My Favorite Blog

Dearest COM 1111 students,

I have decided to preserve one of my all-time favorite student blogs for you to look at to give you an idea of what is expected to receive full credit for blog posts.

Now, sometimes this student had very odd formatting, but I want you to notice a few things:

• Paragraph Breaks: This student includes paragraph breaks which helps my brain understand when the text changes to a new idea.
• Formatting: There are other formatting elements used such as bold, italics, colors, etc. which help me understand her text.
• Uniqueness: This student has developed a completely unique way of completing her blog assignments. I did not "expect" this style of blog submission, but she delivered a unique style that satisfied my basic requirements.
• Humor: You don't HAVE to be funny, but I want you to know that if you WANT to be funny, please do so. This blog can be hilarious at times. Making me laugh while I'm up late grading blog posts can sometimes encourage me to give you higher marks!

Thanks for your time, please feel free to go through and read this blog. We won't necessarily doing all of the blog assignments for OUR class, but we will definitely be doing SOME of them.

Cutting it Close

Its the final count down *Trumpet sounds: BrrrbrBrbrrrr Brbrbrbrbrrrr* 
(Also I have 10 minutes to midnight, which is when this is due... Whoops)

-Rebecca Irons

Below is my final still image video.  I can't tell if this screen is just dirty, thus blurry, or if I'm having eye problems from staring at a screen all day trying to get this done.  (Also, thank god for spellcheck, I've spelled half of these words wrong out of exhaustion, its past my bedtime...)

My video is an introduction to Charcoal Pony auditions.  Purely meant for entertainment purposes and to hopefully make them giggle a little before the auditionees are put on the hot seat.  (Ryan said they would play this video next year before auditions, which is exciting.)

Enjoy!

Update: There is a smudge on the screen, so that's probably why everything is a little blurry.

PS:

Dear Heagney,

Thanks for a fun semester.  Coming into this class, I was expecting it to be a lot less work.  I was wrong.  But trust me, that isn't a bad thing.  All the work I did with all the different Adobe softwares was more than rewarding.  I'm excited to have experience with them before I use them at work in the future.
I hope you're not too sick of Charcoal Pony... However, if you are you're in luck.  This is my last project on Pony!  (I might be more relieved than you are.)

Thanks again,
Becky "The Boss" (who doesn't brown nose) Irons

Obvious Dorothy

After listening to "Somewhere over the Rainbow" for the 5 billionth time, I realized that Dorothy doesn't really say much in this song...

-Rebecca Irons

Fair Use
Fair Use exists so that people can create from old culture, while at the same time the original owners of the content as well as the new creators are protected.  Fair use says that a number of altering projects are okay, such as mash-ups, remakes, cultural references, conversation starters, comentary, example/illustration, etc.  To be sure that you're using Fair Use correctly, one thing that stood out to me was the proportionality.  Be sure to only use what is proportional for your task.

In our videos, we are taking apart and recombining our original videos to create something with new meaning.  This puts our videos under Fair Use.

Video
I used the "Somewhere over the Rainbow" video to make my shorter video clip.  In my version, Dorothy is extraordinarily obvious.

Thats right Dorothy, the sky is high.  Birds do fly high. Good job, sweetie.

What a Letdown.

My philosophy is that you can eat anything you want for breakfast, especially if it has fruit in it.  Banana bread? Mhm. Oatmeal raisin cookies? Yep. Chocolate cherry with chocolate glaze? Absolutely.

-Rebecca Irons

“So Becky, what Comm Week event did you go to?”

Great question, Heagney! It’s a funny story really…

See. I was going to go to the Rock Band tournament on Friday night with some friends and maybe bring a Powerade bottle full of not Powerade (don’t worry, I’m 21). BUT I have to cat sit tonight off campus, so no “not Powerade” for me.  That was my first disappointment. 

THEN I was on my way to the Rockband tournament, fashionably late.  I didn’t want to be one of those nerds who shows up to things on time.  I walk ALL the way to the Cotrell Amphitheatre and there is nothing there.  What.

I could have given up at that point.  It was 7:15, no one was there.  But no.  I’m determined.  I went to the Game Lab, maybe it would be there.  What did I find? Mike, Dr. Hall, some kid I don’t know, and a plate full of cookies.  APPARENTLY Dr. Hall decided to move the tournament indoors for weather reasons and no one showed up.  Awkward.

