the friedorange years

Ok, so I've done 4 more hours. And I am, by time basis 52% of the way through editing. Err, I was under the illusion that I had edited 70% of the movie, but apparently not. This isn't even human, the whole process transcends to a whole new level of inhuman-ness. It's definitely not like, divine or anything, but I am just astounded by the transparency and clarity of the whole process, it is like blood, my blood. Dripping into the tank that calls itself this short film.

As for the day, good. I felt sleepy for most of the day and ate something at some time which caused me to feel extremely sick. Then I went fine, but I may have also caught a cold. I'll know tomorrow.

I just realised how important music is. I mean, I always thought it was important and I had always recited the mantra, "Music is life," or something like that. But yeah, I am having a revelation. Must try and encourage friends to listen to more music. I don't even care what style it is, as long as they have music in their life. Hahaha... this is archetypal music preaching. I'll stop I promise.

Anyway, I am going to sleep early again because I think this editing is draining out me emotionally and mentally. This is like one of those really personal movies which you make because you HAVE to do it, not because it's just a nice story you want to tell. The actual content is not at all autobiographical, but in it's essence it is me. It is like the one thing standing in the way of me closing one chapter of my life completely. Yeah, so in that sense it's really something landmark. At least for me anyway.

Did about one and a half hours of editing and tweaking this morning, the first section is close to my ideal version now. I also improved the credits by making some of the "un-blurring" transitions more smooth and toning it down a bit - now the names and titles are easier to read.

As for the day, it was good. Nice weather and good atmosphere all round. However, it's quite weird to be having three days of uni... hmm, believe me when I say I actually WANT five days of uni a week.

All in all, it's good. John Mayer is still freaking me out. He is incredible.

Ok, more editing tonight, I'm thinking if I do one scene a night (then spend the rest of the time doing other stuff), I'll be fine. Woohoo, this is exciting!

Spent all evening doing the first post-titles scene. It's now done. BUT, it is definitely not polished, it is a rough cut. Right now I'm too close to the material to think clearly, so I'm going to get up early tomorrow morning to polish it with new eyes. First class is at 12 PM so I'm going to take the 9:45 bus or something like that, which gives me a good 2 hours in the morning.

In this section of the film there are four streams of consciousnesses running at any one time, and when I was editing I found it exceptionally tiring trying to follow all the streams. So, I decided to sacrifice a bit of subtlety and make the main stream of thought a different colour (currently green) so that it is the most prominent. This way, the subplot streams may be ignored or be missed, but it's a price I have to pay for clarity. However, if by any chance someone sees the film for a second tme, they'll be rewarded with more information to round out the film.

Ok, I'm going to sleep early, 5:30 mornings are great, I hope I can keep this up... hahah.

Instead of doing the second scene (the first post-titles scene), I decided to do the end-credits instead. So now the end credits are done. I've done 2 minutes out of a possible 8.5 minutes. So that's almost a quarter. Well, not quite, but hey, it's moving along.

However, I'm not quite happy with the end credits. There's something fishy about it, I think I might do another version and compare the two. There's just something wrong with the one right now, I think it might be really bad for your eyes because of it's constant blurring effect due to the transitions between different sized 'dot images'. Yeah, I might just remove the dots and make the images plain.

So in summary, I did a lot of work BUT it might all be useless because I am theoretically going to redo what I did this entire afternoon all over again (hah!). Ok, now I'm gonna do a scene from the film. I might not do 'em in chronological order though... hmm.

Yup, the first 'Angry' scene is finished. I spent all morning, but it was very effects heavy. I just rendered a preliminary MPEG-1 file, and it's looking sharp. I'm going to run the whole thing through Magic Bullet later for a film look. Heheh...

I'm moving onto the first post-titles scene now. By time standards, I'm 2/17ths of the way through, but by scene, I'm 1/5 in. If you don't count the end credits then I'm 2/15ths of the way through. Haha, either way, progress is being made... slowly.

I just brainstormed for the first scene, now I can do the synching. I have decided to use only one font for the 'stream of consciousnesses' in the film as opposed to multiple fonts.

I also discovered today that I had a widow's peak hairline, and it is a dominant gene to the straight hairline recessive. So I'm not going bald (just yet). Hah!

This is a total sidetrack but, I just went downstairs and had some Evian 'mineral water', and it tastes like soap water. I mean, huh?

