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Prior Knowledge |
I know the general shape of a clay ocarina, and I’ve made a couple before. I learned this from watching youtube videos, reading tutorials, and learning about the (very) basic physics of the voicing hole. Additionally I’ve played wind instruments for the last 13 years, and know how to work a tuner. Despite the videos... |
I’m making this for myself, but want to try to make a smaller ocarina. I’ve typically made much larger ones which I’ve found are somewhat less finicky to get to make a sound. |
Umbrella Plan |
• Finances: All the blocks of clay at the student center are about 15$. Everything else involved in the craft is free. |
• Materials: I went with a more grey type of clay. They had several to choose from and I didn’t have great experiences with the brown or reddish clays, but had used the grey successfully before. |
• Skills: I know how to use the tools that are below, as I’ve used them at the craft center for this specific purpose. I know how to tune an ocarina basically, and very well with a tuner present. I don’t really know how to make a wooden ocarina, so I’m going to be working on a clay one. |
Begin Crystalization/Decisions |
First I need to decide what tools I’ll use. I pick out some of the clay tools, then decide upon which pre-made mould ( an egg shaped lump of hardened clay that will form the inside of the ocarina) I want to use. |
The clay is cut from the block, then kneaded to get rid of the bubbles and flattened with a rolling pin. Then I cut the clay and form it around the mould I’ve made. If the clay doesn’t feel even around the mould, I’ll add more. Next is shaving off more clay to make it less lumpy. It’s always difficult to determine whe... |
Once I’ve got a basic mould set up, I cut the ocarina in two, and decide upon a “bottom” half. I construct and attach the mouthpiece. If the hole for the mouthpiece isn’t big enough, I have to make it bigger and recut. If the hole cut for the mouthpiece is too big I have to add more clay. A small square hole is cut ... |
The hardest part comes in making the wedge that splits the air from the mouthpiece to create the sound. This often takes at least half an hour of evaluating, making decisions about how to fix it, and proceeding from there. Often the sides will not be straight enough, or the actual wedge will need to be reformed, or rea... |
The last bit is putting the two halves together, sealing it, smoothing out the edges with more clay, and then cutting the finger holes. During this whole step the wedge will need to be realigned, reshaped, and sometimes the entire ocarina is unsalvageable. |
Final Analysis. |
Since this is just a simple ocarina for myself, whether or not it played was my final analysis. I wasn’t too interested in tuning it this time, as I’ll do that later once it’s hardened more. |
Making a reed |
January 30th, 2013 by sam |
Making oboe reeds |
When I was younger I played the oboe (I still can by the way) and an important part of the oboe is the reed. A good reed can be the difference between a nice sound coming out of your oboe or a bad one. It can also make a difference in what way you need to play the oboe. A thick reed requires more blowing strength from... |
Our research focuses primarily on the interrelations of knowledge and action as individual phenomena, although the inclusion of individual action within a larger activity system requires that we can draw on both social and routine elements. From this perspective neither the human organism nor the external world is sole... |
In a different publication by Janice E. Fournier called How a Creative “System” Learns: The Distributed Activity of Choreography, the author goes into Keller and Keller also implicitly referring to the quote above. Fournier states that most studies investigate how individuals or groups of individuals coordinate their a... |
Thus, to discuss how a reed is being made, how I have made reeds is to discuss and analyze the creative system. So we need to know how activity is distributed across the practitioner and specific tools and structures in my environment. Knowledge is simultaneously a prerequisite and a consequence of action and action is... |
Prior Knowledge |
To make an oboe reed prior knowledge is necessary. The first time I made a reed was during a workshop. The workshop lasted several weeks and was being taught by an oboe teacher and reed maker. The prior knowledge you need is not only about reed making but also about oboe. For one, this is because the reed has a specifi... |
During the workshop however I was confronted with a set of tools and materials I did not know well. Scrapers, specific kinds of wood, lines etc. I had years of playing the oboe though and also of using reeds so I had a mental image of what a reed was supposed to be like. Not only how it was supposed to look like, but a... |
A big part of making a reed is scraping. You need to scrape the cork but also the reed itself. Scrape too much and the cork might not fit and/or the reed becomes too weak. But scrape too little and it becomes too hard to play (and the cork still does not fit!). So here we have a constant evaluation in progress. A recip... |
Analyzing the Processing of Screen Printing with a Stencil |
January 29th, 2013 by The Artist Formerly Known as Kate |
For a period of a few years in the mid-2000s, I made and sold craft clothing items. I wanted to learn about screen printing, but the need for emulsion and other chemicals seemed too complicated, so I started making my own stencils. |
Cultural Considerations |
The look of stencils is usually a bit rougher and more “amateur”-looking than screen prints. There are also some connotations with homemade activist clothing (i.e. the ubiquitous Che Guevara shirts) and posters, as well as graffiti. It’s a craft for people who don’t want their final object to look clean and professiona... |
Prior Knowledge |
Although I learned the basics of screen printing in a high school art class, I taught myself how to make stencil prints by using internet tutorials and trial and error. I’ve never personally seen another person perform this process. People new to this process will inevitably make errors when designing the stencil beca... |
