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I tend to update my tumblr blog on a daily basis….
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Out of all the projects that have been presented in my digital media convergence class (and there have been a lot of really good ones) one of my favorites was the silent short film “Goodnight Rabbit” by classmates Meghan Delaney and Richard Donegan.
This short film had a very stylized kind of feel that isn’t always present in other videos that were shown in the class. The storyline is pretty simple, but the greatness in this video is in the actual camera work and the use of the stop motion scene and the foot prints used to represent the loss of the rabbit.
The beginning of the video has some really great scene setting shots in which the audience can obviously understand that the main focus of the film is on this college aged guy who is getting ready to go to sleep. The scenes like him brushing his teeth establish that there is a presence of normality in the world at the time that we are watching him.
As the plot progresses and the main character goes to sleep with his rabbit in hand we enter an almost dreamlike state and we instantly recognize that the rabbit is missing, so there is a plain and simple conflict. The use of the paw prints is a very funny way of showing that the rabbit may have run away where obviously a stuffed rabbit doll wouldn’t actually leave any prints behind. The film then shows how the main character goes on a search to find his rabbit outside in funny places that a stuffed rabbit doll might want to hide in.
The part of the video that I really like was when they actually showed the rabbit coming into the room with a great use of stop motion. This is where the rabbit was made to appear to be a character itself as it could walk and run away by itself if it wanted to. The film overall was great because it had a simple story that was easy for the audience to understand for a silent movie and the camera work was very clear and thoughtful.
This is the complete short film:
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Death penalty abolitionist says the end is near for this immoral act of violence against the violent
By Don Granese
Activist Rick Halperin gave an in-depth look into the realities behind the death penalty and death row in the United States during a talk at Elon University Thursday.
“This is the largest crowd I’ve ever seen to come out to a death penalty related talk,” said Halperin as he began his presentation, “How many of you know a family with a member lost to homicide?” At this time about a third of the people in the crowded audience in the LaRose Digital Theatre raised their hands.
“There is no replacement for a person,” he continued, “When someone dies they’re gone forever.”
Halperin is the director of the Southern Methodist University Human Rights Education Program and has served on the board of directors of Amnesty International from 1989-1995, and again from 2004-present. In his presentation he explained that he is strongly against the death penalty as a final option for criminal punishment, but he made it clear that he is not interested in letting criminals who have committed outrageous crimes be set free.
“We have a right to be safe in our homes, in our schools and our churches,” he said. Halperin labeled himself as an historian before he began his in-depth analysis of the history of the death sentence.
“The death penalty is all about people” Halperin said, “It’s as old and as American as apple pie.” He went into detail about how the death penalty was carried out as a public event in the earlier ages of American culture, but then suddenly became something that happened behind closed doors where the public wasn’t able to see. It was kept out of its view. “The death penalty stopped being a public spectacle in the 1870s” said Halperin. For a time after 1972 the death penalty was completely disbanded throughout the United States.
On July 3, 1976 in the case of Gregg v. Georgia the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty is not inherently cruel or unusual. That is was constitutionally an acceptable form of punishment, therefore reinstituting the death penalty once again after a number of years of the death penalty being abolished and unpracticed in the United States. Currently 34 states have the death penalty noted in their State Constitutions. Thirty-seven states have carried out a death sentence since 1976, with a total of 1,175 inmates being put to death. “July 3, 1976, was also my birthday and I haven’t celebrated it since then,” Halperin explained after taking a pause to think.
He brought up the point that good portions of the inmates that are on death row have mental issues or a form of mental retardation. “These people aren’t really completely there, you know? They’re out somewhere else,” he said, “The conditions for these people are absolutely harsh or worse.”
Halperin brought up case of Cameron Todd Willingham, a man who had been charged with arson and the murder of his three daughters in Texas in 1991 after his house burned down. The man had a history of beating his wife and other serial crimes. He was sentenced to death years later but it wasn’t until after his sentence was carried out that proof was found of faulty forensics. Halperin used this example to portray how simple it can sometimes be to put an innocent man to death. “It’s incredible when you look at how the system works or doesn’t work for us,” he said.
Recently death sentencing in America has declined, with the case of many alternatives such as life without parole. Halperin is just as driven against the death penalty as ever.
“Is this the best that we can do as a nation?” he asked, “What are we doing this for?”
He told the audience, which included mostly college-aged students, that within their lifetimes he thinks the death penalty will be abolished. “This isn’t a human rights issue, this is the human rights issue,” he said promoting the basic moral concept behind his thinking when he simply added, “There is no such thing as a lesser person.”
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“You and me, the homosapiens have an impact on the earth,” said William Schlesinger who was the first Voices of Discovery guest to visit the Elon campus this academic year in McCrary Theatre on Wednesday.
The biogeochemist, who spent 27 years as a member of the faculty at Duke, mostly focused his lecture around the growing impact of excess nitrogen in our current ecosystem and how we may prevent the disruption of our environment now, and in the future.
