I'm 6' 0.5", so very close to you in terms of height. I also have a desk job and terrible sitting posture, but I regularly go back exercises that target my weak areas. The end result is a very good standing posture.

When I need to lower my height in order to accommodate some person or situation, what I do instead is spread my legs out a little wider than I normally would, lowering my hip some 1-3 inches. behind a fast food counter or barrier, this won't seem odd. It might be a little odd in a face-to-face though.

A person's natural body language is a reflection of their internal state. From your description, it sounds like you maybe feel a generalized dissatisfaction, ennui, or perhaps a lack of purpose, confidence, esteem, and that your body language is actually reflecting this?

I can't speak for your situation, but if this below sounds like it rings of any truth, please consider. I've gone through several phases in my life and I've seen major improvements to the self that I broadcast to the world after making a few specific changes.

1. Physical exercise, specifically strength training. Lifting weights and seeing improvements in your strength and how much you are capable of lifting greatly improves confidence and a feeling of capability. You begin to feel like you are more ready for challenges and situations than you were previously, more capable to handle situations. This, coupled with the endorphins, the release of built-up stress hormones like cortisol, and the improvements to your core and postural muscles will make you begin to stand, walk, move with greater confidence and less clumsiness. The changes to your chemistry and boosted dopamine levels will have you feeling a more steady natural sense of happiness, and smiling will be much less of an effort.
   In particular, my favorite 2 workouts for strength, posture, and serious effort is the Clean&Press and the Dumbbell Snatch which no one else at my gym does - I feel like an absolute badass when I can do 100lbs right up over my head. You should start where it's comfortable to do 5 in a set. These workouts are very challenging. Exercise is the last thing you want to do when depressed, but it's the best thing for it.
   
   
2. Judging by this and your comment history, you're a very serious person, and it seems at least a part of the way you come off is because of this demeanor. Your history of depression is likely the other part - and the two of them together sounds like it makes for a particularly dry, humorless, and withdrawn personage you put out to the world. Your other requests for advice seem to also hover around this, even as you have gigs doing public speaking, you admit that you yourself lack conversational skill and relatability. I don't want to give you the same ineffective advice to "lighten up" that you've probably been hearing for too long. Instead, I offer this. One of the things that really helped me to become a more joyous, fun, and light-hearted person was learning how to better joke about life. I was always mystified by comedy - "how do you even write jokes?" was a puzzle to me. But there's this book which really helped me to become a funnier and more light-hearted person. It may have an audio equivalent. Even if you aren't into writing, it's full of jokes, examples, and great fundamentals about just why things are funny which helps you turn average boring sentences into a setup with a small punchline... it adds up to just helping to transform me into a more enjoyable person to be, and to be with - both of which have compounded to help me in many ways. Do you know your MBTI type?
   
   I assume this is your "self-improvement advice-seeking" Reddit account based on your history. You've been dealing with a lot of things and now you're ready to really emerge from a coccoon and into a new better self, which I think is wonderful and I would celebrate you for doing so. It's a long road, friend. I'm 36 and still growing up, but I've got the majority of my personal issues and character issues handled. At least do me this favor: Self-improvement is one of the best goals anyone can have. Whatever you may feel about reddit, or about your situation in general, do not allow yourself to feel any negative feeling about your own choices to address your issues and improve and grow as a human being. If you're hiding your other self from critique by using a throwaway account, you're doing yourself a dishonesty, and you'd be better off growing up and not trying to pretend you're not broken. Be proud of your efforts to reach out, admit your problems, and ask for help. So many would rather remain broken and never grow. We're all broken in some way. Join us and lets' laugh at our broken selves together.
   
   I preferred not to answer your question about acting class, as I feel it's not actually what's going to help you. I don't want you to follow a lie. This isn't a "fake it until you make it" situation. It's a "work at it but allow myself to feel good about each positive step I take" situation. If you were going to go into any acting, I would lead you towards an Improv class, as it will help you in being dynamic and responsiveness, a "go with the flow" attitude, and comedic structure.
   
   Tony Robbins (whose audiobooks you should probably check into - he's the best motivator I've ever heard, and he gives solid plans) insists that whatever you are focusing on is what you are going to end up gravitating towards. If you are constantly surrounded by and listening to negative reminders of how we should feel inadequate or inferior or wanting, you're going to find yourself living out those exact messages. Root out and remove things in your environment which reinforce negative beliefs, and replace them with things that remind you of the good feelings you get when you take steps, no matter how small, towards your own goals of self-improvement, gaining control of your mood and outlook, and reclaiming your life bit by bit with each new day. Smile at one more person each day. Physically move for one minute longer than you did the day before. Replace one negative reminder with a positive one. Spend one minute more in sunshine than you did the previous day. Call or text one person you haven't spoken to for a long time. These things will compound, until several months from now you'll look back on this moment as when it all started.
   
   I'm not going to say "good luck". Instead, I wish you good attitude, starting now.

As an INTP, it's likely that if you start saying out-loud random stuff that you think then people will find it funny.

I don't consider myself funny, but people sometimes say that they consider me to be funny. It sometimes surprises me to hear that because I don't remember consciously making purposeful jokes around a lot of these people. INTP's tend to think about things in novel ways, which tends to amuse. If you want to be funny and not considered "too deep" or complicated by the troglodytes, just keep what you say to a couple of sentences or less when commenting on random things. Usually "funny" will be one phrase or sentence.

In terms of consciously attempting humor, doing so can be a fine line. When I'm trying to be funny, which is rare because I'm aware of how seldom purposeful jokes hit for most people, the frequency tends to be maybe once every 4 hours or more that I hang out with someone. The problem with attempting to be funny all of the time is that you can come off as inauthentic or "try too hard". Some people can pull off being funny more often, but not many. Inauthentic people are kind of lame to hang out with. Also, unfunny people can perceive constantly funny people to be too socially aggressive. Funny people tend to get into the habit of making fun of each other, and this can be stressful for an unfunny person to deal with. Therefore, be careful of your mode of humor around your less funny or unfunny friends as you may be putting them off without realizing it. Be selective.