Ok, sorry about that, I don't usually complain on the blog, this will be one of the only times I do so. But yeah, avoid it like the plague, it doesn't even taste like water. Or maybe this is what water's supposed to taste like and all my life I've just been drinking something else...

I've finished the Logo Animation. It is not perfect because it has exactly one flaw. However, this flaw is necessary for the animation's being, thus I will leave it in there.

Now I am going to take a break and play guitar. When I come back I'll be editing the Pre-Titles segment of the film. That is, the 'Angry' section. Cya!

So I got up this morning, and instead of doing Part 2 of the Logo Animation, I spent more time on Part One and made it look nicer (i.e. the letters didn't seem to fly smoothly, well, now they do).

Ok, now I'm going to start Part Two. Yeah, this is usually how fast things go.

At the end of Day One I've completed:

Listening, Labelling, Marking and Selecting the music takes.
Part One of the Logo Animation.
Started Part Two of the Logo Animation.

Ok, I'm off to bed now.

I am so slow. Anyway, the first part of the animation (the part with the E, F, F and O) is done. Haha... and it's 9:12, which means that all I did today was go through the music recordings and do half of the animation. No worries though, I want this intro to be wacky, so it pays to take more time.

Ok, back to work.

Just had dinner then. I took a 2 hour nap in the afternoon, so I've animated three letters (E, F and F). Now I'm going to animate the O and do a lot of "spinning" with lines and stuff for the second half of the Logo animation.

I also took photos of food that Mum cooked because it looked tasty.

Cya!

Brainstormed ideas for the Logo animation and just had lunch, frozen Tempura fish. It was good. Now it's time to tween the symbols.

Title is self explanatory, I've selected the [music] takes I want. Now I'm going to do the new version of the Effo Films Logo animation to the new recording.

Just listened to all the recordings, and I made a stupid mistake of recording everything at quite lowish levels, oops. The good thing is I'm getting no overloads, but err, I'm going to have to boost everything. More small posts will follow throughout the next few days as updates on the editing process.

Now I'm going to start selecting the exact takes I want from the recordings, here's how many we did for each:

Angry - 9 + 2 = 11
Duration: approx. 0:45

Logo - 13
Duration: approx. 0:20

Main Theme - 5
Duration: approx. 1:00

Childhood Analogy - 10
Duration: approx. 1:50

Toilet Paper (aka Development) - 6
Duration: approx. 1:35

Metamorphosis - 3
Duration: approx. 1:40

Credits - 7
Duration: approx. 1:00

Yeah, big variations there. Main Theme, Childhood Analogy and Metamorphosis all had a fair bit improvising, which is something we didn't try with the last film. Childhood Analogy stands out as the all out jazz piece in this one, and this one's got a big reach in terms of genre jumps musically. All in all we have 64 minutes and 43 seconds of recordings for 55 tracks, which averages out to be, around an 8:1 'recording ratio'. Not bad.

Today Ajita and I recorded for three hours and got ALL the music recorded. Happiness. Now I have a three day period of hermitism ahead of me, isn't that cool?

There are six themes altogether, and are currently named as follows:

Angry
Main Theme (with tag on)
Childhood Analogy
Toilet Paper (aka Development)
Metamorphosis
End Credits

As it stands our least favourite theme is Toilet Paper, because it sounds like a really distasteful bashing of the pentatonic scale. Metamorphosis tops my all time best Ajita-written piece for film, maybe tieing with Logo.

We also re-recorded Logo, ending this time on a roll instead of a harmonic chord.

I also recorded a cover of Hang (Matchbox Twenty), but it's sorta lacklustre. The recording is really sleepy and has quite literally no pain at all. As of now, posting unauthorised covers of big bands online is illegal, and besides, I can't find a host (hehe...).

I think that's about all that's happened. Oh yeah, I got up early to vacuum the floor, which is always an interesting experience. I also think I caught a cold somehow. That's just wacked, today was really warm, but I just sneezed three times. Grr.

Cya!

