Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Ministry of Magic music video contest

Recently we entered (and did not win) the Ministry of Magic music video contest. Our idea was to do the song "The Curse" which would involve filming in low-light situations (sunset and sunrise) and lots of running. Some might turn away from the challenge, but we took it on with great excitement. We started with writing out our ideas for different verses and generally writing all over a sheet of the lyrics. Then we moved on to costuming which would require a vest, a fedora, and a wolf mask. We made our rounds at the thrift stores and bought some brown and black foam in order to make a mask. Unfortunately the low lighting of the videos means you can't really see the mask, but trust us, it's awesome. One evening Maggie and I journeyed out to a park with a large hill and filmed an entire sunset, and our official filming began on New Years day at dawn. Yeah, we didn't sleep that night. It was bitterly cold every time we filmed despite all the hats, scarves, earmuffs, and gloves we bundled up with from Maggie's trunk. I have to say, however, that the final product was totally worth it. Maggie is an awesome editor and I'm so thankful she enjoys doing that.
"The Curse" Music Video
"The Curse" behind the scenes

you should totally check it out, and our other Agent Ninja Face Productions.
-Anna

P.S. the scene with the werewolf waking up on the ground and the Teenage Werewolf bit were my ideas. Yeah, I'm proud of them.

Monday, January 10, 2011

The Tragedy of Snow

It's snowing right now and I have a snow day...which is supposed to be glorious and awesome but its not...why? you ask?

well i think its time for a list:

1. If it's snowing, then it's cold, so anything involving snow requires some hefty clothing and planning 30 minutes before in order to put all of the hefty clothing on.

2. You want to go out and do something with friends or with your dog or something on a snow day because you have this free day where you don't have to waste your time at school...but you can't.

it's snowing...

now I'm on saying that snow days are horrible, I'm just saying that thinking that snow days are wonderful and awesome...is a lie.

3. For optimal snow days, you must not only have snow but something else such as sleet later on in the day or a ton of snow at about midnight the night of the snow day, this ensures a second snow day.

If none of this makes sense, it is perfectly OK...I am currently sick and I never really understand what comes out of my .... fingers?...when I'm sick

loving snot from:

Kristen

Like a Mobius Strip

So my friends are all inspirational and stuff and encouraged me to do BOW 2011, so here I am in the second week of 2011 posting my first blog of blogging once weekly. I already fail. Spectacular. But I wanted to give this a try, so here we go.

I managed to get a small part in my school's winter play, which means I only have to attend about one third of the rehearsals. I'm fine with this, in fact, it's great. I love theatre, but rehearsal every single day can be a bit much. At my first rehearsal the guy sitting next to me turned to the girl next to him and asked about her scarf. His question was: "Is that a mobius strip scarf?" Her answer was: "What's a mobius strip?" So the guy, the girl next to me, and I all launched into a nerdtastically enthusiastic explanation of a mobius strip, followed by a high five for nerdiness all around. But then I suddenly came over all inspired. Why shouldn't there be such thing as a mobius strip scarf? So there you have it. I went home and knitted a mobius strip scarf.
My pattern was generally as follows:
cast on 22 stitches
knit one row
purl one row
repeat until you have a scarf long enough to wrap around your neck twice
bring the ends together to make a loop, but twist one end so it's a mobius strip
knit back into the original row of cast on stitches and finish

That is my very general, very non-professional pattern for a mobius strip, but let me assure you, I was successful.

Yes, in the photos below I am wearing onesie pajamas.




And so concludes my first blog of 2011.
With craftynerdy love,
Anna

Saturday, October 30, 2010

Halloween Circus






Greetings humanoids, this is Kristen speaking...er...blogging. As Anna mentioned, we are in very circus-y moods. For Halloween this year we decided to dress up as wacky circus performers, metallic leggings and all! Since our school is so awesome, we showed off our too-toos there and later went to a small park on a slightly busy street. When we were there Anna tried to juggle while balancing on one leg and I twirled my crystal sticks, I certainly hope we didn't cause any accidents because I am sure we looked at least a smidgen crazy. At one point, a tweenage girl and her younger brother came over and sat about 30 feet away from us, they just were watching us as we were frolicking in the sun.