In terms of getting good at being purposefully funny, as an INTP I find that mimicry is best at first. That is, you observe funny people and you break down and learn to copy their thought processes in arriving at their humor. Hanging out with funny people helps, especially because you can practice your humor with them with less worry of judgment. Unfunny people tend to have less tolerance for mediocre humor, and also tend to less-often 'get' good humor. As you get better at mimicking humor styles, you'll likely start to better develop your own individual sense of humor. I liked a previous posters suggestion of saying the opposite of what people expect. I've used that on occasion to very good effect. My favorite example of this is when Kramer orders "extra MSG" with his Chinese food meal. You can reuse stuff like that to get a laugh, as its the very rare person who will pick up on where you got it from. You aren't a professional and so you can steal select material (like one liners - whole bits are more obvious) to experience feedback and build confidence as well as a sense of what works in social situations.

This is considered to be one of the better books on learning how to think like a funny person:

http://www.amazon.com/Comedy-Writing-Secrets-Best-Selling-Edition/dp/1582973571

Remember, that being funny is not the key to making friends although it can help break the ice at times. Comedy can also work to distance you from needing to build real connections. Most people aren't funny and have healthy social lives.

Music is about emotion; a lot of music is generic on purpose, because you can capture a certain set of emotions that everyone feels & then leave it up to interpretation by however a person sees fit to respond internally to them. One of my favorite songs is Yellow Ledbetter by Pearl Jam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhJ65v_C-eI

There is a story in there (if you can understand the lyrics clearly, haha!), but it's not super relevant because of how the song was written, sung, and played. Just crank it up & soak it in, you know? If you like it, you like it, and if you don't, you don't. Maybe it speaks to you in a specific way, or touches on an emotion that makes you feel something, or perhaps makes you feel something you didn't realize you could feel before. Another unrelated song is Yellow by Coldplay...it kind of has a direction & some specific lyrics, but it's hugely open to interpretation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PDUO3l8xiM

So I'd say that the first thing to realize is the difference between lyrics & melodies. The melody is like the force field around the song...I've literally listened to songs for years without ever understanding what the lyrics are just because I like the melody & like to sing along & groove to the music. There's a fun show you might enjoy watching, if you haven't seen it, called "Music and Lyrics" with Hugh Grant & Drew Barrymore. There's a really good quote from the movie that explain the division between the two a little bit better:

>Sophie: A melody is like seeing someone for the first time. The physical attraction.
>
>Alex: I so get that.
>
>Sophie: But then, as you get to know the person, that's the lyrics. Their story. Who they are underneath. It's the combination of the two that makes it magical.

So you can kind of divide a song into two buckets:

1. How it sounds, the fun of it, the beat of it, the musical part
   
2. The meaning & the heart of it, the lyrics, the story, the message
   
   One trick to understand is that musical categories already exist, so you have targets to aim for. It's not like you're writing random stuff that's going to magically appeal to everyone on the planet, because everybody's different. So you have to shift from a monolithic perspective of "I have this great song that everyone will love" to dividing it into chunks and saying "I have a great song that people who love modern country (pop) will love". See Old Town Road as a recent example...it offended a lot of hardcore country fans, and yet the Youtube version alone has 300 million views.
   
   Writing song lyrics is half of the design process in music (melody being the other half); design is critical because nothing else happens until that is locked down. There's a really good little 5-minute documentary on "how to make a pop star" on Youtube that exemplifies this:
   
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irk3_p15RJY
   
   So here's what we know so far:
   
   
3. Music is niche, and the niches are pre-defined, so you're marketing to a specific target audience, in a world of music that has a particular set of rules
   
4. A song is made up of the melody & the lyrics; the melody is the fun part that you jam to & the lyrics are the heart of the song that you identify with & that guide you emotionally, which is backed up by the melody
   
5. Those two parts create the design instructions for all other parts of the river of music...the music video, live performances, inclusion into movies & TV shows, and so on - it all starts with that initial design process
   
   If you're up for some reading, I'd actually suggest a couple books from the film world to get started with. The first is the Anatomy of Story, which are the keys to telling a good story:
   
   https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Story-Becoming-Master-Storyteller/dp/0865479933/
   
   The second is Writing for Emotional Impact:
   
   https://www.amazon.com/Writing-emotional-impact-techniques-fascinate-ebook/dp/B004UC6E22
   
   I'd start out with those two books, because if you can learn how to tell a good story & learn how to manipulate a listener's emotions, then you can apply that to the lyrics & also to the melody to create a great piece of music within your specific genre of choice. Good song writers understand how both the lyrics & the melody works within a song in order to create a desired emotional impact, and then use tools like earworms & repetition to make the song work.
   
   part 1/2

Not sure if you're only looking for fiction or an entertaining read, but here are some "self help" books which have blown my mind and have had a huge impact on my life for the better. I wouldn't personally call them "self help" books, but rather, books for everyone seeking to improve themselves and learn how to make a happier life for themselves and others. Please don't be put off by the nature of these "self help" books - a few years ago I was of the belief that these were only for social retards and people with psychological issues, but I've since learned that these books can pretty much improve the life of anyone in the world in some way. Some of the things I learned in these books were so profound I had to put the book down in shock just to process it all.

Vital Lies, Simple Truths by Daniel Goleman

This shows how everyone (including yourself) will always see the world subjectively according to their own personal experiences and bias - whether being conscious of it or not. It'll really show you how to read more into interpersonal relations and develop a far better insight into how people (and perhaps even you) think mentally. Of course it's human nature for people to think they're perfectly rational, but this book shows how to recognise how people will subconsciously deceive themselves into seeing the world as the mind wants to see it.

