Tournament Time!

Although WVU won't be in the tournament this year, I am still looking forward to it. This year's bracket is already looking like one of the hardest to predict in my lifetime. There are multiple teams that could easily win, and I can't wait to see what unfolds in the next couple weeks. I am going to name three teams that I think have the best opportunity of winning the whole thing.

Louisville
The Cardinals are the number one seed overall, and enter the tournament on a roll after winning the Big East title last night. They are lead by one of the best leaders in all of college basketball Peyton Siva. He has been at the school for as long as I can remember and all he needs to complete an incredible career would be a national championship. He is surrounded by a team full of athletes, shooters, and good overall basketball players. Whenever a team wins the Big East Tournament you know that they are prepared to make a run in the NCAA Tournament. Not to mention that this team as one of the best coaches around in Rick Pitino.

Indiana
Indiana has been atop the college basketball world all season. They have probably the most talent of any team in country, and won the Big 10 regular season title. They can beat teams in many ways, and are a great all around team. Although they have had some slip-ups this year that's only to be expected seeing that they played in the country's toughest conference. Tom Creen has done an excellent job bringing Indiana back to the height of college basketball and a championship would be a great way to end a fantastic season. I think that if any team in the field is going to dominate the tournament it would be Indiana.

Miami
This is my guttiest pick, but I truly believe that Miami has the talent to win the championship. Although they stumbled into the ACC Tournament, losing three out of their last four games, they were able to regroup and win the title. In the championship game today I saw Shane Larkin, Miami's point guard, put on an unbelievable performance. He was hitting all kinds of shots and easily penetrating through the lane. He turned into a star today, which is a good sign for Miami going into the tournament. When Miami gets rolling no one can stop them, just ask Duke who lost by 30 points earlier this year to the Hurricanes. I think that Miami could win the whole thing, or lose early, but I am placing my bet on the Hurricanes.
This predictions could easily be incorrect, but I am sticking with them anyway. March Madness is about to begin and I can't wait.

Documentary Reflection

My group's documentary focuses on what role the internet plays in the music industries for artists, record producers, and the fans. This topic interests me a lot because a large part of my life revolves around playing and listening to music. I love that Mr. Mayo gave us the freedom to select our own topics, but I think that the freedom of selection might have made some topics to unrefined. Looking back on the project there were some bright spots, but also some pretty bad ones. I am glad that I had this experience, but also slightly upset about how it ended up.
At first my group and I decided to do something about the evolution of music, due in part to the internet. Then our topic slightly changed and we wanted to focus a lot on how artists and record producers use the internet. Then finally, after all of our interviews, we decided to focus solely on the internet's effect on musicians, record producers, and fans. We were able to interview some very important people for this project. We interviewed Kip Berman on the Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Ian McKaye the operator of Dischord Records and a member of bands like Fugazi and Minor Threat, and Sean Peoples the former owner of Sockets Records.

The problem with the interviews is that since our topic slightly changed a lot we weren't able to get the best information out of our interviews. Still, the planning part of the project was my favorite part. I loved being able to meet and talk with this people about music. I have seen the Pains of Being Pure at Heart live and it was an unbelievable experience to talk with Kip.
After we put our interviews onto the computer things got bad. We didn't have any real direction to go in, and spent many classes watching interviews over and over again, just trying to figure out what to do about the project. Eventually we kind of laid out what we had, but it didn't flow at all, and Mr. Mayo called us out on it. It was disappointing to be called out, but it needed to happen if we were going to make anything of substance at all. We took Mr. Mayo's feedback and were able to make something with it. Mr. Mayo hasn't watched it yet, but it is a thousand times better than it use to be.
Looking back on the project I feel one major issue needs to be addressed. Next time I would recommend that there be more set deadlines. There was suppose to be a rough cut due sometime back, but Mr. Mayo never asked us to look at our rough cut, which is good because we really had nothing. Without scriter deadlines we were able to slack off a bit and not focus hard on trying to create a solid documentary. If I had to do it all over again, I would have worked a lot harder to try and create a rough cut, then tighten it up, and finally create a good final product that I can be proud of. This project was an interesting experience for me and I gained a lot of knowledge from it. I am excited to use the experiences from this project in future. I know now to pre-plan well, and don't get discouraged if interviews don't work out as well as I thought they would. All in all, I enjoyed this project and was able to work on a topic I find interesting for three months, I can't ask for much more than that.

The Killing

Over the past 17 hours I have watched the entire first season of The Killing and have tried to figure out who killed Rosey Larkin, yet I still don't know. You could say I'm hooked.

The Killing is an AMC series about the murder investigation of Rosey Larsen, a 17 year old girl. It is based off a Danish television show called Forbrydelsen. What makes the show great is that it has three separate yet intertwining stories. The stories are the impact of Rosey's death on her family, the impact on the upcoming mayor's election, and the actual murder case conducted by the cops. Each episode of the show encompasses a day, which although making the show slow at times, makes the show more realistic. With all of the shows various subplots it's not hard to get hooked.
 
What I love about the show is how different it is from most other U.S. crime shows. Instead of just solving a mystery in one episode it takes more than one season to. The audience really gets to see what the cops have to deal with in a murder investigation. That aspect of the show reminds of The Wire. In addition, the idea of have three separate stories is very original. Each story has its own twists and turns and in the end they somehow tie together. I specifically like how the story of Rosey's family has been told. The struggles that the family has to face show just how painful the death of a loved one can be. I commend the show for writing that section so well. 
 
