AW YEAH!

I didn’t think I would ever make it to this post, but this week was full of creative, fun, and challenging assignments. I definitely learned a lot about myself in a creative sense this week. For the past 2 years I’ve spent basically every moment in Trinkle trying to cram in a million math classes, which don’t really test your creativity. Being able to take things outside of the box really made for a great week. I was definitely more interested in doing these assignments than my math homework….

 

1.Noir Readings

First off, we had to fulfill some Noir Readings.The first was the mandatory reading of The Postman Always Rings Twice. This proved to be my favorite reading that I did. You can read all about my thoughts and feelings about it here, and leave some comments as well.

The second story I read was Dopamine Agnostics, which I also enjoyed. I felt as though this piece fit into a different kind of Noir than the other stories I read. Nobody died, there wasn’t really and big thrill, but it still had aspects that were dark, and if expanded on, could create the crude, dark, thrilling aspects Noir that other stories possess.You can read more about my feelings on this story here!

The last story I read was Hemingway’s The Killers. I did not like this story. The language was extremely vulgar, and I felt that the storyline was somewhat hard to follow. There were, however, a lot of instances that made the story very suspenseful. I was expecting someone to get killed, but that didn’t seem to happen. You can read more about my opinions on this text here!

In the end, I have a pretty good concept of Noir. I feel as though I have learned a lot just from these three pieces, and I am excited to continue through the semester and learn even more. The dark and thrilling aspects of these stories are really what kept me interested, and they really make me want to read, and eventually watch more Noir pieces. There is so much lying, deception, cleverness, and twisting story plots. There is a lot of dark action, and very rarely is there a happy ending. Some pieces are meant to horrify you while others just keep you on your toes the entire time. Also, endings of the stories can be very open ended, meaning so many different outcomes could happen if the story kept going.

2. Write a Character Dossier

This was probably my favorite assignment of the entire week. I had so much fun coming up with my character, Blair Morgan. While it took me FOREVER to give her a name, I do really like what I have chosen. Her back story is VERY extensive, and I cannot wait to continue to add on to her life throughout the semester. All of her seems to be made up from the dark side of my brain, which is appropriate since we are working with Noir. I think that she will surprise everyone as the semester continues.

3. Writing Assignments

These assignments proved to be a time consuming mess. However, I am really happy with what I came up with. The assignment? We needed to get 8 stars from the Writing Assignment category in the Assignment Bank. The catch? At least 3 of the stars had to be related to our Character Dossier. We also had to do the mandatory Alternate Ending Assignment based on one of our readings.

The first assignment I did was a TV Guide remix in which you had to take a movie or TV show synopsis, and change it to sound like a different movie while keeping the facts correct. I chose to do Frozen, because I am obsessed with it, and could probably quote the entire movie verbatim. I am quite proud of what I came up with. You can find the entire post, here, which is where I went into depth about creating the synopsis, but I’ve also screenshotted it in so you can see the greatness.

This assignment was worth 2 stars 

The next assignment I did was Twitter Trends Turned Lyrical Poetry. This assignment was one of the more challenging ones, as I explained in my post Rap Trends and Orange Soda. In brief, I took this list of trends:

 

and created this work of art:

This assignment was worth 3 stars, putting me at 5 with 3 to go.

For my final 3 stars, I needed to somehow incorporate my Character Dossier, Blair Morgan into it. I had mentioned in her bio that she had planned to “kill her husband,” and I thought I could incorporate that into the Seven Character Story Treatment. Here you had to create a group of 7 people, sort of set up like the Justice League or Murder by Death, and create a TV Pilot or Movie idea. Well, I used the fact that Blair had 5 children, and added a dog to make a group of 7. The whole plot is basically that all of the children and the dog have special gifts that can help in a murder mystery. You can find out more about the pilot to Back To Morgan.

This assignment was worth 3 stars AND included my Character Dossier, which put me at 8 stars. Boom.

 The last writing assignment that had to be done was to create an alternate ending for one of the readings. I chose to rewrite the ending to The Postman Always Rings Twice, since it was my favorite piece. While the ending wasn’t what I expected, I was able to make my ending more the way I wanted things to happen. You can find my thought process and feelings on my original post.

5. Daily Creates

These were so much fun to do! You can find the three assignments I did here, as well as on my flickr and twitter!  They were not hard to do, at all, and like other things I had done this week, they really helped me get creative. The three I ended up doing were the Camouflage, Cat on a Synthesizer in Space, and the Eye Selfie. I couldn’t tell you which one was my favorite, though. They were all exciting and different that anything I had ever really done before.

6. Customizing My Blog

I had customized my blog last week, but my videos weren’t embedding well in the posts I was making. So I decided to scrap that theme and pick another one. While I liked the way my background worked in the first theme, I am quite impressed with how my new theme ended up playing out. Getting the colors coordinated was also challenging, but I am pleased with the final turn out. The whole site is easy to follow and navigate, and I think it represents me very well.

when in doubt just change your whole theme……

— Mia (@miaboleis) January 24, 2015

Lastly, you can find my about me page, here, with the clever title (or so I thought) I’m NOT Missing In Action.

I’m EXTREMELY happy to be finished with all of my work for the week. I didn’t think I was going to make it, but I did, and I cannot wait to see what the class has in store for me next week!

(Also enjoy this picture of how I feel right now)