The Definitive Book of Body Language by Barbara and Allan Pease

As the title suggests, this shows you how to read into body language. This really blew my mind - with this you will learn how to read FAR more into people and more effectively project desired attitudes of your own onto others. This will teach you things that most people are totally oblivious to, and yet, by understanding body language you will be able to tell so much more about people from it - this has taught me how to find out what people are actually thinking.

How to Argue & Win Every Time by Gerry Spence

Don't be fooled by the title - this book is not so much about arguing as it is about getting what you want with people and in life. Written by one of the world's best trial lawyers, it'll teach you how to more effectively communicate and connect with others in order to get what you and others want. At first I was averse to reading anything from a lawyer, but he really surprised me on this one - it was a hugely entertaining read and his words were some of the wisest I've ever read.

Comedy Writing Secrets by Mel Helitzer

This will teach you how to be funny! Of course, this sounds stupid and one might think that this kind of thing can't be learned, but I promise you that no matter who you are, if you read this you'll become a far more interesting person.

I don't know if these were the kind of books that you were looking for, but I hope this comes to some help to at least one Redditor out there. It's just that all of these books have greatly improved my life, and I wish I could have found these earlier. Plus it'd be nice if people would give more heartfelt suggestions on where to find more books like these - hope this helps =)

Ya, I'll echo the "You are 18, calm down" responses, as much as your one response post says you don't like it.

Second, I see you had 5 goals laid out 1) Better social skils, 2) Lucid Dreaming 3) Meditation 4) Positive Thinking 5) Reality Trans-surfing (I googled the book but don't really know what this is, but it seems to have various buzz words I know in theory).

For the 1) "Social Learning" you need to:

• A) Get out in some sort of social setting that is uncomfortable and just... do stuff, meet people, and talk to them. Some people are naturally better at this, but you will not improve by reading books WITHOUT experience and
  
  
• B) accept you might just have something that makes you inherently socially awkward, at least to most people (in my case, I'm bipolar and so have intense moods that sometimes drive people away... keep at it and eventually you'll find people who fit with you and/or how to work around whatever issues you MAY have).
  
  So I'm going to group 2-5 and since it seems like (sorta, I'm not sure?) you have some quasi Buddhist interest refer you to this lecture by Wes Cecil on Siddartha: Buddhism, at around 15:15 and 16:00 where he discusses the centrality of the 4 noble truths and the 8 fold path... especially common misconceptions about it ( The whole lecture is good too ) Basically, don't worry so much about all these esoteric things and focus on the 8 fold path... not tantra and dreams and such...
  
  ... also, keep in mind Siddhartha, and most monks, practice extreme acetic practices and meditation for like 7 years and lived as a wandering nomad, after being trained as a Priest. So like, you need to read a bunch of Philosophy and then meditate for a few years before you give up.
  
  Which brings me to my second point:
  
  You ARE right
  
  School and most pop culture on TV and (I suppose, I grew up before it) Social Media are worthless for your development as a human-being. School is at best a sort of bare basic hurdle you need to get thru. Find something tangible that you have passion about. IF it is really philosophy and lucid dreaming and "Reality Trans-surfing" that's fine, but those seem like more solitary, dare I say borderline occult interests.
  
  And if you want to get in contact with other people, find something that has a community around it. If it is Buddhism you need a Sangha... The community is one of the three jewels.
  
  HOWEVER I'D REALLY SUGGEST MORE PEDESTRIAN HOBBIES! (Trust me, I was a Philosophy Major in College, most people don't REALLY care about the deep questions).
  
  Especially if you want to improve your social skills, get some hobbies that other people can relate to and force you to meet people. The art of talking to people is not hard.
  
  

1. Read Dale Carnegie's - How to Win Friends and Influence People
   
   
2. Try Something like an Improv Class - it is an instant way to meet some new people and learn basic ways to keep conversations going and get outside your comfort zone. You will also get feedback on how you present yourself and techniques for improvement. If you are into reading I HIGHLY suggest the book "Impro" by Keith Johnston. It has some amazing discussion about the nature of status and the "subtle clues" in scenes that you will find helpful in everyday life.
   
   
3. Figure out some club or group you can meet once a week and go DO something. For speaking, Toastmasters is great--AND YOU WILL GET FEEDBACK. For just getting outside, find a Hiking group... maybe there is some sort of Lucid Dream Meetup group near you... whatever. That way you know at least there is a common interest you can start from and branch out.
   
   Get used to not caring about being "rejected" by people, or being "awkward" when trying to talk to them. That's how you learn. The more you do it the better you will get, and there will always be new people to talk to. Eventually you are bound to find friends.
   
   Hope that helps.

>The gist of it is that computer tools, and the skills to use them well, are becoming more and more crucial.

I think this is overrated, but for the sake of argument I'll grant this point.

>Students aren't born with those skills. Even if we aren't working on anything as titanic as a new bridge, we need to model those situations and lay a foundation so that when they do enter those situations, they're prepared and have some experience.

Perhaps your school is different than the ones I've taught at, but I see almost nothing in the experience of my students (except a few bright kids who might join the robotics club, or work on an engineering project with a science teacher) that leads me to believe that they are being taught any of the skills that are necessary to even prepare them to do the kind of work that you describe.

>Phones, tablets, and computers are ultimately just content delivery tools; I doubt we'd label it a habituation problem a student if they spent their weekend engaged with an ebook, audiobook, or some kind of learning course. They're going to be consuming something; part of my job is exposing them to other avenues and resources that are both interesting and beneficial.

Of course not. I use my devices for that kind of stuff all the time, as do most of my colleagues and friends. The problem is that students don't use the devices in order to consume those kinds of things. Instead, they use it to consume content that blunts the imagination, and is damaging to their souls and harmful to the intellect. Just yesterday, I watched a student playing a game on his iPad where the goal (the only goal) was to tap the screen as many times as possible in a given amount of time. He played this game for almost an hour. Experience tells me that this is not far from the norm. Again, perhaps your school is different from the ones I've taught at.

