Week 7: Wrap Up

Hey everyone, long time no see.

This week was probably my most successful, although it might not look like it. I only did two things, but both were fairly involved practice activities.  This was all in addition to running sound on a shoot on Tuesday and Wednesday for some friends who are still at Fox.

The shoots on Tuesday and Wednesday went pretty well, Wednesday went until 5am, but I actually miss those kinds of shoots. I did a good job on sound and from what I saw it's gonna look great (thanks to the eyes of friend-of-the-show David Ridder).

(These are the only pictures I have from set.)

I'm really looking forward to doing post sound on this film. Updates on that whenever it happens.

But onto things pertaining to this blog. For "Record a Podcast", Thursday I recorded an hour and a half conversation with my friend Victor (who incidentally runs my father blog). I have a couple episodes worth of Podcast probably, but for this week I settled on us discussing both of our D20 blogs. This was an easy yet time consuming project, I had a pretty good grasp on how to edit a podcast from my work on "Everyone is John" a couple weeks ago. I'm reasonably pleased with this. There isn't much creativity involved, but content is content.

Next up though is the time stealer, "Shoot Anything and Edit It" and while I cheated because I didn't film this footage, I did edit it and I did shoot something. I'm really really happy with this, it's probably tied with "Everyone is John" for my favorite thing I've made for this blog. I went into detail on what I did for this video, and I'm pretty happy with that portion of the post. I, at least, think it's fairly interesting. So check it out and see if you do too (you won't).

Overall I'm really happy with this week. I only did 2/3 of my intended projects, but if you count shooting for two days and the fact that the two projects I did were practice activities, it adds up to me being fine with it. But what does this new week hold?

17, 14, 9, 18, 13. Wow, that's a lot of Practice Activities, let's take a closer look:

Music Video Without Music (good lord, again?); Write/Record a Radio Play; Take Notes on a Film as I Watch It; Work on Jonesy and the Big Chap; Video Essay.

Well. It looks like a busy week. But keep in mind Thanksgiving is this week, and I don't know when I'll need to start working on post for that short film. With all that said, I'm once again hopeful for this week.

Wish me luck.

Week 6: Wrap Up

Another lackluster week. Sorry folks. Things just keep coming up. It wasn't a total failure though.

I opened this week with a viewing of "Evil Dead 2", a film which I very much enjoyed.  There's also notes that I took while watching the film in that post, if you want to see my thought process while watching movies. I'm not interesting never pay attention to me.

Next up I actually released some worthwhile content with my Juniors Abroad video that I finally got around to finishing. I'm very happy with this and have watched it several times since releasing it. One of the good parts of this project is that it gives me an excuse to go back and finish stuff that I've been meaning to get around to. If you just click on one link in this post, let it be this one.

I also want to give a quick heads up/shout out. Today I saw the movie Arrival and it was very very good. It was one of the best movies I've seen in theatres and a near flawless film in my dumb and bad opinion. If you like science fiction go see this. Or if you have good taste, like me, go see this.

It's late and I'm in my bed so I don't wanna get up and roll my dice, so I'm gonna come back and update this post tomorrow morning with my rolls. Luckily no one reads this blog so that'll be fine.


EDIT:

Okay, here's the rolls:

5, 13, 2, 16, 15.

That's "Analyze one of my favorite songs", "Video Essay", "Watch a movie I’ve never seen and review it ", "Record one Podcast", "Shoot something, anything and edit it ". Well well well. Heads up, I'm filming stuff Tuesday and Wednesday so I'll be busy, but hopefully I'll get a theory activity knocked out.

Peace.

Week 5: Wrap Up

Greetings, folks.

Another week of me slacking off, kinda. I am pretty happy with what I did do, but I am very sad about what I didn't. I only did 2 Theory Activities (though I like them both) and didn't get around to any official Practice Activities. I did, however, do location sound for a pretty rad project so I'm gonna count that as a success. I'll probably post it all when it comes out, and maybe I'll even have some rad preview's for you.

