GreenDay and Jesus of Suburbia

In the modern era where techno, rap and hip-hop play a major part of the music lifestyle chosen by most of the country's young teenagers, Green Day was the band that stuck to the punk roots and explored rock and punk music to the core. A punk rock band formed in 1987, Green Day had many lows and highs in their career over the years. The music they made, always had punk rock as the central style and which never faded away form the roots of the band. In the late nineties, as the band's popularity started reducing, they were in tough times as a result of the shift in culture and the style of music that people listened to. 'Billie Joe Armstrong' and the rest of the band members thought of making a concept album that would be different from anything that they've ever made, in order to try saving the band. But this one album not only reclaimed the band's status once and for all and awarded them with success but also changed the face of punk music and brought the seemingly fading rock music, back into the picture.

The concept album made by Green Day in 2003, named "American Idiot" is one of the best albums punk had ever seen. The concept of the album is to tell us the story and take us on a journey into the life of an adolescent, confused teen who faces tough times in the modern world; 'Jesus of Suburbia' who in a sense is a powerless and mundane antihero, desensitized by constant intake of Ritalin, Soda-pop and other drugs. The life, the neighborhood and the people around him sicken him, and the constant depression makes him come to a stage where he can't take the grueling pain anymore despite of the usage of anti-depressant narcotics. This makes him decide to leave to the big city for the better.

Here, on his journey in the big city, Jesus of Suburbia meets St.Jimmy, a revolutionary freedom fighter who tends to question the politics and the ill doings of the government. He is introduced in the song 'Whatshername' and continues to stick in the story along with Jesus of Suburbia. Other Characters are revealed as we move form song to song in the album who are either directly or indirectly related to the story. But the main theme always revolves around the two main central characters. Both of them are have contrasting natures and the way they think. Jesus of Suburbia is more of a person who wants to pursue love and live a free life, unbounded by the shackles of the pain inflicting government and the society, whereas St.Jimmy is a revolutionary sort of person who always questions and gets into situations where he is making riots against the wrongdoings that he faces. Jesus of suburbia, being a person who has true ethics and moral fiber tries to change St.Jimmy with his influence. What we slowly understand in this is that, both of them are in fact the same person who has two different personalities, and is trying to come out of the rebellious frame of mind. As the album comes to an end the St.Jimmy part of the character dies out slowly which is a bitter sweet end to the album.

Lyrics of many songs clearly to depict the depression going trough the mind of Jesus of Suburbia. The songs, "Jesus of Suburbia" and "Give me Novacaine" tell us about the way he tries to relieve the pain. The song "Holiday" clearly shows the dark side of him, where he talks about the government and how the politicians are hypocrites who neither care about the country nor its people. According to me, "Jesus of Suburbia" is the song that clearly depicts the life and the main theme of the album.

Start... Reset... Restart..!

Run Lola Run is one of those movies which come rather occasionlly, and watching it is as good as playing a video-game which is non-linear in nature with multiple endings. It feels like we are watching a 20 minute video but gives us the expereince of watching 3 movies at once. Its theme is mainly based on the 'The Butterfly Effect'. The concepts here are simple but at the same time shows us the complexities involved. How do our actions affect our own lives, as well as those whom we touch? How does chance and random events determine an outcome? Can we get a different result by making different choices? Well, not many director's I guess have tired to plow the same fertile field but I believe that no one has dealt better with such cosmic existential questions with more striking originality, fast paced action, and a pulsing score that makes the whole thing work. A rather funny fact (courtesy Imdb) is that, the actress in the lead role (Lola) didn't get to wash her hair for 7 weeks, the full course till the movie was completely shot.

In a compact, action packed ninety minutes, combining little snips of animation, funny yet sensitive characters, situations,dialogue, a pace that makes most of the music videos look like they've been filmed in slow motion, and unfolding three versions of the same story sequence each time concluding with a jolting finish that defies convention and keeps us guessing until the last frame.

The game that our group has been designing is non-linear in nature, progresses with a tangential approach as an outcome to the choices that the player keeps making. This movie has been one of the sources of inspiration for the approach that we've chosen.

Here is a trailer of the movie :)

The Epic..! Blade Runner.

The first time I saw Blade runner as a kid, I wasn't impressed. Maybe because I expected more action from a Sci-Fi movie. Then I rented it on DVD a few years later, and upon re-watching I figured something out, this is one of the very few movies that gets better the more often you see it and grows into you. And once that happens, you will start respecting the beauty and subtlety of the masterpiece. Slowly but surely this one has made it into my 'best movies of all time' list.