He is a prodigy. Wtf, he is awesome. Great acoustic riffs and funny, ironic, light, deep, bitter, random, real lyrics. Hahahahaha... I am rediscovering his music again, starting with his Inside Wants Out indie-release. This guy is only 28 and he has ten handfuls of great songs. Too bad the Grammy Awards suck and gave him a Grammy for quite possibly his worst song: Your Body is A Wonderland. No worries though, go buy his CD's (there are only four I think, but somehow he has like 20 songs which are not on any of his albums... what the...), and you'll hear the greatness. I mean, if you want to be inspired by great songwriting, this is pretty much as inspiring as you can get.

Err, I guess you could check out the official site: http://www.johnmayer.com/

But I've already said everything so there's really nothing left to do but go listen to his music. And maybe learn his songs. And maybe start writing your own.

Rikky thinks I look like Mandark from Dexter's Lab:



Hahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahaha... *mandark voice*

Ok, I think my hair is almost as long as his, but it's not nearly as shiny. No gel and no bowl cut. But I'm working on it.

:op

Great day today, the weather was crazy, but it was an exciting change.

Had the test for PHIL 105, did it in 50 mins, not sure if I screwed up or not, but hey, I'll know soon enough.

Donated blood for the first time today. Really not that eventful, I thought the whole process would be really phenomenal, but noooo... Anyway, I'm a B type, now I'll have to find out if I'm a B- or B+. Hopefully I'm a B- which takes up about 2% of the population (this is really just for people who don't feel special at all and have to resort to blood types to distinguish themselves). Anyway, it was fun watching my blood run down the tube and into the bag. Woah, I didn't know I had that much blood going out of my body. Now apparently I'm going to put on fat (woohoo!).

All's well in wonderland. Five day weekend coming up. The recording session for the score for Watermelon has been rescheduled earlier to Saturday. Dad is coming tomorrow. Great, great. Cya!

I handed my essay in today. That was it. So today was the first err, really "nothing happened" day. Now I know people are going to say, "pfft dude, a LOT happens, you're just not noticing", well, ok, a LOT happened but basically not blog material. Ok, I'm gonna go play guitar, I'm in the mood.

I just realised I listed The Shins twice on yesterday's list. Lol.

Anyway, today was a long day, had an extra 3-5 tutorial, but it was good. I only just realised today that... one of my Critical Thinking tutors is blind. Wow, and he is like, really smart, that is awesome.

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Today we had possibly our last composing session before the recording session scheduled on Sunday. It was good, we nailed down all of the themes but one, which is like 80% formed. Got two smaller packs of Starburst Squirts today, they are good. I also have a sandwich which I think is going stale, I really should have eaten it some time today but err, I forgot.

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The weather is wacked eh? Cold, hot, cold, hot, cold. But yeah, let's hope it'll settle down. That Campbell Live driver's licence issue is just hilarious. Ok, it's actually pretty serious but it just adds to the Asian Bad Driving Myth eh? Hahaha... now that's actually a really bad thing, but if you were to take it as fiction, it would be pretty funny. Actually it's just frickin' hilarious. Ok, sorry, I'm Asian too. But I actually do practise driving and I do take legitimate tests. Really.

Today was a good day, I'm not sure why.

I've been listening to The Thrills and The Shins. I like The Thrills more... they're a bit country-ish though, however, the singer has a good voice.

What is it with 'The' bands? I mean, it's pretty cool but, it's wayy overused now...

The Shins
The Darkness
The Strokes
The Hives
The Shins
The Killers
The Feelers
...

I mean, sure there were The Beatles, The Eagles and The Who but um... it's getting really really generic, it's almost lost it's meaning. Almost like, what if they had called the band "Killers", I mean, maybe it wouldn't've sounded as cool but hey, at least they won't be a 'The' band. It's like movies, it's been proven that 'the' movies don't necessarily make more money than movies without 'the'.

It seems pretty even here...

The movies:
The Godfather
The Lord of the Rings
The Matrix
The Lion King
The Incredibles
The Exorcist
The Fugitive
The Passion of the Christ

Movies:
Spiderman
Titanic
Jaws
Star Wars
Harry Potter
Shrek
Top Gun

I mean, you don't hear 'The Spiderman' (well, maybe The Incredible Spiderman), and you certainly don't hear 'The Jaws' or 'The Star Wars' or 'The Harry Potter' or 'The Shrek' (haha... that just sounds lame...).

Um this is really a pointless topic so I think I'll just stop typing now. Cya!