>A better alternative is doing nothing/banning everything? I just can't subscribe to that kind of defeatism. These devices are going to play a huge role in my students lives whether they use them in my class or not, and they're not going away. Knowing that, I'd rather be on the front lines trying to do something about it, trying to form healthy use mindsets, than just wiping my hands and saying it's hopeless.

I'm skeptical that it's possible for children and teenagers to learn how to use these devices in healthy and responsible ways. Their brains simply aren't developed enough, and the devices are too addictive. The very clear risks (addiction, pornography, video games, distraction, etc.) outweigh the potential benefits to the kind of "positive-use" program that I've heard teachers and administrators advocating for almost a decade now. Maybe we just haven't hit on the right way to teach our students the proper way to use these devices, but the problems appear to be widespread enough (just read the comments in this thread) that I'm just not sure that it's possible. Though, if you know of schools where this has been done successfully, I'd love to read about them.

>Two decades into the 21st century, we're still grappling with how these emerging tools influence us. The process of recognizing how they affect us is certainly imperfect, but we can't put the genie back in the bottle. We learned how to live with books, radio, and TVs; I'm sure we'll come around to smartphones and computers, too.

You're establishing a false equivalency between those things (books, radio, TVs and the Internet) because they are all a form of technology. The Internet is magnitudes more addictive, dangerous and toxic than books and radio. The deleterious effects of TV on the brain are well-documented. The very fact that "we're still grappling with how these emerging tools influence" us doesn't give you pause about putting them in the hands of young people? You say that we can't put the genie back in the bottle, and you're probably right about that, but we can limit the access that children have to these devices until: (1) we're sure how they are affecting our brains; and (2) they have cultivated the necessary virtues required to use this technology responsibly.

>These have been classroom issues since the dawn of time. The responsibility of student motivation and engagement falls on the teacher and their ability to design captivating lessons.

There is absolutely no lesson plan that you or I could design that would be more captivating than the Internet at their fingertips. None. The best we can hope for is to provide incentives (either positive or negative) to coerce them into doing what we want them to do with the devices.

>I'm not naïve enough to say that technology hasn't impacted students learning habits at all, but to claim that teaching a great lesson has become impossible because of computer use is both lazy and false. And not for nothing, it also conveniently shifts all the burden of your student's performance/success and what you could be doing to counter these issues onto your colleagues.

Technology advocates love to talk about "solving" the problems with technology in the classroom in the abstract, but when pressed with the question, "Okay, so what specific things could I be doing to counter these issues?" they are strangely silent or they fall back on the old standby of "Well, this is just how the world is now and we need to learn how to adjust," which is a non-answer. Or they love to talk about how technology makes learning more "democratic" (as if that's a good thing) and which, while true, is completely antithetical to both Catholic anthropology and a coherent and robust vision of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. We owe our kids more.

>If you don't take anything else away from my post, at least know that I also don't want to harm my students, and that was all my initial objection to what you posted was about. I think I've said about as much as I can on all this, so if you choose to respond, I will read it, but likely not reply back. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to engage with you and your ideas and express my thinking. Now it's time to get off Reddit and enjoy my weekend!

Thanks for sharing your viewpoints. I hope you're right; I fear that you're not.

D4Darious

An awesome and charismatic dude who focuses mainly on directing/screenwriting, but still has good videos on what makes a good story ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCzcoyDp2fY ) and story structure ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYUE2n91Cok ) in particular.

K.M. Wieland

Check out her books since they're some of the best on story structure (as well as this one: https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Story-Becoming-Master-Storyteller/dp/0865479933/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1522099181&sr=8-1 ) but she also has a youtube channel with 3-4 minute shorts revolving around the info in her books. She is a novelist (and focuses more on writing rather than visual storytelling, which is a little rarer on this list only because Youtube is a visual medium and is perfect for analyzing movies) but her videos aren't all that bad.

LFTS, LFTS, LFTS

I can't say how much I love this guy; I could watch his videos for hours (I do, actually). He breaks down movies, their scenes, etc. and how those movies/screenwriters/story elements effectively create a good story. This is my personal favorite of his: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvtOY0YrF-g and this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKSDctC2o-s and this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUgYoT_xEFY

The Closer Look

Awesome British dude with great videos on things ranging from theme, to genre, to endings. Some of my favorites of his are: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QM1tUwpy-yQ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjCedbTGWzk

Now You See It

A guy who reminds me a lot of LFTS and analyzes what certain things mean in storytelling and common techniques/tropes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR8PDn6YvyQ

Charisma on Command

This one is a little out there (it's actually not about storytelling; it's a youtube channel focusing on relationships and being charismatic/confident) but if you look in between the lines of what he's saying, you can learn a lot for writing. His dissections of GOT characters gave me plenty of ideas and insights into people and how they work. Without this I wouldn't know how super intelligent characters manipulate people (and how more naive characters don't see it coming) This is the specific video I'm referencing: (oh, spoiler warnings in most of these videos btw) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccrQObMjg1U

Just Write

Love this guy too! He is known for his "What writers should learn from " series and analyzes popularly bad movies and explain why they're so bad in the first place (The Hobbit, Avatar the Last Airbender, etc). I'd recommend this one as well as any of his other videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cih9kj6ZPdg for learning about what to do/avoid when writing

This was a list of some of the people I've found and follow, and I hope they help you too.
The last bit of advice I can give to you is to choose one of your favorite movies, books, tv shows, stories and search something along the lines of "Why do people love __?" or "What makes good?" or "Why is [enter director/author here] so good/popular/successful?". You'll find a lot of analysis on youtube you can turn your brain off with (or take pages of notes, whatever your style) to begin understanding why people enjoy what they do. You can use this to your advantage when writing your own stories and avoid walking in blind on a project. Research genre and story structure and characters and plenty of other things until you understand all the arguments, perspectives, and techniques. Good luck!!!

