Category Archives: FALL 2016

Rock’n’Roll is the answer!!

I have always been a music fan. Since I can remember, there was always music of varying genres playing, all imbedded in my pea sized brain. Musicals of the early to mid 20th century were mixed with classic rock of the 1960’s entangled with the punk and new wave of the 1980’s engrossed my early childhood. Puberty hit and I was influenced by whatever MTV showed me at the time, and my own taste was quickly developing.

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Middle School Ragamuffin

The crossroads of teenage delinquency was the turning point of what I listened to. Iggy and The Stooges album Raw Power changed my whole life. The fury and awesomeness that came from the 8 tracks that was bleeding in my ear drums was pure fresh air! The fuel in my blood from the first notes of the opening track, made me realize that it was what I wanted to be apart of. I MUST BLEED MUSIC! The only problem was that I didn’t know how to play any instrument. I told my mom I wanted to be in a band early in life and, being the supportive soul she is, remarked that how could I possibly do that if I couldn’t play? I will find a way……

Tried to play the guitar but my fingers couldn’t figure out. screw it! I will figure it out. maybe I will find a couple of musician type people, dress like them and follow them around? AND IT WORK!!!!! I was now a frontman and have been doing it ever since!

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That was a drunk Halloween!

I’ve been doing a radio show on the University of Oregon’s radio station, KWVA 88.1 fm, now for about year now and it’s just as good as being in a band. With this platform I can play all the music I am a fan of and connect with anyone who is listening. I play everything from Britney Spears to Skinny Puppy. Checkout my playlists, its wild! As much as I love it, it does not beat performing on a stage……

(Warning: Cuss Words)

 


Recording in the Digital Age

Recently, our band Snowdragon has been recording a ten-song LP to be used as a demo reel. We have a large show coming up this summer and the venue requested we send a small collection of the type of music we play. This would be nearly impossible on our collective schedules if it weren’t for the evolution of digital recording within the last couple of decades. Being able to record near-perfect audio signals into a desktop computer is a huge technological accomplishment, and something I love doing every day.

Personal computers have made a huge impact on the way we all live our lives. Whether it be for entertainment or starting your own career, they’ve changed the way many, if not most, things work in America. Ryan “Fluff” Bruce, a producer/audio engineer has founded his career and lifestyle with digital audio recording. His website (http://www.blackmetalbicycle.com/) highlights his roles in his field as well as his current projects.

Another producer from Oregon’s own Eugene, Billy Barnett of Gung-Ho Studio (http://www.gunghostudio.com/) has been in the business since tape and vinyl, but has comfortably made the transition to digital in recent years. When I asked how well he took the switch, he answered,

“In the beginning of the digital era, things were not very good. Most software was extremely expensive and didn’t record with very high fidelity to the source. In the last decade or so, it’s streamlined so many processes and has much higher quality sound.”

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I’ve been working out of my own home studio for the last few years now. Be it recording my own projects or a local band, I’ve always had fun with it and have always been interested in challenging myself further.

Below: A short video of a simple little song recorded in my studio in two hours.


“Listening to Emerson”

Part I

 After my second attempt in reading Emerson’s essay, using a couple of the reading strategies I picked up from “Listening to a Text,” clear meaning emerged within me. I initially read the first five pages of “The American Scholar,” and I was overwhelmed by unfamiliar words. On my second attempt, I implemented annotating, marking unfamiliar terms and references and I searched for visuals that enhance verbal content.

First, I went through the text highlighting unfamiliar words, opportunities for visual enhancements, and I used annotation in the columns. My understanding of the text improved by simply re-reading the five pages.

I proceeded to go back through the text, researching all of my highlights revealing definitions to unfamiliar words and phrases, but I also searched for images of these terms to give further enhancement of the verbal content.

