Voice acting blog

Think about starting one, a blog that not only blogs about your online eandeavours but also the journey (transition) into professional voice acting.

KUH Documentary progression

Don't forget to talk about documentary updates.

Oh and talk about that job role presentation you did in the morning too

Will write when I'm not so tired.

The Documentary Structure and Adgenda

So today was the first day of class and the topic of discussion was about documentaries.

On that note, remember that the deadline for the documentary module is the 12th of December

We watched a documentary called "The Global Warming Swindle" and was asked to deconstruct it, analyse it's techniques and such. It's also good to point out that it was said that we should think of a good title for our documentaries, one that would attract attention, basically the thinking goes that if anyone were to browse channels and see our title, we'd want them to stop and watch.

We were to look at the:

1) Editorial Angle

- Clearly establishes their stand on the topic and constantly questioning the reasons behind the opposite stand. Uses graphics including animations setting a cool and sometimes humourous tone, it keeps the documentary interesting. The B- footage is often of people enjoying the sun or of the equipment that is mentioned in the narration. Most of the experts are filmmed behind books or labs of sorts; makes them look more "official".

2) How the narration develops

- Much like the Freytag's pyramid, the equilibrium is a question that is answered (often by experts with some kind of authority in the matter) and as the answer turns into the "peak" a disruption comes along in the form of another raising question/suspicion which in turn creates the new equilibrium. In other words, the narrator questions why something is the way it is, answes why it is and asks a question that's probably something like "so why is the way that is is like the way that that way is like?"

3) How the arguement is put together

- The documentary had quite a biased tone, however it did explore the opposition's reasoning breifly before deconstructing it and in a way debunking their theories. In a way this gives enough fairplay to constitute the use of polemic arguement.

4) Who and How do you think the researchers have possibly contacted to make the documentary

Most of the experts that appear in the documentary are affiliated with an institute of education, some have even written books, so perhaps they did some secondary research and took note of the author's name and contacted them via the agents and asked if they could discuss some things about the topics raised in ther books in corellation to the documentary topic?

This is basically a brief idea of what I learned or deconstructed from the documentary we watched in class. I need to take these points into consideration when structuring my own documentary (atm on procastionation- it's open to change as per suggestion of the tutor).

I hope things go well!

Ciao puppies!

Treading on shattered glass

Talked to a lawyer Jefferey John, Malaysian, around 20th June, he hasn't worked in Malaysia for 5 years so he doesn't think he can help me, he said he'd contact one of his friends who is an activist and send me her contact details, I still haven't heard anything from him so I'm not sure I should wait, I think I might have to just look for a lawyer *when* I'm in Malaysia. So many things to plan.

I travel to Malaysia on the 15th of July.

More on Documentary

Remember this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCCSEVtkY7E&list=FL-LGEPBIRDhQTh6hq0IvNSA&index=1&feature=plpp_video

http://www.holah.karoo.net/quantitativequalitative.htm

Try to get Marantz PMD660 or better, go to Bad Dog Music see if they have anything like it.

The colourline interview

argh still haven't really prepared, gonna leave a note here so I'll update it later.

Old Dictionary Happy

So today the class discussed documentaries and research for our upcoming documentary next year. I got the fifth edition of "Directing the documentary" by Michael Rabiger and "The art of documentary" by Megan Cunningham to start off my book-based research. I've already got a general idea of what I want to talk about, being a pragmatist, I might end up going for this topic all the way; it's something along the lines of "Being gay in the Sultanate" it's a working title, I still have time to refine my concept.

I know that the Muslim religion plays a lot into why homosexuality (NB: Be catious about religion here) is illegal in Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore but what about locals or natives who aren't from that religion? Isn't that unfair? Being a homosexual myself, this will be quite a personal topic and if I work hard, I'm sure that it could be great.

Remember to try and get expert legal opinion from Joanne Yuan Tan (Need to look into some gay related crime cases and perhaps ask her about what actions could be taken and why some things are justified).

