Guest Speaker Night

Thank you Jeff Burns, the creative genius behind the web series "Super Knocked Up", for joining us as our guest speaker on Monday June 25, 2012!

 (Logo used with permission)

Jeff shared with us that he is a writer, director, producer... who focused his web series on telling the story of human interaction (more than superhero special effects).
 

 (Photo by Micaiah Siemski)

He also has a masters degree in history and devotes much of his time to tutoring and working with children with learning disabilities.

 (Photo by Micaiah Siemski)

 This presentation was more of a discussion group and everyone enjoyed the interaction.
 

 (Photo by Micaiah Siemski)

 

He shared the comic book art work, fan art, a few episodes, and gave out pins and other promotional materials!! And we learned that MVCA members like free stuff!!! ;)

  (Photo by Micaiah Siemski)

Two of the "Super Villains" in the third episode of "Super Knocked Up" are local teens who also joined us and talked about their experience working on the project.

  (Photo by Diane Hale Smith)

Jeff's formal Bio:

Jeff always wanted to be a superhero. But since he doesn’t have any superpowers (except the power to be super-geeky) he decided to make a web series about superheroes and villains instead. He first got the film bug in college where he and his friends improv-ed an entire movie for fun (when they weren’t studying, of course). The film was about an evil twin, pimps, and Darth Vader. Deciding to make more professional and less ridiculous sounding films, Jeff made his first real short after grad school, even though he had no idea what he was doing. Several short films later, his films have screened on PBS and at festivals throughout the northeast.

When he’s not making films, Jeff tutors high school students and is co-founder of Dyslexia Consultants where he helps learning-disabled high school students improve their writing and critical reasoning skills. Jeff ‘s current project, the web series 'Super Knocked Up', has been viewed over 900,000 times in its first few months of release. Jeff is having a blast shooting the series with his amazing cast and crew! 'Super Knocked Up' is based on Jeff’s actual life. Okay, not really. But he would really like to date a hot super-villain!

(Photo by Diane Hale Smith)

MVCA wanted to see more of his films (like the one with Darth Vader and the one about Britney Spears). Do you think we can get him back again with those movies?!  

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Creative Challenge 6

Creative Challenge 6

Emotion

June 18, 2012

Assignment:    Create Emotion - evoke emotion in the audience

                        Creations will be shared and discussed at MVCA Meeting on July 23, 2012 at 7 pm.

Discussion:      Define Emotion

1. Emotions are defined as feeling states with physiological, cognitive, and behavioral components

2. Emotions are the various bodily feelings associated with mood, temperament, personality, disposition, and motivation and also with hormones such as dopamine, noradrenaline, and serotonin

 

Here are some thoughts on emotions:

Robert Plutchik's theory

Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions

This says that the basic eight emotions are:

·        Fear → feeling afraid. Other words are terror (strong fear),

shock, phobia

·        Anger → feeling angry. A stronger word is rage.

·        Sadness → feeling sad. Other words are sorrow, grief

(a stronger feeling, for example when someone has died)

or depression (feeling sad for a long time). Some people

 think depression is a different emotion.

·        Joy → feeling happy. Other words are happiness, gladness.

·        Disgust → feeling something is wrong or dirty

·        Trust → a positive emotion; admiration is stronger; acceptance is weaker

·        Anticipation → in the sense of looking forward positively to something which is going to happen. Expectation is more neutral.

·        Surprise → how one feels when something unexpected happens

Book Two of Aristotle's Rhetoric

This theory says that the emotions are:

·        Anger, opposite calmness (not feeling excited)

·        Friendship (Love), opposite enmity (feeling hate)

·        Fear, opposite confidence (having no fear)

·        Shame, opposite shamelessness (shame: how one feels about one's past bad actions or thoughts; shamelessness: one does not feel shame, but others think one should.)

·        Kindness (benevolence), opposite unkindness (kindness: when people are good to other people)

·        Pity (when people feel sorry for other people)

·        Indignation (feeling angry because something is not fair, such as undeserved good fortune)

·        Envy, jealous (pain when people have something that one wishes for oneself)

The Engineered Language Lojban

This "language" has words showing these emotions:

Simple emotions discovery - confusion surprise - no surprise - expectation wonder - surprise - commonplace happiness - unhappiness amusement - weariness courage - timidity - cowardice pity - cruelty

Complex emotions pride - modesty- shame closeness - detachment - distance complaint/pain - doing average - pleasure caution - boldness - rashness patience - mere tolerance - anger relaxation - composure - stress

Pure emotions fear - nervousness - security togetherness - privacy respect - disrespect appreciation - envy love - no love lost - hatred hope - despair