The week Missed

Well I didn't actually miss last week's class, I just wasn't feeling well. So I don't have any feed back on what happened. I've been looking at these demo reels and so far I've only found one that I like for editors. I'm wondering what medium(s) we're allowed to use? Only real-life imagery or are we allowed to use some cartoons? Oh well, I'll find out when I get to class next.

Editing

The projects from last week were interesting, some more-so than others, but who am I to judge as of yet? For the demo reel project, I'm having troubles finding a medium. I want to do something with real-life footage, most of my editing thus far in life has been with Japanese animation or cartoons of the nature and not so much with live - I guess you could say - footage. Editing with cartoons is a much easier feat, but I have to break away from that eventually. So I'm not entirely sure what I want to do, but I do have a few songs picked out. The more dominant one so far is 'Symphony of Destruction' by Megadeath. We'll see how that goes.

The Forgotten Week

Looks like I forgot again, but I have been rather busy as of late. Last weeks class was interesting, especially the clips from that movie, I think it was called Coffee and Ciggaretts, not too sure, but it seemed to be an interesting movie. I'll have to check it out. There wasn't much else save for the slide shows on lighting and wot-not, I left early because I had already finished my titling projct. So this is the day we get to present it, so we'll see how it goes.

Title project.

Well, I don't really mind the project but I felt I needed to do a little more for myself. So my project, which is completely done, went a little further than anything else I've filmed, mostly because I spent money on it. More money than I normally would. Don't worry, it was only $50. So we'll see how it turns out, I'm anxious to get real feed back on it. So far everyone who has seen it are friends, and it's said that friends and family make the worst critics. So we'll see what happens.

Final Cut + After Effects + Slow Internet = Epic Battle

I sat infront of Final Cut and After Effects for a total of about 3 hours working on this project. Normally it wouldn't take that long, but the internet was slow and I was trying to look up a tutorial on how to create a certain effect in After Effects. That didn't work out too well. After almost 2 hours, the page wasn't even half way done loading. So I skipped that part, deciding not to do it, and went ahead and created my text effects in AE. After a few crashes and long rendering time, it was time to hit the cutting room floor! Final Cut, I'm happy to say, was a joy working with after one failure and one near death experience with AE. After all was said and done, my project turned out fairly well.

I tried looking for that Samurai movie we watched in class last week, but was unable to find it even at movie stop. The only place I found it was on Amazon and I had no money in my account to purchase it. Though I liked the opening credits to that movie, I prefere a more grungy feel to my video's. The darker side of film, if you will. So thats what I tried to go for in my project. And as for the final project for this section of the class, I want to do something similar, so this was just practice. The real one will be more indepth and time consuming on the After Effects end of things. Anyway, this is Dib, signing off!


~Dib

P.S.
I despise the Mac keyboards. They suck.

last day!!

Hey all! Last day of class! I don't have much for you, save for I still don't have the internet, it's going on three weeks now! Well, I didn't have time to publish it to youtube or anything, but I have a video I'd like to share with you. It's an AMV I'm currently making, it's incomplete, not even 50% but I just figured I'd share it just because, so (if it works) enjoy! Later

This Weeks Shinanigans

Well, I'm still without internet, which is supposed to be getting back tomorrow (cross your fingers!). Other than that, nothing really exciting; I was filming in Ybor today and we had a guy set up his hotdog stand and he didn't have a permit to actually sell them and about six people, including a bum with a broken guitar, stopped and asked for hot dogs. The bum was actually pretty funny, he came by a second time and said: "Give me a hot dog or I'll blow your wiener off." It kept us all from pulling our hair out. A friend of mine noticed that my right break light was out, which sucks because it was too late to go get another one so I'll have to wait until tomorrow to get one, or hopefully the Wally World Emporium (Walmart) will have one. Lets hope. Anyway, thats it for me, take it sleasy.

shitty shitty shitty internet

It's been, as said above, very shitty. Our internet was shut off last week, and won't be back up until next week! Stupid brighthouse sent the bill to our apartment when it should have gone to the school, as I'm in school housing. Those nerds. So yeah, I'm stuck and everyone else is stuck and it sucks. Thats about it, 'cept I had a job interview today at the Health Care Parking Systems of America. So hopefully everything with that will go fine. I needs a job.