The movie is not one of those action packed thrill rides where you just see amazing inter-galactic explosions and colossal wars between mutated alien races. This movie is truly rich in the sense of its magnificent plot and the way things come together slowly towards the end and the journey is indeed a swashbuckling yet sweet voyage. It's really close to an art movie, the first science-fiction art film is how I would want to put it. It indeed is a futuristic film beautifully put together. Impeccably made by one of the great visionary directors. And the future that we experience, looks very different from the one we had seen before. A future that looked very believable; given the visual-effect shots of anti-gravity cars zooming the aerial freeway tunnels over the fantastic looking city. The fight sequence doesn't prepare us for the traumatic emotional side that there is in the film, it leaves us sort of broken.

There is a beautiful, delicate, honest and emotional scene that touched my heart when I first saw the movie and wait for it, time and time again. I was so drawn to what Rutger Hauer was doing, drawn in by what the theme of the movie has brought us to. The true magnificent moment where he is letting go of life. And in those last moments, he learns to appreciate life to the point where he spares Deckard's life, and where he holds a white dove because he just wants to have something that's alive in his hands. It's an amazing sort of crescendo that's going and he then says: "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tanhauser Gate. All these moments will be lost in time like tears in rain." Hauer puts all the things that are so amazing about people: sense of poetry, humor, sense of sexuality, and sense of the soul. This is one of my favorite scene in the entire picture, well, there indeed are many, but this just rings a bell, every time I see it. The movie truly makes us feel the story, the emotions of the characters, the surroundings and by the end, we get lost in the midst of this wild world, rich yet painful, dark yet filled with compassion.

The set design is something else that always gets me. When ever I see the movie, I keep searching for new things and end up finding something. The overpopulated, sort of crowded scenes are so rich and varied and there's such an extreme attention to detail designing even when we look at something as simple as the magazine covers, designing the look of the punks, the Hare Krishnas, the biological salesman, precisely everything. We get a sense of the layers of the society and how the future would look, or may be could look. That is one of those things that I see again and again and it makes me think.

Blade Runner, to me, is one of the classic, beautiful, pure movie-making writings. The images, the music and the world lost in time, is pure cinema.

Song Review - Whiskey Lullaby ~Brad Paisley

Here are the lyrics and the review of the song:

She put him out like the burnin' end of a midnight cigarette
She broke his heart he spent his whole life tryin' to forget
We watched him drink his pain away a little at a time
But he never could get drunk enough to get her off his mind
Until the night

1st Chorus
He put that bottle to his head and pulled the trigger
And finally drank away her memory
Life is short but this time it was bigger
Than the strength he had to get up off his knees
We found him with his face down in the pillow
With a note that said I'll love her till I die
And when we buried him beneath the willow
The angels sang a whiskey lullaby

La la la la la la la...La la la la la la laaaa...
La la la la la la la...La la la la la la laaaa...

The rumors flew but nobody knew how much she blamed herself
For years and years she tried to hide the whiskey on her breath
She finally drank her pain away a little at a time
But she never could get drunk enough to get him off her mind
Until the night

2nd Chorus
She put that bottle to her head and pulled the trigger
And finally drank away his memory
Life is short but this time it was bigger
Than the strength she had to get up off her knees
We found her with her face down in the pillow
Clinging to his picture for dear life
We laid her next to him beneath the willow
While the angels sang a whiskey lullaby

La la la la la la la...La la la la la la laaaa...
La la la la la la la...La la la la la la laaaa...
La la la la la la la...La la la la la la laaaa...
La la la la la la la...La la la la la la laaaa...

Review.

I picked to review the song Whiskey Lullaby by the contemporary country star, Brad Paisley. A lot of his songs try to convey pure emotion and deep seated love. I picked this because this is not a normal, happy country song that describes the rockies and the rivers and the vast blue skies. This is a love song. One of my favorite's because it shares a special place in my heart. This was the song that slowly made me realize that life's too short to take chances and let go off someone we love. Made me understand that if I don't go ahead and tell the person I love that I love her, it sure is going to be too late. The central theme of the song is about a couple who, have separated in the face of deceit and unable to take the pain, eventually drink themselves to death. This song takes us on a bitter sweet journey showing us how painful and aggravating, emotions can be.

The time period of the song is set in the World War II era. Returning from the war and thinking of home and his girl, his flashback shows us the close and tender love that they shared. Which is interrupted by a series of gunfires and heavy artillery sounds that he can't get out of his head despite the war being over. But he still clings hard to the memories with her, every sweet little moment they had under the huge Willow tree outside their farm house. As the bus stops, it takes a moment for him to completely return to his true senses, and recall the fact that he truly is home.

As he walks into the house seeing the willow tree, he sees the pictures of him and his wife. Then he hears her happy voice, laughing upstairs. As he rushes upstairs, unable to wait seeing her, he finds her in the bed with another man. Heartbroken, he leaves immediately and the song starts.

