My Project- Ad Plays

So what I'm doing is writing four plays based on advertisements I found in the city. I have two done so far, one about two lesbian girls coming out at school and another is a monologue about stories in my life all revolving around the shoes that I wore. I am going to finish all four by Monday and get actors to start acting them.

10 Tankas

Here are ten of the tanka I wrote. These, I think, are the best in the pile of crap.

It is cold in here

I should have brought a jacket,

Or at least long pants.

I hope tomorrow is warm

Because don’t we live in hell?

The rain has started

But that is fine, I like it.

My hat keeps me warm

And I sit under cover

But still feeling a drizzle

Sometimes I wonder,

If there is another me

I wonder if his life sucks.

If not then I’ll get mad.

If so then I might smile.

Am I ever done?

Because it all seems endless

I guess when it ends,

I’ll sing another song.

But for now it is just so far.

My life is no show.

There is no plot of climax

Only an ending

Not even a good one

Reality is no show.

I am writing,

It’s poetry.

Tanka.

Would you read it?

No? That’s okay.

Anyone can write

It isn’t that hard.

Just a pen and paper

Making art?

Who cares?

Fifteen years of suck

So far, that has been my life.

It’ll get better

People always promise me.

I want to believe them.

Why do I feel blue?

Is there a reason for this?

Maybe it’s just life.

Or maybe it’s just my life.

Anyway, how are you?

The telephone rings.

But I don’t want to pickup.

I’ll just let if go.

Over and over again

Until I decide to die.

NYC Trip

I thought I'd stick to writing in this trip. No use in trying something totally out of the box and there is a lot I can do with writing. I had an idea that involved talking to people on the street bu I figured that if I involved the public then I would have to stop very often and it doesn't seem logically to be doing that when I'm part of a moving pack of students. So what I've decided to do is to write down phrases I like from advertisements and newspapers since that is no too hard. I can do a lot with that, make it into some piece about humanity as a whole, then somehow tie it back to magnet, or just find some inspiration for something inside of what I get.

Tanka

So tanka is this form of Japanese poetry that is becoming more and more popular among English literature. There is a pattern with the syllables where it is divided into lines of 5-7-5-7-7. This is not always the case though because some styles tanka are free form but the basic idea is that they are short poems that can be said in two breaths when read aloud. Tanka poems don't usually have titles and are many are based off of a single memory that is expanded to the five lines.
Sanford Goldstein is this really cool American writer who started writing tanka and haiku before it was a common thing. She did this longer extension of tanka where each stanza is a tanka poem. She also has a bunch of normal tanka poems in a book that she had published.

Questions 2

1) How much time did you spend working?
I spent all the STAC periods doing something toward my project and then added I spent maybe 5 hours editing and another 4 trying to fix the problem.
2) How much time did you spend thinking about the work - sort of sitting there and staring at it, or listening to it over and over again, etc.?
Well putting a number on that is hard because I've had the idea for weeks before and I had been wanting to do it for a project for a while. But I spent a day collecting all of the little thoughts I had and making it into an actual plan.
3) How much time did you spend doing other stuff that seems like work to that make you think you're working but you're not?
I spent time trying to fix an editing issues that was never fixed and I feel that was a lot of wasted time.
4) How much time did you spend socializing?
Not much, I really took an independent approach to this. I might finish ten of fifteen minutes early and then spend that time talking but other than that I didn't talk much at all.
5) How did you use your community?
I really didn't much. I told people about my idea so that they could praise me but if I had taken into consideration other people's inputs then I would have never finished.
6) Rip apart your awful project and how did such a disaster happen?
I decided to experiment. This whole process was an experiment to see what I could do but it never was even able to play. I should have just done a script and try to act it out, at least I could have been able to show something.
7) You've completed a step on your path. What is your next step?
My next step is to try again, some other time. I learned from this, and now next time I do something like this I know not to use window movie maker and I know to spend more time in recording the voices.

Questions 1

1) You've worked on a group film and on your own. In which situation are you most comfortable - group or solo? Which do you work best in?
I like working on my own. I don't like the way that ideas tend to collide in a group and there is always a huge power struggle where no one really knows who to follow. I like being a leader but getting that position when every other group member wants it is difficult, so I don't even bother. I am a good follower though. I can be productive in a group but that if I'm not in charge then it's not the best for me.
2) What did you learn that you expected to learn?
I expected to learn more about movies, and maybe try that more this year.
3) What did you learn that you didn't expect to learn? 
That sometimes the world decides to screw you and you can't blame the world because that is just it's nature. The video files stopped playing on the movie. I eventually learned that that is because I decided to copy them so I wouldn't lose them and the computer got confused and wouldn't play them.
4) What didn't you learn that you expected to learn?
I expected to learn more about editing but all I really learned was that Windows is shit.
 5) Praise your amazing achievement and explain your brilliant plan for pulling it off.
Well my plan for pulling it off was supposed to but bulletproof, and if not for my technical difficulty I would have pulled it off. I made it so that I had a low level of commitment with room to expand. This allowed me to make sure that I could film and edit everything in time because I am very new in this field, and if I finished early, I could easily expand what I had done.

The Fall

We all need imaginations. Well need is a strong word but we all have them. Weather we want them or need them is a different story but the fact is that they are there, and while some people try to suppress them others want to keep them but either way the imagination fades over time. Imagination is meant to fill the space in our minds for when we don't have a memory there, and that is what I took from The Fall. As children we need imagination to fill the space in our empty memory and as we get older we don't imagine as much. The little girl in The Fall has a vivid imagination, while the guy was telling the story it was her mind that was animating it based on compilations of the little that she knows. If the girl was older she wouldn't animate it in her mind the same, she would probably she everything from a more literal stance.

I recently watch Pulp Fiction for the first time and it got me thinking about plots and that kind of spilled over into The Fall. I has a linear plot unlike Pulp Fiction but it isn't anything normal. The movie is made as if no one ever told you how a movie plot should go, and then you have to make a movie, for the story parts of it, but in the hospital parts it is very movie and that makes a sort of controlled freedom.