Film Planning

Today, our group finally have the chance to thoroughly discuss about the cell-phone phenomena idea. For now, only the film layout is written down, but I will get my brother who majors in animation to help out with creating the story board based on our outline.

Here is our outline:I am glad that Melissa was able to simplify my thoughts because I was thinking about this film in a complicated way when it was not necessary.

A new member and filming practice.

On Monday 2/22/2010, we have Karina as a new member to our group. Now we have four people in our group.

I have to tell her about the idea our group had decided to follow through on the film project.

It's kinda hard to repeat myself, especially about a lengthy summary of our idea. So I refer Karina to read my blog about our first meeting.

Later, Shawn gives us a project where we have to come up with an idea of strange occurrences to be interviewed by the other groups.

I probably should have thought of something funny to do to entertain others, but my mind was in serious mode, but I still enjoy the jokes that other classmates did.

Interview 01


Interview 02


Interview 03


Interview 04


I try my best to keep things moving but it is hard when it seems like the whole group depends on you since you are the one with the idea so they think that they can't or shouldn't give any input on other ideas they might have or at least able to expand and elaborate on the idea I had.

I believe that I have to figure out a way that my idea can relate to my group so that we can collaborate more easily. Otherwise I felt like I have to do everything when I know that's not true, but it just felt that way.

First Formation of the Film Group

Today is the first day that filming project is introduced by Shona. Varies examples were demonstrated of the possible potentials for this project.

After that, our group was formed by drawing numbers out of a cap. My partners are Kimberly and Melissa. Melissa had to leave early so we quickly exchanged our contact information such as our e-mails and cell-phone numbers.

I am left with Kimberly after Melissa left. Kimberly starts off by asking me if I had any ideas for the film because she is not into the whole tech-savvy things or sci-fi, at least that's what I can remember she told me.

I answer her question with a story I remember reading from a visual novel I read nearly 3 years ago. The visual novel is called "Resonance."

The summary of the story that I told Kimberly is from what I can remember of the main plots.

The setting is during the summer somewhere in Japan.

A high school girl was late to class so she rushes to school putting her cell-phone along with a juice box in her book bag. As the girl rushes to school she crashed into a boy who was also late for school. The collision causes the juice box to squish and splat breaking the girl's cell-phone. The boy apologizes but the girl yells at him for how he is going to pay back for her cell-phone, but the boy just continue rushing to school. After school is over, the girl is depress about her broken cell-phone. As she walk home, her cell-phone receive an incoming call. The girl answers her cell-phone which reveals a girl and later the sister of that girl. Since it gets confusing here without labeling the characters, lets call the first girl Jill, the second girl Alice, and the sister of the second girl Lily. And to fast forward the story, the girls becomes best of friends after many days of summer and eventually wanted to meet up since they live in the same place and probably gone to different schools. They decide to meet up at the train station at lets say 11 am. When Jill arrive at the meeting location at 11 am, she did not see Alice or Lily (Jill knows what Alice and Lily looks like because the cell-phone was a video-phone). Jill calls Alice, asking her if she and her sister is here yet. Alice told Jill that they are here at the station below the clock. Jill is below the clock of the station but she still did not see Alice or Lily. It is then that they realize that they were at the right place but in a different world or parallel world so they can never physically meet up with each other. They are depress about this fact but there is nothing they can do about it. Instead, they try to hang out with each other through the cell-phone as long as they can till the next day (which was near the end of summer). Jill tries to contact Alice and Lily, but the cell-phone did nothing. Next day, cell-phone still did nothing. When it was the start of the autumn classes, Jill felt that the experience she had with Alice and Lily was like a dream. When Jill walks to school, she meet the same boy she crashed into at the beginning. At first the boy was startled to see her, afraid that she is still mad at him about breaking her cell-phone. But Jill did not yell at him, instead, she thank him. The boy and Jill became friends after that. The End.

Kimberly likes the story and I like it too. So this is a potential story that I believe we can work with. I just have to e-mail Melissa about it and see what she thinks.

Project 01 - My Interest Exposed

Natalie Bookchin

The work she done has a story is based on a 1966 short story by Jorge Luis Borges or called "The Intruder."

The story is a grim tale of prostitution, fraternal jealousy, and violence against women in which two brothers fall in love with the same woman, share her, and sell her to a brothel.

It has an interesting way of presenting a story through a series of classic computer games.

What I like about this work is the way the it is created to have interaction with the viewer.

Direct Links: 1, 2.


Man marries virtual girlfriend


The man, known only as Sal9000. He decided to marry the virtual girl from ‘Love Plus’ named Nene Anegasaki.

I can understand how Sal9000 can fall in love with a virtual girl since I do have feeling for girls that are just drawings. But, the difference is that I would not go as far as marrying a drawn girl.

For me, this feels like living with a programmed machine. I'm not sure whether Sal9000 likes Nene just because of her appearance, behavior, or expression in the game. Whatever may be the reason, it would be like someone falling in love with a concept idea that the creator implemented to his or her character.

Direct Links: 1, 2.


Life-like Robots

Actroid made in Japan present DER2, a life-like robots with human expressions and motions.

There are many other life-like robots made in other countries such as the United States and China, but this one appeals to me the most. The appearance of this Actroid looks very realistic to a real female.

This makes me wonder how robots living, interacting and communicating with humans will be like once they are fully operational. I am very curious on how the relationship between humans and realistic robots will be in the future.

Hopefully the future would not end up in an apocalypse prophecy in the movies of Terminator 1 (1984), 2 (1991), 3 (2003) or I, Robot (2004). Perhaps it would be more calmer and emotional similar to the movies of Bicentennial Man (1999) or Artificial Intelligence: A.I. (2001). Either way, I just hope that these robots will be made for doing things for the good.

Direct Links: 1, 2, 3.


Nyan Nyan


A YouTube clip that I found to be fascinating is the remix music video of a scene from an anime Macross Frontier. The one that originally caught my attention was the one that is about 9 minutes long with just the loop of an 8 seconds scene.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCimwxjj9m8

It is originally only a 8 seconds but it was probably so enticingly cute that people would create clips of different ways in repeating this scene, at least that's what I thought and felt about it.

This nyan nyan was introduced to me from my cousin. I was just playing cards with my other cousins until I suddenly heard "Nyan-nyan, nyan-nyan, nihao-nyan! Gorgeous, Delicious, and De-culture!" repeat, repeat, and repeat. This was the background music for our card game for about 3 hours.