Hail Victory

Hail Victory

To read about the Redskins' victory and their pair of talented rookies, follow this link to the Sideline Scoop.

"You Don't Know Bo"

You Don't Know Bo

You Don’t Know Bo  is an expository documentary that details the life of former football and baseball player Bo Jackson, and his stunning athletic legacy and achievements. Bo Jackson was born in a dirt-poor neighborhood in Bessemer, Alabama, the second youngest of ten children. It was evident from an early age that he was an immensely gifted athlete, and it was at this age that the lore of Bo began. He went to McAdory High School, and by the time he graduated, he had set the record in the 100-yard dash, and earned a combined baseball and football scholarship to Auburn University. College-level sports proved no obstacle, as he excelled from his freshman year. He led the football team to their first victory over hated Alabama in ten years, and established himself as a first round MLB prospect. After his four years, he was drafted by the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers, but refused to play for them after a visit to their facilities in college rendered him ineligible to play baseball his senior year. Instead, he chose to play baseball, and was drafted by the Kansas City Royals. His godly athleticism manifested itself in his first at-bat, when he beat out a routine grounder to second base. After a year of baseball, the L.A. Raiders came calling, and he agreed to play for them. So, essentially, he took football up as a hobby, something to take up his time after baseball. And he dominated the league, until a freak hip injury ended his career. A brief stint in baseball happened, but it was the end of Bo Jackson being Bo Jackson.

The overall mood of the documentary was a mix between upbeat, because of his completely ridiculous feats, and sad, because so much potential was left unfulfilled after his premature end in sports. This was clearly established in the documentary, as the director would slow the shots and music down when a somber tone was needed, and would speed up the shots along with brighter lighting when it was detailing his outstanding career. The music is outstanding, alternating between fast paced marching band music and mournful classical music. The special effects were also a nice touch, as often, cartoons would be used to depict legends of Bo that had no video available. Archival footage was used heavily throughout the documentary, to emphasize his crazy sprints and jumps and throws. Interviews were conducted of Bo himself, and coaches and teammates of his. Jackson actually was the main narrator of the film, explaining the events that were happening on screen.

If you’re a fan of sports, then I would absolutely recommend this film. The archival footage alone, of him climbing up walls, running people over, and hitting mammoth homeruns, makes it basically a spectacle. The film does, however, get a little slow near the end, when his injury happens. The director’s portrayal of the injury is a tad overdramatic, and too long is spent lingering on the injury and his rehabilitation. The film would’ve been better off simply chronicling more of his athletic exploits. Nonetheless, even if you are someone with little interest in sports, Bo Jackson is still an intriguing figure. The folklore surrounding him makes him almost a literary figure, and his grace and power and capability to make you say “Whoa” can reach all people, regardless of their interests. You Don’t Know Bo is worth the watch. 

You Don't Know Bo , 77 mins , PG

"You done messed up, A-Aron!"

"You done messed up, A-Aron!"

Key and Peele, a comedy duo, created a sketch called "Substitute Teacher" in October. Since the video has been released and posted on Youtube, it's garnered more than 8 million views. And I think it's a safe bet to say that my friends and I have contributed a solid half-million views to that count. The 3-minute long video is easily one of the funniest things I've seen this year, so in lieu of my normal sportz blog post, I thought I'd break the video down. Be forewarned, the b-word is dropped a couple times, but it's all in the name of laughter.

0:00 - Nothing too original, just another substitute teacher joke. Until...

0:19 - "No Jay-queline here today?" Poor Jacqueline makes for the first victim of Mr. Garvey's name-butchering. She serves the role well, though, looking both confused and intimidated at the same time. Still, up to this point, the video is nothing more than giggle-inducing.

0:47 - "Where's Belakay at?" This sequence is the most underrated part of the video. Blake doesn't stand a chance. This is also my favorite name of the entire thing. It truly takes a comedic genius to see the hidden pronunciation in such a one-dimensional name such as Blake.  Will I ever be able refer to someone named Blake by their proper name again? Probably not. Also, note the meek smile at 1:15 that  was probably accompanied by Blake peeing his pants.