Combining these three reading strategies, I have a deeper understanding of Emerson’s intentions for his essay. Noting organizational signals and identifying points of difficulty are two more reading strategies that could aid immensely when wading through tough literature as such.
Part II

After a brief search of Ralph Waldo Emerson, I learned that there was such an occupation as an essayist. Emerson was an essayist, lecturer, and a poet. He stood for transcendentalism along with individualism and he published essays and gave over 1500 public lectures in America in the mid-19th century. Among his essays were

While attending Harvard Divinity School, Emerson’s conviction for transcendentalism emerged. Transcendentalism is a spiritual or philosophical movement which appeared as a response to the general state of intellectualism and spirituality that was present in the late 1820s and 1830s in the eastern United States. A core belief of transcendentalism is in the innate goodness of people and nature; that people are at their best when they are truly self-reliant, not having to depend on others for stability. Emerson was a co-founder of the Transcendental Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1836 and published in their journal The Dial. Emerson wrote of individuality, freedom and manifesting one’s true greatness. In the 1840s, he was strongly influenced by Vedanta (Indian philosophy) and many of his writing had strong shades of non-dualism, or non-duality, a term and concept used to define various strands of religious and spiritual thought. Emerson’s principal concerns were collectivism, conformity, totalitarianism, and social engineering to name a few.


Final Project – The Man Among The Trees – [concept] Trailer

 

So… this is my final project for this class. This time around, I decided to go with something more creepy in tone, like my Audio project.

This project actually started nearly 5 years ago. Back when I was a Sophomore in High School, I picked up a hobby in screenwriting. The first script I ever wrote was the first draft of a horror film called The Man Among The Trees. It was inspired by the Slenderman character, but with my own original take. Since then, I have written 6 different drafts of the script and am currently working on a seventh.

The basic plot is that it’s about a young man who returns to his hometown for a funeral, but upon arriving to the town, he can’t shake the feeling that there’s something watching him from within the woods.

I decided to use the basic concept of this script as the basis for my final project, because I wanted to work on something more cinematic and eerie in tone. Plus, I wanted to work more closely towards something I have a strong passion for (film-making).

The original plan was to have friends of mine walk around the woods and say a few lines that would build up the suspense surrounding “The Man” (in the script, “he’s” referred to as The Figure). Also, before the main title card, I wanted to film a sequence where the main character would walk around the woods in the dark with a flashlight and he heard a twig snap near him. He would then turn toward the source of the sound and a dark man-like figure would lunge at him before cutting to black. Sadly, I didn’t get to film these scenes because the friends that I talked to that said they were available never got back to me when I checked in with them. Thus, I was stuck with about 30 minutes of footage of trees, branches, and a couple of squirrels.

I admit to being disappointed with the video, because I personally don’t feel like everyone is going to get what the story was supposed to be based on a montage of trees and branches. There isn’t really a narrative here.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m being too harsh on myself, but I know that I could’ve made something more unique with this concept if I had more talent in front of the camera and more time to get some more variety in my shots.

By

Hunter Ruland

 


Sleep & Play All Day

          Hello,

I kinda sorta like dogs. So, I decided to make the subject of my final one of my friends dogs. My friend is Chloe, and she takes care of the Star Winnipeg. We call her winni for short. Winni is seven years old, or 49 in dog years. I was thinking about “a day in the life of Winni”, but decided to make it a little bit more simple. My ultimate goal with this video is to make people feel good. Sleeping and playing is basically what winni does all day. I titled the video that, because those are winni’s favorite things to do. She is a very funny, happy dog to be around. She has arthritis, which makes it kind of tough for her to move, but it doesn’t dim her bright attitude she still acts like a puppy when she plays. To create the video I used iMovie, and this time around I was able to adjust the sound a bit more precisely than the other video. The video with my dogs was monotone, at that time I was unsure on how to adjust the sound like I do know. In this video I was able to quiet it down while she was napping or resting, and bring the volume back up while it was a photo of her playing or being active. Overall, I feel pretty good about this video.

 

 

By: Nieman T. Adams-Jackson


Something About a Robot Dog?