I strongly recommend this show because of it's well written, shot, and it's very original. It is very slow at times, and extremely dark. Not many happy things happen in the show. There isn't a lot of comedic relief, and it can be extremely depressing, but in my opinion that's what makes it great. There's such a variety of storylines and characters in the show that it makes me want to keep watching. Hopefully next time I write a blog post I will know the answer to this question.

 

 

 

 

Mountaineers Showout at the Combine

Today Tavon Austin and Geno Smith showed why they are top NFL prospects by having impressive days at the combine.

Smith has been labeled the top quarterback prospect in a weak quarterback class. He could be the first pick in the draft or fall to the late first round, it all depends on how well he does in the coming weeks. Today he ran a 4.58 forty yard dash, the highest of any quarterback that ran. He showed that he has solid athleticism as well as a rocket arm, which was on display during the throwing section on the combine.  Over the past years Smith has showed some speed in WVU games, but his arm was always his best feature. It will be interesting to see where Smith ends up.
Geno's receiver, Tavon Austin, might have had the best day of anyone at the combine. He ran an unofficial 4.25 in the forty yard dash, the record in the event is a 4.24. Everyone knew that Austin was fast, but maybe not that fast. I can see Tavon being a very good receiver in the NFL. This year he was the most electrifying player in college football, if you don't believe me watch the video below. He could have been considered in the Heisman voting if WVU could have won some more games. In the NFL he will return kicks and punts, and also be a weapon as a slot receiver. He could possibly even get some time at running back.

It's nice to see some Mountaineers having success at the combine, and hopefully in the NFL. This year was a tough one, but looking back it wasn't all bad. We were the talk of the nation for about a month, and got a ton of publicity, when does that ever happen. Yeah we ended the season horribly, but  it was an incredible ride. I will miss all the departing players, especially Geno and Tavon.

60 Second Video

This was our newest assignment. Each group had to write a script, get shots, and edit the whole assignment in one week. The catch was that each group got a specific prop that had to be included in the film. My group got a robot, and immediately we knew that we wanted the robot to fall in love. We decided that the robot would fall in love with me.

The process of making the film was fairly easy because we prepared for each step well. The only real problem we faced was how to get the robot to move. To solve the problem we tied string around the robot and it worked pretty well. We had a couple hiccups when we started editing, but Max and Kyra fixed them up, with some help from Mr. Mayo.

This project was really fun to make. It was a nice switch from the long and tedious documentary making process, and I really think that my group did a good job. The experiences we learned from this will help during CAP Hollywood. We managed our time, and prepared well. We were able to get around the bumps in the road, and produce a solid product. I think one important listen I learned from this is to not over think things. By not over thinking the project we were able to produce a simple, but effective film. If we had tried to do too much, then we might have been rushed and came out with a less polished product.  

New Film Project

Leigh and I made a video about basketball in Silver Spring for this assignment. For us basketball is life during the winter months. We have games and practices almost every day, so it really is important to us. In the film we show various clips. They are from an outdoor court that Leigh and I shot at today, a scrimmage the boys JV team at Blair had against the varsity girls, and a series of interviews with players on the girls varsity team. We didn't really know what we were going to do with this project, but we had a lot of fun making it. This is probably the most work I have put into any of these outside of school film projects. I still hope that we can get an in-class project like this one because then I could use final cut pro and nice cameras, instead of YouTube video editor and outdated iPhones. Here's the video, "Ball is Life."

WVU basketball has been particularly inconsistent and bad this year. The team has only two seniors who play, Deniz Kilicli and Dominic Rutledge, and the teams lack of experience has proved to be its downfall. I enjoy watching the team play because you never know who will play well on any given day, Aaric Murray could be a force in the paint, Juwan Staten could make the defense look slow, Terry Henderson could make it rain from the three point line, or any other member of the team could step up. At times though it can be extremely tough to watch this team play games, they turn the ball over a lot, miss shots, and lose they focus on defense. What I have decided is that this year I am watching this year's team to anticipate next year's team. What I mean by that is I am basically waiting for next year.
Next year could be a great year. Junior center Aaric Murray will have played for coach Huggins for a year and know the system well. With his length and athleticism he could turn into a superstar down low. Sophomore guards, Jabarie Hinds, Juwan Staten, and Gary Brown will have even more experience and will devlop chemistry with each other. Freshman, Eron Harris and Terry Henderson, who are the team's best shooters, will have even more experience under their belt. Finally, two high caliber fowards Devin Williams and Elijah Macon will join the Mountaineers from their high school teams. Check out their high school highlights.

I can't wait to watch those two join the team next year. Next years lineup could have three guards in it, and not too many bigmen, or it could have many bigmen and few guards. The choice is up to Coach Huggins. Next year he will have a very deep and interesting team. I trust him to be able to guide the team in the right direction. With the amount of talent and experience that the Mountaineers are going to bring back, watch out because come next year they will make a lot of noise. I am not saying that I anticipate I a Final Four run next year, but I do anticipate a great team that competes for a Big 12 Championship, and makes its mark on the NCAA Tournament.