I started off the week with a viewing of "The Evil Dead". My thoughts in brief: If the entire movie was as good as the last quarter, I would love it. Although in a brief conversation with friend-of-the-show Jared Slife, he pointed out that it's interesting because you can see Sam Raimi grow as a filmmaker and find a style throughout the film, which I agree with very much. And the style he finds at the end is raaaaaad. I'm excited to check out "Evil Dead 2" sometime soon.

Next up is my War and Peace, my Les Miserables, an album analysis of Yeezus. This thing is long. I spent well over three hours writing it. I listened to each song three or four times each. And I think it all turned out pretty good! But this is a niche post, you probably already know whether or not you want to read it. Thesis: I think the album is good.

What will I attempt to do this week? I don't know. Let us find out together.

7, 9 15, 17, 2.

Those are "Write about anything", "Take notes on a film as I watch it", "Shoot something, anything and edit it", "Music video without music", "Watch a movie I’ve never seen and review it". I'm excited about these. Odds are I will combine 9 and 2, and that it will be "Evil Dead 2" - the idea behind 9 is that I take notes and then post them here for all to see. I think there has only been one week where I didn't roll "Music video without music". Oh well, maybe I'll actually do it this time. Those are your rolls for week six, and who knows I may post an addendum to week five with some sweet footage of me doing rad stuff from my shoot.

Hasta la vista.

Week 4: Wrap Up/Roll Update

Hey folks.

So obviously this week was light on content. My apologies for that, I got pretty burned out after working hard on the only piece of content I have to present this week. Which, by the way:

Everybody is John was released this week (if I word it like this it makes it seem like people wanted this). So this project was a two parter, and I had a brief write up last week. Last week was putting everything together and cutting out the filler. So what I did this week was massaging the edits to be less obvious and adding all the sound effects. I'm still proud of this a week later, and I've actually gotten really positive feedback. It's an hour and fifteen minutes long, and you can download it and listen to it "on the go" or you can also not listen to it. But I worked very hard on it and it is actually entertaining if you ask me or a handful of other people. Also huge shouts out to Victor, Austin, John, and Joseph for doing this oh so long ago.

But that was it for this week. Yeah I know. I was burned out and got pretty busy with Halloween parties and such. I also was an actor for a couple of Fox students recently, so that took some of my time as well. And maybe I'll post those as they are released. But I'm making up for this lack of content by providing you with an updated roll list.

Roll List v2

1. Write a short story/script 
2. Watch a movie I’ve never seen and review it 
3. Analyze one of my favorite albums 
4. Analyze one of my favorite movies 
5. Analyze one of my favorite songs 
6. Write about a director/cinematographer/etc. I love 
7. Write about anything 
8. Read, write about it if it’s interesting 
9. Take notes on a film as I watch it 
10. Analyze the sound of a scene 
11. Recreate the sound of a scene 
12. Mix a song 
13. Video Essay 
14. Write/record a radio play 
15. Shoot something, anything and edit it 
16. Record one Podcast 
17. Music video without music 
18. Work on Jonesy and the Big Chap animation 
19. Create/record 2 sound effects/build sfx library 
20. Roll a D-6. If even, pick any activity 1-10; if odd pick 11-20

I only changed three rolls, which were "Listen to an album I've never heard", "Write about an artist", and "Change the sound of a scene entirely". Hopefully no one was looking forward to any of those. But I needed to cut down on music ones and wanted to add some creative writing. I'm not big on 9 and 12, but who knows. Maybe they'll be great. Maybe I'll change them again.

Also I'm gonna switch up the rules here. Following more classically in suit with my father blog, I'm gonna start rolling five times, and do at least three, and fit more in if I have time. I think giving myself some wiggle room will be good. Or maybe I will just fail two more times a week. Anyway, enough house keeping, the rolls for this week:

2, 3, 11, 12, 10

Those are "Watch a movie I've never seen and write about it," "Analyze one of my favorite albums," "Recreate the sound of a scene," "Mix a song," and finally "Analyze the sound of a scene". I'm pretty excited to tackle these, maybe with the exclusion of mixing a song, but only because that requires procuring a song. But we'll see what I can get done! See you in a week. And also, days in between that week.

