Weekly Roundup: Volume 2, Issue 3

Life has called me away from my blog for the past few days, and I apologize for my tardiness! I’ve been doing lots of shooting, lots of homework, and lots of trying to keep above water. So, here’s a quick little post for last week:

1.Documentary
I had my first meeting for post-production of last semester’s documentary. now titled “The Committee”. Only a handful of us students are continuing with the project, and this week we talked about starting another Kickstarter campaign to cover the cost of submitting the film to festivals, which we’re in the process of doing. It’s already been submitted for the College Television Awards and another whose name I can’t recall. We’re also working on getting screenings, so I’ll keep you up to date!

2.The world
What’s happening? Seriously. Website blackouts, protests, the circus that is the Presidential primary. I feel so distanced from these things, but they’re actually all quite close to home. Surrounded by opinions, I feel like I don’t have a good grasp of my own feelings about these things. I’ll figure it out with time. Sometimes I miss the days when I never paid attention to the news!

3.CFF
Here are some photos from this week…

Improv UKnighted performing at Natura. Here’s the article.

Improv UKnighted at Natura

Improv UKnighted at Natura

This guy is a professor at UCF and co-founder of Men’s Health Initiative. Here’s the article.

Michael Rovito

This article didn’t end up getting published for some reason, but this girl is a women’s studies minor who will be presenting her research about the importance of heritage in the world of Harry Potter, particularly how the magical genes tend to come from the women in Ms. Rowling’s work. Cool, right?

Rebecca Miles

4.Some beautiful music
It’s Tuesday! Keep on truckin!

Weekly Roundup: Volume 2, Issue 2

1.Spring semester breakdown
I can’t yet judge how difficult, easy, fun, or challenging this semester will be. One week isn’t quite enough time for me to tell. But it’s the last one, so I need to make it count! Here are my first impressions of all my classes:

Desktop/Internet Publishing: I’m not going to lie, my very first class of the semester was a disappointment. I was looking forward to this, since it is my final journalism class, but I found out that it contains students from a wide variety of majors and specialties, so what we are learning won’t always apply to me or be beneficial to my future career. I’ll learn how to use Microsoft Publisher, but it looks so similar to all the other Office software. Our professor has had a lot of jobs, but none of them have been desktop/Internet publishing. On Wednesday, we learned how to open a new document. And then we learn that text goes in text boxes. I feel this might be an infuriating class!

Cinematic Expression: Apparently, there was a sort of intro to cinematic expression that everyone in my class has taken…except me. This made me a little nervous, but I’m sure I’ll be able to handle it. The professor posted some notes from that class online for us, so I’ll be able to catch up and learn the vocabulary I’ll need. The part that makes me even more nervous is that we’ll all be put in groups, and throughout the semester, each group has to make three films: a 20 second film, a 30 second film, and a minute-long film. Those time constraints should make things interesting. I’ve been trying to come up with ways to tell a story in such a small amount of time. Luckily, I’ll be working with a friend from last semester’s Documentary class, and I know he’s awesome at shooting and not a lazy pants! Group projects are always better when you know you’ve got a good team.

Advanced Poetry Workshop: I considered taking Advanced Fiction instead of Poetry as my final creative writing workshop, but I’m glad I picked this. Poetry isn’t my greatest skill, but it is something that I would like to get better at, and it’s a great outlet for stories and ideas. It offers a different kind of freedom than fiction and nonfiction. The class is very small, and I like the professor, who taught my first poetry class. He’s a nice old man. My first poem is due on Tuesday, so I might share it if I like it enough!

Art of the Cinema: What I enjoy most about studying film is that it teaches me to use my brain while watching movies. That’s what this class is all about. On the first day, we watched a scene from Juno (great movie), and then went frame by frame through it, talking about the techniques used to create tension and reveal emotion. I noticed things in the scene that I hadn’t noticed before, and it made me appreciate the film and its creators all the more. Our professor said he would have us watch movies we aren’t likely to have seen in other film classes. Unfortunately, he didn’t give us a list of all the movies we’ll be watching (I want to know right now!), but I’m definitely looking forward to breaking down some cool films.

2.Losing Teeth
Abel drove me down to West Palm on Thursday night and I got my wisdom teeth ripped out of my face the next morning! It’s so strange to simply not remember any of it. The last thing I know, I was watching the Today Show’s 60 year anniversary and the surgeon was poking a needle into me. Then I don’t remember anything until I got home, and even that is groggy. Apparently, I was pretty loopy and Mom and Abel made fun of me! All in all, it hasn’t been a terrible experience. The anticipation was worse than the actual event. I got a little swollen and sore, but nothing I can’t live through. Abel was helpful to me — I felt very doted upon! I will admit that these days made me realize how much I like food that crunches!