1:36 - "Do you mean Denise?" And here, Mr. Garvey meets his first opposition. Dee-nice shows a little bit of sass as she challenges the battle-tested sub, but it's to no avail. Remember, Mr. Garvey taught in the inner city. This segment does, however, set up the best stretch of the entire video.

1:56 - "You better be sick, dead, or mute, A-Aron!" This 40-second part of the video deserves to be put in the comedy Hall of Fame, if there is such a thing. Everything, from A-Aron's smug face to the eventual expulsion to O-Shag-Henessey's office, is hilarious. The sequence is capped off beautifully by Mr. Garvey's declaration that A-Aron is both insubordinate and churlish. Also, this isn't relevant, but I don't like A-Aron. I hope Principal O-Shag-Henessy really lays into him.

2:46 - "Ti-MOTHY." Finally, someone cooperates! The other half of the comedy pair finally appears, and kills it with his perfectly timed "pree-sent". If only we could see the rest of Mr. Garvey's science class that day.


Sorry for the lack of sports in this blog post, here's a hoops mixtape.

Sports and Healing

Sports and Healing

Sports can have a way of healing things. They serve as a constant in people's lives, the one object that will always be available for discussion, for yelling at, and for cheering for. They can distract when distraction is needed, and can give a town something to huddle around in dire times. Sports can be a source of comfort in the wake of a tragedy, for both the fans and players. And that is why the Kansas City Chiefs' decision to play on Sunday afternoon, despite the franchise-shaking murder-suicide that took place at their stadium the day before, is the right one.

It's unclear why Jovan Belcher did what he did. There was no sign of a troubled mind, no indication of unrest. Family friends described him as "friendly, a good guy... someone you wanted to be around." His agent, Joe Linta, pinned him as "charitable and humble." So when Belcher shot his girlfriend on Saturday morning, then drove to Arrowhead Stadium to kill himself in front of coaches, the tragedy struck home harder. The excess of questions left unanswered in the incident will undoubtedly make the healing process more difficult, and keep the wounds open longer. When there is no explanation for bloodshed, it feels that much more bloody. And because of this, the sentiment that the Chiefs should not play Sunday against the Panthers is one that is surely floating through not just Kansas City, but the entire country. And on the surface, that argument is the right one. The deaths that took place eclipsed the uneclipsable NFL, and in the wake of them, football seems to have no place. But that's where the argument fails.

The Chiefs have been, to put it simply, having a really, really, bad year. They have a 1 and 10 record that is every bit as ugly as it seems, and the GM and coach will almost surely be fired at the end of the year. The players were unhappy before the incident, and the fans were disappointed. But now, the added feeling of sorrow has been heaped onto that. And while time to mend may seem to be the remedy, the best move would be to play the game. The players would get a reprieve from the mourning, and find comfort in the thing they love most. Fans from across the heavy-hearted city would have both a place to comfort one another and a place to show support for a devastated team. Some things are bigger than football, but that doesn't mean football can't help.

NOTE: The Chiefs decided to play, and won 27-21. Coach Romeo Crennell: "As far as playing the game, I thought that was the best for us to do, because that's what we do. We're football players and football coaches and that's what we do, we play on Sunday."

The Sad State of the Wizards

The Sad State of Wizards Basketball



The Washington Wizards are bad. And by “bad”, I don’t mean bad in the sense of,  “Wow, that was a bad movie.” Because someone, somewhere, enjoyed watching that movie, even if just for a scene or two. No, the Wizards are tragically, deplorably, bad...

To read more, follow this link to the Sideline Scoop.