Not that I’m any expert at gamer tournaments, but I have planned lots of events, and may need to in future marketing or project manager jobs.  I really think the advertisement of Comm week is not effective. Students outside of the Comm department aren’t informed of any events.  I wasn’t even notified that the event was moved to a new location.  Someone should put it on Facebook.  Advertise the week on social media to draw more of a crowd.

This event relates to communication through the video game aspect.  Interactive media is a major here (I think it’s Ryan’s major) which is why they had this event, even if it didn’t really go over well.

I did get three oatmeal raisin cookies though, so it wasn’t that bad.

UPDATE:  If this doesn't count as enough participation in Comm week, I'm also starring in a 48 hour film festival film.  I'm the jogger-girl, love interest. I was clearly born to play this role.  Check out my film debut on Sunday.

Charcoal Pony is WHAAAAAT?

I didn't realize it until just then, I was sick of Charcoal Pony and everything having to do with humor.

-Rebecca Irons

At the beginning of this semester, we were told to pick a topic that we would cary through all our projects in this class.  I chose Charcoal Pony.  And now I'm feeling mentally un-stable.  My voice is getting a little horse talking about all this Pony stuff.  I'm about to make like a mustang and go rogue.

But anyway.  Here is the final product for the Audio Story in which I asked people the question:

Why is Charcoal Pony funny?

Trust me, I didn't expect some of these answers...

Turns out, Charcoal Pony's hilarity is just an enigma.

The Most Interesting Man in the World: Dan the Man

Is Dan St. Germain really the most interesting man in the world? Perhaps, perhaps not.  But he was the only person I could find who was willing to talk to me for 10 consecutive minutes.

-Rebecca Irons

For class, we were required to talk to someone *gasp* for 10 whole minutes *gasp gasp* in person *hyperventilate*. It took me forever, but I finally found a fellow college student willing to talk to me face to face and let me record a story that they tell me.  Dan told me a story about the time he went to a Macklemore concert with his older brother.  His favorite part of the concert was the very end when Macklemore came back onstage for an encore in an alternate persona.

From the 11 minute clip, I had to pick which part of Dan's story was the most entertaining or best summarized his trip.  I figured that I should highlight the part that Dan seemed most excited about during his story, and that was the end when Macklemore came back out on stage.  I trimmed the clip and put different clips together so that as a listener you knew that Dan was talking about Macklemore, and you didn't have to listen to the boring "uhm... yea... what was his name?" parts in the middle of all the excitement.

Dan is kind of an interesting guy, I guess, so check him out below.
Below you will find both the long 11 minute version of Dan's story, and the 24 second version of Dan's story.

Short Version: (0:24)

Full Version: (11:35)

Smorgas Boardwalk

Note: Never live in a Smart House. 

Second Note: Never talk about men/women I'd bring home to said Smart House if my significant other will be listening to my online podcast. Unless they're into that sort of thing. But they're probably (definitely) not.

Third Note: Never tell a woman "Its not a big deal" and "Calm down" unless you really have a death wish.

-Rebecca Irons, Common Sense Expert

PODCASTS. RADIO SHOWS.  AUDIO STORIES.  How funny that my life is crunching together like this.  My graduated friends just put out their first Podcast online at smorgasboardwalk.com (shameless plug) and I was just listening to it this morning before sitting down to write this blog.  I noticed some interesting things BUT FIRST I will address the assigned materials THEN go to infinity and beyond by making interesting connections.

Ira Glass

Ira Glass claims that there are two main building blocks to any audio story: the Anecdote and the Moment of Reflection.

• Anecdote:  Put very simply this is the actual story. It is the sequence of actions in the story - this happened, then this happened, I thought this, she said that, I stabbed her, she died, the end.  This sequence of events formula creates momentum in the story, even if it is the most boring events or actions ever.  There was momentum in my example until the exciting part happened at the end of it.
• Moment of Reflection: This is the point of the story.  The lesson, the main idea.  Why does the story matter?  If there is no moment of reflection, the anecdote is worthless because it means nothing.  You have to have both a good anecdote and a quality moment of reflection to be truly successful in your story telling.

Some of the other really interesting and important things (in my opinion) that Ira Glass said were:

• You trash a lot of what you write/get. AND everyone is Disappointed in their first works, or even if you're not disappointed, its most likely not very good.  (Kind of like when you tell us that our first draft is never as good as a second attempt, Heagney)

• If you're not failing all the time, you're not doing enough to get lucky. (This one is exceptionally poignant to me.  Holy cannoli.)