Week 3: Wrap Up

Thus ends week 3.

I ended up being pretty busy this week being both an ac-tor and an award nominated location sound guy, so I didn't end up having as much time for things as I initially anticipated.

But the week started out with a song analysis of Kanye West's "Blood on the Leaves". I think I did a decent job at this "analysis". If you're interested in that kind of genre or anything, check it out.

Next up was an album analysis of Neil Cicierega's Mouth Silence. Unfortunately this post got rushed as that was a day that I was on location sound duty. So I talk a bit about the first few songs and then I looked at the clock and rushed the rest of it. I'm rather disappointed and I'll have to work on not worrying about the clock in the future.

Lastly, yesterday's post. I wrote about what this was gonna be all about in last weeks re roll, but basically I'm editing down a role playing game some friends and I recorded a year ago and I'm gonna add sound to it. And if I want to do this right, I need more time. So I'm extending this activity to be on of this weeks activities. I edited it all down for yesterday's post (three hours into an hour-fifteen) and so now I'm gonna give myself ample days to do the sound right.

So onto the rolls for this week. Automatically I am adding the thing I just explained, and only rolling twice. Those rolls are:

17, and 9.

Those are "Music Video Without Music" (again), and "Write about an artist" (again). Ugh. I keep rolling the same things over and over. How is this possible.

Either way, I'm looking forward to this week. That's two Practice Activities and only one Theory, so we'll see if I can handle it, cause every other week has been two Theory and one Practice.

Au revoir.

Week 2: Wrap Up

Thus ends my most successful week yet, because I did everything (compared to the one other week). It was a pretty easy week what with two theory activities and only one practice, but still.

First of the week was my write up on artist Stanley Donwood. I'm pretty happy with it. I don't often, or ever, write about art but I think I was pretty clear with my points and examples. I really liked looking back through his work. Good artist. Go look if you haven't read that post. Or don't.

Next up was "Write about anything", a loosey goosey activity with 0 guidelines. I chose to write about the fear of failure, something that's been pretty dominant all my life and especially recently. I think it's pretty good. I actually think I did a decent job about being honest and still entertaining. There is no real organization in it, and I mostly wrote stream of conscious which I like to do. If you don't like that though, beware. I don't know. It felt nice to write about.

Lastly was my late, but only because of a prior engagement and not because I'm bad, "Work on Jonesy and the Big Chap". I didn't get as much done as I wanted, but it was insightful and I think I'll be better for it going forward on this side project. Who knows if it'll ever happen.

This week I watched a few things for once. I watch The 13th, a documentary on Netflix - it was great everyone should watch it. Lauren and I also watched through all of Stranger Things. I wasn't sure if it was going to live up to the hype, and while I have my gripes and nitpicks it was an amazing show. I was pleased that it wasn't just "HEY REMEMBER THE E I G H T I E S???" which was a big worry going in. But no, it actually had a reason and used the setting well. I also watched all available episodes of FX's Atlanta. I was quite charmed, so I'll be keeping up with episodes as they come out. That was all the media I consumed.

Now for the rolls.
3, 5, 20 (which requires the roll of a D6, which was a 1)

That is, analyze on of my favorite album; analyze on of my favorite songs (hopefully I'll be better at analyzing music this week), and the third will be a bit of a mix. A year or so ago me and a few friends recorded a role playing game, and I never got around to editing it. Here's the plan, it'll be a mix of "record a podcast" and record a radio play". The podcast is recorded, but the parts that are "in the game" I will treat like a radio play, sound effects and all.

I plan on spending a lot of time on that activity, but if I have extra time I rolled one more time and got 17 (another Music Video sans music). So we'll see if I have time for that, no promises and I don't necessarily feel obligated to do that.

