"Survival isn't who you are. It's who you become." -'The 100'

One of my favorite TV Series at the moment is The 100, which is one of the new popular shows that runs on The CW. This show first premiered on March 19, 2014; I didn't even know about it until I was looking through Netflix back in October and saw that a show called The 100, was recently added and nearly had a 5/5 star rating, so naturally I thought I would give the show a try and soon after starting it I was HOOKED!

"The Ark"

This series starts with one of the main characters, Clarke explaining what has happened and where she is. She states:

"It's been 97 years since a nuclear apocalypse killed everyone on Earth, leaving the planet simmering in radiation. Fortunately, there were survivors at the time of the bombs. There is now only The Ark, one station forged from the many. We're told the Earth needs another 100 years to become survivable again and man can go home, back to the ground. The ground, that's the dream."

Clarke, played by
Eliza Taylor

We soon find out that Clarke and many other minors are in "prison"!  Since they have been up in space for nearly a hundred years, all of their food, supplies and oxygen are low at The Ark. They believe they are the only humans left in the universe so to keep the human race alive; no matter what crime they commit they are sentenced to death. They shoot you out in space, they call it "getting floated". The only way you don't get "floated" from committing a crime is if you are under the age of 18. The reason why this show is called The 100, is because the people that are in charge of the Ark decide to send 100 prisoners down to earth to see if it is livable once again. 

I love the character development that happens once they are on earth, from the start of the season to the end. It starts out with the 100, acting like normal teenagers, partying, not thinking/planing how to survive and where to sleep. They mature into warriors, when they need to start fighting for their lives when they realize that some humans have been living on earth all this time and they aren't happy that they are living on their land. I also like how we learn more about how these teenagers used to live on The Ark through flashbacks, and how much their characters had to change to survive. 

I recommend this series to anyone that likes Action, Drama, and their minds being BLOWN multiple times throughout a season.  

I would rate Season 1 of The 100, 9.3/10.  The only reason why I didn't give it a perfect score is because the series starts out a little slow but by the third episode it picks up pace and keeps getting better with every episode. 

The Film 'Birdman' Looks to be One Long Continuous Shot

*No Spoilers, I will just go over the way this film was shot

Birdman was shot in a way where the entire movie felt like it was one long shot as well as one take.  After seeing all the Nominations and Awards this film is getting I decided to watch it for the first time over the weekend.  I have never watched anything like this before! I am amazed by the amount of preparation and practice it must have taken to pull this off so well.

Here is a scene from the movie so you can get a feel of how this was shot in an unorthodox way.

After doing research about how this movie was filmed I was surprised to find out that they shot the film within thirty days. They shot in portions of seven to fifteen minutes. 

Here are quotes by Star Michael Keaton that shows how in sync the cast and crew had to be for this film to work: 

"Anything—a misremembered line, an extra step taken, a camera operator stumbling on a stair or veering off course or out of focus—could blow a take, rendering the first several minutes unusable even if they had been perfect.  You had to be word-perfect, you had to be off script, and you literally had to count your paces down to the number of steps you needed to take before turning a corner," "Everyone would apologize perfunctorily if they messed up ... mostly because we were aware of how hard it was on the camera operators, and the camera operators didn't want to screw up because of us."

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/birdman-how-it-was-filmed-2014-10#ixzz3PVkiC100


Unfortunately the Director Alejandro González Iñárritu & DP Emmanuel Lubezki didn't give away too much about how they shot this movie so fluidly, but did mention they used quick "Pan" shots as their cuts.

The Sound of Gravity

The movie Gravity, written and directed by Alfonso Cuaron elevated the standard for how things should sound in outer space entirely. Although their have been so many brilliant films located in space, such as Star Wars, and Alien, Gravity set a more realistic version of space's ambient tone. Because in space sound cannot be transmitted throughout the atmosphere, essentially nothing can be heard. But because of brilliant audio engineers, and Cuaron's artistry the sound comes from the perspective of the actors interaction with elements. If the actor grabs or touches something the vibration will travel into their ears. For people who haven't worked on sound, or know very little about it, this means all of the sounds you hear in the movie DOES NOT come from recordings on set, it is entirely recorded separately.

If you haven't seen the movie, which I recommend you do the film is about shuttle explorer STS-157, on which Dr. Ryan Stone (played by Saundra Bullock) who is on her first mission. She is accompanied by Matt Kowalski (played by George Clooney) who is on his last expedition. During a spacewalk mission control channels the Explorer (the name of the shuttle) that there has been a Russian missile strike and the debris is headed their way. Minutes later a cloud of debris hits the shuttle and detaches Stone leaving her drifting alone throughout space.

What I find so fascinating about the movie, is because it comes from the actors perspective, who is flying around in space, the music and the sound are constantly traveling around you. Cuaron and the engineers composed the sound to surround you and pan into different speakers. What this did was it built up the emotion and fear into being lost in a completely different world, and made you feel like you were there. For sound nerds like me, the plug-in the engineers used to pan the sound and the score is called "Atmos" which is located in Pro- Tool 7. Whats so cool about this plug-in is most of the panning is automatically tuned by the program itself. According to the re-recording mixer Skip Lievsay who worked on No Country for Old Men, Fargo, and No Country For Old Men, most of the scenes were autopanned with Atmos.

The love and the passion that Cuaron puts into the cinematic experience of the movie encourages me  as I enter the beginning stages of my career. It proves that with countless hours of work, very little sleep, and a lot of drive you can create anything. I sincerely hope this movie lives up to its potential at the Oscars. For 90 minutes I was convinced I was lost along side Saundra Bullock traveling with nobody in outer space. And the music and sound had me on the edge of my seat during this terrifying situation.

Olympic internship

So its finally almost here.  Time to get going on the application for the NBC Olympic internship.  Pretty excited personally.  This was a huge reason I came to Ithaca College was to get a good chance of being apart of the 2014 olympics in Sochi.  I cant even think of an even more incredible experience.

So the reason I am getting all excited is because today was the first informational meeting.  Alumni and students, who just returned from London 2012, came and talked about their experience.  While I am not 100% sure if NBC or broadcasting/studio production is the exact career I want to pursue, I still believe this experience would be a life-changing one.

Also, I feel the situation is perfect.  Its in Russia (probably one of my top 5 favorite countries for whatever reason).  Number two, its in the winter which means snowboarding, skiing, luge, bobsled, and who can forget curling.  Some of the most underrated sports right there, and what comes with these events? The best athletes in the world.  Put all this and the overall hype of the olympics in one town, and give me a job in the field I love, well consider me on the first plane out of here.