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Gardening the Mind

I recently spoke to a woman who is one of the few surviving anti-GPS enthusiasts. She stated that she likes to use maps because she prefers them to GPS, she likes to know the area she lives in and not simply be a slave to turn by turn instructions. Her chief concern about the technology was that its stopping people from thinking and developing a lateral thinking mindset. Something which I somewhat contest, I believe that the technology of the future, although it might render certain thought processes obsolete, it may in fact call for new patterns. This is something which I had on my mind while reading Gardeners Five Minds For the Future. The five minds are as followed

The Disciplined mind – a person who has mastered a specific craft
The Synthesising mind – Somebody who is capable to making dense of large amounts of diverse information
The Creating mind – this is a new evolution of ‘mind’ as it combines the previous two. This is the mind that innovates a creative idea from synthesis and then shapes it into a disciplined form which can be consumed.
The Respectful mind – This mind recognises the diversity and complexity which is becoming prevalent in our world, and embraces it.
The Ethical Mind – Ponders the impact of ones work, and how it could render service to the community

Gardener then goes on to discuss the new vs the old attitude to education, and this is where the GPS argument comes in. In the past for example, it was necessary for people to develop a disciplined mind, one had to be to ultimate master of a trade, many things were not automated, thus calling for intense learning about all details of a task such as map reading or type setting. Now, in the digital age however, this is no longer required, as the previously ‘nitty gritty’ information is readily at hand for anybody. Therefore, we can now turn our focus to developing Ethical, Respectful and Creative minds.

Finally, the chapter concludes by explaining the importance of developing rounded mindsets, and the ability of becoming a multi-faceted human being, along with the benefits this will have on the quality of ones life.

Mystache!

May 19, 2016 / Jordan Raj / 0 Comments

Today, Imma Nohere made his acting debut in Sketchy Students. What does that even mean?

Well – Imma Nohere is a character that has been written into the show as the zero attendance student, that one that never shows up but still gets good grades. That is Imma. I was happily cast as Imma for the 3rd and 4th episodes of sketchy students, and today we did his first bit of filming. Due to one of the other projects that I am currently working on, I am going to have a moustache for the next few weeks, and for the sake of consistency I even need to have a moustache as Imma. So Imma Nohere has a moustache – and there is nothing you can do about it.

For the role of Imma, I wanted to have an American accent, because Im trying to work on my American accent, plus I wanted him to stand out as different from the other characters. I believe that this has been done aptly by the moustache and the voice that does not at all match the face. One thing to note however, is that my experience in the character of Imma did not yet feel very consistent, as I have not been him for a very long time, thus this first episode with him will be quite experimental on my part. I look forward to you seeing him next week!

Sketchy BTS.

May 16, 2016 / Jordan Raj / 0 Comments

Today the first Behind the Scenes of Sketchy Students was uploaded to Facebook… and it features me! Very exciting – thats all I wanna say.

Actually no, I also want to mention that today is my Brothers Birthday… Happy Birthday Bro!

However, in the world of serious, this evening I had a meeting with Simone and Dylan from the management team. We were discussing episode 4. It was decided that I would be the one who did the revisions for the 4th episode, so that is what happened this evening.

A lot of concerns were raised in the meeting and we tried to streamline the script to both make the filming manageable, as well as the characters consistent. For example, there was a concern raised that both Sandra and Phoeboe were ethnic characters, both female who never spoke besides using their phones. This was the entire depth of their character and this was still all they did in episode four. Besides the fact that the gag itself was getting lacklustre, it was also necessary to give them more depth. Thus during the meeting we discussed changing that part of the script. These are the kind of things we discussed. Overall it was a fairly efficient meeting.

The Power of Fusion

May 15, 2016 / Jordan Raj / 0 Comments

So, after the melodramatically titled “great sit down” last week we have run into some road blocks. Luckily no car spikes. Just some road blocks. Its looks as if the originally planned episodes 3 and 4 are going to be too elaborate to actually be achievable in the designated timeframe. Therefore we have decided to merge a few of the gags together in order to achieve ultimate hilariousity and possibility.

Now, our final mystery character will not be appearing in episode 4, but will be entering earlier during episode 3, then the season finale 4 will combine everybody for an epic story.

From a writing perspective this means that now we need to make the gags deeper and funnier, in order to compensate for the lack of quantity. But then again it is much better that we can now aim for quality over quantity. Its just a reminder that within any creative endeavor is is important to remain detached. Sketchy students has been a constant reminder of this principle, with the episodes being reviewed by different people and constantly changing, and the fact that once stuff is written it gets interpreted by other people. They say that when writers write, producers almost always change what ends up happening, even if its on set. I don’t remember where I heard this. But now I believe it.

The Great Sit Down of 2016

May 10, 2016 / Jordan Raj / 0 Comments

The title makes this post sound extremely ominous, and it is. So brace yourselves.

