because air conditioners are heavy and city apartments don’t have enough storage room. Yes, this is a short post. I worked 60 hours this week, attended two three-hour evenings classes, started memorizing a sketch for this Saturday’s Sketchubator show at the PIT (at 11 PM – be there!), watched To Have and Have Not, and [...]

Another week, another round of classes, and once again, I enjoyed the sound design class more than the editing class. However, I’m not sure how much of that was influenced by straining to watch grainy, black and white silent film clips in the latter and getting to play with hundreds of dollars’ worth of electronics [...]

A prime example of the Principle of Inscrutability is song lyrics. “Drops of Jupiter” by Train is playing on my radio right now, and although I enjoy it, the lyrics are so nonsensical that I can read as much brilliant metaphor into them as I want: Tell me, did you sail across the sun Did [...]

In contrast to the Sound Design course, the Art of Editing course I just started turns out to be a more traditional humanities theory course: an analytical discussion of film editing techniques in the context of in-class screenings. Back in high school, I loved classes in which topics were subjective and there was no such [...]

It’s the end of the week for me – the film class week, that is. My first Art of Editing class was yesterday, followed by my second Sound Design class today. Originally, I had been looking forward to the editing class more than the sound design class, but I have to say that, so far, [...]

My first assignment for Sound Design puts the “woo!” in homewoork. I’m supposed to watch the animated movie The Triplets of Belleville and note how the filmmakers distinguish characters by giving each of them a signature sound. The instructor demonstrated the use of signature sounds in class by showing a brief clip from another animated [...]

The other day, I passed a line of people, camping chairs, and tents behind a police barricade that extended halfway down a city block, wrapped around the corner, and went on for another at least another half-block. It turned out to be the audition line for Last Comic Standing at Gotham Comedy Club, and it [...]

My first Sound Design class began with an overview of sound, which brought me back to my days in Psychoacoustics Lab in college. I would have never thought any of that course would have come in handy in the future besides providing me with great stories of sitting outside the testing rooms listening to experiment [...]

I double-checked the time and location for my Sound Design course the night before the first session, wrote down the address on a slip of paper to carry in my pocket on the walk over to the building, made sure I had my registration form and student ID card in my bag, and left myself [...]