Schlesinger is the president of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, which is located in Millbrook, N.Y. He calls the institute a “think tank” where scientists like himself are conducting studies to test the condition of the environment. In his lecture he focused around the current condition of nitrogen levels on our planet and how humans are affecting the natural cycle of nitrogen. Recently the levels of nitrogen in the biosphere, which is the area of earth harboring life, have risen greatly. This is due to the burning of fossil fuels, and the many uses of industrial nitrogen fertilizer by the agricultural industry.
These large amounts of fertilizer are used every year continuously to promote a healthier and bountiful crop. The human population is growing so fast that the farmers need to find ways to grow more food for these people. “The population of the earth never would have risen as much as it did if it weren’t for the nitrogen fertilizer,” he explianed.
Recently scientists like Schlesinger have discovered that the high amounts of nitrogen in the fertilizer do not just go into the crops. So the question he asked was, “Where is it going if not in the plants?” His answer was that a number of things happen to the nitrogen in this process, but he focused on three main routes the nitrogen takes before it is transferred back into the earth or as protein for plants.
A portion of the nitrogen enters the atmosphere in the form of ammonium, which is a toxic chemical that can help plants grow. Ammonium in the atmosphere is completely natural, but what is different lately is that there is a much higher amount of ammonium; in fact it’s almost twice as much ammonium in the atmosphere present day produced by humans than what the earth already produces naturally. Ammonium travels in the air with rain and can fall to other locations, but its mostly harmful by staying in the atmosphere because it acts as a green house gas that has a more lasting effect on the atmosphere than even carbon dioxide.
Nitrogen is also very harmful as it enters local rivers and water sources. Schlesinger used the Mississippi River as an example. The large amounts of nitrogen that run off into the river from surrounding farms and from streams that lead in to the Mississippi all travel down to the Ocean off the coast of Louisiana. The large amount of nitrogen by the mouth of the Mississippi creates a hypoxic zone the size of the state of New Jersey. A hypoxic zone is an area of extremely low oxygen. The nitrogen causes a concentration of new algae that sucks up the oxygen in the area. The low level of oxygen present in this area kills off the aquatic life, which eventually harms the local fishing industry.
Nitrogen affects the drinking water and well water as well. The nitrogen from the fertilizer seeps into the ground and gets into the ground water. This makes the water rich with nitrate. Nitrate rich water can be used for the same purposes that clean water can be used for, but it cannot be consumed.
Schlesinger stated that there is reason to still be hopeful when he said “nature can be managed to work for us rather than against us in natural instances.” He cited wetlands and how they are a natural way of turning nitrogen back into protein so that it would not have harmful effects to surrounding environment.
The way that the water containing nitrogen runs off the hills and sits in wetlands is a natural way of recycling the nitrogen back into the earth through the natural nitrogen cycle. Another way that high nitrogen levels present in the biosphere can be reduced is by using organic fertilizers and slowly releasing nitrogen fertilizers. This way nitrogen levels will be lower and the harmful effects of the chemical can be avoided.
For further information about the Cary Institute visit its Web site at:
http://ies.readyhosting.com/contact.html
Mailing address for Cary Institute:
Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies
Box AB
Millbrook N.Y. 12545-0129
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This was our third and final video project that Anna and I put together. The assignment was to create an interview in documentary style. We decided instead of interviewing a real person that we would create and tell the story of Patrick the penguin, a student at Elon University who has a hard time trying to fit in with his peers. We put the most work out of all of our projects into this one. We used two tapes and filled about 1.5 tapes full of footage. We had a very good amount of A roll as well as some very good quality B roll material. Although we took the project in a different direction that most people probably did, we committed ourselves to creating something that followed the format of what the assignment required of us, but also told a story that is compelling but in a way that could still be entertaining and laughable. In the end I am very proud of what we accomplished and I think we will get a good grade. After working with final cut pro software for the past three weeks I feel like I understand how to film and properly edit a good piece of film, and pieces that I am all proud of.
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This is the second video that Anna and I made that we titled “Chinese Takeout”. As the assignment was to create a “silent movie” the actors voices are never heard, but if you watch the movie there are different voices and sounds used to tell the story of two college kids who’s destinies have intertwined and who fullfill the prophecy of their ancients ancestors, by fighting… to the death! We used one found clip that lasts about three seconds after rcieving approval from our professor. The music that we used in this project was all from killertracks.com. We recorded our own voices as the actor’s voices and we even recorded one sound effect with the mic that came from my phone (the crickets). We used the text generator in a couple different places like in the beginning where we used the typewriter and scrolling text settings, then we used then normal text generator in between scenes with the “bad film” filter to make it look old. We put in hours of work on this project and we didn’t just try to make soemthing good for class but we wanted to make sure that the finished project was something we were happy with.
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This was mine and my partners first time completely executing a video project. The video is a music video put to the song Vanya which is an original song I wrote myself. After deciding to use the song we then had to craft a story around it. The assignment for our class was to film and edit the video in Final Cut Pro and then post it on YouTube and WordPress.
The process of creating the film was pretty simple at least in most cases. We did hit a couple problems with getting the film from out tape and onto the computers. Overall I enjoyed the assignment and I think that we did just enough filming that we were able to tell a story with our video and create something that is at least to us a good first start for film editing and filming.