Need to also talk to some sort of psychiatrist or psychologist or anthropologist on the possible reasons for such a majority rejection of the behaviour, the reason why it's still upheld.

Try hard for polemic arguments.

Look into "Cinema Verite".

Demento

Insanity in a nutshell is a person who repeats the same action over and over again expecting a different outcome or something like that.

Last term for my personal professional development one assignment, I had concluded that I should add on to my work bi-weekly, that I should create my own deadlines that were at least a week before the real deadlines and that I should talk less; out of those three, I have managed to talk less, so thankfully studying about and applying the Gibbs reflective cycle had not gone to waste.

Realistically, I have not developed much, in fact I feel as though I may have gone the opposite direction. I have addressed this issue in an earlier blog post and have discovered that this reverse-development could be attributed to the fact that I have gotten disinterested in the supposed repetitiveness of the course. Yet I feel that really is not a good excuse for ennui.

Perhaps next year I will try and view essay writing as a sort of race or life and death situation? Anything to help with the lack of motivation that I am experiencing now that seems to get worse each year.

This may be a cause for concern when I complete my education and seek employment, but hopefully if I keep record of my personal professional development, I will be able to deconstruct my mind and manage the insanity better, or at least come to a sort of compromise.

I must really point out though, however silly it might sound to say that I have achieved a goal by ‘talking less’, doing so had improved communication between the people I work with; it did not make everyone else more vocal as I had expected but it has lessened the stress. I can confidently say that by using the Gibbs reflective cycle I was able to find an issue that may have seemed like nothing at all and change it to improve similar situations.

The Vertically Raised Arm

Now people, I will honestly admit that I do not like working in groups very much; oftentimes it does not end well. I seem to have a history of being teamed up with people who either don’t do their work, don’t know what they are doing or frankly don’t even care, if I’m unlucky all of my team-mates would have a combination of the three, there will of course now and again be that one exception, but never without one of the former.

For my video production, I felt that I was unlucky enough to be paired with a couple of the same people I had work-related issues with last term, the fact that no one else had chosen them is a pretty clear judgement on how incompetent they were deemed to be. Considering, like I had pointed out earlier, I have a history of dealing with these kinds of team-members it is very surprising that I still have so much difficulty managing the group sometimes.

I have often attempted to be a delegator, but I feel as though I may lack the confidence to really go for it and delegate work properly. Being a firm leader was never my strong point but I would like to believe that my leading skills have improved this term, if not leading then dictatorship- to me there is a difference, usually distinguished in the tone of voice or how many prisoners I torture. Jokes aside, I do feel that my unadulterated frustration with grouping with team-members like these have made me perhaps a little bossier over the years and I am afraid barking orders might not be the best path to take, so I feel I should find another method of delegating, one that will not only assure that team-members get work done, but also make sure that they are not stressed out. Of course, according to my team-members I don’t really give that impression, so it might just all be in my mind.

Through the Looking Glass

When I was doing my BETEC in creative media, my weakest subject was how to utilise the technological side of production. Since I am very much a visual learner, I had convinced myself that perhaps recording my audio tech classes this year would help me greatly as I could always review it later to take more detailed notes, as a reminder, or to check back on the class in-case I had missed something possibly crucial.

Doing this had actually worked however there were times when I would be careless enough to forget to bring my recording device. Luckily my sheer enthusiasm for improving myself in audio tech had influenced another student to follow suit:

Yes people that is me and I do sing in the shower (but only to count the minutes I have to leave my shampoo and conditioner on before I rinse). Being in the recording studio next door I would have missed the technological ‘how-to’ in this class but this became one of the instances where recording the session proved extremely helpful and I was able to take notes on applying reverberation effects and controlling gain levels afterwards.

