Side Quest 9
This is a scene from The Godfather. I do not think it is exactly word for word. I did my best to dress up like Don Corleone and to imitate the unique lighting of the film’s opening scene.
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I K.O Batman
I recreated a scene from the Christopher Nolan Batman series. This scene is during Batman: The Dark Knight Rises where I impersonate Bane, the antagonist of the film, and easily K.O Batman. Filming this was only described as cringe. I tried my best sounding like Bane, but my voice just wasn’t low enough in some places. Also, I clearly don’t know where to look when I film myself. However, this SQ assignment was extremely fun to make and I had lots of laughs in the process.
The original scene here
Game Comparison Reflection
Before deciding what my these statement of my game comparison essay was going to be, I first spent times replaying the games, such as the Depression Quest, Gris, Gone Home, and Life is Strange. Then I made a decision to analyze Gris and Gone Home. With the experiences of Podcast episodes, compare and contrast did not take much of the time. After replaying these games, I found more interesting details to write about that I was not able to notice on the first time playing them. On the first section, I argued that both Gone Home and Gris illustrated the relationship with others after the main character undergo the trauma. On the section section, I included Cathy Caruth’s quote, saying that the traumatic event remains outside the range of the consciousness to portray the event as a narrative.
‘The Underlying Lessons of Valorant” Reflection
A couple weeks ago, I took a passive role as the line producer for my group. This time around, I took initiation as the Executive Producer. When I was thinking of which game to study on, I looked at the gaming categories on the largest gaming platform, Twitch, as the viewer counts give an idea on which mainstream games are the most played. As expected, the most concurrently viewed game was League of Legends. Scanning through the other games, I saw a game called Valorant. I had heard of Valorant before; I knew that it was released only 6 months ago and that it was a blend of Overwatch and Counter-Strike:Global Offensive, both games that I had previously played before. I downloaded the conveniently free game and tried it out. It had the same mechanics as CS:GO and the different agents had unique abilities like Overwatch. I played a couple games and got hooked. Transferring my knowledge from Overwatch and CS:GO, I was able to adapt to Valorant pretty quickly.
My primary goal for the podcast episode was to explain Valorant in a way that would be easy to understand for the typical non-gamer. Valorant isn’t a complex game; it doesn’t have a steep learning curve unlike League of Legends. Valorant, however, has several components to the game which made it slightly difficult to explain the game in just a short explanatory paragraph. The biggest challenge our group faced was analyzing the game. After all, Valorant is just an FPS game. When our group met up with Professor Morgen for a progress check, we were able to write about Valorant that was more than just describing the game. In the end, I was extremely satisfied with the final product. I don’t think we would have done anything differently with a time extension or under different circumstances. Our group performed well together; I am thankful to my group that they were responsive whenever I needed feedback or when it was time to record. Making the podcast was a unique and fun experience. I was able to achieve the learning outcome “summarize, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate the ideas of others as you undertake scholarly inquiry in order produce your own arguments”. By connecting ideas to novels like Jane McGonical’s Superbetter, my group was able to talk more than the basics; we were able to scrutinize the game and find The Underlying Lessons in Valorant (episode title). Overall, I am super proud with the outcome of the episode. Also, I am happy that I thought of recording the podcast via individual home recordings rather than a Zoom group meeting recording because the quality also turned out pretty great.
Recreating an Iconic Movie Scene
I love watching movies, still it was impossible for me to think of an iconic movie scene to recreate from Hollywood. When it came to Bollywood, however, it took me less than 2 seconds to think of this scene from the 20-year old film Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, which in many ways, defines Bollywood– the drama, the slow motion shots, the music, and the over-the-top visuals. Of course this video is technically catastrophic, and the only thing it does perfectly is embarrass me. I am pretty proud of it nevertheless. (Also shoutout to my aunt for singing the background music for me!)
That’s so Fetch!
I chose a scene from Mean Girls as my iconic movie scene. Here is the original.
Podcast Reflection
In the episode of Oxenfree, I am the assistant producer this time. We are consist with our previous decision on the task involved. As the assistant producer, I need to assist the discussion on the game, make the transcript, and attend meetings including the meeting with Professor Morgen. Compare to the previous podcast on Temple Run, I think we are much more organized. Instead of deciding on our game the day before the meeting with Professor Morgen, we decided on the game about two weeks before the due date. For the last episode, we had to probe on how to record in zoom, who is doing what job, and we had to record several times before the final version. Yet, for this episode, everything is simply going as smoothly as possible
Moreover, the goals and main talking points had shifted. Since we had barely nothing to talk about for Temple Run‘s mechanics, we focus more on its relationship with COVID-19. But for Oxenfree, there are tons of information and themes. We first did some research on the game. For instance, I discovered the meaning of “Oxenfree” and its connection to the pandemic. Therefore, with this abundant amount of talking points, we focus more on the mechanics and meaning of Oxenfree. If I had more time, I would delve deeper into the plot and reference more specific moments in the game.
As we have more attempts on the podcasts, the ability to “demonstrate collaborative skills in classroom discussion and while working together on projects and presentations”, as stated in the Learning Objective page, will significantly improve. With the projects, Anusha, Hayden, and I had definitely became more comfortable working with one another. Although learning how to cooperate is a gradual process, we had made clear progression to mastering this skill.
Econ. Doodle
First and foremost, I learned that I am a terrible artist. The only reason why each doodle is even recognizable to the eye is due to the fact that each doodle was drawn extremely slowly and meticulously. However, I also learned couple positive things from the doodling process. As I was rewatching my Econ 101 lecture about the labor market, I found that doodling helped me retain what I was learning. When you write/take notes, you remember what you’re hearing because the physical motion of writing helps you process and retain the information. When I was doodling pictures along with the written notes, I felt like it helped me even more with retaining the information because, I think, psychologically, I was associating the information with the doodles. I also found doodling to be quite therapeutic. There is something quite soothing about just moving your drawing pen on the paper and contemplating what to draw next. The only downfall for doodling notes was that it took a long time for me to draw everything, but I think it’s because I suck at drawing. For that reason, I don’t think doodling notes is a very practical way of taking notes.
Find the blog post assignment here
Sketch Post
I learned that it was really fun and entertaining to do a creative notes. This page of notes above is way more appealing to the normal notes that I do. And now looking back, there were some occasions when I got really frustrated taking notes. I think doing visual notes like this can balance my emotions because it alleviates some of my stress.
I’ve found that drawing cute little images make me happy and positive. I’ve never imagined incorporating my own drawings into my notes; however, now I find it enjoyable to create some images in my notes, just for the sake of adding some colors and special elements. Or else notes are simply tedious. Check out the original sources and instructions about this visual notes post here.
