Brian's World

Sad Drama

October 13th, 2006 Posted in Life | 1 Comment »

This blog might not be too long, I don’t know. I have a few random shoutouts before I get going. Based on some statistics, I’d like to say “Hi” to any friends who happen to read this at Olin College. I hope all is going well. Same to those UMass student. “Hello”, I hope everything is going well in the zoo as well. Its nice to know a few people actually visit this thing. Every now I then I get the estranged reader from Spain or China and I wonder how they find me. If you like what you read, or even if you don’t… link to me. Maybe someday I can get paid to blog about my problems. Then you be like wow, he has more problems them me.. i feel a little better. We’ll call it group therapy… and you’re all mute. 😛

Ok, down to business. This is my third blog of the day. Yea, a lot. I feel sad when I miss events of my girlfriends. The longer she has been preparing for an event the sadder I feel. There are two categories that really make me sad, Tiger Times, and Drama/Theater/Performing Arts. Tiger Times makes sense.. the other one probably has confused most of you.

Well, I was in chorus in 4th grade (it was more like a ruckus than a choir) and I enjoyed singing. Like everyone else, I pretended to have a good voice. I happed to be friends with Matt Caron and Adam Zukowski, both of which actually can sing. Well, 5th grade came and I was afraid of everything so I didn’t try out for the chorus. Same thing with bell choir. The problem is, its hard to join a group midway through your career at a school. Like bell choir, they always get new 5th graders.. who joins in 6th grade? Well, I didn’t. I enveyed them when they got to go to the Holiday Stroll to perform, an event I’ve never attended. I was always jealous when they got to put on shows for their parents and the community and skip class to practice.

When high school came the exact same thing happened again. This time it wasn’t with chorus… it was with Harlequins, the schools acting group. Like everyone else I think I can act. (Personally I think I can pull off a mean british accent too) Well, I wanted to be in Harlequins and get up on stage and entertain the masses. I’d never done it before, and when people were getting ready to tryout I went to check it out. I arrived to find everyone there with friends, going over lines. Most kids were in chorus, so they already knew everyone there.. after looking like a fool for about a minute, i walked to the nearby water fountain and left. There was no place for me.

I’ve always been taunted with joining the group. I would overhear friends talk about how desperate they are for males, or how tech crew could really use another pair of hands. At several times, people have jokingly asked me to join.. not understanding I was actually considering there offer.

Junior year I was invited into the tech crew very last minute, a week or so before the play. I was very excited, I enjoyed being part of a larger production, running a fairly large projection TV from behind a curtain. I can’t pinpoint why I enjoyed it but I did. Maybe its the stress and confusion behind the scenes that lead to a great show, or wondering if you’ll get your cue right.. I dunno… but it was fun.

I’ve always been hesitant to inclusion in the drama department, even as a guest. As a director, I strongly dislike when there are bodies around that aren’t doing something, and dislike it even more if they’re not doing something for the show. Therefore, I never really went back stage before to see what is going on. I know I could have, I was known enough in the school to have said “Tiger Times” and people wouldn’t argue.. but no.. I was afraid someone would be like hey you, you’re not in here get out. So i stayed away.

I’ve had a few small opportunities to see how much fun people can have putting on a production, and tonight I knew Katie was having fun.. I’m saddened by the fact I can’t be there to share in the fun.

The saddness grows when I see pictures, because I now understand whats going on. I can imagine the tension and nerves in a huddle or the tense laughter or preparation… all of which makes me think to myself why aren’t I there.. or the deeper question, why didn’t I join.

Goodnight moon

One Tearful Act

October 12th, 2006 Posted in College, Life, Problems | 1 Comment »

Today at South Hadley High School the Harlequins are performing two one act plays per tradition. Actually there are usually 3, but I guess some people aren’t motivated enough to pull it off.

As I write this my girlfriend is on stage, or in the wing. Somewhere close the the stage. She is wearing her cotillion dress from when I took her to cotillion. The only time I went actually, in my senior year. She is wearing makeup, white high heeled shoes, and carrying a purse with some makeup in it.

I am sitting in my chair, staring at the LCD hooked up to my Microform Computer typing on my keyboard.

Do you see what’s wrong with this picture? If you can’t you should be slapped by a digital hand, or shocked.. even better… lol, theres an inside joke there. But I’m in the wrong place tonight. I’m lost, unable to find my way to where I should be. And by the time I figure out where I am suppose to be, it will be too late.

This is very poor timing. I know I could have theoretically taken a train to get home, but the problem is that a. Katie has school tomorrow and b. my parents are coming here tomorrow. If it wasn’t parents weekend I could have gone home and slept in the woods behind my house for the night. That wouldn’t have been an issue, just have my brother throw a sleeping back outside or something and then I could spend the weekend with Katie, but I have parents arriving appx 6:30 tomorrow so I would have needed to speed back here.