Kristen

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Anna's Circus Act

Recently, in true dilettante spirit, I have been dabbling. It all started with charlieissocoollike's video about learning to juggle. I have always wanted to learn to juggle, but never succeeded. I was inspired, and a little jealous, but I did nothing about it. Then one fine summer evening, I spent the night at Kristen's house. As we are very unusual people, this was not your run-of-the-mill giggle and tell secrets and paint each other's toenails and talk about our feelings sleepover. Aside from the fact that we fell asleep reading the constitution on her iPad as a bedtime story, at one point she handed me juggling balls as she left the room and said, "practice." So I did. For two hours.
Now, after a great deal of practice, I can successfully juggle. Not well, not for an obscenely long time, and I can't do any tricks, but I can confidently say that I can juggle now.

My current endeavor: learning to unicycle. This one is going to take a lot more practice.

-Anna

Old News - ALL CAPS video contest!

In a previous (possibly our first every) blog post, we talked about entering Straburry17's ALL CAPS video contest. Well, it's several months' old news now but...

WE WON!

We are very very very very very grateful to Strawburry17 for picking us, and even after several months, we are still in shock. Maybe once we come out of this comatose-like shock, we will post a video about it. We are hoping to do a behind the scenes video. We will see.
Anna 

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Musical Fiction - by Anna

For my writing class, I recently wrote a story based loosely on the song of my choice. I actually chose two songs: I Love You, and I Love Brains by ALL CAPS. I mean, really, they just go together. Here is the story I wrote:

Once upon a time there was a boy and a car. One fair evening he was driving along and a girl appeared in the car. When he saw her, he screamed; he had never seen a girl before. Then his favorite song came on the radio, but she started singing along before he did, and that is how he knew he loved her. As they were driving along they saw a zombie in the road. The girl clambered out her window and pranced up to the zombie.

“Oh man, I hate freakin' zombies!” cursed the boy, as he opened his car door and ran in the opposite direction.

When he realized she was not following, he turned back, but another zombie tackled him to the ground. It was alright, though, because the girl had a shotgun and fought off the zombies single-handedly while the boy received only minor injuries from the encounter.

“It bit your arm!” cried the girl.

“It's only a minor injury,” said the boy, waving it off casually.

As they skipped off into the sunset hand-in-hand, the infection from the minor injury spread slowly up the boy's body. When the girl felt his hand begin to erode in hers, she turned to the boy and saw him foaming at the mouth. This was very upsetting, so she did what we all know any sensible teenage girl would do when the love of her last ten minutes ends up a supernatural being: she asked him to bite her.

The girl, a once healthy and happy apparition, was now rotting from the inside out. She would have eaten the boy's brains right then and there, but his zombie transformation was complete, so she trotted off, losing a middle toe to a fallen branch on the way, to the local Applebee's. There, she found that although shoes and shirt were required for service, middle toes and general aspects of being alive were not. Chomping, munching, slurping, the zombie ate her waiter’s brains.

When the ghoulish boy, dead and yet alive, watched the girl trot off toward Applebee's, he felt no impulse to follow; he was hungry, and she was not food. Zombies cannot just eat other zombies, that would be cannibalism, and then you would have a plague of Mad Zombie Disease. Imagine, a pack of rotting corpses wandering around, spreading an incurable sickness!

So, just as suddenly as the girl had appeared, she disappeared. The boy, wondering why this did not seem to bother him, searched around the area for an answer, because we all know you can find the answer if you just look in the right places. There, on the ground about ten feet away from him, was his heart which had fallen out of his sickeningly dead chest. He carelessly tossed it over his shoulder; he would not be needing that anymore! So he set off following the wind, in search of a human brain to feast upon. Feet dragging, arm twitching, the zombie boy vaguely tried to remember what it was like to have feelings.