Reflecting for the 3rd time

Our film is coming along great.   Sam is doing some final touches on the editing.  We do not have any narration and some of our shots need to be redone.   Hopefully we will get it done soon.

This week I made the poster for our film.  It was a hard light shot of Ben smirking.  His face faded into the black background.  We took pictures and then I made the poster in photoshop.   Molly was unsure about the title 'The Boy with the Smirk' so she changed it to 'Fight of the Mind'.   I'm not really sure what the title is now, I'm fine with both.  I used 'Fight of the Mind' on the poster only because it was the title that Molly had chosen when the poster was made.  

Next week there really isn't much more to do.   I will help Sam with final edits and getting any last shots we need.  We will probably reshoot some shots to make the story clearer. 

Reflecting on filming part 2

1.Our film is coming along pretty well.  We still need to record our voice overs. Our rough cut looks pretty good so far, Sam has already done some simple color correction on it, but the plot won't make much sense until we get the voice overs in.
2.I have begun to work on the poster and I helped film the intro.
3.This week I will be editing the intro in class and working on a poster.
I wish I had more to say on this, but I do not.  Our film is coming along great.

Reflections on Filming of Things

Our film is progressing really well.  We have almost all of our scenes filmed.  It proved to be difficult to film the bus scene, so hopefully we will figure that out.   One of the challenges is that we are editing outside of school.  Editing outside of school in itself is not a challenge (it makes things easier, because we have more time to work on it) but it is challenging during class time because there is less we need to do. 

I helped with filming.  I was also a background actor in one of the shots, but I'm not sure if that really counts for anything. We also tried to figure out lighting for the poster picture.    I worked on creating different lighting for the various shots.   I also have done a lot of searching for sound effects.  I have found various sound clips (especially for neighborhood noise and doors closing and bus sounds).

Next week we need to continue to edit.  I will work on the poster (we are going to do a variety of designs and then choose) and then we will decide on one.

Our movie is pretty awesome, I think it has a really good story. 

Just stuff.

Not sure if we are supposed to do a blog post today or not, so I'm just gonna talk about a lot of things.

First off, Camp Nanowrimo.  Lets just say I'm wayyyyyyy behind. No word count api for this, so you guys cant see just how far behind I am.  And I don't see myself catching up anytime soon, thanks too a variety of time consuming projects coming due. Which brings me to my next point.

Feature story.  Nothing better than stressful stuff, I can tell you that.  I've got my interviews done, but 8 pages is freaking me out, seeing as we haven't talked about feature stories in like a month.  Freaking out about this is a severe understatement.

Cap Court. Togas.  It's gonna be fun.

Wichita St v. Louisville That game.  I just can't.  I wanted Wichita to win so bad. They were up by 11 and then they just lost.  I can't even tell you how nerve racking that game was for me.  Also can we talk about how their mascot appears to be a bale of wheat?

Space I feel like I should mention something about space, but like my other interests, my life has been hijacked by school.  So space. It exists.  Please enjoy NASA's astronomy picture of the day, Saturn photobombing a picture of the moon.

Books.

I have to admit, for the longest time I wasn't much of a reader.  Of course I liked to read, and I read the books we had to for school, but usually I didn't carve out that much time to read.   Something changed in 9th grade, and I started to read books more.  I also rediscovered the awesomeness that is the Wheaton library book sale and have gotten so many awesome new paperbacks there that I had to rearrange my bookcase to fit them all.   So I've been reading a lot more. 

I've gotten some new favorite authors like H.G. Wells and Diana Wynne  Jones (she wrote Howl's moving castle...which I haven't read yet) I feel like my main problem with trying to find new books is that I never know if I am going to like it or not.  The back of the book descriptions never really do it for me, so I am still kind of hesitant to find/start a few books.  Odd for someone who like to read I suppose.

I will admit that I 100% judge books by their covers.  I hate book jackets because the books without the jackets look older and more unique.  That's also why I like the book sale. The books are old. Well not really old, but a lot of the paperbacks have a couple decades on them. Just recently I bought a hardback copy of 20000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne that was published in 1940. So yeah. Books. Awesome.  I was too lazy to research space so I hope you enjoyed these ramblings instead.

Camp Nanowimo

After recently discovering that the vast majority of my non-school related posts were about nanowrimo, I was a bit hesitant to write another one.  I like writing, but I will say that it's not one of my main interests.  I'm way more into soccer/athletics in general, art, and astronomy. So the idea that I have a ton of writing related blog posts is pretty strange.  Ah well.  I also think its strange to write about writing.  It just doesn't seem like it's always the write thing to do.  Puns...

But anyways.  Since my Nanowrimo was a success, I'm partaking in Camp Nanowrimo during April.  And no, it's not, as I suspected when I first heard about it last year, an actual summer camp.  It's essentially the regular NaNoWriMo, but you get to choose what your goal is and what not.  I'm going for the regular 50k.  For Camp Nanowrimo, you can choose your format too, so it doesn't have to be a novel.  It can be anything, like a movie script.  I'm sticking with a novel, 'cause it's easier. 

My novel for this April will be set in the same world as my November novel, which I'm still editing.   I have the basic premise down, but figuring out certain details, like how far in the future the novel is set, characters, even major yet simple details like my main character's name have proved difficult.   November's novel I knew the name right away.  Well not right away, but essentially early on in writing.   Now that I know I can write 50k in a month, I'm really determined to do it again.  I was planning on saving this novel idea for November, but I've just been itching to write it.  Waiting just a few weeks till April is hard enough.

So yeah. Camp NaNoWriMo, awesomeness.

Nebulous Nebulae

All stars begin in what are known as nebulae, beautiful clouds of space dust that are scattered about the universe.  They are classified into four major groups:

H II regions, which encompass diffuse nebulae, bright nebulae, and reflection nebulae.

HII regions are named HII because they contain vast amounts of ionized hydrogen (I'm to lazy to talk about what that is so go google it or ask Connor).   These form from molecular clouds (also known as stellar nurseries, isn't that just so cute?).  Molecular clouds are actually pretty stable and tend to stick around for awhile, until the universe (quite literally) conspires against them, causing gravitational collapse from shock waves from super novae and fragmentation within the cloud.   By gravitational collapse I mean in specific regions.  This causes the gas to swirl around, creating even more gravity before eventually becoming a swirling mass of hot gas known as a protostar, which eventually becomes an actual star.  The stars formed in HII regions drive away the rest of the gas with radiation pressure.   Only 10% of the gas gets used to make stars.   HII regions last about one or two million  years.

Planetary nebulae

Planetary nebulae form from stars like our sun and those not massive enough to supernova.   When these stars die, instead of perishing in dramatic explosions, they expand slowly outward turning into red giants and eventually become faint clouds of gas and dust known as planetary nebula. Eventually, these nebulae expand further and become invisible, leaving behind only a small white dwarf star.  Planetary nebula are actually really important because they contain heavier elements like nitrogen, carbon and oxygen.   It's elements like these that help make life.

Supernova remnant

These nebulae form after the melodramatic deaths of supermassive stars.   It expands with the shock wave of the explosion. 

Dark nebula

 

These nefarious nebulae are dense clouds of dust that are dark because they block out any light that is behind them. They are all unique, some taking the shape of a horse head, others taking amorphous or serpentine forms.

So anyways, yeah nebulae are pretty cool.  If anyone actually is reading this blog, leave a comment below suggesting a space related topic you'd like to me to do a post on.