Month: May 2024

For this weeks blog assignment we are reflecting on the phrase, “freedom to express, freedom to explore, freedom from expectation.” We were asked to write about how we might depict each of these three concepts.

Freedom to express. Freedom to express for me seems to deal with the relationship of one to themselves, at least in regards to the other two concepts. I would try and consider that as I explored depicting this concept. One route I may think about is the idea of an introspective journey. An example of this type of story might be into the wild, which touches a lot on themes of self and society. I think that I would try and tell a story ultimately focused on one perspective trying to make sense of the world.

Freedom to explore. Freedom to explore feels to me like it involves kind of abandoning the self to embrace outside perspectives. This story might take the form of travel, or journalism. Exploration at its core seems to new experiences. I think I would maybe consider a story about animals and domestication- maybe goats. Goats exist in the most hostile wild environments and also in very domestic settings. They are wicked climbers, which seems to be a good metaphor for exploration I guess.

Freedom from expectation. I see this as a story about placing something or someone in a world of routine. I think the most compelling way to tell a story about expectation, ironically, is to tell a story about the most basic routine- everyone listening would probably realize how little we actually stick to a routine.

This week for our blog assignment we are designing miniature food trucks! My food truck is for an imaginary Pink Floyd themed pop up restaurant called “Hole in The Wall.” I envision it having a pretty fun gimmicking menu. Perhaps it will reference song lyrics or it will be all foods with holes in them like donuts, bagels, or swiss cheese. Some potential options include: Pigs (Three Different Ones) in a blanket, Learning to Fry, Another Brick in the Wall-nut brownies, or Run Like Kale salad. I went simple with the design, just sticking to the subway tile like it is on the cover of The Wall album. The hole for the service window is kinda a fun nod to the name hole in the wall.

This week for our blog assignments we are reflecting on our Blender Projects videos. My team made a commercial of sorts for an imaginary cheese stick brand, “Dave’s Cheese Sticks.” My teammates were Diana and Patrick. The original three sticky notes that we drew for our project were a stuffed rat as a prop, a car crashman safety specialist (wtf is that?) as a character, and “I love cheese sticks,” as a line of dialogue. The dialogue and the stuffed rats luckily were a natural fit and that kind of led the direction that we went as we began to brainstorm ideas for our project. We were all very excited about ideation at first. We discussed ideas such as stop motion, a godzilla type video, and a commercial in the style of snickers “you’re not you when you’re hungry.” We ultimately went the snickers direction. We chose to use the character we were given to set the setting in a boring office environment, but have all hell kinda break loose to turn a stale environment into an interesting space. We decided to have a stolen lunch trope turn into a type of werewolf (wererat) type destruction scene, and have cheese sticks be the antidote to the problems in this universe. Everyone did a great job contributing to the storyboard, and coming up with ideas for setting and costume design. When the day came to film, we had to be adaptable because our camera person groupmate had gotten in a bad bike crash and couldn’t be around. Everyone was really flexible and we were able to redistribute tasks to keep a fair share of work. Filmers became editors, etc. Overall I think we ended up making a pretty compelling movie. It had a nice balance of drama, humor, mystery, and suspense.