi-tasking!!! Fortunately we don't have to have all of our shots rendered nicely out, as some of mine are quite pathetic looking. These [gorilla] films are supposed to help us focus on the cuts and editing, so that we can produce our film more effectively. So, I don't plan on getting much sleep tonight [again,whatelseisnew?]...cheers.