Here we go, back to these titles. Anyway, finished my PHIL 100 essay this morning. Did my vacuuming and chores yesterday. Uploading the rough recordings for Watermelon from yesterday right now. That's about it really. Oh, and I woke up early and cooked myself a boiled egg. Actually I didn't really cook it, it was more like, 60% cooked. I was going for 80% cooked but I under-did it so it ended up like a slop of oily yellow and white stuff. But it was of an acceptable cooked-ness. Just not ideal.

Great day today, it was nice and warm, like summer... daylight saving ends tomorrow, yay! It is one of my favourite days of the year, when you gain an hour.

Star Mart has a promotion of 2 family bags of Starbursts for $5.00. I got 'em today, they are becoming the official food of our composing sessions for these short films. Today we nailed two themes (like, the exact timings and stuff, woohoo!). Only spent about 1 hour too. I also had another revelation last night about the short film, it's all clear to me now. One other thing is, I had thought I lost my Watermelon folder but yeah, I had just left it at Ajita's, so no worries.

Got an essay worth 20% for PHIL 100 due and a test worth 30% for PHIL 105 on Thursday. Wow, so the work starts now...

Had Academy again today, it was good. We are supposedly going to have some social functions at around mid year. I suggested bowling and Rainbow's End, not sure if they are musical or not, but hey, it would be fun.

Listening to The Thrills right now, hmm the singer has a good voice but for some reason I feel sleepy when I listen to their music. Other stuff include Weezer and Radiohead, who I've mentioned already but yeah, they're great.

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I got this email from the Film Wanganui Trust today:


That is some really sad news... argh, I really hope this whole festival doesn't fall over and that there will still be one next year and the year after and so on. It would be great to see these small festivals develop into firm and strong venues for film work to be shown. But yeah, damn, I was looking forward to that festival this year. However there are still quite a few other short film festivals in New Zealand so it's still pretty cool (just check the links on the right if you're interested).

Here's a cool site: http://www.brickshelf.com/

It's a database of photos of Lego-made things people have made. Some of these people are geniuses... just type in anything in the search box and see what you get.

Ok, here are two new trailers for two big, highly anticipated movies coming out this year:

War of the Worlds (adaption/remake?) - Spielberg and Cruise: http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/waroftheworlds/ (choose Teaser Trailer #2)

Sin City (comic book adaptation) - Rodriguez, Miller and a hint of Tarantino: http://www.apple.com/trailers/miramax/sin_city/trailer/

Yeah, I hope they don't suck. And another one is Batman Begins. Please please please Nolan bring credibility back to this crapped out franchise...

Anyway, good day today, met even more people... errr, this is crazy, I thought it would slow down but there are just truckloads of new strangers coming in by the hour. But they are all pretty cool people though, yes, cool individuals, if I can remember their names. Gotta work on that.

As for classes, they were alright eh, I think I woke up too early today so I was getting sleepy by 12 noon. Today's Critical Thinking Chicken Joke:

One chicken said to the other chicken, "Gluck gluck gluckgluckgluckgluck gluck gluuuuuck!" The other chicken said, "Hey I was just about to say that."

Haha yeah, that's what we do in Critical Thinking, listen to absurd chicken jokes.

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We're doing more Watermelon music tomorrow, we got all the themes nailed (oops actually we did that on Tuesday but I forgot to blog it) and now its just timings, rotations, narration etc. which need to be coordinated. Then comes a 2 week massive block of taking digital photos and doing the new logo animation and intensive editing... which come right in Easter Weekend. Wow, that is just... great timing.
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I've convinced my mum to get new supplies of Mi Goreng so that's good. I've realised that my blog has been lacking in genuinely humourous material, well, my life hasn't really been particularly funny or laughable in the past few weeks so, meh. I mean, I could make up some stupid parallel dimension story like:

Dennis' alter ego steals Dennis' wallet.
Dennis starts punching himself.
Dennis continues to punch himself for the next 30 minutes.
Dennis realises that there is no use punching himself because he is his own alter ego and that he actually stole his own wallet, which is in his/his alter ego's pocket.

Anyway, cya later, take care.

I had a magical craving for Wendy's today. So anyway, I bought lunch. Noooooooooo! I have been pretty money conscious, the most I've eaten out has been like once every 10 days.