Three things are going to help you:

• Thinking in terms of Systems and Specials
  
• Specifically choosing how your lights are channeled and groupd.
  
• Having a Magic Sheet
  
  
  

  Systems and Specials
  

  
  First off, you want to always be thinking about your lights in terms of Systems and Specials. A System is a group of lights that perform a single function together. The most common form of a 'System' is a wash. Your front light is a system. Your top light is a system.
  
  Specials are the individual lights that do 'special' unique functions. For example, you might have a light that shoots through a window to make the effect of moonlight. Or you might have a light that sits on a chair for a musical number.
  
  Let's imagine a really simple show where you have four systems, an RGB cyc, and two specials. Your systems and specials are:
  
  

• Front Straight Amber Wash, R02
  
• Front Straight Blue Wash, R62
  
• Top Amber Wash, R16
  
• Top Blue Wash, R80
  
• RGB Cyc, each one individually controlled.
  
• Firelight special
  
• Moon Gobo special
  
  The first four systems are made up of 15 lights each, covering two dimensions: SR - SL, DS - US. Something like this:
  
  UR URC UC ULC UL
  CR CRC CC CLC CL
  DR DRC DC DLC DL
  
  You also want to individually control all the cyc colors so you can do mixing. The two specials each need to have their own channel.
  
  

  Specifically choosing how your lights are channeled and groupd.
  

  
  The next thing to do is to specifically choose how your lights are channeled and groupd. When you had a board with all sliders, you might just have assigned everything numerically, because you were limited in how many physical sliders you had (or perhaps limited by dimmers). The advantage of a modern board like the Ion is that you can use numerical mnemonics to visually identify/remember.
  
  Imagine your Ion screen is laid out something like this:
  
  01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
  21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
  41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
  61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80
  81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100
  
  Now if you just channeled everything in order, numerically, you'd end up with channels looking something like this:
  
  

• Front Straight Amber Wash, R02 - Channels 1-15
  
• Front Straight Blue Wash, R62 - Channels 16-30
  
• Top Amber Wash, R16 - Channels 31 - 45
  
• Top Blue Wash, R80 - Channels 46-60
  
• RGB Cyc, each one individually controlled. - Channels 61 (R), 62 (G), 63 (B)
  
• Firelight special - Channel 64
  
• Moon Gobo special - Channel 65
  
  That's not a bad way of doing it, but it's not really optimal. For one, there's no easy way to visually look at the screen and see what things are doing. Your systems wrap across multiple lines, and everything is just group'd up with no rhyme or reason. It doesn't help you remember anything.
  
  Visually, the channels will look like this on your Ion Screen: http://i.imgur.com/YJca3Ff.png
  
  Instead, imagine channeling it something like this:
  
  
• Front Straight Wash R02, Channels 1-15
  
• Front Straight Wash R62, Channels 21-35
  
• Top Amber Wash R16, Channels 41-55
  
• Top Blue Wash R80, Channels 61-75
  
• RGB Cyc, each one individually controlled. - Channels 81 (R), 82 (G), 83 (B)
  
• Firelight special - Channel 91
  
• Moon Gobo special - Channel 92
  
  Now look at that on the Ion Screen: http://i.imgur.com/3TXCGYx.png . Look at the nice neat columns and rows that let you easily see what's going on. What's more, the numerical mnemonics help you know where channels are:
  
  11: UR 12: URC 13: UC 14: ULC 15: UL
  06: CR 07: CRC 08: CC 09: CLC 16: CL
  01: DR 02: DRC 03: DC 04: DLC 05: DL
  
  You know that X1 is always DR. So 01 is DR Front Amber, 21 is DR Front Blue, 41 is DR Top Amber, 61 is DR Top Blue. You can look at the screen and see what's going on visually. Eventually, you'll be able to look at the channel screen and instantly understand what it should look like on the stage.
  
  Now, it does get tedious to select all the channels you want all the time. This is where Groups come in handy. You use Groups to select your systems so that you don't always have to type in [CHANNEL 1 - 15].
  
  Again, numerical mnenomics will help you out. Let's just think of our four front washes. You could group them 1-4:
  
  
• Group 1 - Front Amber Wash
  
• Group 2 - Front Blue Wash
  
• Group 3 - Top Amber Wash
  
• Group 4 - Top Blue Wash
  
  Problem is that way doesn't help you remember what your channels are at. Group 4 is... What? Oh, Top Blue Wash, my fourth system. When I make groups, I make them around channel numbers:
  
  
• Group 1 - Front Amber Wash, Channels 1-15
  
• Group 21 - Front Blue Wash, Channels 21-35
  
• Group 41 - Top Amber Wash, Channels 41-55
  
• Group 61 - Top Blue Wash, Channels 61-75
  
  That helps you remember what channel you're selecting. You can also add more groups to get more levels of control:
  
  
• Group 5 - Down Stage Front Amber Wash, Channels 1-5
  
• Group 10 - Mid Stage Front Amber Wash, Channels 6-10
  
• Group 15 - Up Stage Front Amber Wash, Channels, 11-15
  
  And so on.
  
  Eventually, you'll have a selection of groups that let you quickly and easily select areas of the stage you want to isolate.
  
  
  

  What is a Magic Sheet?
  

  
  Once you know what your systems and specials are, and you've got them grouped/channeled, you can make your Magic Sheet. Your Magic Sheet is for you, as the designer, to help you remember what your systems and specials are. It's a quick reference to tell you what your systems and specials are so that you DO remember what you have to use. That way you can just look down and know what channels you need to call out. Magic Sheets are unique to you... you might make them look like color keys, you might have them visually laid out on the stage.
  