I designed my Fridays to be usless, CAD and Basic Skills in Calc.

I’m also wondering when the CS guy plans on teaching me something. I’ve found the course very old. 4 years of CS and Windows Networking has taught me how to beat most things, as well as the scripting it took to write BriSpace.. a myspace clone that lasted about 6 months before people got bored of having unlimited pictures and no html restrictions.

Thats avoiding the topic, I can rely on computers as an “out” when I have something I’m frustrated with. I just really would have liked to be home. Why? I feel I’m letting Katie down, actually.. I know I am. I made a point to attend her musical all 3 times and the one acts last year just to watch her. (Ok, I filmed too.. but that just to get in for free). I don’t want to be the boyfriend who doesn’t support my love, but when its logistically impossible I get mad. I couldn’t focus in class today, sending text messages like no tomorrow hoping for a reply. I was lucky enough to catch her online when I left one class early to skype with her.

Grr, I just feel out of place. I know most people would it is because I’m a freshmen and it happens to everyone, but I like to think I’m slightly different from everyone else. I just hate being far away, and being unable to get back quickly. If I had a car, I would have no complaints. If RPI was located in Western Mass, I would have no complaints. But no, RPI has to be located close to 2 hours from Western Mass, and I don’t have a car/allowed to have one atm. I’m really not in the mood to wait until next year for things to start going the way I want to. Well, I’m going to go sulk some more… and send some more txt messages.

I’ll be online forever, like always, woot woot… please sense sarcasm

Making News

October 12th, 2006 Posted in Studio | 1 Comment »

I’m posed with an interesting question. As of late, a topic of my involvement in a “college” tv news show has arisen. I was contacted by some officers of RPI TV and advised to join their news team, something I had originally stayed away from.

At first I was clueless about the group, I really didn’t know how they operated or anything like that so I decided to take the mellow/shy approach. Attempting to show off or anything like that is stupid if you ask me, people can determine for themselves what skill or lack there of I have.

The group is working to get a news show broadcasting, and with my experience I joined the teams “mailing list”, whatever involvement that brings. I guess my main thinking point on the subject is how would I do it differently. I can say I’ve started a news group before… Tiger Times… but the college version cannot be the exact same.

The main sticking point for me is sources. In HS we were given news, in college we’re given nothing. Working with “TV” people for a little while, I’ve learned the tech-savy people tend to be not so great at finding news. Hence the need for journalists. At RPI, all the journalists are a member of The Polytechnic.. a newspaper. So how do we get news? Whatever is found needs to meet a few criteria.. it needs to have reliable timing, the accuracy of the content isn’t as important as the regularness of it. News also needs to have some substance to it, a college news program needs to run for at least 15 minutes for it to be effectively watched.

Unlike high school, the stories don’t need to have any specific relavancy to anything.. thats a bonus feature if something exists.. but there needs to be stories.

Production time is another critical component. News gets stale overnight, unless you’re breaking a story or taking the documentary approach, news gets old fast.. and by fast I mean by the time you have time to air it, its alreadu outdated.

Few thoughts…. I get these annoying bullitens in my email weekly with 3-4 stories, theres some content. Could any kind of partnership with the Poly be setup to allow for a more visual presentation of their stories? I know most newspaper people hate tv… Ok, I’m alreay out of ideas.

Now for the structure of such a group, I dunno but access to a studio is critical, especially if a “breaking-news” approach exists. Based on my experience, having people work on stories seperatly is very difficult. I pulled off a total of 2 half-hour shows like this and it took about 4 months to do so.. why? Everyone has different deadlines. You end up waiting on stories or footage forever, constantly re-adjusting deadlines and frustrating everyone in the process.

An interesting idea would be a joint-editing facility.. somewhere that everyone could edit together.. better allowing the communication between editors and stories to make things flow.

How would I do it again? Depends..

Daily news has to be linear. Thats rule number 1
Weekly news can be edited, but keeping it linear will save time and ease deadlines

Bi-Weekly can be fully edited and spiffed up.

One problem I see is talent. In most cases, finding a tech crew isn’t nearly as hard as a reliable anchor. Since RPI is mostly an engineering/science school, I doubt finding a passionate journalist will be easy.

Well, I don’t know why I wrote this.. it will be interesting to see how things go. Being the freshmen I know changing the world is not something in my scope….

Time to attack php.. I’m beating phpBB and Gallery2 to use the same login for the Tiger Times portal. I compare it to… using a fork to drink milk