Remembrance Day is never over.

Ok so last week all us CreComms did our Remembrance Day assignments. I've been struggling with Journalism for quite some time now and really needed to do well on this one. I worked very hard (as I'm sure everyone did) and came out with an A and a B which I was very happy about, and still am.
But because I'm actually quite proud of myself I figured I'd let everyone else read what got me the A.

Note: Sandy Klowak(Journalism Hero) helped me edit this story, she probably saved me from getting a C. Huge props!

On the day that we remember our fallen soldiers with a moment of silence, the ceremony at the Manitoba legislature honors them with a 21 gun salute.
On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month we stand to remember the sacrifice that those brave men made serving their country.
Three C3 Howitzers stand in wait, a single 105 mm shell is loaded into each one. The command to fire is given and by the pull of a “fire rope”, the name given to the rope that triggers the charge, the blank round is fired producing a concussive bang and a large amount of foul smelling smoke from the barrel, that for a moment blotted out the sun.
The powerful feeling you get from being there and feeling the shock wave run right through you, makes you feel as if you were in the trenches about to rush Vimy Ridge, or on the boat about to storm Juno beach. Warrant Officer Robin Everette, the man responsible for putting this year’s ceremony together, explains why Remembrance Day is so important to him, “it’s important to come down and remember everybody before us that made a sacrifice, and to also remember those making sacrifices today.”
Many people, from all different walks of life, came down Wednesday to pay their respects to those lost, and to those still fighting, “todays turnout was fantastic, the good weather certainly helped. Roughly 300 people came out today, I even spoke with a few families who are starting to make this a tradition and I think it’s great,” explains Everette.
With every passing year more and more of our Veterans are passing on, leaving stories untold. As Officer Everette said, “they gave us their tomorrows, for our today’s.”

Will Smith IS a true Actor!

I've heard for quite some time now that Will Smith is a terrible actor, that he isn't worth the money studios spend on him and that he should even quit acting.

These comments are ridiculous. Most of which is for the 2007 movie I Am Legend where Smith plays the character Robert Nevil previously played by the magnificent Charlton Heston in The Omega Man (1971) which was a twin, if not a remake, of The Last Man on Earth where the always creepy Vincent Price played the character Dr.Robert Morgan. Which was all based on the
1954 novel I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, a fantastic book by the way!


Smiths character Nevil, is a virologist and the only man alive who is immune to the vaccine that was made to cure cancer. This vaccine however turned people in "vampire like creatures" that now prowl the streets of Manhattan at night looking for humans to feats on.

Now Will is completely alone for the first 2 acts of the film, other than his dog, and is left to act alone. He speaks to mannequins to keep his sanity and even develops a little crush on one of them. Acting in a movie with no one to play off of is one of the most difficult things you can do as an actor, and Will does an amazing job. Watching him react to his own surroundings and being alone is fantastic. Probably the most heartbreaking scene in the movie (No Spoilers, for those who haven't seen it) comes close to the end of the second act where Will keeps a promise to his "friend" by talking to the girl at he video store. It's remarkable how well he plays the scene off of no one.

Eventually in the third act he meets up with 2 survivors and struggles to communicate with them seeing as these are the first people he has interacted with in 3 years.

The movie is great if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it.

What I really wanted to talk about though is where Will got his big break.
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was a landmark show for him, it's what set his career off.
As anyone who's watched the show knows it's full of humour, jokes and genuinely funny moments throughout the series.

However there is one particular scene in which Will father, who abandoned him at a young age, comes back to try and rekindle the father son relationship by taking Will on a summer road trip. The scene that follows is probably one of the best acted sitcom scenes in history. I don't say this lightly, but it really makes me sad to watch it, no matter how many times I've seen it. Will does an unbelievable job of making me believe that he is truly crushed, and I can't help but feel bad for him. I personally know what it's like to loose a father(but not in this way) so maybe that's why this scene carries a little more weight with it for me but it's still heartbreaking to say the least. Look for a great supporting performance by James Avery as Uncle Phil. It's also important to note Will's entry into the scene, he's very excited to get to spend time with his dad and his demeanor changes so subtly but naturally you really feel like he's devastated. His body language is that perfect fidgety/natural way of moving, that clearly shows he's trying fight back emotions. The way he speaks with a quiver in his voice and even stutters a line. It's all just so real. Anyway watch below and you'll know what I'm talking about.