Capture the Fall

Capture the Fall

For this assignment, I needed to put together a minute long video comprised of at least ten clips, and this video was supposed to exemplify what fall means to me. So, I set out with my friend Peter, and started scoping out for shots. We got the typical leaves and nature shots, but those weren't my favorite shots. The shot of us tossing the pigskin around isn't the most artistic, but does capture a key part of my fall life, and the shot of Peter falling into the leaf pile is just classic. Since I wanted to give the video a lively feel, when I was editing, I threw in an upbeat, energetic piece of music that I found on a CC approved website. I threw a few transitions in, and the result is what you see below. Unfortunately, the video is not quite a masterpiece because I had some slight issues holding the camera steady. Enjoy "A Frandsen Fall".

Multiple Choice

Multiple Choice plus a hoops mixtape

I'm fairly satisfied with our trailer, "Multiple Choice". It details the concept of a society in which one test decides your place in the community, and if you fail, then you're sent away for a lifetime of labor. A family comprised of two brothers is split up after the elder one fails the test, and in his combination of rage and sadness, the younger brother decides to fail on purpose to break his brother out, and presumably start a rebellion.

I love some of our shots, but more than anything, we stumbled upon them. We were walking to one our group member's houses, when we noticed a pile of dirt with a gray wall behind it. A collective lightbulb flashed above our heads, and we got into costume and shot our labor scene there. Next, we needed a spot for Jesse's rousing speech, and wandered around the house for a while. Eventually, we found a small room with old looking walls, and after putting a camera on it, it looked perfect. Those are my favorite shots in the film, and they came about completely on accident.

There are, unfortunately, some slightly sketchy things about our trailer The video quality is sort of poor, because we used a flip camera, but one could argue that the low quality was in the name of creating a dismal image of the society. And in hindsight, we could have furthered the concept a little more. But I think our music saves it. The song, Prophecy by Mr. Morse, is savage. If I were grading our film, I would bump it a solid five points for the music alone. It was interesting that were able to find such a quality piece of music using vocals that was CC approved. Anyhoo, you will find our trailer below.



P.S. I swear I will get back to writing about sports next week. Unfortunately, nothing very writeable has happened in the sporting world over the past two weeks. In the meantime, enjoy this hoops mixtape.

What Just Happened: Harden Dealt

What Just Happened: Harden Dealt

The Oklahoma City Thunder have traded James Harden, Cole Aldrich, Daequan Cook, and Lazar Hayward to the Rockets for Kevin Martin, Jeremy Lamb, 2 first rounders and 2 second rounders. That much we know. But why? What does it mean? How will OKC compensate for the loss of facial hair? The Sideline Scoop reacts...

A National Shock

A National Shock

Heartbreak does not come about very easily in baseball. Sure, teams may lose key games, favorite players may get traded, and stars may get injured. But that is only disappointment. Heartbreak is when your team allows four runs in the last inning, after leading by as much as six. It’s when a record-setting crowd falls dead silent as the other team celebrates on the field. It’s when a team invigorates a city, only to see themselves ousted from the playoffs in the most devastating fashion possible. It’s what happened at Nationals Park on a very late Friday night.,,

To read more, visit this link to the Sideline Scoop

Same Love

Same Love



Few things make my dad's eyes water. But this video did. "Same Love", by Macklemore, is a song dedicated to the support of gay marriage, and the video chronicles the story of a man who grows up confused and angry, and struggles to accept his identity. He falls in love with another man, and they get married and grow old together, holding hands until their last breath. The video itself is masterful, and the vocals and lyrics are thoughtful and pleasant. But the most important aspect of this video is the message.

