DESIGNS I LIKE

Thanks to the advent of blog posting, I've become a big fan of its intuitive format. Just give me a headline and words and I'll figure the rest out for myself. Hell it doesn;t even have to have images. It can be all text-based.

This is a far cry from the early internet website design, where animated gifs were practically required. Much like arcade games, webite designs figured the flashiest things would be most attractive to the passer-by. But now we have the Sophisticate Internet!

A good example of a Sophisticated website is the Gothamist. However, I'm going to talk about Brooklyn Vegan instead because he's a hard working guy and he deserves it.

Brooklyn Vegan is a cool music blog run by one dude, and it's all about music news and particularly that news which is related to the New York area. The blog design is classic: each post is headed with a telling photo, and then there's a bunch of text underneath that follows journalism standards pretty strictly. It's an appealing design to me because it's very simple to follow and easy to navigate. Band names are bolded so you can skip to who you'd like to see, and there are highlights running down the side of the page. The only thing I dislike is how difficult it may be to find something in the archives, but Google helps solve that. The end!

SOUND THING

Staten Island is a pretty dull place, aurally. I just heard some guy yell swears at another guy outside the window of this room up at Hunter, which is slightly exciting. However, walking around Staten Island is just plain boring, at least where I live. I live in a county called Great Kills and yes, we call them "counties". Great Kills is mostly residential. Most of the people that live there stay in their houses all day and all night, except for the summer when all the South Shore kids decide to pay us sixth gen Italians a visit. Then it's not so boring, it's just annoying and the sound of street racing at 4AM is unpleasant.

I decided to not put my iPod on during my walk to the train one day, which takes roughly 25 minutes, and I wrote things down in my notebook as to what I saw and heard. Well I can tell you now that there was a whole lot of inactivity on that day on the count of it being nice out and school in session. But I did see a lot of video game systems turned on indoors thanks to the steadily rising unemployment rate.

I mostly heard the occasional car pass by and the ruffling of leaves. You can talk to trees but they can't talk back, so I suppose they are always making the most conversationalists until they fall over and hit a power wire. Then you just hear a snap and some buzzing, and then darkness, although darkness doesn't make a sound.

Once I heard a couple arguing. This is not uncommon because in my area you rarely see a family with a divorced, single parent and many of them have that "stay together for the kids" mentality since there are so many kids there. Of course they all go to public school, and I thought about walking over to my old public school to take a stroll past the school yard, but decided that might be kind of creepy and left it be.

I'd have to say the most prominent soundmark is the dog that barks at me as I walk past it every day. He hides behind a white fence and I'm pretty sure if he were let loose he'd tear me to pieces. Each morning when I walk to the train this dog barks at me. When I walk back home late at night he's still there barking. I can't remember a time when this obnoxious dog hasn't barked at me because this has been going on for at least six years now. This thing will never die. If it does, I will not know what to do.

BLADE RUNNER

In the history of mankind, there are very few visually impressive science fiction films than Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. Released to theaters in 1982, the Harrison Ford powered science fiction is based on Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and features a number of technical features that were not only innovative in 1982, but hold up just as well today. Compared to many other science fiction fantasies of the time (such as Star Wars), Blade Runner features an aesthetic that didn't cheaper over time.

Many of the scenes are shot wide and long, to convey a sense of giganticism. The camera work is actually done strategically (with plenty of post-effects) so that it's impossible to tell that the tall, futuristic buildings look as those they're in a grimey future dystopia and aren't just models with a smoke machine behind them. Also noticable is how each shot is completely in focus from the foreground to the background so as to not blur any of the spectacle.

Many of the movement shots of the characters are shot from far off, unless they move through a crowd, in which case many shots are quick cuts and claustrophobic. The villains are usually centered. This creates a feeling of in-your-faceness for the viewer. In opposition are the normal shots of people, who are usually off-center so as to allow focus on whatever they're looking at.

A lot of the shots are dark, but illuminated by what appears to be a fake light. Practically the entirety of the film takes place at night and most of the time it's raining, so the visual achievement is impressive in that the lighting is consistently subtle in order to make the dark, moody mood all the more gloomy.

In a final intense moment, during the famous "Tears in Rain" scene, the camera focus is directly on the character's faces as to capture the emotion and expression coinciding with the dialog. Here is a good example of how light is used to create mood.

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