Radio Lab

Radio Lab - telling stories in different ways.  These guys were nuts but hilarious and probably geniuses.  Their plan of attack when producing a podcast story is to start at the beginning.  A logical place to start. Good.  That's just about where normal ends.

Their beginning starts in a place of unknowing.  As they move into the story, they begin to learn and understand and "know"  a little more.  Then they end with an "uhhh", and unsure knowing and/or unknowing.  This cycle, while wild and unstructured, allows for ultimate creativity and you can tell these men enjoy it.

VERSUS IRA GLASS v.s. RADIO LAB 

For This American Life, the intro was brief.  There was a fun story to pull the listener into the show.  This was followed by a brief outline of what would be talked about on that specific show.  The background music was a little funky and trippy (apparently "trippy" isn't a word according to Blogger, but it is the most appropriate word I can think of to describe the out-of-this-world quality of the music being used), but perhaps that was just for the specific episode I listened to about animals and their impact on humans.  There didn't seem to be a lot of background noise, maybe some car sounds at one point to make it sound like the host was still on location with the story subject, even though he was talking about the subject in past tense.  The background noise and music led the host directly into excerpts from the actual interview which made it really compelling and interesting to listen to.

Similarly, for Radio Lab, the intro music was also a little trippy sounding.  But before the intro music, we had advertisements to support the radio show.  Back to the trippy music.  The into is a little crazy.  And it led nicely into the topic of the podcast which was on sort of strange music.  The hosts were a lot more relaxed during this show than in This American Life.  The background music came from the woman that they were talking about during the first story.  Behind the hosts talking, you can hear the audio clips from the interviews starting to speak until the hosts cut out and the audio clip is the main focus and the loudest sound.  This layering effect was really cool, I really liked the effect it made and the different levels of emphasis.

Smorgas Boardwalk

Here is where I make connections to my real life - interested?  You should be.

Three of my friends who graduated last year put out their first podcast today.  Their show is called Smorgas Boardwalk (they're kind of clever and funny.  It makes sense that they're my friends, birds of a feather and all).  Their podcast was on Smart House (that Disney movie) and Pirates (just pirate jokes, all the pirate jokes).  What they were missing was a lot of what Radio Lab and This American Life has.  There was no Moment of Reflection.  The conversation was good because it was funny, but it didn't really mean anything.  I don't know if I would even call it an anecdote, because there wasn't really much action. Their intro and outro music was neat and fun, another one of our mutual friends made it, but they had no music during their show and no background audio clips.  The background of the show was eerily quiet like floating voices.  Maybe that's good, maybe not.  I'm not an expert.  Basically, these guys need to follow Ira Glass' advice and keep making podcasts and recordings because with practice, they will get better.

(I would like to explain that today's Rebecca Irons quote is a reaction to this Podcast, in which one host makes the severe mistake of talking about his potentially plentiful "romantic" escapades in a Smart House and then his significant other listened to the online show. Yikes.)

Congrats on Baby Heagney!  He looks so sweet and peaceful and not Gollum-like, unlike most babies.  I'm impressed with him already.

Most Babies:

Baby Ezra Fox Heagney:

I AM THE LITTLE MERMAID

Figures, I get both my feet back and lose my voice.  I always knew I was a princess, I was just hoping I was more of a sassy badass like Merida (from "Brave")... Not a boy chasing, half-fish like Ariel (from "The Little Mermaid")...  HOWEVER - A princess is a princess. Give me my A, peasant.

-Silent but mostly mobile, Rebecca Irons

Speaking of fantastic movies… Apparently tonight is the Oscars.  And that means Leonardo DiCaprio has another chance to maybe win an Oscar. Finally. (Check out this hilarious Twitter I found regarding Leo and his Oscar wins)

My friends are all very optimistic for tonight.  However, Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn. (That was the great Clark Gable from "Gone With the Wind", who incidentally HAS won an Oscar.  Not for "Gone With the Wind", but for "It Happened One Night" in 1935.)

Mr. Gable with his Oscar

Enter my Meme.  In the spirit of the Oscars I’ve hopped on the bandwagon of making fun of poor, poor Leo.

Sorry Leo...

***If Leo wins his Oscar tonight, I would like to claim partial credit due to the Opposite effect.  (That effect states that since I’ve talked about him losing, the opposite will happen and he will win.)  If he loses, I DID NOT jinx him.  Clearly he just didn’t deserve it.

Update: Congratulations to Leo on his win, you're welcome sir.