Internet has been lost (for some reason or another)

My internet at home has been shut off for some reason, not sure what yet, but it's been off for a couple of days now and it should be up tomorrow or monday, hence the lateness of my blogg post. Anyhoot, so I got my return check the other day which made me really happy! I can eat now! I got a laptop this morning so I can be more moble, so when I got up north to my grandparents house I can bring my homework with me. My grandma's computer can't handle any of the programs cause it's slow as hell. Anyway, thats all I've got today, later.

Nothing new

Sorry for the short post, but there's really nothing new. I had to go out of town on some family business last week which is why I didn't post a blog last week, but I won't bore you with that. So instead, I shall talk about the crazy christian. If you haven't already heard, or have not seen the video, there's this lady and about one-hundred people who attend this church and call them selves christians, and they protest soldier's funerals with signs saying: 'thank god for dead soldiers.' I could go on but it's better if you see:


So that's the crazy christian lady. If you ask me, she is exactly the type of person who give's religion a bad name and is one of the reason's I am not religious myself. Anyway, thats it for me, I'm out.

Oh yeah, if you're a Naruto fan and only watch the cartoon's, here's a spoiler: Jiraya dies. Have fun.

Introduction

I wanted to take a few minutes and introduce you to the characters in my picture. Why? Well, I've got to write about something, now don't I!

Well, these characters are just three of many that have been in my head for about eight years now and I chose these three because the storyline evolves mostly arround them, but there are many others that play major parts. I also have two unique races that are my own, well technically three, but the Vye are loosely based off of the Viking's way of life.

Saerin;
Saerin is a memeber of the Cyenathian race, -she's not an elf- who were the second race of people to come to inhabit the planet. The characteristics of a Cyenathian are what seperate them from Elves; They have longer ears and are set lower on the head, they're an older race and have a better understanding of Kal (magic, Kal means 'Rune', or in some Vye legends Kal means 'Ruin', and for good reason)
When Saerin was eighteen, her villages was plundered by a group called The Black Eye, a religous group that worships the Goddess Almone in brutal and barbaric way and are adament on killing all those that would not follow their way. She was seriously wounded and paralyzed due to a sword wound on her lower back that cut into her spinal cord, her mother and younger brother were killed, her younger sister and father dissapeared. After some long, medieval surgery by Verior Kell, Saerin's wound was healed and she was able to walk again, but would be in constant pain the rest of her life, (Have you ever pulled your back? Yeah, that's what she feels, constantly) it also left a pretty nasty scar on her lower back and she wears a cloak most of the time because traditional Cyenathian armor only protects the chest with a leather cuirass. Some choose to wear additional armor, to protect their legs and stomach more, but after her injury in the battle for her village, Saerin was rarely injured during battle.
After she was healed, she was banished from her village by Verior Kell and was sent out into the world to basically familiarize herself with the peoples and different cultures. I won't get much into it, but she wander's for about one-hundred-fifty years before she finally meets Vareal and begins her real challenge in life.

Vareal Reilm;
Well, I'll have to leave Vareal's bio a little short as I don't want to give too much away, and he is the main character, we'd also probably be here all night, it's a long, long story. I will tell you that he is a human raised Liithian, he spent time in the military, but never saw any real combat. His father was a scholar in his free time who was obsessed with basically everything, but mostly the Liithian race. (Note: Vareal does not know he is Liithian until much later) His father sends him to the holy land Arleo to deliver a message to the current Verior, Terreith, and is instructed to never open it and never loose it and to deliver it to the Verior himself and only the Verior. That's all I'm going to get into on Vareal, sorry but it is a little long and difficult to explain his story. But I will tell you, in the very end he finally find happiness.

