National Article!

Awesome news!
My Avatar Facebook News Feed has gone “national” and been featured on Collegehumor!

I’m super happy about this, and you should definitely check it out and click “i like it”.
They published the shorter version for some reason, but you can still check out the “extended” version here.

Avatar Facebook News Feed

Check out my new article on CollegeHumor, Avatar Facebook News Feed. Make sure to click “I like it”, because you will like it.

Avatar Facebook News Feed

VIEW FULL ARTICLE

Updating!

Well I haven’t updated my WordPress page since April, so I figured it was about time to start using it again!
I haven’t worked on too many projects since my last update, but the ones that I have worked on have seen really good reception which is a great motivation for me to make more stuff!

First of all, this summer I was really excited about the release of Inglourious Basterds. So excited in fact that I decided to shoot what is essentially a shot-for-shot and line-for-line parody of the trailer. It was extremely flattering to see how much everybody liked it! It was featured on several of my favorite comedy sites, which to me is like a writer getting a story picked up by Rolling Stone. These sites are viewed by millions of people every day, and to get a video I created get featured on them is just mind-blowing. Here’s a list of some of the places Inglourious Toddlers was featured.
- CollegeHumor
- Funny or Die (Will Ferrell’s website)
- I-Am-Bored
- Heeb Magazine (magazine financed by Steven Spielberg!)
- Alamo Drafthouse Theaters (it was picked up as part of the pre-show for Inglourious Basterds in several Texas theaters)

Now, if you haven’t seen the trailer for Inglourious Basterds, the video will not make sense, so I suggest you watch this first: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sQhTVz5IjQ

And here is Inglourious Toddlers!

Also this summer, some friends and I participated in the 24-Hour Film Race, a competition that takes place through 20 cities in North America. The way it works is that at 10pm on the day of your city’s competition, you receive an email telling you a surprise theme and a surprise prop that you must incorporate in your video. You then have 24 hours to conceive, write, shoot and edit a 4 minute movie. The theme we got was TRUST, and the prop was TOMATO. Here’s what we came up with:

We ended up winning for :
Best Film,
Audience Awards (Screening + Online),
Best Direction, Best Lead Actor,
Best Acting Ensemble,
Best Writing,
Best Cinematography,
Best Editing,
Best Original Music Score,
Best Sound Design.

And now, since we are the winners for our city, our video will go up against the winners from the 19 other cities involved. Winners should be announced soon!

Other than that, I haven’t really produced any new content, although several projects are in the works.
To end off, here’s some stats of some of my YouTube videos that have been doing well for whatever reason!
Sax Man: 201,935 views
Christian Bale calls Dora the Explorer: 125,035 views
The Dark Brick: 56,084 views
Spiderman Voice-Over: Break-In: 25,176 views
300 Voice-Over: Field Trip: 21,878 views

My top 3 videos with the most views are all projects that required little or no content produced by me, they’re just mash-ups that I made. That kind of sucks, but I guess that’s the nature of YouTube.

Anyway thanks for reading, and I’ll try to not wait 9 months before updating again!

Griffintown Soundwalk

I have to admit, when I heard about the Sound walk project, it sounded like something I really would not enjoy. I really didn’t feel like spending time walking around some old neighborhood listening to some random sounds. To my surprise, I had an awesome experience!

When Sam, Cory and I synced our iPods and started the walk, we were kind of laughing at how ridiculous this was going to be, laughing at the old Griffintown song. For me, it really got interesting when the audio tracks started pointing things out around us. When the stories of old Griffintown inhabitants were being told while we were standing right in the area where they occurred, it was a really weird feeling. I felt like I got shoved in a time machine and was seeing things nobody else could.

We must have looked insane, all three of us standing in an awkward circle listening to our iPods and slowly turning around to look at the sights the tracks were telling us to, never saying a word to each other. At a certain point a random horse ran by, which had been discussed on one of the tracks. Cool stuff.

It was awesome how the tracks synced up perfectly to where you were, like having a guided tour, except way more personal. Of course, when we stopped to pause on track 8, we realized that not all of us had been experiencing this harmony between audio and visual… Cory had his iPod on shuffle mode for most of the walk and was hearing random tracks at random spots. He swore a few times and said he would redo the walk once we left.

Some of the areas and tracks really stood out to me, and made the experience truly awesome. Here’s a list of my top 3 moments, because everybody loves lists.

3. The Church
This was the last part of the walk, and it had an awesome effect; really a good way to end it off. Sitting in the area where a church used to be was really weird and chilling. The audio was really supporting the stone outline of where the walls once stood, and the benches positioned as the pews once where was an awesome touch. The whole experience of this track was really immersive, and it made me realize the power that audio can have on people. When the track ended, Cory, Sam and I just spoke about how awesome that was.

2. The Plane Crash
I had heard about the plane crash in Griffintown, but that information got lost in my head at some point during the years, and I’m glad it did, because as soon as I heard the crash track my jaw dropped to discover I was standing in the spot of the crash I had been told about years ago. The audio for this part was particularly well-done. It was amazing to hear the stories of the people that actually lived where we were standing, and their experiences of the crash. It was chilling to hear about the explosion, and about the 14 people that died at that exact location. Giuliana, you owe me 17 000 000 000 dollars for the time machine I had to build to take this photograph.

