Monday, March 17, 2014

A.S.: Web-spinna' Battle

We’ll Be Back

            Webspinnas: us?  Whodathunk?  This was by far one of the most enjoyable experiences I’ve had in this class so far.  This one really pushed us to be as creative as possible, while still working within specific limitations.  Costumes are always a plus, and the social interactions that took place during the making of the battles were things many of us will fondly reflect on for years to come.
            Jacob and I decided to mix our nerdyness and push our spinna’ skills to the limits.  Neither if us had ever had much experience in sound mixing, but we immediately drew from a wealth of memories of our genres: science fiction and fantasy.  Our greatest challenge lay within our own authorial cores: he and I are both passionate writers, and we struggled to get our story out just like we wanted it to.
            After a few run-throughs of the rough draft story, we realized that less was more, and that the more we simplified our sound clips, the easier it was to gain some free space to wiggle around in.  After cutting the fat, we ended up with a fairly solid short story in sync with classic hero’s journey tales of warriors rising from humble beginnings to thwart a monumentally evil force.   Technical difficulties ensued during our performance, but we managed to save the moments as best as we could, and the laughs from the crowd seemed to dictate an appreciated approval of our work.
            Dubstep remixes and fan made YouTube videos greatly influenced our work.  Popularized dubstep sounds are very characteristic of a techno-sci-fi world, and we soon found a plethora of “dubbed” sound bytes from films.  This inspired me to try and make our entire battle flow as if it were one mashed up dub song.  I opened with a classical version of the Imperil March from Star Wars, paused it at the musical beat, and played Kahn’s “Shall we begin?” line from Star Trek: Into Darkness; this was immediately followed by a dub drop in a remixed version of the imperial march.

            Jacob, not wanting his fantasy theme to be squashed by my heavy drops, did some questing of his own and found heavy metal renditions of songs from The Hobbit: an unexpected journey and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.  We were so engrossed in our story and the potential behind the music that we both determined to re-group after the battle and mash up our own YouTube mix of the event, in similar style of artists such as Pogo from our discussion/readings.

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