Man and man, woman and woman, man and woman, it is all the same love. There is no need for people to hate and spew dark words when a man holds hands with another man. Yet, many in today's society still reject the idea of gay love, and cannot even imagine the concept of gay marriage. Pop culture has inserted the word "gay" into our vocabulary as a synonym for lame, or stupid. High schoolers drop derogatory remarks without a second thought as to what they are actually saying. It's been subconsciously ingrained within many young minds that gay is bad. This mindless hate leads kids to despise themselves, for merely being who they are. And sadly, even if they find the immense courage to come out as gay, they may not even have the ability to get married to another person of the same sex. Barred in most states, same sex marriage has emerged as one of the most polarizing issues in our society today. But the legalization of it, as suggested in this song, is necessary. Marriage is a declaration of love and companionship, but same sex couples cannot marry unless they live in the minority of states that allow it. Shut out, they are treated as unequal members of our society. We look down on discrimination based on skin color, but turn a blind eye to people discriminated against for loving who they want to love, for holding hands with another man. For wanting to marry someone they are infatuated with. It may not be traditional, but it is not immoral, or something to be ashamed of. Legalization of gay marriage wouldn't abolish all traces of gay hate. But, as Macklemore states, "it would be a damn good start". Marriage is a union between two people that love each other. It is all the same love.

Dystopian Trailer Sounds

For the sound and music portion of our dystopian trailer, I found two sounds in particular that I think we could put to use. One is an air raid siren, and the other is a clip of classical music. I chose the air raid siren because it gives a sort of ominous tone to whatever scene is going on, but also one of slight chaos, which will definitely occur at some point in our trailer. When heard in movies and TV shows and whatnot, the viewer generally gets the feel that something bad is going on, and this is a mood we are hoping to create in our trailer. 

I chose the classical music piece, "Ave verum corpus", because it could be used as an interesting juxtaposition to the chaos and action occurring on screen. Sometimes in movies, you'll see fighting or action on screen, and classical music in the background. It makes the clip seem even more effective, because it sort adds a calm to the movement happening. Also, it could be used during scenes which display the "upper class", because it gives an air of sophistication to the scene. 

We could find some other sounds of yelling, perhaps, or maybe a simple police siren, and include them in our trailer. We could use the yelling if we have a scene of social unrest, and the police siren could be used when the authorities are rushing over to arrest the protagonist. They would undoubtedly add another level of quality to our trailer. 

Book of Eli Trailer

  Book of Eli .  Albert and Allen Hughes .  R .  2010

The United States as we know it has been destroyed for 30 years now, replaced by a society in which looting and murders run rampant. One man, known simply as Eli (Denzel Washington), has been traversing the country since the war, determined to complete his task of getting the last Bible in the world into safe hands.

The trailer uses a multitude of effective techniques which create an exemplary  post-apocalyptic dystopia trailer. Among these techniques are background music, lighting, color, setting, and voiceover. The trailer opens in a dark forest, as ominous music pumps through the background. The music beats quicker and quicker until finally it hits a crescendo, in which the screen switches to a wide shot of a solitary man, walking across a dry wasteland. This small sequence encompasses music, color, and setting to create the dystopian feel. The music sets a serious and tension-filled mood, and when combined with the black and gray color of the forest, viewers immediately realize that this movie will center around something dangerous and dark. In the wide shot that follows, setting is utilized to further make clear that something has gone very wrong with this society. The setting depicts two highway overpasses with rubble and other miscellaneous metals strewn beneath them. The inclusion of the overpasses makes it clear that at one point, civilization flourished, but the rubble and overall disrepair makes it clear that such a society has not existed in a long, long time. As the trailer continues quick shots are shown which display Eli looking over a wasteland and fighting with insane looking men. In both of these shots, lighting is used to further the setting of a post-apocalyptic world. The light casts shadows over his face as he surveys the land, and when he's fighting, the lighting is dark to show the danger of this world. Throughout the trailer, intense and fast-paced music flows, which only support even more the dystopia, and a voiceover of Eli plays constantly, which explains what his task is, and how truly dangerous it is. Our trailer will use voiceover, setting, and background music to portray our own dystopia, and this trailer is an excellent example of those techniques.