Since I no longer sell my crafts, my current goal would be to make myself a print or clothing item. I could choose my subject based on my personal likes or to express an opinion. If I don’t have to sell a print, the standards will be a bit lower, as I am probably more accepting of imperfections and mistakes if I’m not ... |
Umbrella Plan |
Finances: Finances are rarely a consideration, since stenciling is a very inexpensive craft, costing only a few dollars per item. |
Materials: Paint (varies based on what is being printed), plastic, a good Exacto knife. These are supplies I keep on hand and are easily obtained. |
Skills: The most important skill in this process is the design (considering positive and negative space) and the ability to make fine cuts through the plastic with the knife. The paint application requires almost no skill. |
Standards: Although my own standards are probably not as high as the “craft community,” I would still attempt to create something that looked good enough to post/share online. Looking at the work of others and comments from the community would inform my perception of quality. |
Begin crystallizing |
Decisions: There isn’t a lot of room to change decisions once you start cutting, so the design process is critical. |
The first step is decide on an image that will lend itself to a high-contrast (black and white) conversion. Because of applications like Photoshop, it’s easy to test out different images. I need to analyze if there are “floating” negative spaces that I would need to connect in my stencil. If I’ve chosen a good image an... |
Next, I print my image and begin cutting out the black areas with my knife. This part of the process requires the most manual dexterity, but not much decision-making. I’ll need to make decisions if I’ve made a mistake in the design process (or if I’ve made a mistake with the knife). If there’s a “floating” area that I’... |
There are usually two points of evaluation: |
1. After the image has been printed (does it look right in black/white contrast? Is it still identifiable? Will it be too difficult to cut?) |
2. After I’ve applied paint and removed the stencil. This is the last step of the process, so if I’m not happy with the way it looks, I need to determine if it’s a design flaw, a poorly cut stencil (i.e. jagged edges), or the paint seeping under the stencil. In this case I would use the “academic standards” to determin... |
Final analysis/thing |
Once I’ve completed the process until I’ve “passed” the evaluation, I’ll have a stenciled item (and a stencil that can be used many more times). |
No personal blog crapola. |
Just one guy's quest to unlock the mysterious art of storytelling on screen. |
Friday, December 19, 2008 |
Andrew Stanton (PIXAR) - transcript - Keynote, Screenwriting Expo 5 (2006), Understanding Story: or My Journey of Pain |
UPDATE, March 2012: |
New TED 2012 Talk by Andrew Stanton, covering much of the same material recorded here. |
READABILITY TIP: For easier reading and to prevent eye strain, narrow the width of your browser tab to reflow the text into shorter lines. I recommend a words-per-line count of 12 to 15. |
As soon as I found it on Google Video, I knew I would have to transcribe it. |
Here is all of Andrew Stanton's keynote from Screenwriting Expo 5 (2006). He named it: "Understanding Story: or My Journey of Pain." |
I have not transcribed the Q&A that followed the keynote. Perhaps I will tackle it one day. Not for a while -- this transcription consumed quite a few of my nights, and I'm happy to be done with it. And now that I can look at it from head to toe, I can see it was worth every coffee-fueled keystroke. |
With Stanton's experiences and lessons to guide us, we cannot fail to become better storytellers. |
Note: Andrew talks FAST, so this transcript is garbled in places. Where the dialogue is mostly clear, I've used what I think he is saying. Where it's mostly garbled I don't try to guess but instead use the placeholder '[garbled]'. I apologize to Andrew if I've made mistakes in transcribing. However, I'm confident nothi... |
At the end of this article you'll find my own summary of Stanton's storytelling advice. |
Additional links to explore: |
Alright, let's get started. |
A tourist is backpacking through the highlands of Scotland, and he stops at a pub where he goes to get a pint of beer, and the only other patron there is an old man nursing a beer at the bar. And they drink in silence for a little bit. Suddenly the old man lifts his head and he goes, "You see this bar? I built this bar... |
He puts his head back down. He start to listen again. He points to the window. "You see that stone wall out there? I built that stone wall with my bare hands. Picked every rock, placed it just so, through the rain and the cold, but do they call me McGregor the stone wall builder? No!" |
He points at another window. You see the pier on the lake out there? I built that pier with my bare hands, drove the pilings against the tide through the sand, plank by plank, but do they call me McGregor the pier builder? No!" |
He looks around. "But you fuck one goat..." |
[audience laugher and applause] |
Storytelling is joke-telling. It's knowing your ending, your destination, your punchline, and then building the telling of that story so that everything supports a satisfying conclusion. |
David Mamet wrote: |
"That's all that theatre is: storytelling. Theatre's no different from gossip, from dirty jokes, from what Uncle Max did on his fishing trip. It's just telling stories in that particular way in which one tells stories in theatre. To me, recognising the storytelling dimension of playwriting is the beginning mark of matu... |
I read this enlightening observation by David Mamet just as I was getting my first opportunity to write a movie, and it's remained probably the most steadfast truism in screenwriting for me today. |