  
  Here's an example of a magic sheet I drew up for this show:
  
  http://i.imgur.com/5uOvjYU.png
  
  The magic sheet has all my systems with their appropriate channel numbers as well as my cyc numbers and specials. Because I'm using group number mnemonics, I don't have to write down group numbers... I can just remember that Group 1 selects R02 Front, Group 61 selects R80 Top, etc. etc..
  
  I hope those tips helped. If you haven't yet, you should get (and read) the Practical Guide to Stage Lighting, which will really help you get the most out of your designs. http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Guide-Stage-Lighting-Edition/dp/0415812003
  
  

  tl;dr
  

  
  Buy this book: http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Guide-Stage-Lighting-Edition/dp/0415812003

No problem at all! In this case, I mostly learned it by reading a lot of essays and interviews and books, in this case especially ones on Kubrick and on cinematography. I don't remember specifically what stuff in particular, unfortunately. The best advice for watching EWS (or any film) in its intended format is to find a screening of it that's in 35mm--depending on where you're located, good bets are museums like MOMA in NYC, a local university, or arthouses and repertory theatres that might have a Kubrick retrospective or something.

As far as becoming well-versed in film, the first step is to watch everything you can get your hands on, even if you think it will be awful, and pay as much attention to the choices that are being made, how a camera is moving, what is in the frame and what isn't, lighting, color, dialogue, etc., even if you have no idea really what to be paying attention for. Anything you can think of or see onscreen, think about why that choice is being made and what the purpose of that choice is. And then after viewing something, look up some reviews of it (to find good critics, a good start is to go to Rotten Tomatoes, narrow down a movie's reviews to Top Critics, and then read the full reviews from there), positive and negative, and try to match what they're talking about to what you just saw and see if you can recognize what they're mentioning. And if you can't, just store the type of thing they're talking about and remember to think about it during the next movie you watch, and the next, and so on. Practicing this will build up your knowledge quite quickly, and it will become second nature to pick up on all kinds of things, and once that becomes habit and you don't have to pay as much attention consciously, you'll pick up on more and more subtle nuances. (If you want to have a starting point for films, you can go with a list like this, a list of 1000 movies that are "the best of all time" as a result of aggregating several different polls. Obviously, you never want to put too much stock in other people's opinions of what the best is, and it seems intimidatingly long, but like I said, it's just if you want a reference point. And they link to the polls they use, so if you want a smaller list to work with you, you can try one of those. This is helpful because again you'll discover what you like, so you might find one movie on that list by a director you love and then go off and watch everything else she ever did. And then you come back to the list. So it's not really about completing the list, just using it as another starting point for discovery.) Also, I recommend you keep at least a brief log of everything you watch, along with some notes about it--this will help you keep track of directors/screenwriters/cinematographers you like, as well as help you understand what you like and don't like about films better.

Once you start to feel comfortable with some of the basics, you can start seeking out books that discuss the film-making experience. With both movies and books, you'll discover your tastes as you go along, so it's best to start casting a broad net and reading books that cover a lot of topics, and then you might find that cinematography interests you most and then start reading books that are more specifically about that, and subscribing to specialty magazines like American Cinematographer, or you might find it all appealing and want to read books on all aspects of filmmaking.

That probably seems like a ton of info and fairly intimidating, but I basically started from nothing and basically just taught myself whatever I know by this method, no film school or anything certainly. Not saying I'm an expert on this stuff by any stretch of the imagination, but I've been able to become knowledgeable enough.

Some specific recommendations that I found immensely helpful that hopefully might be helpful to you too:

Current film critics: Dana Stevens (Slate), Stephanie Zacharek (Village Voice), Karina Longworth (freelance), Manohla Dargis (NYT), Wesley Morris (Grantland), A.O. Scott (NYT)


Kubrick:
The Stanley Kubrick Archives - A great book that also features Kubrick's drawings, personal notes, continuity photos, and interviews with him

Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made - A book on SK's uncompleted Napoleon film

The Kubrick Site - A really amazing online resource with a lot of links to essays and articles


Film magazines: Sight and Sound, Film Comment, American Cinematographer, Filmmaker, Little White Lies, Screen International


Books (if you only ever read one book on film, I'd make it Hitchcock/Truffaut--I learned more from it than from any other single source):
Hitchcock/Truffaut

What is Cinema?

Pictures at a Revolution

Negative Space

A Cinema of Loneliness

Easy Riders, Raging Bulls

The Age of Movies

Making Movies

From a theory/craft/story building perspective, I'd start with either John Truby's Anatomy of Story (The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller https://www.amazon.com/dp/0865479933/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_l1iMBb6PRTA0G), or Robert McKee's Story (Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting https://www.amazon.com/dp/0060391685/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_e2iMBb0CKZ42M). They have some similarities but either is a good starting point for the background theories in story telling and story development.

For formatting/templates there are lots of guides. A general Google search for screenplay formatting should get you a good starting point for the standards needed.

Teaching yourself to have a critical eye to discern between good and bad film (and then further between good and great film) takes time as well as remembering that each person's opinion on what makes any one film good/great is subjective. That said, getting a basis in critical film analysis can help because that will get you watching films that have the best stories/characters/dialogues/settings/etc. This will prime your subconscious and get you thinking in those ways so that when you write your own work, you're starting from a place of strength rather than from cliche.

Research what kind of screenplays you could do - original, adaptations, big budget, studio specific, independent, genre, art house, etc. Maybe you'd be happier in a writer's room at a small studio as opposed to a large one. Maybe you really like adaptations. Try to figure out what powers your desire to write (Truby has a great exercise early in his book for this).

Find a local writer's group if possible. Hopefully one that has other screenwriters, but any good group you mesh with well helps, as they can be external mentors and feedback for your efforts.

Look at participating in National Novel Writing Month in November as a rebel (i.e. someone writing something other than a novel) as motivation/structure/deadline to forcing yourself to write.

