A quick word about my previous posts

1. "Adult Parties and Why I Hate Them":  I went to another adult party yesterday.  After reading The Catcher in the Rye, I know exactly how to describe the way I feel.  They are all PHONIES.  I cannot stand it.  I do not want to become that.  I resent the phoniness.  Yet it somehow feels as if there is no way to become an adult without embracing the phoniness.  I really feel like Holden.  I do not want to be a child, but I do not want to be a phony.  Why are sincerity and sensitivity childish?
2. "Music that I Like": The Hobbit soundtrack.  Radagast the Brown, The Hidden Valley, and The Adventure Begins are some good tracks.  Also, the Game of Thrones main theme is ear candy.
3. "My Dog": I look back on that post with a sad sort of irony.
4. "Rowing Crew: Parts 1,2, & 3": Wow, those posts were long.  They're where I got a lot of my views.  Apparently people are quite interested in how rowing works.  Maybe that's because it doesn't get a lot of coverage in the mainstream media.  Hmm.  There was a Mythbusters episode featuring crew, though!  They were testing if you could waterski behind an eight.  Spoiler: you can!
5. "Sexism in the Media": I would really love to delve into feminism in A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones.  It takes place in a very sexist setting, but there are so many strong female characters in so many different roles.  (Can you say Brienne of Tarth, Arya Stark, Sansa Stark, Catelyn Stark, the Sand Snakes, Cersei Lannister, and especially DAENERYS TARGARYEN, Daenerys Stormborn, Khaleesi of the Dothraki, the Unburnt, Mother of Dragons?) It makes me really happy and I highly recommend the series.  You know what?  I'm going to do a post about just Daenerys next week.  Just because I can and just because she is so awesome.
6. "High School is Awful": This continues to be a true statement.  I am so done with school.  I cannot wait for summer break.
7. "Homestuck": To clarify, the goal of the game is to create a new universe by breeding the Genesis Frog.  Defeating the denizen is necessary to advance to the seventh gate, and advancing to the seventh gate and Skaia is necessary to defeat the Black King & Queen, who are bent on destroying the Genesis Frog.  Reaching godtier is not necessarily a goal of the game but is highly useful.  Also, a warning: Homophobes beware Homestuck.  The most successful ship right now is two girls, one troll and one human.  (Rose/Kanaya <3 OTP) Troll culture does not even have a word for homosexuality.
8. "Cosplay for Those Who've Never Heard the Word": There are so many great cosplays out there, and people love to post pictures of themselves in their cosplays.  Is there a character you like?  Chances are there's a cosplay of that character out there somewhere.  Google it.  Also, if you like cosplaying, I encourage you to try roleplaying.  It sounds dumb and so stereotypically nerdy but it's basically just improv acting, and if you can find other people to roleplay with, that makes it so much fun.
9. "The Castle: A Fairy Tale": Sorry, but I probably won't post the ending to this.  I'm sort of taking it in a direction that I do not think is appropriate for this blog.  If you want to take this idea and run with it in your own direction, go ahead! Just let me know in a comment or something.
10. "Shakespeare Wrote the Best Romantic Comedies": Still true.  Though as a second best, there's a trailer out there for a (nonexistent) retelling of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince as a romantic comedy and it's pretty hilarious. Mostly it's hilarious because that book was the most romcom-like of all the Harry Potter books.

I hope some or all of that was useful or interesting.

Next week I fangirl about Daenerys Targaryen because KHALEESI.

Shakespeare Wrote the Best Romantic Comedies

Shakespeare.  Everyone thinks Macbeth and Romeo & Juliet, the Globe Theater, stuffy old language and boring English classes.

It may or may not be news to you, but Shakespeare's comedies were basically these hilarious, low-brow humor, complicated romantic comedies like you see commercials for on television now.  The nurse in Romeo & Juliet practically only says things that have a double entendre, and the trope "comedy of errors"? A Comedy of Errors was one of Shakespeare's plays.

There's a reason modern adaptations of Shakespeare plays like She's the Man (Twelfth Night) are so popular.  He's hilarious.

I think Midsummer Night's Dream takes the cake though.  Four teens, two boys and two girls, get lost in a forest, magic gets involved, and we get shenanigans.  There are fairies and a really bad acting troupe It starts out that both of the boys like Hermia, and Helena likes the boy who Hermia doesn't.  But then, due to Puck's mistake, the boys then like the girls who don't like them back.  Then, both of the boys like Helena!  Then finally, both boys like the girls who like them back and everyone is happy and the four get a triple wedding with the Duke and his betrothed, and everyone watches a parody of Romeo & Juliet.  Everyone is happy.  The end.