If you watch that and don't feel bad for Will I'm shocked.
I think this is a pivotal scene for Will Smith and for me, is probably one of his best acted scenes.
Every time I watch it, it makes me feel something, and if an actor can take words on a page and create an emotion in someone watching it on TV, that's EXACTLY what a great actor is supposed to do.

Comic Con 09!

Wow so this was literally one of the busiest weekends I've had in a long time.
First off with Comic Con being in Winnipeg it brings with it tons of great talent and interesting people. This years marquee name being Adam West.
However the event also brought some big names in the Comic Book industry that I was not expecting. The biggest being Tommy Castillo. On Wednesday his plane landed in Winnipeg and he rushed over to the Park Theater and hosted a screening of the original Night of the Living Dead(1968). Tommy had worked with George Romero on a comic book called Toe Tags, so Tommy had a bunch of great stories from the man who literally pioneered his own genre of horror.


Friday night was without a doubt HEAT!
My girlfriend and I went to the premier of a horror-documentary called Cropsey. It was shown in a warehouse on the 5th floor in the exchange district. As we were walking down the street towards the building there was a creepy old guy standing outside who looked at me and asked, “you here to see a movie?” I thought briefly about whether or not to call the police but then decided to go inside. We took a disgustingly small and frightening elevator ride up the 5th floor, where I expected to see some level of decorum. I was surprised to see that the place looked very refined for your average crack den. We sat down and watched the movie, which was actually pretty wicked. I highly recommend picking it up if you can.



Saturday was the first real day for the Con(Khaaaaaaaaaaan!) My girlfriend and I got there around 2ish that afternoon, and of course the first person I run into. Giacomin. Who apparently later got into a heated conversation with the ex pro wrestler Virgil. Heat!

On Saturday I picked up some nerd items, the first being a film cell from The Matrix Revolutions, the scene just as Smith and Neo punch each other in the face. Very cool.

The second being an autographed picture of Sean Connery and a film cell from Goldfinger, which is amazing!

That night we went to see Mode 7 play at the Park Theater. For those who don’t know, Mode 7 is a great video game cover band. They play music from all the classic video games, and they really brought the house down Saturday night, play some new tunes and finishing it off with Ghostbusters, which was actually very well done.

I had planned to spend at least $60 on Sunday at the Con(Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!) but every time I would go around looking at stuff I would just put it back down. I bought a Lime Lemonade for 3.75 which was delicious.

Comic Con this year was a great time, there was more to do and to buy and I think just put together much better. My only complaint was the Adam West autographs were too expensive. $40, yeah no thanks.

The Future of Blogging

To me there is no end to blogging. As long as the Internet is around blogging will be there. However the future of blogging, to me, seems to be going in a visual direction.

More and more people are taking their camcorders and recording events in their day, and posting them as a video diary or blog. YouTube is filled with video blogs and journals, daily updates and even specific channels devoted to an entire year of your life, doing one video every day.
This is why for my last two posts I’ve been experimenting with the video blogging idea. So far it’s been decent, I try to treat it like it’s a stand up routine and play off an invisible crowd. It’s not as easy as I thought it was. To be able to hear laughter after telling a joke is how a comedian can tell if it’s funny or not, but while I record myself talking and ad-libbing there is no one laughing.
I love making people laugh and can do so very easily, but trying to write or perform a blog that you want to be funny is a completely different animal.
Back to video blogging though, it’s a completely different game than writing. In some ways it’s more involved, you can be more creative and for me (if I’m being honest) it’s less work, but only because I’ve been shooting and editing video for so long now.
The steps to shoot a video blog are as follows.