After having a very intense meeting with the management team it became apparent that the Writing team needed to sit down and have a face to face meeting in order to finalise the final two episodes. It had basically only been me talking to Simone and Dylan on a late night google hangout, and they explained to me that they were quite confused as to where the writing team was going with the show. Now – as the literary coordinator its my job to consolidate all the written materials and know where all the ideas are. The issue was – EVEN I DIDN’T! Therefore it was time to switch our gears from virtual to face-to-face.

Thus, today in class we all managed to sit down, IRL and have a proper discussion. We started going over the content for the next two episodes and we have now decided on the content that will be in them. This includes a basic outline of the gags for the episodes and the major plot points involved. There is quite a lot to get through, there will be a whole bunch of students running late, and a glorious entry for a new character. Stay tuned!

Late Reaction

March 15, 2016 / Jordan Raj / 0 Comments

This week im working on a video regarding the new reaction videos on facebook, you know the ones:

Without going into too much detail about the video itself (I will post it here when it is complete) I wanted to touch on the making of Process. The video is filmed in what i like to refer to as my studio, which is really my bedroom and some coloured paper. I set up three lights, one camera and a microphone and hit record. I then roll the camera for sometimes one and a half hours simply capturing footage of myself talking to camera. I usually follow rough script which is on a laptop just out of frame. Im alone in my room and this means that i can be as silly as i need to be to get my point across and don’t have to worry about embarrassment, i simply cop it all later. Here is a video of me getting distracted in the 12th minute of footage:

I am saying “In Cheeye” which is Farsi for “What is this?”… Im learning Farsi… I then say “In Kheily cool bood” which i believe means “This is very cool”… I was alone.

Once I film, the process involves me copying all the information onto a single folder onto my computer, since this video does not have many scenes I can copy all the information into one folder without it getting too confusing:

As you can see, the audio and the video are seperate files that need to be synced together later. The editing process starts here, I use Adobe Premiere Pro to go through all the footage and cut it into a final product.

When the editing is complete and I export the video in 1080p and upload it to my YouTube Channel, making sure that I have a cool Thumbnail for the video. Something like this:

Once all this is done I share the video link to Facebook and beg my friends to watch it… Simple…

I aim for the final video to be posted by this Sunday the 20th of March… I hope… Now that I have written this post I simply have to follow through…

What We Learn

February 9, 2016 / Jordan Raj / 0 Comments

So a few things have become evident to me throughout the editing process for our Music Video. Especially as the camera operator for the shoot. Firstly, something which I learnt on the shoot day – ALWAYS have multiple memory cards, and do data dumps even if you don’t need to. We ran out of space on the shoot day, and this was after having somebody standing by with a laptop all day in case we needed to do a file dump. However, we didn’t NEED one and so we didn’t. But of course as soon as that person left the card filled up as we were getting crucial shots. This lead to me deleting a few of our extra shots, which ended up being necessary in post. WHAT WE LEARN.

Secondly, make a better shot list. Our shot list was very rudimentary, I was impatient when I had constructed it and due to time constraints on the day I hardly looked at it. This meant that we missed a very important establishing shot (Elvis approaching Rapunzel). Especially since we did so many repetitive scenes on the day, it felt like we were getting everything, and I didn’t notice when we missed it. Next time, have somebody ticking the shot list and make it more detailed. WHAT WE LEARN.

Lastly, allow for the action to run from slightly before to slightly after the shot you need. In a few instances we started looking for a specific action from another angle. But often I had stopped the camera too early or started to late, or simply not even have asked for the entire action to be carried out. This would have been handy later when the original angle planned for a scene did not end up being the most flattering. Let the action play out. WHAT WE LEARN.

Overall, I would like to say that I learnt a lot from the shoot of this music video. And next time ill try and come better prepared.

Great Belgian Egg Hunt

January 8, 2016 / Jordan Raj / 0 Comments

Firstly, lemme just hit you with the same amount of context that I had:

– We will be making a Music Video. Here is something inspiring:

Oh Boi oh Boi oh Boi. What was that? That my friends was the work of a man by the name of Anton Corbijn, (prunounced like Corbi-jaan. However I am eternally convinced its Cor-Bidgin). I soon found out that we would be looking at a range of his work, allowing us to analyse different styles of music video.

Welcome to “The great Belgian Egg Hunt” the one and only Amazing Music video Summer Course at RMIT this year. Tutored by sir Rohan Spong the course is already destined to be entertaining, and frankly, quite realistic. Realistic meaning that the things we learn and discuss will not be theoretical and unattainable, instead we will be learning from each others real world experience, of which Rohan has the most.

First session in we were asked to outline why we were there and what motivated us to do the course – good start, thus I will be sharing some of that here:

I wont lie, partially i wanted something to do during the summer so people didnt tell me to get a job
I am interested in music video making, its a quick and concise production, also it allows one to be abstract.
The practical aspect of the program interested me, I would get to work with people who really want to be there (I mean they are there during holidays!) And it being done in 6 weeks means theres no time to waste.
Brushing up on my own skills is always a positive. For example here is a music video which I directed in the past:

This video clearly lacks in a storyline, and If i was to do it again there are a quite a few things I could NOW improve. Thus the best thing to do is continue making music videos and learning about my craft. This is what I hope to achieve during this course.

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