1. The Ghost of Mary Gallagher
I thought that the set-up for this creepy tale was really well-done. Out of nowhere, the voice on the track said: “We are now approaching the scene of the crime.” That freaked me out. I had no idea what the voice was talking about. Hearing the story of the Ghost of Mary Gallagher was really cool. I’ve been to an abandoned house in Ontario that is supposedly haunted, and I got the same kind of feeling in this place as I did there. Awesome. I love horror stories. There was trash and debris everywhere, and I actually found myself looking around to see if I could maybe spot Mary’s ghost, or find her head. I didn’t find her head, but I did see a scary headless figure that popped out of nowhere.

Overall I really enjoyed this experience, and I’m glad I went. This was probably the best project of the semester, and it was really fun and educational (an improbable combination of words). I’ve been recommending this walk to everyone.

Oh yeah, we got a ticket. That sucked.

Can we have your liver?

Whenever Life gets you down, Mrs. Brown
And things seem hard or tough…
And people are stupid, obnoxious, or daft…
And you feel that you’ve had quite enough…

Just remember that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
That’s orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it’s reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the ‘Milky Way’.
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It’s a hundred thousand light years side to side.
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
But out by us, it’s just three thousand light years wide.
We’re thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
We go ’round every two hundred million years,
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that’s the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you’re feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space,
‘Cause there’s bugger all down here on Earth.

New Video: Sax Man

VOTE FOR ME

My friend Sam and I entered into a contest that Doritos is having. PLEASE VOTE FOR US BY CLICKING ON THE IMAGE BELOW AND GIVING US A THUMBS UP!!!

Sam busts his head on the ice.

Sam busted his head open on the ice and I was lucky enough to have a camera! (I’m going to hell)

Facebook Tagging

There’s this new trend going on on Facebook of tagging friends in this image:

So I decided I should modify it to make it a little more interesting.

Start tagging, people.

Sound Blog #1- 5 Most Influential Sounds

The following is a blog I’m required to write for my Sound 1 class at Concordia University.


The 5 Most Influential Sounds In My Life ( in no particular order)

5. My dog waking up in the morning:

Every morning that I have to wake up early (around 6 AM), I go down the stairs (in the dark, which is depressing) and I stumble around the kitchen, trying not to make any noise but of course knocking things over and swearing. The sound of my early-morning I.Q. deficit never fails to wake up my dog Maggie, who sleeps on her bed in the living room. She’s a Golden Retriever, and is pretty big for a dog (90 pounds). The fact that it’s dark and that my vision is blurry from being exhausted and having slept on my face for the past few hours makes me really hear the noise of her waking up. It’s unmistakable and ridiculously cute. She’s pretty old (11) and has some arthritis in her legs, so it takes her a little while to get up. Her morning routine consists of moaning and groaning while stretching (sounds like a boat motor). When she’s wearing her collar and her choke-chain you can really hear all of her movements precisely because of the little jingle of the chains. Then, as she walks towards the kitchen so that I can let her outside for her morning business, her claws click on the floor with each step she takes. Her routine finishes up when she scratches on the foor to ask to go outside, it’s a loud and unpleasant noise, that almost sounds like something ripping. I let her out and watch her roll around in the snow.

4. The squeak of my chair:

I hear this sound every day, and it’s pretty irritating. I bought my chair about a year ago, and I never really had any problems with it. For the past few months, my chair has developed a squeak. Really annoying. Every time I make a slight move, there’s this high-pitched RRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII. It sucks. Especially when I get home late and go to check my email or my Facebook or whatever, and I’m trying to be quiet about it so I don’t wake up my family. The squeak never fails. Not only is there a squeak but there’s a creak that follows it. I could probably fix it with some oil or something but I am a lazy bastard.

3. Consuming food and drinks:

So this is a sound that I kind of discovered while I was doing my non-verbal narrative. My project was of a guy peeing that then zipping his fly up too quickly, thus cutting his schlong in the process. I was sitting there with my headphones on, plugged into the Edirol, and I was chewing gum. I brought the mic next to my mouth and was amazed at the disgusting sounds that were coming out of my mouth. It sounded like a bowl of slime being squished around. I started going around my kitchen and drinking and eating different things just to hear the gross sounds that were made while I did so. My mouth sounds totally gross. Now whenever I eat or drink I pay more attention to the sounds that I make and I laugh at how weird they sound.

2. Hum of my computer:

This is just a background noise that I’ve filtered out after spending many hours at my computer. It’s very quiet, but it’s noticeable if the room is silent. My computer is pretty much on all the time, so this little humming sound is a part of my room’s atmosphere. It’s even there when I sleep. I wonder if I sleep better with it or without it. This blog has inspired by to check that out.

1. My insane cat:

Sometimes cute, sometimes annoying, there is no doubt that my cat is insane. He doesn’t know what he wants, but he’s very vocal about what he THINKS he wants. My cat has a very particular set of meows. His favorite is the one that sounds most like my name (RRRRRRRRRRYYYYYOOOOOOOWWWWNNN). I’ve never heard another cat meow like mine. He also meows in way that sounds strangely sounds like my mom’s name (Aurora= AWOYWOO). This cat is ridiculous. He never shuts up. My day starts and ends with the sound of this cat yelling at me for all different reasons… he wants to go outside, he wants food, he wants to sleep on the chair I’m using, he’s bored, he’s thirsty, he woke up) I’m surprised I still have some of my sanity left. It is a noise that is impossible to filter out or ignore. Ugh. He’s alright though.