Met a movie-buff on the bus today - Steve (also in my FTVMS 100 class). Woah, he's seen a lot of movies. And by a lot I mean, mention any movie and he's probably seen it. It's amazing. He was also a big Radiohead fan, which is always good.

Music: Dashboard Confessional? Hmm, I like their non-amped up acoustic songs more. Screaming Infidelities is my favourite song from them, ever.

Now I need to check out The Thrills? Yeah, and probably a lot more 'The' bands... all is good, PHIL 100 essay and 105 test are both on next Thursday.

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We're scheduled to record the score (or I should just say, music) for Watermelon next Sunday (27th of March). Woohoo...

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On a side note, I'd just like to point out something that happened today. Ok, so far, the Uni 'service department' has been excellent. Excellent in that when you actually see them in person, they are really helpful and friendly. Haha, well today I met a weird/made-me-feel-like-a-piece-of-trash service lady. She is like, the black sheep. Or the bad seed. Or whatever you call it. But anyway, so we have our university ID cards, and if you wanna photocopy stuff, you have to top up your 'card' with money. You usually top up your money at 'top up stations', where you swipe your card then insert coins and that gets added to your account. Then when you print you swipe your card at a print station and the stuff gets printed.

Now here's a little problem: My card has never worked in a swipe machine, anywhere, in anything, ever. It has never worked in the print stations or the photocopiers or the top up stations. There's this massive scratch across the card BUT I'm pretty sure that's not why it's not working. Anyway, so I go to the helpdesk (and there is always a line on the left and a line on the right), and the sign on the top says, "Left line for cash, right line for eftpos." So I stood on the left side, and there was only one service lady (i.e. the weird mean one), who was standing on the left behind the counter.

So here is how it went: (we shall call the service lady Bus Tyre, because I can't come up with anything creative today)

Dennis: Hi, my card doesn't work in the top up station, can I top it up here?
Bus Tyre: Um, if you haven't noticed, you usually top the cards up at top up stations, and people only line up here when there's too many people waiting.
Dennis: Yeah, but my card doesn't work when I swipe it in the top up station.
Bus Tyre: Oh ok. *moves over to the right hand side*
Bus Tyre: Um, you know usually if I'm standing on the right it means you move over to the right so you can be served. And if there's no one in front of you it means you can move up to the counter.
Dennis: What the... *looks at eftpos/money sign, shrugs* *moves to the right*
Dennis: *GETS SERVED*

Pfft... did she just think I was retarded or something? Haha... maybe I am.

So, after raving about how awesome uni is, I thought I should just share the two downsides, one I've already mentioned...

1) Everything costs money (almost everything).
2) Everyone smokes (almost everyone).

Maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but yeah, if you're not a smoker you are at least inhaling a lot of that junk just by being there, there are a lot of smokers (I'm not sure about the stats but maybe at least 30% of the people? Hmm maybe more), and basically you just learn to stop avoiding them. There basically isn't an *outdoor* place where there aren't people smoking, so the only way is to go indoors.

Yeah, anyway, apart from that --> Have you tried Indomie Mi Goreng? Ok, go try them, NOW. Also, the Popular Music lecture today was hilarious. There was one fat guy who eerily knew everything about Christina Aquilera's music, like all her albums and track listings? Yeah, it was unusual.

Also, the Critical Thinking lecturers are very humourous and random, today's lecture was LOTR themed, and one of the lecturers just randomly decided to speak in Gollum's voice for half the lecture. Err, and they also played the soundtrack to back up their powerpoint presentation as well. Haha, yeah, a bit weird but hey, it's quite amusing.

Bus was packed, the last two days have been very hot, and I think I need to buy more packets of Mi Goreng. Ok, cya!

Today was really tiring for some reason. Probably cos I forgot to eat breakfast. But it was good, the tutorials were fun. Yeah, I'm too tired to type anything up right now, cya!

Ok, just thought I should say, if you want quite possibly the best instant/2/3 minute noodles around, get these.

They are the best. And incredibly addictive. Ask ANYONE who has ever eaten these, they are crazy. Like, quite honestly the best student food thing around. Except quite possibly very, very unhealthy.

Ok, that's all. But YOU MUST TRY THESE. We had them when we first came to NZ, eating these packs reminds me of all the great memories. Go Mi Goreng!