Pudding and a smashed banana for lunch...mmm...

3.CFF
This week, I shot for two articles. One was at an alumnus’ business, where he and his crew fix broken smartphones and such. The other was with a theater student who has been nominated for awards through the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. It was a fun portrait session, and I have to say that theater students are much easier to shoot than non-theatrical students! Here’s the article. We had a good time, but unfortunately, none of the portraits made it to print. I’m bummed about it, but I’ll post them here so at least someone will be able to enjoy them.

Bryant Hernandez

Bryant Hernandez

Bryant Hernandez

4.Listening is an Act of Love
Finished it this week. The stories were great reads, and I felt an array of emotions while reading each one. I think the StoryCorps project is simply wonderful. Enough said. My next book is David Foster Wallace’s A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, which is a collection of his essays. I haven’t gotten into it yet, but I’m looking forward to it. His only work that I’ve read is the essay “Consider the Lobster,” so I don’t quite know what to expect, but he’s a big enough name in nonfiction to pique my curiosity.

Until next week!

Weekly Roundup: Volume 2, Issue 1

1.Breaking Bad
After finishing The Sopranos the week before Christmas, Abel and I began watching Breaking Bad together. First of all, The Sopranos is amazing. Second, Breaking Bad is amazing. I’m almost done with season 2, and it’s driving me pretty crazy. All I’ve heard is that it only gets better and better each season, so I’m excited for what’s in store. I’m also scared. I’m bad at handling drama!

By Amy Nucera

By Amy Nucera

2.Reading Lolita in Tehran
Finished the book this week. It was pretty enjoyable, and I’ve always found it good to read first-hand accounts from people who are native to cultures I hear a lot about. Iran is a bit of a hot topic these days, although I’d say that most of us know little of the country’s history. The book was a mixture of memoir and literary criticism, relating the real world of Iran’s political unrest and the characters’ personal struggles to the fictional worlds and characters in Lolita, The Great Gatsby, Pride and Prejudice, etc. I think one of the most interesting aspects of the book is how the narrator’s literature classes showed the foolishness of political extremism. A lot of her students were against the books she taught because they were “Western” and “decadent,” and they promoted a lack of morality that the Islamic Revolution in Iran denounced. But when you really read these books, you can see that just because the protagonist acts in a certain way doesn’t mean the author is promoting it. In fact, in many stories, the hero’s flaws cause his/her downfall, unless he/she overcomes them.

Basically, the book stressed the importance of fiction in our nonfictional world. Nafisi reflected that sometimes these fictional worlds seemed more real than her own. As I was reading this book back home in West Palm, I overheard someone say that they didn’t like to read fiction, because “you aren’t learning anything” when doing so. They said that in order to read fiction, they had to learn to be OK with not learning. Of course, I wanted to throw my book at them, but I’m not all that aggressive! Certainly, many frivolous books exist, and there is nothing to be learned from them. But I can’t imagine someone reading classic literature and NOT learning. I understand that everyone has different taste and such, but if you’re not learning from fiction, you’re not reading it right. /rant

Now I’m reading Listening is an Act of Love, which is a compilation of interviews done by the StoryCorps project. This project began in 2003, and it provides people with a place to talk to or interview people they love (or people they find interesting), records the conversation and gives one copy to the participants and one to the Library of Congress. The purpose is to get the stories of everyday Americans from the 20th and 21st centuries. It’s a neat project, and a neat book, but I’m going through it very quickly! Definitely check out the StoryCorps website, or listen to some of the stories on NPR’s Morning Edition.

3.Central Florida Future
This week I started as the CFF’s senior staff photographer, so I got to go to new places and see interesting things. Here are some of my first photos of the semester. This is what I get paid the big bucks for!

Chewy Boba Company (boba still makes me want to vomit).

Toubab Krewe at Plaza Live.

Galactic Funk at Plaza Live.

SkyWatch at Orlando Science Center. I saw the moon, Orion nebula, AND Jupiter!

The OSC Observatory.

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Ready or not, my final semester is here! It’s true what they say: these things fly by too quickly. I’m hoping to make the most of my last little bit of time here at UCF, and of course my dear readers will get to hear all about it!