It’s important to me that you read this stuff first.

This project was pretty difficult for me, as the only other video editing i’ve done in the past was the pizza one before this, and two other videos for my Spanish class in high school. You can actually watch them on my youtube if you’re interested, but they’re terrible so I wouldn’t.

This project was suppose to make you laugh, wether at the things i say, the cheesy-ness, or whatever. It’s to make you laugh.

But the only thing i could think of recording for this video was my brother’s dog, Chica. She doesn’t really do much besides lay down and sleep all day, so trying to make this not terrible to watch was a challenge. I was originally going to do a day in a dog’s life, but it would’ve just been her laying down all day, plus another student said they were going to do that. So, then i came up with the idea of doing things dogs think about which is what i followed through with.

I ended up accidentally deleting the first video i made the day before it was due, which was sort of a blessing because it sucked. This one is better but not entirely what i wanted, but oh well. So, i recorded my brothers dog, did a voice over, and boom.  This is the end product.

My biggest issue with this video is the voice over when turned to a higher pitch sounds sort of robotic? I tried to fix that somehow but alas, i couldn’t.

Enjoy.


Southern California Day in the life

This project was by far my my most complicated and best in my personal opinion. I original was going to do a continuation of my last work out video but unfortunately not all plans come to completion. My friends who original agreed to act again for the project backed out and told me they had absolutely no time to film something amongst all their finals and studying. My other idea I had brought up was possibly making a video about the day in the life of a skateboarder or a surfer. I ended up using my current situation to boost me into an optimal opportunity to kind of keep my foot in both of the worlds I wanted to do. I was traveling home last week for my grandparents 60th anniversary and figured I would film it while I was home. I ended up helping my buddy who I used to work with shoot an advertisement clip for his upcoming Summer Clothing look book for his company he had just began working with again. We ended up calling our friends and got them over and even got our buddies parents to let us use their Lamborghini. Most of the shots were pretty simple and even got to use Elijah camera which is a pretty nice camera. I used my GoPro to get the underwater shots. He helped me achieve some of the solar flares and told me what angles would look best which was good when filming something so Important, it was nice having someone I could ask when confused and direct me. The whole scene is a mini story in itself. It is a look into the lives of what me and my friends do when it is nice out in Southern California while also helping show off some of the clothes. I added the Lamborghini to give the video an idea of a story (Yes it is a bit over the tope but who would pass up an opportunity to work with a Lamborghini). It is like a small peak into a fun day in the sun, which I am sure we have all had but with my friends from back home! I added the quote in the beginning because it perfectly incapsulates all of our love for the water/ocean and what our summers are like. I think overall I am proud of the final product.


UO VS SMU Lacrosse Highlights/Recap

I originally filmed two games and planned to have my friends on the team, Sam Jarman-Miller (#41) and Chris Damewood (#42) talk about the games through voice over. However, 3 minutes wasn’t enough time to set the atmosphere I wanted to. So instead, I just focused on one game I filmed, Oregon Ducks VS SMU Mustangs. I decided to just show the highlights of this game because the Ducks game the night before SMU, against Simon Fraser, was a blowout win for the Ducks. I wanted to show a close, gritty game between two good lacrosse teams.

I started the video with the pregame rituals, the huddle and the face off. After that I wanted to demonstrate the physicality of the game of lacrosse, because I imagine not many people have watched a lacrosse game or know the rules on checking (hitting) your opponent cleanly. Then, of course, what’s sports highlights without the goals scored. I wanted to mainly focus on the Ducks offensive possessions trying to get my friends on camera scoring a goal for my original storyboard plan with them doing voice over of the game and their teams strategy. Instead I decided to put together a recap of highlights from this overtime thriller. Even though the Ducks were defeated by SMU, I really enjoyed watching them play and filming their games. Enjoy!

Music By Eric Parsons A.K.A Puffy, here’s a link to his soundcloud page below: https://soundcloud.com/puffy-beats