Couples are annoying

Contrary to popular belief, playing loud music in your room fools no one.  We know you’re in there with your flavor of the week/month and my boyfriend and I find it irritating. (Happy Valentine's Day)

- Rebecca Irons

“Becky, How on EARTH do annoying couples relate to your brochure project?”

Great question!

See, my brochure project is on Charcoal Pony. (As if I haven’t already done enough stuff on CharcoalPony… Sorry, hope you love us.) And in Charcoal Pony, there are some annoying couples!  Like that redhead Becky chick and Ryan.  Gross.  They’re the WORST.

Anyway-  Onward to my brochure.

Cover:

For my cover, I will probably put either a picture of a Charcoal Pony, our logo, OR a photo of the whole troupe (as per suggestion of one of my classmates on the padlet).  Maybe this photo:

I think, with some editing, this photo could catch people’s eye and quickly communicate the idea that we are a fun loving group of people who do strange things.  And of course I’ll put CHARCOAL PONY really big on the cover somewhere.  My classmates also seemed to like my tagline “We make sh*t up”.  It is attention grabbing, so maybe I’ll keep that too.

Inside Front Panel:

For this panel I’m going to include things about who we’ve performed for and some stats about performances.  I’ll probably include pictures of us playing some games, doing ridiculous things.  A sample may look like:

WHAT DO YOU MEAN: YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF CHARCOAL PONY???

We’ve performed for plenty of activities at HPU……We draw crows of over 300 people……Grandparents love us…. Etc.

Inside Three Panel Spread:

This section will be split into three columns with photos breaking the space so that it still sort of looks connected.

History:

WHO WE WERE…

*Insert picture of hamburger here*
   - Tell story of name
   - Tell Chronology of Presidents

Members:

WHO WE ARE…

Becky, Fletcher, Ryan, Stuart, Mitch, etc.

*Include photo(s) of troupe/members* Like so:

     

(Teddy & Jared - Our diversity)

Stable Games:
WHAT WE DO...
   - Shoulda Said
        - Explanation for all the rookies
   - Whose Line
        - Explanation for all the rookies
   - Freeze
        - Explanation for all the rookies

I’m thinking that I’ll have a pony trotting across the top of the page to help connect the three columns together and further break the separation of the columns.

Back Cover: 

On the back, I’m going to list the numerous ways that people can follow Charcoal Pony including: Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, Youtube, and in real life.  I’ll also name the hierarchy of power so people know who to contact.  There will be special emphasis on my name since I’m VP (aka business president) and I do all the show scheduling/planning and other boring stuff. 


The worst thing about couples? They have joy and laugh really loud while you're trying to blog.  Please.  Be less joyful.

Mission: Nature VS Nurture

As I stare at these innocent flowers I wonder: Did their parents teach them that it is bad to steal otherpeople's flowers' phones? Or did they just naturally grow to know that stealing is wrong?

-Phoneless Rebecca Irons

Week 5 Assignment: Color Schemes and Nameplates

The Mission: (As if you don't know) Take a photograph of something colorful and natural outside and use it as inspiration for a color scheme and nameplate.

The Location: The freezing, yet snowless, tundra that is HPU.  (Clearly Nido's weather machine is going haywire.  This weather is not extraordinary.)

The Side Note: Let me just say- taking pictures of beautiful and colorful nature things is sorta difficult in the winter. But I digress...

Step one: The Photograph

Believe it or not, I took this photo.  I know, real National Geographic quality here.  The photographic force is strong with this one.

This photo is of some of the few colorful blooming flowers I found around campus.  These particular flowers were found shivering in the flowerbed outside of Phillips hall by the fountain at the end of the Promenade.  I was particularly attracted to the contrast between the brilliant purple color and the bright, happy yellow.

Step Two: Color Swatch

Since, as I said above, I was particularly attracted to the purples and yellows, those were clearly going to be two of the colors I chose to put in my color scheme.  The last color was logically the green of the flower stems.  I felt the green would be the perfect addition to the trio since it tied the yellow and the purple together as the same stem color for both color flower.

I think coming up with the swatches and tints is my favorite part of the project.  Its fun to pick colors out of pictures and play with the colors you can retrieve.

Step Three: Nameplates

Nameplate 1

Nameplate 2

Nameplate 3

Anyone fun and creative won't like my typeface, but I love it. I think it looks very bookish and nerdy, which pleases The Boss.  I liked the aesthetics of having my list of professional/semi-professional qualities separated like you have yours, Heagney, but my need for individuality would not let me use the vertical bars like you had.  I thought the brackets were aesthetically pleasant, and had a book-end like effect for my qualities. 