Can we have a modern Midsummer Night's Dream?  That is pretty much the only romantic comedy I would actually want to see.  Get on that, Hollywood.

CAP Hollywood Weekly Reflection Again

I finished our movie poster this week.  I am bringing home the microphone today for my dad to record voiceovers again.  Vu and Leila have been working tirelessly at editing.  I think this project could pull together in time.

Well, I thought that, before someone made the call that our audio is not on par for CAP Hollywood.  Now I'm sort of resigned to the fact that our film is barely going to scrape by.  I stand by my former statement: there was simply not enough time.

I need to get the microphone so my Dad can record the voiceovers.  Other than that, I am not able to do much.  I am not an editor for this project.

Reflection: CAP Hollywood

To be frank, I am nervous about my CAP Hollywood film. We started filming late. We do not have the best quality footage that we could have. My dad, who plays the main character, has no background in acting. The voiceovers that he did, which were good, were lost on Mr. Mayo's microphone. Props, sets, and costumes switched around during the course of filming, and we still had not finished casting by the time we started filming.

This could have all been mitigated or avoided completely if we simply had enough time.

We have had less than two months to do all of CAP Hollywood, from scripting to the public showing. Yes, we did a 60-second film in five days. But that was held to a far lower standard of quality than CAP Hollywood is. The 60-second film took a day to write and storyboard. We could write the script to have only teenage characters and take place in places which we could film at school. We filmed on the school cameras and built the script around the object we had to include.

CAP Hollywood is based on our short stories, which we wrote in English Class. Yes, we could have written our short stories to be better for filming, but the stories Ms. Fillman picked for us to choose between were very centered around adults and took place in somewhat hard-to-film settings.

We had to adapt a short story into a screenplay, storyboard it, cast it, film it, and create a movie poster for it in about a month. It just isn't realistic.

I realize that the dates are not moving. I simply would like to say that we did the best we could with what we had. Our editors are doing the best they can with what they have. We are making the most of our time. We will have a finished product in time, but finished does not mean perfect.

In better news, this week I worked on the movie poster and it looks good. Our group members have had access to multiple computers and are collecting music and such for the film. We do not need lots of complicated editing or special effects, and this week our editors have been churning out a nice rough cut.

Over all, I am just worried about time and the quality of our footage. But honestly, I am not expecting an award, nor do I really want one. Hopefully we can finish this film with minimal hiccups, and I can watch the other films and then forget about this whole ridiculous project.

The Castle: A Fairy Tale

[There sat an elephantine stone castle within a deep forest.  It could be any forest on Earth, but you could never know it was the right one until you were already deep within and could hear the voice.

Not a plurality of voices, merely one, always hitherto unknown by the observer and defying classification.  It has neither gender nor accent, nor even a language.  Each person to find the castle hears a different voice, and reacts according to their personality, but their reactions always lead them to the same outcome.]

Eve was on a hike.  She enjoyed hiking in different forests, and saved up her money each month for a plane ticket to another wood somewhere in the world.  She loved the way each forest was different, but still teemed with life and sound.  There was no music Eve loved better than that of the forest.

She was walking in a temperate woodland forest sometime in May when she noticed the leaves getting thicker.  Not the ratio of leaves to space between her and the sun, but the thickness of each individual leaf on each tree she passed.  The further she walked, the darker the forest became.  She decided to turn back.

Of course, like any person hiking in the woods in a fairy tale when it starts to get dark, Eve became lost.  She followed the path forward and backward, but either way she went she returned to the same point.  She decided to sit down there, regain her bearings, and set off again when she was calmer.  She was no stranger to losing her way, but had always managed to find her way home.

She had just pulled out a map when she heard a voice through the trees.  It sounded as if it was coming just out of earshot.  She decided to find the person and ask for directions.  At the very least, it was safer to walk with someone else in the dark.

As she walked toward the voice, she tried to place it.  She was sure she'd never heard the voice before, but there was something familiar about it all the same.  She continued to walk towards it.  Perhaps the owner of the voice was related to someone she knew.  She was still trying to place a gender for the voice when she stumbled across a clearing.  She'd been so lost in thought that she'd forgotten to watch where she was going.  Realizing how dangerous that could have been, she almost did not process what she saw when her eyes adjusted to the bright sunlight in the glade.

There stood an enormous stone castle, weather-worn and covered in ivy.  Its ancient, stolid foundation held firm, but here and there parts of the battlements crumbled.  The voice seemed to be coming from one of a few towers, which unlike the battlements seemed unfazed by the passage of time.

There were etchings and markings all along the exterior wall at eye level.  Deciding that the voice could probably wait just a few more moments, Eve read the first one she could see, scratched on in permanent marker:

Turn back.

To be continued...