Looking forward to this week. See you out there.

Week 1: Wrap Up

So that was week one. It was moderately successful start. I opened on Tuesday with a poor "analysis" of Between the Saltmarsh and the Sea by Stornoway.

This was an easy and sort of cop out first post, and I realize now that I am probably the worst person to analyze music cause I really know nothing about music. So we'll see if I end up keeping that activity in. Let me know what you thought of it, tell me I'm bad or whatever. It's helpful to have feedback.

Next up was the Music Video Without Music. This one was hard but I ended up with a really fulfilling product. I'm really happy to start working with sound again, but I'm gonna need to sort out my Pro Tools cause I may end up smashing my desk apart if it keeps not working. When it works it's great and when it doesn't it's the most painful thing in the world.

And lastly was Shoot Anything and Edit it. Which I didn't do. I'm really off to a strong start here. Things came up on the weekend and I wasn't really prepared. But no excuses. I'm a vile, lazy creature. I'm gonna try to step it up and be a good boy.

Rolls for this week are: 18(Work on Jonesy and the Big Chap animation), 9(Write about an artist I love), 7(Write about anything)

I look forward to being a good boy again.

The Big Idea

Oh hey. I'm Matt. I'm a recent film grad feeling a little (a lot) lost in this big world. I'm perpetually bored, and feeling creatively empty. I've recently done some freelance things, which reminded me how much happier I am when I have something creative to do. I have a lot of time on my hands now, and I desperately need something to do with it.

A couple weeks ago my good friend Victor announced a little project/idea he was going to start doing. I thought this was a really good idea, so I stole it. I've changed most of the activities to be more pertinent to my interests.

At the beginning of the week I will roll a 20 sided die (that I own from my past dabblings in being a total nerd) and do the activity that coincides with the Roll List.

The Roll List

1-10: Theory

11-20: Practice

1. Listen to an album I’ve never heard and write about it
2. Watch a movie I’ve never seen and review it
3. Analyze one of my favorite albums
4. Analyze one of my favorite movies
5. Analyze one of my favorite songs
6. Write about a director/cinematographer/etc. I love
7. Write about anything
8. Read something and write about it
9. Write about an artist
10. Analyze the sound of a scene
11. Recreate the sound of a scene
12. Change the sound of a scene to make it entirely different
13. Make a video essay
14. Write/record a radio play
15. Shoot something, anything and edit it
16. Record one podcast
17. Music video without music
18. Work on Jonesy and the Big Chap animation
19. Create/record some sound effects
20. Roll a D-6. If even, pick any activity 1-10; if odd pick  any activity 11-20

It took quite a bit to come up with this list, but I'm actually pretty happy with. The list is subject to change, and I'll be feeling all this out over the next few weeks. I will expand on what each roll means as they come up, but I think most are pretty self explanatory. I will make a post about my experience with each Practice activity and I will roll the die three times, for three activities. I won't necessarily do the activities in the order they're rolled.

The Schedule

Monday: Start Activity 1
Tuesday: Post Activity 1
Wednesday: Start Activity 2
Thursday: Post Activity 2
Friday: Start Activity 3
Saturday: Post Activity 3
Sunday: Wrap-up post, re-roll

This schedule gives me two days to work on each activity, which may not always be necessary. Say if I roll three Theory activities, then I may roll one or more extra - I'll bring attention to this when/if it happens. Three Contents^tm a week is my goal, but I may go over or under depending on the rolls and how my week goes. Sometimes life happens. Every Sunday I will do a sort of weekly wrap-up and roll for the next week's activity - where I will disclose if I rolled extra activities.

So that's Project TimeSync (get it, like "time sink"). I'm pretty excited, hopefully I will be good or at least entertaining. Be sure to follow me here at this blog, and also give Victor a follow since it was his idea and he is generally more talented than I.

And the first rolls are: 17, 15, 5