Unfortunately as mentioned before I do have a habit of forgetting to even bring my recording device, so I’m unsure whether or not I could keep up the habit of recording all my audio tech classes, I am not very good at taking written notes quickly from verbal sources, so perhaps as a sort of contingency I should try to improve my listening and writing speed skills so I could catch up with the tutor better. According to my IELTS scoring though, from the second time I took the test, my listening had gone up from 7.0 to 7.5 out of I think 9 or 8 which is nevertheless a good development, even if only slightly.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

I had quite a difficult time debating which topic I should choose to do for my communication concepts two paper. In the end, I had chosen to write about the liberal narrative in broadcasting media, the reason behind my choice being that I had taken too much time pondering on which topic to choose and not enough time doing the work, so I picked a topic by randomisation and stood by it.

I had not done extensive research on the liberal narrative prior to starting the essay and I feel it had probably reflected prominently in the completed work. As a result of rushing the essay I had succumbed to one of the pragmatists’ weaknesses, I used the first solutions I could find, not exploring other sources for a confirmation on the same theory, but looking at many sources for different theories that I would use instantly in the essay if I deemed them useable.

It’s quite obvious that to combat this, I should probably have taken more of a reflector’s approach however forcing myself to adapt to the learning style of the reflector had proved very difficult and I know this because I have attempted to follow a reflector’s learning style for years, the style itself is very reminiscent of the kind of learning my teachers from kindergarten through to high school had tried to enforce onto me and failed; I gave it a try, on and off for about fifteen years, to continue attempting to change my learning style this way would be the basic oxford dictionary definition of insanity.

Looking back on how the year has been and how I’ve been dealing with problems, I’d conclude that I should try to experiment being more of an activist learner rather than trying hard to become more of a reflector. Activists are flexible, like change and they like to try out new things; these characteristics sound exactly like what I said I would need in my previous blog post doesn’t it?

The Tortoise and Hare

So here I am, sitting in my little cramped room, there are an assortment of books and the typical selection of student impromptu “sustenance” scattered from the floor to the ceiling (somehow stuff just manages to stick up there) I am staring at the words I’m typing right now and thinking of what to write next, frantically pulling my hair out and obviously using this vague, haphazard introduction to begin my first blog entry.

It’s a common college student habit to leave one’s work to the last minute (and I’m sure some of my readers, if there are any out there, know what I’m talking about), and naturally this habit is not beneficial, the deadline comes closer and closer, we students rush to get our work done, the workload naturally causes stress and the quality of our work suffers significantly. From the beginning of the college year I had exactly told myself not to do this again, yet my constant reminders only enforced the habit, possibly to a much worse degree than before; perhaps I had accidentally caused a reverse psychology effect on myself? Note to self: “slack-off” more (yes I’m definitely going to be published now).

I used to think that I am, or rather I would have liked to identify as, a theorist or a reflector however, looking back at my actions this term, I think I am or have become more of a pragmatist; this is further confirmed after I’ve taken a Honey and Mumford Learning style questionnaire. That’s not to say that some aspects of the former learning styles aren’t present within me but I think it’s natural to assume that everyone usually is a mixture of all four styles (one style more prominent or lacking than the other). Honey and Mumford had designed these categories to help learners like myself to identify our strengths and weaknesses but I personally feel as if I had failed to utilise the knowledge I’ve gained from discovering my own style.

What knowledge is that you ask? Since I am supposedly more of a pragmatist, my weaknesses lie in my, for the lack of a better word, ‘eagerness’; quite coincidentally my name does actually mean ‘eager lord’, bless my parents. Pragmatists are eager to trying out ideas, they like to work on ideas that attract them and perhaps this is why I have been feeling very much unmotivated lately? Most of the work this term, to me personally felt like a disguised repeat of the last term and perhaps I was simply hoping for something new, how selfish can I get right? If this is truly the common denominator, then perhaps to tackle this problem, I would have to simply try and look at an old problem in a different light? The next time I am faced with a similar task, I should not strive to work harder on it rather I should strive to explore a different way of doing things to keep things fresh.