Connected Learning

In a nutshell, "Preparing Students To Learn Without Us" by Will Richardson states that customized learning has already been proven to work,  and that it's the issue of changing teachers teaching methods that will hold the concept back. Many students, including the author's own son, have found success with a personalized lesson plan that centers around a passion of theirs. It takes a specialized kind of teacher to aid the student in their learning, however, and the style necessary is fairly unorthodox compared to the rigid learning and testing standards that are commonplace now.

 One part of this article that struck me as surprising was that, as the author says, "personalization is an expectation" in education these days. At least in my schooling experience, there has not been a large amount of flexibility in the way we learn, besides division into advanced groups. Hopefully, in this media class, we get to do a little bit more of this, perhaps by having a good amount of freedom in our projects. Certainly, we need guidelines, but instead of laying out a very specific objective, we could receive a broader one and in the process, enjoy it more.

 We could also use these blogs to keep track of our own passions, and share them with others. For example, I love sports writing and sports journalism, so I could find blogs or sites that discuss this and follow them. Here is a link to my Diigo page.

"The Expendables 2" Movie Review

Emma Yeager, author of the review "The Expendables 2 is spent", was not enthralled by "The Expendables 2". The review, which can be found on Silver Chips Online, had very little positive things to say about the film, and from the get go, made it clear that the film was both "dull" and "dated".

The review began by outlining the plot, setting, and characters in the film, and after introducing the gist of the film, begins sharing her opinions on it. First, she comments on how women are portrayed by the writers, and then goes on to critique the acting, in particular, the acting of Sylvester Stallone. Before she concludes the article, she does give out a rare compliment to the film, saying that some of the the pure action scenes, are in fact, fairly entertaining.

Yeager's main problem with the film seemed to be the general theme of it. After all, the concept of American action heroes saving the world from a Russian super-villain is hardly an original one. The incessant violence in the film also seems to have left a bad taste in her mouth, as she several times referenced back to it being "ceaseless", and "gory". Surprisingly, for a review of an action movie, very little time was spent evaluating the editing and special effects of the film, something that had to undoubtedly be a strength of "The Expendables 2". Perhaps this was because she wanted to paint a negative picture of the film, but whatever reason, more than two lines should have been spent on it. Luckily for the readers, she does not reveal anything too spoiler-like in the review, but does give ample information to know what it is for the most part about.

The quarterly movie assignment should give us a considerable amount of freedom, as CAP kids do best when not restricted to a tight set of guidelines. That is not to say that we should have no guidelines, though. Having a base set of questions that need to be answered would be mutually beneficial, as the students would not become sidetracked into an entirely different project, and the teacher's could actually  have something to grade. However, it is key that we are given more freedom than we were last year, both in terms of what movie to watch and how to review it, as they could get to be a chore instead of actually watching and enjoying a film.

Here's the link to my annotated review:

http://diigo.com/0sv3u

I'm Alex, and this is my own personal CAP blog. I like to read and write and whatnot but my favorite thing to do is to relax with my friends, and do typical teenager things, like watch TV, play basketball, scrap, and eat copious amounts of food. I don't really I have a lot of video experience thus far, as I was a Home-Ec kid in middle school, but two projects I enjoyed doing were a show open and a video explaining the role of a producer. In the show open, me and two other group mates had to shoot a roughly 30 second segment to open the daily Info Flow show at Blair. And with some crafty editing from my group mates (I don't know how to edit) we made a pretty cool video that showed a piece of paper spelling out the word "INFOFLOW" travel around the school. In this project, I was the director, and set up the shots. In the producer video, we interviewed a number of people asking them what a producer did, and only gave them a rough outline of what to say. We got some fairly humorous responses out of this, and formed a decent video. Again, in this one, I was director and helped set up shots. Also, check this link out, it's a sports blog my main man Landon and I have. thesidelinescoop.com. The picture I chose is of Ian Desmond sliding into second, because he's my favorite player on my favorite team of my favorite sport. 

We could use this blog to:

• Share classwork that we're particularly proud of.
• Help study for quizzes
• Share our CAP experiences.

Image Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/keithallison/7435599724/in/photostream/