When you are growing up, there are 10 stages you will reach. Most notably is five. Perfectly balanced towards left and right, with one unifying center.

In life you get just one moment where everything pans out to what you want it to be, and then that moment is gone, but you keep moving on.

This project is representing five to me. Five is the end and beginning of a person’s true story. 5 is the end of a season, the precipice of a new one. 5 is our struggle to be perfect, 5 is the process of winning a battle and losing.

I set up these shots with the intent to bring you into the character N’s story. The original poem was written by my partner, and the music was from Bensound. Together the intent was to give you a miffed feeling. A feeling that something tipped over the edge, teetering and dipping into a point of resolution and change.

My shots were shaky and if I could redo this I would’ve spent more time editing my reaction shots and taking a surplus of them. Despite these self critiques, I am confident and proud of the quality of this project.

Kumoricon is a 3-day Annual Anime Convention held in Portland, OR during Halloween Weekend. This year’s was the 28th – 30th and was accompanied by an uncharacteristic amount of sunny weather.

This year, the Convention had moved from a Dual Hotel Venue in Vancouver, WA, and its Labour Day Weekend schedule, to the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, OR, and an October schedule.

I myself was attending this year, for my second time, as a member of staff. As Photography Staff it was my job to get images of the events, panels, and general happenings going on during the weekend. I was also allowed to go where I wanted in order to get these things done. Typically this meant going into back stage areas, or jumping queues, in order to capture moments from positions and angles that regular people couldn’t get to.

The single best moment, for me, was the Cosplay Contest on Day 2 (Saturday). Cosplay, for those of you who don’t know about it yet, is a mix of the words “Costume” and “Play” and generally involves dressing up in such a fashion as to emulate a fictional character’s appearance, much like people do on Halloween. A Cosplay Contest typically incorporates two kinds of shows together: a Runway Show, where contestants come onto the stage and briefly show off their outfits in such a manner as to woo the crowd while showing off their craftsmanship. The second, is a Skit Show, where Cosplayers come onto the stage and give a performance that is flavorful to their character.

All the while the contest is narrated and commented upon a person, or persons as was the case this year, called the Master of Ceremonies, or MC for short. The MC’s job is to introduce contestants and give Skits context if there isn’t any spoken dialogue as well as offer their own commentary to keep the show interesting. Behind the scenes, there are many staff members doing their part to make sure the show flows as smoothly as possible: Live video crew broadcast the contest to large screens, as the room is rather large and filled with many people while audio and lighting techs make sure that the lights and music are perfectly timed.

As for Photography Staff, we had no less than four people (myself included) covering this event. It always proves to be an entertaining challenge for us. Each of us ends up taking a different approach and while we are shooting the same subjects we get drastically different results, but we all share the same goal. Capture a moment that we will never see again. The lights, the energy, the smiles, the amazing people who all make this happen.

This isn’t to say that the show isn’t without it’s problems. Technical issues, such as an audio tech not picking the right song, can and has happened. Typically, however, the cosplayers just don’t go on stage until their song is played, so when this hiccuped occurred it was but a brief moment. There are also moments where techs take slightly longer to switch things up between performers, so the audience is left hanging in this awkward silence. But that’s what the MCs are for; if transition takes too long they come up on stage and vamp for time, often with comical results.

I chose to do a reading of this poem because I found it very interesting, and I wanted to see what music could do to help add new meaning to it. The ambient song that I chose certainly did that I think. I had never used Audacity before this, but after getting help and watching tutorials I feel like I can do very basic audio editing, which is super exciting to me! Every time I open up one of these programs I have just no idea what to do, and usually tutorials don’t even really help me. But Audacity was so simple to use I am really happy about what I learned through this.

This project was focused on recreating the feeling of new love. From my original poetry piece Getting Lost to the gentle sound of spring rain to the sound of a fire crackling. I wanted to recreate the breathless, gentle and sometimes overwhelmingly sweet feeling of love. This project taught me how to play with gain to bring a track up or down; but more importantly gave me the skills to learn how to record quietly. It took a few takes to get my voice this clear. I edited and played around with this track, but I ended up uploading the track I first finished. My voice sometimes is drowned out by the music, but I think that lends to the overall feeling of the poem–getting lost. Before this project, I had little experience with Audacity, mostly just changing the gain, not importing several tracks. However, I find myself enamored with audio tools and look forward to the net project that leads me to a recording studio. I wouldn’t say that I’ve mastered audacity, but I came out with exactly what I went into trying to create, and that makes me happy.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Chris, this is for you.

credit to bensound for the music track find it here

img “My Love” by me

This project I not only used for my class project but I wanted to help promote the current video game that a company I am part of is developing, Sockeye Game Studios. The game is Called Odd Wyvern. It is a Third person space shooter. What I was trying to accomplish with this assignment was to make a promotional advertisement to let more people be aware of this game that is soon to be released. My overall experience making this track was so much fun. I got to gain even more experience with Audacity than I had before and I learned new sound effects as well as the ones I have used before. I had a few struggles making this track but I did my best to push through them. In my opinion my favorite part about this track is the whole thing put together, each part of it compliments the other the voice levels with the music as well as the effects and sounds I used, all of the music and sound effects are made by members of Sockeye and are part of the game. I hope you enjoy the track and have interest in our video game. please comment with any feedback or questions you may have Odd Wyvern is set for release in December of 2016.

The picture featured below shows Subject Pi, the main character of Odd Wyvern next to the logo for our game.

This is my sound project now I have done many sound based projects before but this is my first one without any video. So the basic idea is that a journalist has discovered a hidden government secret what that secret is and what his fate is will be listen and find out. The mood is supposed to  give a dark and tense environment of  this mans surroundings . I let myself become paranoid by watching freaky videos to get myself in the right state of mind which I think helped in my performance.  I am hoping while you listen you start to feel the same paranoia that the character is feeling. From watching other videos that are tension filled I knew the key aspects of a good tension filled audio project which are lack of music, describe your environment to get the listeners mind into the situation. I whispered into my microphone at 1 in the morning in a dark room to make it seem more real through the voice. I really hope that the fear and paranoia is as strong as i want it to be and while i realize it will not have the same impact on everyone I hope it will at least be entertaining.