Something else I was sure to toy with was the symmetry of the nameplate.  I liked the lingual symmetry of using an -er suffix for all of my qualities.  However I was (and still am) increasingly displeased by how unsymmetrical the list is visually.  I played with it for a while but liked the aural symmetry in the repeating pattern of the hard "k" sound in the second and fourth qualities in the list, so ended up leaving the list as it is shown above.

Since I know I'm probably way over the word count (SORRY), I'll briefly talk about how I chose colors.  You emphasized "contrast, contrast, contrast" in class so that's what I tried to do. I always used one of the lightest tints and one of the darkest tints in each nameplate.  The third color could be of any tint as long as it stood out enough and looked appealing.

Mission Completed. Agent 00Boss debriefed.

See you in class.

Photoshop makes me stress eat. (Week 3 Assignment)

I swear this empty, family sized, double stuffed Oreo package was full yesterday...

-Rebecca Irons

Warning: Contained within this post are the agonies and stresses of a Senior college Female attempting Photoshop for the first time.  Proceed at your own risk.

Week 3 Assignment:

Original Photo

This is the original photo that was provided to us.  (Clearly. I’m not THAT bad at Photoshop...) 

As of right now, there haven’t been any edits applied to the photo.  It is free of any layers that would change its appearance.  The photo is grayed out looking and the colors aren’t vibrant either.  I anticipate I’ll be playing with the colors in Photoshop, considering what we did in class the other day. 

I’m a little nervous about using Photoshop since I’ve never really gotten to play with this software before.  But really- 

How hard can it be? 

–Famous last words.

Step One: Curves

(Two Oreo's down.)

For this first step, our instructions were to apply the curves feature of Photoshop to the photo. (I know you know this, but for the sake of writing 100 words…) The curves icon is in the adjustments section and it looks like a box with an “s” in it.  To get to the special auto options, I held down the alt/option key and selected the auto button.  (Like you showed us in class)  This opened up a new window with further curves options.  I chose the topmost option, Enhance Monochromatic Contrast with the snap neutrals option selected.

This option made the darker colors in my photo darker, and the light colors lighter by appearance.  It definitely took out the gray color and made the regular colors more vibrant.  The grass was definitely greener on this side of the curves edit.

Step Two: Levels

(Seven Oreo's "missing")

This second step was to apply the levels adjustment tool to the photo.  The levels icon looks like a histogram.  To apply this layer to my picture, I was sure to turn off the previous curves layer.  I then used the little black triangle and the little white triangle on either side of the histogram to adjust the photo.  I moved each triangle to where their respective pixels began to appear on the graph.

This editing layer also got rid of the grayness of the original image, as well as made the colors of the image brighter. However, the dark pixels in this version didn’t seem as dark as in the image created from the curves edit.  Perhaps that is because I didn’t move the little triangles enough. 

(Personally, I think the levels edit and the curves edit look extraordinarily similar… Which potentially means I’ve done something wrong. Yikes.)

Step Three: Vibrance

(10 Oreo's disappeared. That's 5 servings.)

The tricky thing about this step is that one of the two links to tutorials dealing with saturation and vibrance wasn’t the correct link.  It took me to a tutorial about levels, and I’ve already watched that video. (AKA the 3rd tutorial link under Photoshop and the 7th link under Photoshop take you to the same video.)  That’s alright though, I tried my best. Anyway, ONWARD.

Because the one tutorial about vibrance and saturation said to NEVER mess with the saturation of images dealing with human beings, I didn’t touch the saturation slider.  The last thing I want is this sweet little girl looking like some bleached blonde Snookie.  (She’s a real life Oompa Loompa from the TV show “Jersey Shore”, in case you don’t know.)

I selected my curves image because I thought it was the better looking image with the slightly darker shadows and barely greener greens.  I applied very little of the vibrance adjustment layer because I thought it sort of made the little girl look sunburnt and pink if I added too much vibrance. 

I hope for her future’s sake that she put on sunscreen… She really should have put on sunscreen.

Somehow during this whole process I consumed over an entire row of Oreo cookies and now I need to spend my entire weekend eating nothing but kale and spending every waking moment at the gym. Whoops.

I hope you enjoy your weekend more than I'll enjoy my kale...

"The Boss" is signing out.

Update: After attempting to take photos for my photo story the entirety of my Oreo package is gone... I hope this means I'll be better at Photoshop in the future, because I'm out of junk food.