Deus;
Ahh, Deus. Don't let the name fool you, the only thing he is the god of is death, destruction, misery, blood, anarchy and basically anything you can think of that is evil. Well I guess thats a lot of things, but you get the point; he's and evil mother-fucker. Is what is known as a Blood Omen, and no one knows where it is he or his companions come from, or what they really are When they first appeared, before they begain their rain of doom, they called themselves the Omen and claimed that they were the rightful rulers of this world. There were originally six Omen's, the main three being Orrin-Kaul, Deus and Venetia. Deus and Venetia didn't like the way Orrin was running business, so they killed him and Deus took his place. (When an Omen dies, the senior amungst them gains their powers) so Deus gained Orrin-Kaul's powers. During the Great Battle (or the Blood War) the Omen's completely wiped out the Elven race and nearly did the same for the Liithian race. (Of course the Vye were no where to be seen) The population of the Cyenathian race was severly damage, but would live on, and of course the human race was scathed, but still existed in large quantities. (I had to have some sterotype) The Omen's got the nick name 'Blood Omen' because of this war, and if you look at the soil anywhere in Arleo, you will notice it has a blood-red tint to it. The battle was so massive and bloody, that the soil has been stained for over fifty-thousand years. I won't tell you what happened to the five remaining Omen's, but I'll tell you that it's not over yet. It's far from over.
Actually, there's two elves that survived. >.>

The Two Swords;

The two swords featured in the picture are Ferrentha and the Elysian sword. The swords are polar opposites, Ferrentha being the sword of Light, and Elysian being the sword of Dark. The names are kind of wierd, but again are opposites in a similar manner; Ferrentha is the word for the Underworld in the Liithian language. Elysian, well to pull a direct definition: 'being of such surpassing excellence as to suggest inspiration by the gods.' Now the Elysian sword pre-dates Ferrentha by over a millenia and know one knows who created it, but the original owner was a Cyenathian man known as Durziel. Verior Kell, who could control the Kal in a way no other was able too, pulled Ferrentha out of the Kal when he was a child to save his father from death.

I had pondered on placing an entry from 'The Scriptures of Almone', but I'm gong to decide against it because the entry is six pages long, and who knows how long this is. So I'll leave it at that. If you have any questions, feel free to ask and I'll answer what I can. Thanks for listening.

~Dan~

This World of Mine

Still nothing new. As I've said, I had a very bad week so I don't have anything to to post, so instead of talking all the time, I'll just entertain you with video's. (if it will work...)

Mostly, I've only had my hand in editing and I haven't shot anything of my own, yet. So here's a couple of video's I made.

Name: 'In Your Face'
Video: Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
Description: A video I made some months ago while I was messing around and playing with the manual effects you can create in Adobe Premiere.



Name: 'Bed of Lies'
Video: Rurouni Kenshin
Music: Matchbox 20
Description: Quite depressing. The video itself is not finished, and probably never will be.


My hobbies include playing the guitar, reading, writing, gaming and just hanging out with people when ever I get the chance. I started playing the guitar on and off some ten years ago but I didn't really start to pick it up until about a year ago. I don't usually try to learn other band's songs, I prefer to write my own, but here is a list of song's I know how to play: 'Kryptonite' by 3 Doors Down, 'Another Hero Lost' by Shadow's Fall, 'The Wicked Witch' by Demon's & Wizard's, 'Fly by Night' by Rush, 'The Rising Fighting Spirit' a Naruto theme song, 'Sanitarium' by Metallica, 'Mr. Jones' by, I belive, Counting Crows, Part's of 'In the Presence of Enemies Pt. 2' by Dream Theater, 'Nutshell' by Alice in Chain's and the Top Gun Anthem. I'm sure there's a few other one's rattling around in my fingers, but they're not too important.
I draw occasionally, but it's nothing really to brag about, here's an image I did for my Principles of Design class:

The piece is titled 'Satire'. The project was to take words and incorporate them into an image with design principles. I won't go into depth, but one of the word's was 'Godzilla', which the instructor almost removed from the list because he was tired of seeing giant lizards. If you can find 'Godzilla', you win.

Also, I've put up, for some reson or another, a video of me playing the opening to 'Another Hero Lost' by Shadows Fall on you tube. I've removed the embeding option, but here's the link:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=8hXY-mt6Z6U

~Dib

First Post

First post of my blog. This is for CS2202 Computer Concepts. My name is Dan Bernard, but you can call me Dib (my initials), my major is Digital Film and Video Production and I am in my third quarter.

~Dib