Webspinna Battle!

Here are the links for my sounds to be used in the Webspinna battle:

Concerning Hobbits

Dumbledore Quote

Harry Potter Metal

Captain Barbossa Quote

Theoden Battle Cry

Misty Mountain Cold Metal

Gandalf - You Shall Not Pass

Harry Potter - Expecto Patronum

Helm's Deep Victory Quote

Harry Potter Theme

In Jonathan Lethem's essay entitled, The Ecstasy of Influence, he says, "Most artists are brought to their vocation when their own nascent gifts are awakened by the work of a master. That is to say, most artists are converted to art by art itself." I found this quote spoke to me, in that I didn't decide to become a writer until I had read the Lord of the Rings and understood just how amazing the prose was in that book. In my efforts to become a great writer, I've tried to emulate Tolkien (in my own small way), to be able to become better than I am.

David Farland in his book, Drawing on the Power of Resonance in Writing, said, "The truth is that you can't write any tale without drawing upon that vast pool of shared experiences, but the wisest writers, those who become most popular, learn to draw upon art and literature in order to create works that speak to audiences more strongly, more deeply, and appeal to a wider network of readers." For the longest time I felt that I was cheating if my stories were too similar to random events or themes found in other books. So this quote helped me to see that I'm not only most likely doing it subconsciously already, but that I should do it to help appeal to a wider audience. That I should draw on the power of resonance.

I was very glad that Neeko wanted to do Sci-Fi vs. Fantasy for our Webspinna battle. While I do love both genres, I would say that I have a little bit of an affinity towards fantasy, so I was eager to see what we could come up with. The important thing for both of us was the narrative. We didn't just want to have random sounds playing, we wanted our sounds to tell a story. A story that matched the character of the two genres.

In the end I feel that we accomplished that through rehearsal and discussion. Performance was another issue though. That entire night was awesome. I got to know many of those in our class much better than I had previously, and really appreciated the wide range of impressive talents we have in this program. But man . . . those computers. I really wish I would have practiced with a mouse or even a Mac before the performance. 

We really struggled during our performance, or at least I did. Trying to navigate the computers with such insensitive mouse movements, my muting/fading abilities were shot with how different the mouse was compared to the track pad on my laptop. One clip in particular didn't even play sound because after further investigation, whoever put the clip on youtube only had sound on the left channel of the stereo mix, and my computer must have been hooked up to only play the right channel. Making a very important clip that was integral to telling the story we were trying to tell, just didn't happen. Causing a party foul with a dropped beat, and I'm pretty sure I yelled at my computer. Hopefully it wasn't an expletive, because I don't remember.

Once that happened, I panicked and got extremely nervous, no longer paying attention to what Neeko was doing and only able to think about not screwing it up more. Which meant that in a moment of silence in the middle of one of Neeko's sounds, I jumped the gun and played one of my clips too early, thinking that brief silence meant it was my turn. Later with my hands shaking, concentrating so hard on trying to use the mouse correctly, I hit the mute button for one clip twice accidentally, ruining another cool transition between the two of us. 

Neeko was a great sport though, because not only did he help me on the fly by whispering what I should play next so that our performance wasn't a complete disaster, but after the fact, instead of being negative about it like my first instinct was, he said something really positive, which helped me to not be so frustrated.

My frustration was even more short-lived because of how great everyone was. The general atmosphere and the genuine positivity of everyone there was contagious, and I couldn't help but feel awesome about the entire thing. Sure I wish that our performance had gone the way it was supposed to (because it was awesome), but thankfully that was far from the most memorable thing about that night.