The whole first verse of the song shows us how, the man turns to alcohol and how it slowly consumes him. It describes the deception that he had to experience, even after having such true love towards his wife. He tries getting really drunk and attempts to get her off his mind but it doesn't work well for the poor guy. The whiskey, takes its toll and rapidly starts to become a chronic alcoholism and kills him due to the pain and the excessive consumption. Then they show his wife crying and burying him beneath the willow.

In the second verse of the song, the wife; who after his death, realizes how big a mistake it was to have done something so terrible to her husband, who loved her more than his own dear life. He was at war, already in pain, seeing terrible things but still clinging on and praying for the war to end and return home to his true love. Waiting to return home, where things would be beautiful. But this is what he had to face. Thinking of this terrible thing that she had done which killed him, she then realizes how much she actually loved him. This verse describes how much she falls into the hands of drinking, trying to forget the fact that her husband is no more. Being drunk, she tries dancing and sleeping with several men, but she always sees him in every one of them. No matter how hard she tries, she doesn't seem to forget him. She holds herself fault for his death and the pain slowly takes on, killing her, after which she gets buried beneath the willow beside him.

Finally, they show a little girl, who sees the ghosts of both of them dancing beneath the willow tree. Hugging, kissing, and falling in love, all over again.

Cover Idea for the Game...!!!!!

Hey people, I sat and sketched down a rough mock up as a design idea to the cover of the game that could be the DVD cover or the poster of the game. I will increase the detail on the sketch slowly and try to buld on what I've got. Wanted to give it a little Sin City kind of effect with the Blacks and the Reds. No one better than Frank Miller to turn to for comic art I guess. Made the reds more subtle as our game is not really violent and all.

Motion capture suit for Secondlife..!

Motion capture is always a more fun way to interact and play games compared to of course, the seemingly dull mouse. I guess this is just a start of something that would turn into a really good device which can be used for other great games too like Halo, Counter Strike, Assassin's Creed and the list goes on. A major chunk of the motion capture research till now, basically went into the scientific research field on athletes and things like that. It is good to see the way its branching out and trying to explore newer realms in the gaming industry as well.

Stop Motion, the start of it..!

By definition, Stop motion is an animation technique to physically manipulate an object to move on its own which is done by moving the object in small increments between individually photographed frames. But making an actual stop motion video, takes a lot of time and planning. Just going to the set unplanned to make a video in the spur of the moment is not sufficient for stop motion. Every little detail must be just in place for the whole thing to work. The things that play a major role in making any stop motion video are, the sets, the lighting, the camera and most important of all the character. The character is indeed the most important part of any stop motion video because, the character is the thing that needs to act and tell the story. So, it must be pliable in nature. In the most primitive stop motion animation, the characters were made of clay. Clay being a material that can easily be modeled, formed the core ingredient to make the character. One of the important parts is also the co-ordination between the Animator and the Director. The Director needs to get the best expression out of the character which the Animator has to take care of, every single shot. Just to make a second's film in real time, in theory, 24 shots need to be taken. If the shots need to be in slow motion, there are more shots taken and less movement of the actual character.

Here are a few stop motion movies that have come over the ages...

"Action League - NOW" is one of the most primitive stop motion tv shows that was made. It was a part of the Nickelodeon network. Action league is a league of super heroes who solve crime and fight evil and all that jazz. The characters are action figures in this show which is so cool as it makes us wanna be directors and shoot stop motion video's at home too.

Wallace and Gromit, is my favorite stop motion feature. In Wallace and Gromit, the characters, the sets and all the possible things around are individually handmade and are moulded out of modeling clay. This makes it even more challenging to work with but the final output is just brilliant. The colorful aesthetics is one of the main reasons, for picking clay to be a part of the backgrounds as well, unlike the one above.

Finally, here is the making of the movie, "Fantastic Mr. Fox" made from the book by Roald Dahl. This gives us an overview and an insight into the art of stop motion making.

The Curse of Monkey Island... :)

Curse of the Monkey Island anyone? Well, I don't know how many of you guys know of the game. If someone missed it, I would want to say, please make some time if possible and play it. I am sure you wouldn't be disappointed. Monkey Island was the one most favorite game I played in my childhood. Probably more than even Dragon's Lair and Mario together. I remember having exactly 8 floppy discs to the previous version, not eight copies of the game but eight discs of one complete game. When this got released, me and my brother were really thrilled seeing it at the corner video store. I was 10 and he was 8 years old and we literally begged dad for it. But he didn't get it. Not until the final exams were done. As soon as we came home all vexed in the sweat drenched uniforms after the final exam day, it was there. And we spent the whole summer playing.

