Salad Days: Casey Shaw & Christine Weirick (cultural event 5)

Salad Days was a one night only art exhibition in the Shepherdstown Community Club by showcased the work of Casey Shaw and Christine Weirick.  The show was really packed with students and observers. I noticed a lot of the work from the previous art show I attended titled “Sans Merci” which displayed the work of a lot of graphic designers at Shepherd including poetry. Salad Days was an impressive display of work by Casey and Christine, just as I’ve stated before Shepherd has a talented and independent group of students that’s coated with rich artistic ability.  These girls are truly gifted and have an eye to demonstrate their passion to the world.  Their work could be placed beside any masterpiece in a museum and relate well to the overall theme of the museum.  The work was very contemporary with a mix of photographs, graphic design, and paintings.        

Women, War and Peace (cultural event 4)

March is woman’s history month and in that month Shepherd University had a lot of seminars and organizations dedicated to women. One of those events was the showing of a documentary called Women, War, and Peace and its about the role women play in war, which is considered a man’s domain. The film concentrates around women that are in the conflict zones from Bosnia to Afghanistan and Colombia and Liberia. All of the woman show tremendous audacity to confront the issue of war in their countries, and to get their men to come to some kind of understanding of the horror they put their own people threw.  Most causalities of war involve women and children. They say this is the new face of modern warfare but unfortunately the fact is that women and children have been victims of warfare for many centuries. The raping and burning of homes and villages have been around since the Romans and Barbarians. It’s used now as more of a psychological war tactic to ruin the disposition of the enemy.           

Developing Archaea the Samurai

My senior project is a fictional short film that I created. My task included everything from writing the script, to finding the locations to shoot. My first priority was to write a feasible script. Once I had the general idea I began to develop the characters and story.

There are two main characters that I had to cast, one of which was myself, and the other was a friend of mine Lamar Scott. After I had the cast I began scouting locations and storyboarding.

Establishing a schedule was essential and made the process smoother. I would shoot each scene in chronological order and edited the film as I went along. The major scene was the fight scene at the end that involved samurai swords. I really loved the location of the scene and the atmosphere is enhanced.

While filming and editing I was also looking for music to apply to the soundtrack. The majority of the music came from SoundClick.com, and the rest came from my friend Lamar Scott who also raps and makes music.

The process was very enjoyable and I wish I had better personal equipment to enhance the film. I will continue to learn and explore the field of digital film and continue to write screenplays and work on short films.

Archaea the Samurai (Fictional Film)

Treatment

Archaea is a descendant of a samurai warrior family who’s had an ancient family medallion stolen from him by a soulless zombie warrior named Iron Lung. Iron Lung does not look like a traditional zombie he does not deteriorate, and doesn’t age. Iron Lung has been hired by the Roman Catholic Church to steal the medallion for the Pope to progress the Catholicism agenda of controlling the masses. The sacred medallion possesses mystical powers that give off energy to the person holding it, as well as the ability to control the mind of the person that is engaged in conversation with them. Archaea realizes that if the medallion falls in the wrong hands it will mean serious problems for the rest of the world. Since the medallion belongs to Archaea’s family he is impervious to the medallions powers, and is the only person that can stop Iron Lung and retrieve his families relic. Once Archaea realizes that Iron Lung is the one who stole the medallion he seeks him out and challenges him to the death in a sword fight.

Capstone Presentations cultural event three

At first I was a little nervous about capstone presentations, but after the first few minutes I started to relax and it was a fun experience. A lot of people walked up to my poster board and watched my short film. I think my movie poster was somewhat ambiguous and got people curious. I enjoyed looking at my fellow classmates presentations also; everyone had really good displays. The environment was very laid back and chill, which made it easy for students to come up and talk to you about your presentation. The majority of the people I talked to were not comm majors or minors; just people interested about the displays. I like the idea of networking and I need to put myself out there more than I have. Overall capstone was a great experience, it reminded me of a freelance project because we didn’t meet every week and we had to relay on our own time management skills. My classmates were always asking me how things were going, and I would do the same. We offered to help one another also. It was a great closing class for my shepherd career.

Cultural Event Two: SANS MERCI Volume 36

The 36^th volume of Shepherd University’s journal, Sans Merci was released on March 29, 2012. The release party was held at the Shepherdstown Community Club. The book consists of visual and written arts as well as photographs and paintings. One guy even had an experimental film. The artwork was truly amazing and there are some great artists that go to Shepherd University. Stephon Hummer’s piece EUPHORIA was very captivating to look at. It was dark, gritty, and reminded me of a dark corner in a nightmare that you wanted to escape. The poetry was well written and insightful.

Sans Merci is a student run organization, which produces an annual publication featuring student works in creative fields. I have a few copies of the early editions as well.