Reading Week

Since my last video I have given a great deal of thought to how I will further my approach to various historical events through my depictions with kids toys, and I have come up with a few more plans. I am waiting until class on Tuesday when I present my ideas to get some input from the class on what my audience would prefer, so until then I have held off editing too much to save time and get some other homework done.

I really appreciated the last presentation we had in class, with Professor Daniel Fischlin coming in and discussing his work on the Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare Project. I was genuinely interested in the processes he is going through, as it is basically a magnified version of our big projects, only with a lot more resources and volunteer help. In contrast to his opinion, however, I was highly interested in the business aspect of his work, and the commercialization of his app. In my view if he was making some profit from this work he could be investing it into more work, rather than depending so much on pro bono work. I understand the desire to maintain scholarly credentials, I just see the benefits of incorporating a business side to things as well. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that if I was better at math I would definitely be a Business Major.

In any case, I was highly intrigued by his presentation to us, and would have loved to have some more information on his process of organizing all of the various aspects to the site and app work. I definitely see the history field branching out in the future towards more projects similar to this one, and incorporating a very practical side to a university degree, something that can be used towards more career choices than teaching or research. Designing games and more technological approaches to studying history and the various assertions and writings would be a huge benefit to the scholarly arena, and invite more technically inclined people into the field. History is very much a study associated with writing, books, research and archaeology, and while I would never argue that those aspects of resources are not valuable, I increasingly find myself drawn into the idea of a newer, digital, multimedia approach to various aspects of study. For example, 3D digital and interactive images of archaeological specimens found only in museums would be amazing to access on a public and scholarly site…something to consider for further exploration. I think if we can invest time and money into CGI for movies, why can’t we invest it into education? Tapping into internet fandom would be incredible too, as shows such as Sherlock and Doctor Who (Yes, I watch entirely too much BBC) incorporate historical learning into their shows while leaving their audiences completely obsessed with them. If there were more teams on set to maintain historical accuracy (perhaps another field widening from it’s skeletal form?) there would be more reasons to take history in university, as well as a better education from watching the shows, adding to the wheel that could get spinning if universities incorporated more classes like this one into curriculum.

 

Anyways, more posts on the Big Project later this week! See you all in class on Tuesday (weather permitting!) with my presentation!

 

 

 

 

Progress

I must say, in my first video I have made a lot of progress today. I am still a long ways from a final edit, but here’s what has happened so far.

1) I chose a battle! Finally! I’m starting with the Battle of Hastings in 1066. There are numerous reasons that I decided on this one, but my number one reason was that this one is fairly straight forward, and I figured as it happened in a rather short amount of time (excluding context) it would be easier to portray with my limited skills as of yet.

2)I have my props- you can catch a glimpse with my former post.

3) I did some filming! I took what I thought was a good amount of clips for this upcoming video, and then decided if I was going to do this right I would download the 30 day free trial of Final Cut Pro X to go with my mac. As soon as I started editing I found that I had way too few of clips, and will need to do a substantial amount more filming. I have so much more respect for youtubers right now.

4) (Mentioned above…) I downloaded Final Cut Pro X! So in addition to figuring out my research and battle, I am trying to figure out a fairly high tech program. But it is pretty fun unless I get stuck on minor adjustments.

5) Found out that I need to do voice overs via Garageband- luckily I already have this installed. I could also record it with my camera and put it in as an audio clip, but I think Garageband will work better in this project.

6)More research! In addition to understanding a basic grasp of this battle, I found that I will have to do a lot more research to fully portray this event in the humorous method which I am hoping to attain.

7)…Still need to write a proper script. So far I have been filming what I know can be incorporated, but until I get all of my research done and a script written, not much else can happen.

A few things that had to be addressed as I got these things done or am in the process of doing them:

1) Location. As of now my characters are going in a fairly large lightbox that my dad and I created from a few lamps, plastic tablecloths and a bit of scrap wood. It turned out really well, but I think as I  go along I am going to have to come up with some more original location ideas.

2) Fiddly- my props include little green army men, and to get those guys to stand up straight on various materials is incredibly difficult.

3) Scripting- as mentioned above, I am having a really hard time coming up with how best to describe these battles in relation to my videos- I had thought that I wanted it to be a voice over, but as I was editing I was also thinking of having it text based with sound effects, in addition to some voice overs.

4) History with action figures- I love telling my story with representations of characters with kids toys, but relating back to location, something has to be done about how I portray where things happened…for example the battle of Hastings hinges on the fact that there was a hill involved…creating a dilemma of how best to film this.

5) Fingers- do I show the characters moving with my hands, or painstakingly move them a bit at a time and cut out all hand appearances in post-edits?

I’ll keep you posted! As always, comments and suggestions are welcome.

Something’s Coming…

to a computer near you…

Canadian Shakespeare

After clicking through the link on the HIST 4170 blog, I had no idea what to expect with Canadian relationships to Shakespeare. In fact, I didn’t know we had any before exploring this site. After looking around for a little while and reading some of the various links, I was quite impressed with what has been done. What I was really interested in was the app that was created for a study guide of Romeo and Juliet. I am really hoping that this blossoms into more study guides, as in high school I would have loved something as comprehensive as the screenshots on iTunes make it look. If I was studying Shakespeare, it would be well worth the $5 to have it broken down into the various segments, characters, plot, etc. I am not studying it right now, though, so I did not purchase the app.

 

Instead, I went back to the website with a renewed interest in what they are doing. If they can come up with something that awesome, they probably have an awesome site too, right? In my opinion, the site could be much more interactive. It is VERY text/link based, but they could easily make it much more user friendly and even visually attractive. In fact, I often found myself skimming over text just because it was tiny, which is an easy fix in web design. I realize that it is a scholarly site intended for education purposes, but with students in mind, I think it would go much further if it was more interactive with bigger text and…really just more similar to the app. It could be broken down further than it is, with the side bar leading to an overview of the subject (for example the Online Anthology) rather than the whole thing right there in an overwhelming fashion.

In addition, their multimedia link was severely disappointing. When I saw it I right away clicked on it, kind of expecting cool graphics and video links, but instead was met with tiny font leading the way forth to image galleries that led to a very text based link site. So much could be done to make it more visually pleasing, even to incorporate blog-type photo templates to create some visual interest, and make it easier to find various works or galleries.

However, the subject of the site is really great. It is amazing to have such a compilation of Canadian adaptations of various Shakespeare works ready to go with a click of a mouse. The disclaimer that these works are available for study purposes but not reproduction for actual productions was good, but if they can’t find the copyright holders I doubt someone interested would be able to either, so maybe further effort in that regard would be beneficial for those looking to produce one of the adaptations.

Overall, the content of the site is a wonderful addition to education within the Canadian Shakespeare realm, but I think the web design could use some updating.

For Fun…

Yesterday I was taking a study break on campus and decided to watch an episode of Big Bang Theory. I haven’t really been keeping up with it, but lo and behold the very episode that was available was one on 3D printing.

Enjoy. It’s called “The Cooper/Kripke Inversion”, and is episode 14.

 

More on Battle Bites coming up! Thanks to all who commented, your suggestions were much appreciated.