Before I get started I need to put all of my story edification in context and explain the environment at Pixar. We're up in Northern California, just below Berkley, just above Oakland. It's a very unique place, and it's a perfect storm of art, science, and studio savvy that's beaten tremendous odds to exist, let alone ... |
There's no politics. Basically there is -- we're employees. We're hired nine to five, Monday through Friday. So there's no agents, there's no deal making. Similar to the old studio system, we're a bunch of artisans at the top of their craft working under one roof on multiple pictures. There's no studio executives. An a... |
It's a director-driven studio. We don't invest in ideas; we invest in people. We invest in the directors and the ideas they have, the ideas that they are interested in. So we'll back that vision. And we've formed what over time has turned into the term Brains Trust, which is really just the directors that have a story ... |
Consequently, we only do in-house original ideas, based on the ideas that the directors have, like I said, or are interested in. So our ratios to story development... our stories being developed, being produced have always been one to one. It's not that we develop twelve and then we pick that one idea. |
I was describing this on a panel at the Austin Screenwriting Festival with a bunch of screenwriters. In the middle of saying this, one of them -- a screenwriter [garbled] says, "What do you live in, fairyland?" |
[audience laughter] |
And I go, "Yeah. Yeah, we do." I live in fairyland, and so if you're gonna have questions I'm not gonna have any advice about how to get your script written or how to win and woo an agent or how to navigate the industry. I have no Hollywood survival skills that I [garbled]. |
[audience laughter and applause] |
Pixar's made seven films to date, and I'll be focusing on the first five, mainly because I didn't work on the last two. So I don't have any great personal trench stories from them. The later panels will cover much more. |
I have to admit, I'm a bit apprehensive standing up here and talking to you about storytelling. Even though I've spent fourteen years making movies I still feel like I'm just beginning to understand the roles, and I seem to forget them again and learn them again. At Pixar I spend most of my time feeling dumb and inadeq... |
So rather than tell you what we know at Pixar about story, I thought instead I'd take you through the history of what we didn't know, or what I like to sort of call 'My Journey of Pain.' |
[audience laughter] |
OK, so we're gonna start our journey of pain back in 1992. In '92 -- |
[audience laughter] |
-- there's about twenty-five of us, in all in the group. And all we did was shorts -- CG animated shorts and commercials. And that's pretty much all I thought we were gonna do when I was working with them at the time. |
Disney had been trying to woo John for a long time to come back down there and make a movie for them. He loved what he had started creating at Pixar and wanted to keep it going. So he kept refusing, and finally they called and said, "Look, you stay up there and you can use Pixar. Just make us a CG films and you can mak... |
And that's an interesting problem to have. We had a blank canvas with an infinite amount of choices. So, we found ourselves overwhelmed by the simple problem of how to start. |
And I -- God -- I mean I fantasized my whole life about making a movie and never really thought it would really -- I'd be a part of anything like that. And it was interesting to suddenly go, I've never really thought too hard about how do you start writing a story and developing something. This is 1992, this is the age... |
And there was this one scene. I don't know if it's gonna translate at all to you guys like it did to me. But it's like the clouds parted, and I started to understand how the basics of telling the story on film really worked, like how the strings worked behind things. I'll show you this clip -- we're gonna set it up. |
If you haven't seen Ryan's daughter it's basically Rosy Ryan is the main character. Her father Ryan runs a pub. It's 1915 in Ireland. And she's always gotten everything she's ever wanted. She's spoiled; she fell in love with a school teacher, and when she was old enough she married him. And there's this kid she grew up... |
And we cut to the bus stop, on that line, outside of town, and this is the clip... |
[clip from Ryan's Daughter] |
Suddenly, like John Nash in A Beautiful Mind, I felt like I could see the equations floating up there. The way certain pieces of information were told in a certain way to create interest and enquiry. It was so beautifully simple, but like most great art was deceivingly simple. It's all about audience participation. We ... |
David Mamet has quoted that directing film, he "put the protagonist in the same position as the audience through the cut, by making the viewer create the idea himself in his own mind." I'll elaborate on this much later in the keynote. |
So when I started at Pixar, I was not a writer. I came from animation -- that's what I went to school for. But I'd always had strong opinions about what I wanted to see on the screen. Turns out, that's half the battle of screenwriting. I'd always considered writing such a lofty, erudite profession and felt that I'd nev... |
What enabled me to enter this craft was the realisation that screenwriting is not writing. A screenplay is not something to be held up and read as a finished piece, and it's not the end result of a creative endeavour. It's the beginning. It's an intermediary form. It's a means of documenting cinematic storytelling, of ... |
I understand I'm probably underselling the art form by calling it that, but that utilitarian phrase helps free me up from my insecurities I still have about writing, sort of demystifies the process. It gives me the courage to face the job at hand everyday. So I use it. |
So with blind eagerness and optimism, we had our blank [garbled] canvas. We set up [garbled] idea for our first movie. Now if you should ever find yourself in this situation I'd highly recommend that you write what you know. And if you don't know anything then research what interests you and know what you write. |
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