Had one hour of class today: a tutorial. It was good, we talked about big evil record labels and how they weren't really evil and were a necessary evil. But then that would make them evil. Ahem, anyway, I think it was more like the tutor talking about it and everyone just sitting there like rocks listening to the sound of waves. And I found out Amos [Ling] is in my tut class (wow, that makes 4 Macleans people in one tut class) - he's doing History, long time no see. That's what's cool about uni - you bump into people you haven't seen in ages and go, "Woah, is that you?"

I finished the pack of Starbursts that I was supposed to save for composing sessions. Oh well, I will get another pack. I did a lot of reading today - there is this massive 40 page tiny font article about the history of Rock music we got assigned to read and it's a killer. But I'd have to say, so far all the POPMUS 106 readings we've been assigned have been incredibly interesting. There was one I read last week about what goes on in pre-teenage girls' bedrooms... it was talking about active consumption of music (i.e. singing to the hairbrush, doing Spice Girls' moves) versus passive consumption (i.e. turning the radio on and blinking twice everytime the snare drum is hit... wait, that is active consumption too... well passive is just basically doing nothing). Anyways, it was good. Tomorrow is my Tut Day... muahaha!

Today is Mischaberg's birthday. Ok, cya. Haha.

Today was good. We worked on more of the music for Watermelon, I *think* this is what we have so far:

1. Development theme (weirdo minor-ish to random major one? played fast...)
2. Childhood Analogy theme (changes key and stuff, goes 'round or something)
3. Angry theme (errr, one point in the chord progression is similar to Running, thus keeping a consistent 'chord progression motif'... lol)
4. End Credits theme (Scott Joplin + Running)

We still have a few more things to work out:
7. Thoughtful theme (reaccuring theme that will define the character of the film), hopefully we will have 2/3 different renditions of this...
8. Waking Up theme
9. Pre-Titles theme (this is where we get to have a bit of fun).

Ok, so we are around halfway done, yay... actually today we only worked for about an hour and a half, it was really productive.

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We had Academy of Strings today. It was good. For some reason everything seems quite funny to me (in a good way), so it's really quite enjoyable. The pieces are fun (there are a few wacked ones), and the people there are cool and friendly. Yup, it's good. Also, it means I get to play my violin at least once a week.

It just occured to me that Ethnomusicology might be interesting. The Popular Music paper I am doing (I know I've mentioned it already... quite a few times...) is just awesome, I should really take more of these music-ish papers. Anyways, the good thing about FTVMS is that there are only two 'media studies' core papers I HAVE to take: 100 and 204. So that means for the rest of my major I can take papers which are about MUSIC, FILM and ART, not all that media stuff. Not that that wouldn't be useful or interesting. It's just quite um, "broad"? Like, first we're talking about advertising then we're talking about movies, then we're talking about films, then we're talking about blogs, then we're talking about documentaries, etc. etc. Ok, that IS cool, but it takes a toil on your brain. Mmm, semester 2 will be great: 10 hours a week, 2 hours a day, and 3 great papers (Italian Film, Film Studies and Drama on Screen and Stage).

Actually I was going to take the German Film paper too but it clashed with my Critical Thinking paper on one of the days. Which is fine with me, the Critical Thinking lecturers make the lectures pretty interesting and quirky. They um... dress up in costumes, play the Star Wars theme song to accompany their Powerpoint presentations and auction money off (the $20 note eventually went for $450).

PHIL 100 is pretty good too - the lecturer talks really slowly so you have ages to write down whatever's important. However, if you've read your readings like you're supposed to, you find that you sorta know what she's saying anyway... but yeah, it's useful. Tutorials are probably the best uni related classes I've had so far - a lot of group work and discussion.

Now there is one cruddy thing: I originally thought you could take out the videos and DVD's from the Audio Visual Library. Turns out you can only watch 'em IN the library on their designated "video cubicles". I was first befuddled by this, then I realised, yeaa.... they don't want piracy DO THEY? Lol... There is also a viewing theatre just in case 3+ people (up to 20-25) wanna watch the same movie.

Alright, I'm off.

Man, 2nd week is over, I've finally been to every class thing that I have for this semester. Yeah, it's basically exactly like how I had expected it to be (uni), but then you realise how much more real it is after it happens.

