To cut or not to cut...

As a movie nerd I contantly think about the choices the directors, actors, cinematographers, etc. make regarding the delivery of lines, the setting, the colors, and everything else in a movie. Over the weekend I watched Half Nelson and was so impressed with every aspect of the movie. I thought about the editing choices, and realized how significant they are while watching the Oscars. During the Best Editing award, they showed a clip from each nominated movie, and at the top of the screen showed three shots from different angles of the same clip, while the final from the film was shown at the bottom, much larger than the others. I spent more time looking at the smaller squares at the top to see the options the filmmakers decided not to go with, and I started to wonder what exactly goes into the process of choosing each frame. I thought about the time commitment involved in choosing the best shot from the stacks and stacks that must be filmed for each scene. I'm very interested in this, and want to find out more about the process the editiors go through to choose. What makes "good editing" in a movie? Why were the five films chosen for best editing over all the other movies from last year? How does one determine this good editing? To be continued...

I finally got a picture to work!

In an attempt to make my blog more visually appealing by adding pictures I had to recruit a writing center friend much more technologically savvy than me. It appears both macs and PCs hate my attempts at posting pictures not in a post, so here we are. More to come, if my luck holds out...

So here's the URL, for real

Hi everyone,

Okay, here is the handy URL. Looks like it will work now that I'm on a Dell. Pshaw.
http://712educators.about.com/od/discipline/tp/disciplinetips.htm

Confession #2 and handy URL

One of the things I'm most apprehensive about regarding teaching is classroom discipline. I'm not very menacing and am a bit tiny. I wish there was a class through the education college that focused on HOW to maintain discipline without being a total tyrant and making your students hate you. I've had teachers who were naturally brilliant at keeping students under control, and they did it respectfully and without a lot of effort, or so I thought. Anyway, I found a website (part of the cheesy about.com) that links to several secondary school classroom discipline resources and how-to's. Some may speak more to your interests and tastes and style than others, but they are worth a look. The site is http://712educators.about.com/od/discipline/tp/disciplinetips.htm, but hilariously enough my MAC won't let me do the link. I don't have the link button and control-shift-a doesn't work, either. Ha ha! I'll make the link work tomorrow on a PC. Phooey.

P.S. I heart my Mac!!! I really do!

Confession #1

Perhaps my identity will rely on confessions. I have many, many deep and dark (and cliched) confessions, the first being that I am a sucker for advertisements. I'm also a sucker for their aesthetic value. I make collages with them. I put cool ones up on my fridge. I love examining the people featured in them and trying to interpret the looks on their faces. This probably sounds crazy, but a lot of them (especially weird, couture fashion-y ones) have bizarre poses and odd facial expressions. WHY? How is this useful?! These don't compell me to drop a zillion dollars on clothing. Other ads, though, do tempt me. Those for cheaper products (a new kind of body lotion that will smooth away the winter dry-skin blues? YEAH!) that feature attractive people happily using their wonderful product. I think we all like to see ourselves as immune to the influences of commericals and ads (and maybe pop culture in general) but I think it infiltrates us even when we believe it doesn't. So there.