And most of all - write. Just start. Get going and keep going. You'll want to freeze up or get it right, but so much good comes during the many iterations your story will take, so start earlier rather than later.

Hope that helps.

ETA: links

Start with Marshall McGee: He's one of the Sound Designer who worked on Just Cause 4 among other things, and he makes a lot of bite-sized, info-rich videos that are just fantastic.

Then of course, you should read the works of some of the professionals in this field: The Sound Design Bible by Ric Viers and Sound Design by David Sonnenschein would both be good places to start.

Obviously, you should also get out there and record, as soon as possible :) You'll need a portable recorder, and one or two mics. Obviously, it's entirely possible to do sound design using nothing but samples, but you'll be skipping one of the key steps of making great sounds. Great sound design begins by great sound recording, and knowing how to get your very own, unique, high quality sounds is not only a key step in this process, it's also a lot of fun. I started with a Zoom F4 for my recorder, and it works like a charm for its price. For microphones, you'll want either a shotgun microphone (particularly if you're doing Foley), or a pair of mics capable of handling various tasks. My first microphones ever were a pair of Oktava mk-012, and they're great, reliable microphones.

For DAWs, as always, there is no right answer, and whichever DAW you're comfortable using is the right DAW. I'd recommend Reaper, as it's dirt cheap and is just as good if not better than many, more expensive "studio standards" like ProTools, but, again, whichever DAW you're comfortable with is the right DAW.

And finally, welcome ! It's always nice to see new people interested in Sound Design.

Here is what I recommend currently:

For beginners:

Free: https://www.coursera.org/courses?languages=en&query=digital+marketing

Paid: https://www.udacity.com/course/digital-marketing-nanodegree--nd018#

(You can get it free if you take the courses with out the degree)

Foundations To Advanced Topics:

Paid: http://neilpatel.com/advanced-marketing-program/

(Neil Patel is one of the few Internet Marketers I would trust. He has successful businesses and is fairly transparent)



Books that can help you with marketing:


Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion - Once you read this book you will see the techniques used everywhere in marketing. Once you understand the techniques you can apply them yourself.

The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller - Everyone talks about copywriting, but IMO most copy is written way to salsy and is obvious. I have had much better results using stories to sell and most of my sales pages use story telling techniques to bring the reader on a journey.

The Copywriters Handbook - That said, you should still understand the point of copy and this book does a good job. Once you know the fundamentals of copywriting you can sell almost anything.

What to avoid:

Avoid any courses that are selling Techniques or formulas (I.E: My Super Awesome Snapchat Method that brought in $5000") while most have useful information the issue is simple:

Formulas/Templates/Tactics will only get you so far and won't always work. Yes, some methods have been proven to work time and time again, but you are still better off learning the fundamentals of marketing and sales over reusing tactics and templates.

By learning the fundamentals you will be able to rapidly test and try new things to see what works and doesn't. This will give you more flexibility and success in the long wrong.

Most people sell courses around tactics because most customers want a lazy way to make money. Do they work? yes and no. There is no real answer - these tactics may work for you or not as there are a lot of things to factor in.

When buying a course check out the instructor. A lot of Internet Marketers only had 1 success before selling courses on the subject. If someone claims to be an awesome marketer and doesn't have more than 1 success as proof, something is wrong and most likely that success was a fluke.

Most trustworthy marketers normally will have a long track record of successes or at the very least have well known clients (Google/Facebook/Coke/etc).

TL;DR: Avoid tactics/templates/Formulas and learn the fundamentals of marketing.

Books I recommend / see commonly recommended.

• • -
    Show Networks and Control Systems
    
    This is a great book all about how modern lighting networks work using sACN and other protocols. John Huntington is a great speaker if you ever get a chance to see him speak. He should be doing a session or two as USITT this year. He is also a professor at CUNY and has a great program there.
    

• • *
    Electricity for the Entertainment Electrician & Technician
    
    Another great book by another great speaker. I got to see a panel with Richard Cadena a few years ago at USITT. I was very impressed with how he spoke about stage lighting and some of the practical experiments that he has done and shared with us. I haven't read this book, but I've heard great things about it. A big topic of conversation at that panel was inrush current, and he gave some really great and easy to understand answers. I suspect that his book is more of the same.
    

• • -
    Designing with Light
    
    A classic. Very very well respected book. It will probably be the text book for your first lighting class in college, if you choose to study lighting in college.
    
• • -
    [Light Fantastic: The Art and Design of Stage Lighting] (https://www.amazon.com/Light-Fantastic-Design-Stage-Lighting/dp/3791343718)
    
    My favorite lighting book. Covers a huge array of topics, addresses lighting history & color, shows and demonstrates some really really interesting designs.
    
• • -
    A Practical Guide to Stage Lighting
    
    I see this book recommended most often. It's another great book. The title holds true, it is a very practical guide to stage lighting. How to do paperwork. How to write a contract. How to talk to people. Some nuggets of lighting knowledge. I didn't really get as much out of it though, as I am not trying to become a professional lighting designer.

Thank you for your kind comments and thank you for a thoughtful post.

I'm not so enthralled by old-school Westerns either. I found Stagecoach and The Searchers fairly entertaining but not much else from that era. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly is one of my all-time favorite movies though.

My main point about Ford is that he really had a breakthrough in location shooting, almost making the location a character in the film, and certain types of shots that are so often seen in Westerns. There's more to it than that (the story of The Searchers is pretty great), but that's the main gist of my argument about Ford. Those are the elements that were influential.

>Would you also ascribe Albert Einstein's scientific discoveries to the US because he spent the last years of his life there (well, considering he was chased out of Germany at least that's not unthinkable)?

No, I wouldn't because he made his big discoveries in Europe. Chaplin, OTOH, made the bulk of his artistic output in Hollywood. I'm not alone in thinking this way, the American Film Institute claims Chaplin's films as American. You're right though, I'd say it is a gray area. Even still I think it highlights how Hollywood was a magnet for foreign talent.