Anyway, just thought that I should say that, Goo Goo Dolls for some reason are becoming this eternal band for me. There's a lot of music that you hear that you say, "Wow, I like that song," but then after a few weeks you get sick of it, etc. etc. Well, with Goo Goo Dolls it seems like you can play it at any point in your life (my life anyway), and it'd all make sense and connect no matter what. So it's like, 3 yrs ago it would've made sense, and it still makes sense to me now. Although my musical taste and perception has changed a lot in the last 2 years, this is like one of those bands which I can always listen to. Yeah, they're good.

Anyway, right now I'm still basically in the whole Death Cab For Cutie phase. Their songs are just great as soundtrack to life. I find that (in any case) if you combine a quirky verse that is somehow hollow and minimalistic with a chorus that is VERY unsubtle in it's chord progression, you end up with a song I would like. Also I always prefer melodic rather than harmonic chords, i.e. arpeggiated vs. power chords. Also if you have a great melodic bassline I'd like it wayy more.

So the criteria goes: (plus some other things)

1. Unique or very melodic and beautifully smashing bass line.
2. Arpeggiated Chords
3. Unsubtle popular chord progression for chorus.
4. Minimalistic and seemingly hollow verses (in terms of instrumental texture).
5. A really melodious or distinctive guitar solo or bridge. If you don't have at least one interlude or bridge the song loses a lot of points.

Finally the last thing:
7. Good lyrics.

Lyrics are important but sometimes even minimalistic lyrics which have like three words in a phrase or are not very prominent can work very well if you have the right musical basis. There are a LOT of songs which have generic lyrics but rise wayy above what you hear normally just because of their pure musical genius. So um, lyrics come last for me. As long as you can connect, you don't need any deep-muahah-I-am-sooooo-clever lyrics.

Um ok, cya!

Man, waking up early is awesome. You get sooo much more done and you are actually less tired somehow. I dunno how it works, but today I took like a 6:55 bus in and it was good. Anyway, I just checked this 'StatCounter' thing and apparently the blog has just passed 3000 hits. Mmm, that's ok I guess. That's around 15 hits a day (lol!). Yeah...

So I found out Simon Zhou is in my FTVMS core class. That's pretty cool, there are a coupla Macleans people doing FTVMS after all... just not many who are um... obsessively majoring in it.

As for uni, it rocks, I think I am getting into the groove now, the timetable is all working out.

As for Watermelon, Ajita and I worked on the music again, we came up with the two themes for the end credits - two really different motifs which are stringed together - one in the style of Scott Joplin and the other one slightly more serious and dramatic. It's good.

Yea, there's probably a lot of stuff that has happened that I've forgotten to write down... well, memory only works so well. But yeah, it's all happenin'...

Cya!

Nothing has happened between yesterday and today. Well, actually some things did happen, just not exactly blog-material.

Anyway, every blog as a slump period. This is a slump period for the blog. There's just a lot of stuff to do right now so I don't have time to write today, but I will tomorrow or the day after.

Cya! Take care, whoever reads this stuff...

Had two PHIL tutorials today. They were pretty good - the classes are really small - we had about ten people in each. There was more discussion and it was more relaxed compared to the lectures.

There really isn't much to write right now, so I better save the words for the more eventful days. There will be more of those coming along very soon.

Cya!

Man, today I had ONE hour tutorial. THAT WAS ALL. I have no idea why I was so tired. But I was. So I took a 4 hour nap after I got home. I'm still tired.

Anyway, the tutorial was good, it had only ten people. Tomorrow I have 3 hours of philosophy (!), although two of 'em are tutorials. Not bad, not bad at all.

Um, apart from that nothing much has happened from yesterday to today. Went to Ajita's yesterday to work on music, I was underprepared, i.e. had-a-crap-strategy. However we figured out another hopefully better way of writing the music (as opposed to her just writing 'blindfolded' like the first film), so we'll try that this week.

Alright, cya.

Ok, Danny Elfman is a genius. His film music freaks me out AND he worked with my fave director ever - Tim Burton. So anyway, just a rundown of some of the films in which they collaborated: (in no particular order)

Batman
Batman Returns
Edward Scissorhands (which in my opinion is his best score)
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Mars Attacks
Sleepy Hollow
Pee Wee's Big Adventure (haha!)
Beetlejuice
Big Fish

In addition to that, he also scored some other major films:

Spiderman
Spiderman 2
Hulk (uhh...)
Mission Impossible
Spy Kids
Proof of Life
Chicago


Annnd... this year he's doing the remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Yeah, he's really awesome, check out this site for more info: http://www.bluntinstrument.org.uk/elfman/

Alright, that's all for now.