This game is the third installment of the tale of Guybrush Threepwood, a lanky wanna be pirate, Elaine, his true love and the infamous evil pirate LeChuck. At the start of the game, Elaine wears a cursed diamond ring that turns her into a golden statue. And the whole game is the vast adventure of Guybrush through Islands, Jungles, Seas and Mountains in order to break the curse and get Elaine back to life.

The humor of the game and the detailed story are one of the main reasons that get us hooked to it. The brilliant background score is always relevant to our current course of action and is really hard to notice the subtle change of the mood in the melody according to the way the game progresses. The path of the game being non-linear is also a great way that makes people get more connected to the game. When you have to talk to a particular person, say a pirate, the barber, or may be even the bartender, you would be shown a couple of different things that you could say. This gives us more control over the game's story and also makes the player relate himself to the character. On deciding and picking what the best thing to be said is, the things that are going to happen next change with the kind of decision that we made now and is similar, all along the course of the game. The things we could say to a person can be, really friendly, could be outrageously angry, and there are even a load of funny things that we can just say for the heck of annoying the characters that we face in the game.

As the timeline of the game flows, there are some times when there are a bunch of special little adventure and strategy games that keep turning up every now and then. These are the games that effect and change a significant part of the game which would lead us to our ultimate goal. Which are thereafter followed by traditionally and beautifully made onion skin animated cut-scenes. Probably the kind of ones that you would not want to skip.

The main theme or the backbone structure of the game our group is going to design is based on this game. Our group's game, being a 2D game, which has comic style animation, hand made sets and backgrounds is much in sense near to this game than any. These kind of games are called "Room Escape" games or also known as "Point and Click" games.

Head tracking Virtual Reality Device...

Remember the good ol' days when we played FPS games and tried to duck and evade being shot at ? And remember how that didn't work well and we eventually got shot ? Well, guess what ? With this Head Tracking Device, the console tends to track the you, i.e the user and your movements that gives us sense of depth and presence in the actual game-play. This is another cool gadget that I'd definitely want to get for my gaming console, its not there in the market right now but will be in my shelf as soon it hits the stores. I guess this takes the whole gaming scene to another level altogether.

Citation:

http://johnnylee.net

Storytelling - An art lost in time?

Storytelling is an art that has been the way humans communicate and let out emotion, knowledge and experience. One of the most comprehensive and well documented story ever written comes from the Hindu Mythology from the land of India. It indeed is Mahabharata. The most epic adventure ever written. The Mahabharata was written in the 4th Century by Ganesha. But it wasn't just written by him, this was a story that a pandit by the name 'Vyasa' narrated to Ganesha who had listened, understood and written it for Vyasa. The great scripture contains 18 parvas, each parva being a different book, not a chapter, but an entire book which describe to us in detail about the 'Bharata Dynasty'

Trying to convey emotions and experience has always been the way humans lived even before we could talk. One of the most early cave paintings in France, and many more in the world show us that even before the brain of the actual Human completely developed to the way we are today, we wanted to convey emotion to the ones around him and the latter. It could be about how he took down a beast, or could be about his opinion or findings about the cosmos or could be even about the invention of the wheel. All of these show us that this is of extreme importance, the art of sharing mind. What we just simply call story telling is not just a mere narration of a few sentences, but can be of various forms. A kid tells a story about how he fell off his bike on the way to the candy store, a composer takes us on a magical journey into the deepest realms of his mind and paints our senses with his masterpiece, an opus, a symphony. Paintings make people run into tears, not always because of the complexity or the strokes but because of the journey the artist takes us on. Story telling is the way a being expresses himself. It can be as small as the simple emotion of a child or could be a brilliant symphony.

Storytelling, in the modern era seems to have lost its importance to the average human being but still rests and will continue to stay in the soul of every industry. People continue with their lives thinking its been a long time since I've heard a bedtime story, read a book or things like that. But the fact of just reading a story is not just it. There are stories around us, everyday and almost everywhere we go. A movie, a song video, a game or an advertisement on the tv tells us a story. For that matter, even the smallest thing as the illustration on the top of a grocery item that we buy for the most mundane of uses tells us a story. The case of the most seemingly silly purchase of something like, say toilet paper. Even then, our mind tends to go for the one that has the huge fluffy bear on it. This is because the bear tells us a story. The bear might not narrate one, but the soft and tender big bear makes us feel and assures that the paper will be soft because he looks happy. The big happy bear gives us this message. All these little gestures that make us think about someone's emotion and someone's heart is precisely storytelling. This clearly shows and tells us that, the art of story telling is not dead and neither is it dormant. It still rests and is an integral part of our society and the world around us. Its just that we are unaware of it. All we need to do is to just keep looking.