1. Writing a point form script.
-This is so that I can remember on the fly what I want to talk about, I can also create breathing room to improve a different joke into a certain take. This way I’m not bogging myself down with a script I must follow.

2. Shoot supporting footage/ Find supporting footage (Optional)
-Now it’s not 100% necessary to have supporting footage, but I’m a big proprietor or “Don’t tell me, show me” I want to see what you’re talking about, not look at you talking about it.

3. Film Monologue
-Really the backbone of the video blog, this is where you set up the camera (in this case my webcam) and start reading your script. It usually takes me 30 minutes to an hour to get the right read that I want to use. Of course changing up the background scenery is a good idea so that when the camera does cut back to you it’s not the same ugly location. (You can also just record your voice if you have enough supporting footage to go the entire time)

4. Editing
-For me editing is the fun part. It’s where you get to be the most creative. Importing video into your choice of editing software. (I recommend iMovie or Windows Movie Maker for first timers) and start filling in the blanks. I always think that it’s better to see video of what you’re talking about than your face, however some people are really good at speaking and having no video reinforcement which is also fine.
YouTube is the best place to post your videos and then just hyperlink or embed them into a blog post on blogger. That way you can easily track all of your views, comments and ratings. Plus YouTube has a great feature called “Insight” where it lets you know some very specific demographics about your audience so you can then cater to them more in your videos.

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The Making of Torches of Freedom

So since Jeremy, Jordan and myself did our presentation in Tuesday's PR class a lot of people have been coming up to use and asking, how long it took, how did we put it together and so forth.

I figured I should probably blog the events and answer the questions people have been asking.

So we got our assignment in last Thursday's PR class and were given the hour to think about how to present. We didn't want to do a power point thing because we didn't really know how to use the program so we immediately defaulted to doing a skit. That in turn led to us asking Melanie if we could do a video instead which she said was fine.

After brainstorming we decided that it would be a better idea for a slideshow/video type of thing after remembering how funny those old skits on Conan O'Brien where he tells a story with pictures he took that go over the nights events. They were hilarious but unfortunately I can't find a video of it.

So Jordan and I met up at J Jack's house on Sunday and we started got out our story boards and started setting up all the Edward Bernays and George Hill scenes, we used his dinning room


We also had to "carefully" draw on Bernays mustache with a smelly marker.









After getting the scene set up we took pictures of each other with different facial expressions and different physical expressions. We had Jordan dress up as Phillip Vogelman and hold Jeremy's dog "chicken". Oh and the "phone" is actually just a lamp and it's glass shade that was on the coffee table.




After all of the guy scenes were finished we then looted Jeremy's moms closet for all her old dresses, Jordan got the nicest one but let's not get into that.

The dress I wore went on quite easily, unfortunately It was a pain to get off, I was about to ask Jeremy to cut me out of it and I actually think I ripped it a little getting it off.

Here are some pictures that really should never see the light of day.






So after that we went down to the edit suites on Monday after school and recorded the voice over you heard. Everyone did their best 30's mobster impersonation and we decided that mine was the best one. My throat was really sore after all that recording, we spent roughly 3 hours in that edit suite writing and laying down tracks.

Now the song Jeremy sang was actually recorded the day before and we were going to make a video montage of Bernays with the song playing in the background, unfortunately I don't know how to use Pro Tools to save my life and lost that file along with some others. Jeremy sang it live instead which I think was a better choice, but we're going to record the song soon just because it was awesome.

We have plans to possibly start writing an entire series on Bernays and profile his life, depending on how much spare time we have.

Anyway I think the last thing I should mention is the picture of Bernays is ACTUALLY him, yes he does look a lot like Jeremy but that was just pure luck on our part. After the mustache and the tie Jeremy looked so similar some people have asked me if I photoshopped one of the pictures. I didn't that's just how lucky we got.



Well that's it, it was a fun project and I hope we got a good mark on it. We probably put too much effort into it but I think it was worth it to make people laugh.

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- JW