Tagboard somehow is screwing up my layout ONLY on Internet Explorer. So I took it off. Grrr. Tagboard is actually really cool but for some reason my page is all screwed up and no one else's is. Maybe I have some really screwed up code in my Tagboard, but it looks identical to the other ones. Damn, I'll figure it out some day.

In other news, Uni was good today except it rained and I forgot to bring an unbrella. Umm... the Critical Thinking lecturers are just plain weird (in a good way). One has a lisp plus talking difficulty thing in which he'd sometimes say particular words like five times, almost as if it was a hurdle (and the last time he says it is always really high pitched), while the other lecturer just stared at one place the whole time and never blinked or looked elsewhere. However, they cracked 'in jokes' throughout the whole lecture and were pretty enthusiastic about the subject. So far so good.

Argh crap crap crap if I had a car or um a full licence it would be great right now. So anyways I was planning to go to a charity concert but suddenly realised that no one I know (who has a full licence) is going!?! Very annoying when you can't drive yourself. Grrrrrr.

Uni is getting less tiring, I think my body is adjusting to the environment and lifestyle. By next week I should be fine. First two days were exhausting though.

Just received a post card from ANZFFT informing me that they had indeed received Epilogue and that results will be made public on April 28th (I think). They extended the deadline by one month to April 1st.

Today was good, had my second PHIL 100 lecture, I'm starting to get the hang of things now. Library lecture halls are so much nicer than the HSB ones - less steep and nice and new.

Also had my first FTVMS 100 lecture. Woah, massive class, it was crazy. Although sort of introductory and boring, watching clips throughout the lecture was pretty cool, whenever the lecturer wanted to prove a point he'd just play random snippets from media. Today's selection: Billy Connelly's World Tour of NZ, Kill Bill Vol. 1, The Office (BBC) and Super Size Me.

I think once you get the hang of things it gets way less tiring. The first week is like an adjustment period. Except there are a lot of course readings, although most of them are fairly interesting.

Ok, here we go....

Tuesday: Had my first lecture. Philosophy 100. Big class, lecturer was pretty good, talked really slow but made perfect sense so there was no trouble copying notes down. Got an iPod Shuffle. Met Ajita (who lives 5 mins from the Music Suite), Yuen (who bus-trains to Uni), Katherine (who was in my form class and is doing BPlan), Nixon (who's doing Politics), and a lot of 6th form leavers (Kelly, Jenny, etc.). Also met and shook hands with a lot of people, but never once saw them again. Heh... you say hi, they say hi, you introduce yourself and vice versa, then the next day you walk into the lecture and everyone's sitting in a different place again.

Um, new people: Met one guy who was a dick and ignored me and met another friendly person who began analysing my psychological 'make-up' (he was a Psychology/Philosophy double major). Also met someone at the bus line who took part in the 48 Hour Film Fest last year.

So far, iTunes has been pretty good, working on a Windows system without being a slug. The stock earphones that came with the Shuffle are satisfactory, I think I'm going to keep them for now.

Today: Had my critical thinking PHIL 105 class today. Big class, I didn't get a copy of the survey (grr). The two lecturers were genuinely trying to be interesting, but in the end the course still didn't sound very interesting. HOWEVER, it seems to be fairly manageable and do-able.

I had my POPMUS 106 lecture today. This is basically the history and study of popular music and the popular music industry. When I say popular I don't mean Pop as in, the tiny genre, I basically mean everything from rock to reggae to punk to hip hip to metal. It was a pretty awesome lecture. Basically everything was interesting and the class was smaller too (under 100 people?). Lol, yeah, it was good. However, the course reading load is huge. It's really dense too, I mean, the language. However, if you ever wanna like, you know, 'Pop Music 101' (well in this case it's 106), this is the course. The lecture was basically about 1 and a half hours of talking about different genres and radio stations/record companies, then 30 minutes of listening to music to illustrate the lecturer's point. Cool stuff.

Umm... bus rides are better now, music makes it go by a lot faster.