Another Night of Filming

This is our first shooting with dialogue (improvised). Unfortunately, the words were drowned out by the traffic, so I decided to do something a little different with the final composite. The quality isn't that great because it was a night shot. Got a couple of good moments out of it though. The score is called "Ghosts" by Thomas Newman (Road to Perdition).

Stroll Through Brooklyn

Scent of a Woman

I've always wanted to see the entirety of one of Al Pacino's finest films, Scent of a Woman. Thankfully, it's been playing on Starz lately, so I'm taking some time out of my Saturday to watch...

"He may be Jack to you, son, but when you've known him as long as I have... That's a joke."

Status (Improv)

Yesterday in Improv, we studied status and how it effects characters' relationships with each other.

One exercise that helped us to further understand this concept was the "Blind Teacher" exercise. Each of us went up alone as a teacher of any kind of subject. We had to enter with our glasses somewhere on us other than our face. It's the first day of school and we have to start teaching class immediately. The only problem is, we accidentally walk into the Board of Directors meeting three separate times - each time lowers our status because of the humiliating mistake that we keep making. Between the first and third time we enter, our status goes from an authoritative figure to a submissive and embarrassed figure.

In other news... SNOW!!!

Silent Snow

John and I were feeling a little creative in the late hours of the evening. We took careful advantage of the snow, whopped out the camera and began filming. Let's see where improv gets us.

Spoon River Anthologies

We started our work on the Spoon River Anthologies today in Meisner. The book is full of poems spoken by dead people. Each poem is about one emotional moment, such as irresistible urge, abject terror, or absolute regret. The objective is to express whatever moment our poem calls for while avoiding acting the lines. As John so thoughtfully put it, "Acting and lines are different."

We've got one more Meisner class this evening, so hopefully I'll have more information on which one I will be doing tonight.

More ZBrush Retoplogy Practice!

Original topology

Retopology

Spotlighting

Learned some cool lighting techniques that resemble "helicopter spotlights." Been working on the city-scape to practice rendering environments with depth and fog. Here's another couple of images.

A Day Full Of ZBrushing....

Before.....

...and after!

Paying more attention to bone structure and muscle layout. Also trying to capture the way the skin stretches over tight areas of the chest and joints.

Wednesday

Today turned out way better than I originally expected! Our "One Action" exercises were all very well done. I went up early with my partner, Katy. The circumstance I created for us was such... We were coworkers in an office building. Hundreds of dollars somehow went missing in our accounts and Katy had accused me of being responsible for it; I almost lost my job because of this. My "criminal" activity was to sneak in to her office while she was away and season her sandwich with a little bit of red chile pepper, something that Katy is severely allergic to (in the exercise).

The exercise was so simple, yet so much happened. Within about five minutes, I found my heart racing and my hands shaking. John was very satisfied with all of our exercises.

Two weeks until Midterms... Yikes! We've got Shakespeare and..... well that's all we know for now...

Class Progression (with a side order of snow)

More snow began to fall last night and didn't stop until about 5:30 this evening. It wasn't strong enough to pile up, but it did freeze up some of the sidewalks.

For the past few weeks, we've been practicing cold readings in our Voice class. We've gone through different genres such as fantasy, sci-fi, crime/mystery, political drama and sit-com. Today we did contemporary realism. We had the choice of doing a scene from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or a monologue from Contact. We've all been doing very well with these genres. Can't wait to see what we do next week!

Tomorrow, we'll be learning a new exercise in Meisner called "One Action". We partner up (as usual), and come up with a circumstance that would call for one of us to do something "criminal" in nature. The entire scene is improved. We may get caught or we may not. The purpose of the activity is to live truthfully under imaginary circumstances. If done well, we may find ourselves breaking out into a sweat or perhaps even shaking. John is the only teacher as SFT that teaches this exercise, so I'm excited to see how it all turns out!

The New DHARMA Shirt!

My belated birthday gift from Ariana came in a couple of days ago with a giant DHARMA logo on it!

She also sent me a coaster of a mosaic DHARMA logo, with hundreds of little pictures of characters from the show.

More Snow

The Blizzard Effect

Couldn't get the camera out while it was snowing, but I did manage to get a few pictures. More to come later.

And Another Something Learned

Today I learned just one more of the many rendering features of ZBrush - FOG!! I tested it out on a Cloverfield "scene" I've been working on for a couple of days now.

LOST (and snow)

The final season of television's most explosive drama series yet is starting off on a SUPER positive note! Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse seem to be giving Lost the proper wrap-up it has come to deserve ever since the epic pilot episode in 2004. With approximately fourteen episodes left, I can honestly say that I am liking where this is going.

In other news, snow is moving in... fo sho! Classes have been cancelled tomorrow in preparation for somewhere between 10 - 16 inches of snow. Should be an interesting time in the dorms tomorrow... Laundry anyone?

Officially Snowing?

Well, it looks like the snow is slowly but surely trying to make its way into NY. It was bitter chilly this morning with a thin layer of icy snow all over the hoods of the cars parked in the streets. Unfortunately, the only time it really started to snow hard was while we were in a 9:30 make-up class. By the time class was over with, so was the snow :_(

Don't worry, though; I've got the camera close by in case it does start coming down again, which I have a feeling will be sometime soon.

The Vids

Apparently the Blogger website has some issues playing videos... If a "Currently Unavailable" message comes up on the video, keep trying it. They do work, it's just a matter of having to either refresh the page, try playing another video first, pull the time cursor to 00:01...

The Mailbox

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewkpzrxM5K8

Bloopers

LOST - Season 6 Premiere!!!

When class ends at 5:40 this evening, AJ and I will start preparing to host our very own "Lost - Season 6 Premiere" party which will be held in our room. So far we've got about four or five other fanatics coming over to enjoy the the most anticipated two hours of Lost ever! AJ's even got orderves.