>I too see Europe as one creative entity in these matters,

Yeah, I'm only lumping them together because of the initial "us vs. them" mentality of my initial response. There are some pretty distinct strains of European cinema: German Expressionism, Italian Neo-Realism, the French New Wave, the films of Jean Renoir, Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini.

>[The Wizard of Oz] just looked like a very low budget kid's show

Low budget? It was one of the most expensive movies of all-time up to that point. I think only Gone With the Wind had a bigger budget. Anyway, it played on American TV every year at Thanksgiving holiday for some 30-40 years. It was influential for many reasons, one of them being that it was ubiquitous.

>Funny you mention they used Hitchcock as an early example as I've never heard him mentioned as an auteur. Mostly because he's done such a wide variety of movies and a lot of them aren't good at all. Now that you mention it it makes sense though, the films I've seen do indeed seem to carry a similar artistic vision (though, might I say, it feels more technical than artistic to me).

If you take anything away from this conservation please re-consider Hitchcock. His career spanned some 50 years and he made a ton of films. Yes, there are clunkers but on the whole he is awesome. Most of his work in the 30's, 40's and 50's are just outstanding. It's too long to list in this comment but ask me and I'll gladly respond with the must-see Hitchcock films. I will point out that Vertigo has been mentioned as one of the ultimate examples of the auteur theory at work. Also, my absolute favorite book about film is a in-depth, film by film, interview by Francois Truffaut of Hitchcock. Link

>Yes. Actually the story about how spaghetti westerns came to be is my favourite in all of cinema history because it's so absurd (geographically speaking); westerns from the US influencing japanese samurai films, that are later remade (Yojimbo that is) into italian western.

Yeah, all that and they were filmed in Spain.

All of them, really. Absolutely no harm will come from reading all the books out there (for a while). At worst, you'll learn ways of doing things that DON'T work for you but it's still good knowledge to have.

After a while, eventually, you'll start noticing though that all the new books out are just copying and rephrasing the books that came before them. That's when it's time to stop.

Some of the popular ones are syd field's book, Robert McKee's book, Joseph Campbell's book (and imo a book called The Writer's Journey by Christopher something that analyzes Campbell's book and puts it into modern story telling terms). That'll get you started. I have varying opinions of each of those books and none of them should be adhered to by law, but they ALL contain concepts and theories that, as a professional writer, you'd do well to expose yourself to. If for no other reason than that you can be aware of the concepts when others talk about them.

Tangentially, Stephen king's On Writing and William Goldman's books are great reads but don't necessarily apply to the craft of screen writing directly. Also useful to read any interviews or collections of interviews with screen writers. You may also want to check out some podcasts, Jeff goldsmith's interviews with screen writers is great and I have no idea if it's still available or even what it's called but I used to listen to one titled something like Sam and Jim Go to Hollywood (I am positive I got those names wrong) about two guys who up and quit their careers as restaurant owners and moved to Hollywood to become writers and share what they've learned. Ted Rossio and Terry Elliot also run, or ran, a website with forums (which are eh) and and a collection of articles about screen writing which are fantastic.

This was all stuff I was into years ago, so I don't know how much of it is still relevant, because like I said when you get to a certain point you've kind of read everything out there and it all starts repeating itself, and you realize all that's left is to read screenplays and write a ton.

Good luck.

e: back on my computer, here are some links:

Syd Field's Sreenplay (he has several books out, that's the one you should start with as it lays the foundation for basic story structure of nearly all modern movies. IMO, it's also the best one out there because he never says these are rules in any way, he simply analyzed a bunch of movies and lays out his findings for you to do with as you wish)

Robert McKee's Story

Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces

and Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey

Stephen King's On Writing which describes his writing style and, while I don't prefer it, is a very interesting style similar to the Cohen Brothers

William Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade and Which Lie did I Tell? two accounts of William Goldman's experiences as one of the top writers in Hollywood, and dealing with the business. Writer of The Princess Bride, Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, and many others. Dude's a legend.

Jeff Goldsmith's Q&A podcast he also did the same style podcast while working for a screenwriting magazine, though the name escapes me right now

Sam and Jim Go to Hollywood holy shit I got their names right I can't believe it. Seems to be dead for a few years but it looks like their podcasts are still up.

Wordplay, Ted & Terry's website read every single one of those articles

e: BONUS! Not that useful as an educational resource, but it's fun to read Ken Levine's blog, writer on MASH and Cheers Ken's blog (no, not the guy who made BioShock)

It depends on what you're drawn to. Are you more interested in interpretation of story for your own personal growth? Or interpretation of films? Or are you looking to create stories?

The best books I know on this subject at least on interpretive myth include:

• Women who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes (sure it's about women's stories which can dissuade some younger men learning about this subject but it's seriously one of the best books on how to interpret a myth out there)
  
• The Hero Within by Carol S. Pearson. This is more if you're trying to find your own personal mythology for instance.
  
• The Water of Life by Michael Meade is tremendous. He does amazing events around the United States and gives good performances as well as talks and storytelling online via his non-profit Mosaic Voices.
  
• To learn more about interpretation and ways to interact with your unconscious, I'd recommend many of Robert A. Johnson's books specifically Inner Work however Transformations of Masculine Consciousness, He, She, We and Living with the Heavenly Goddess are good too depending on what topic you're interested in.
  
• For storytelling, I'd recommend the book Healing Hearts Communities which consists of a collection of stories which are appropriate to use for a variety of modern requirements. So you have stories talking about addiction or violence etc.
  
  In my experience, after Campbell people usually begin to drift toward what their personal myths are. So you have some people who get really into film and get caught on Vogler or Bonnet's work, others who want to go help returning veterans and end up getting really into Odysseus in America. Or people begin focusing on different cultures and religions and move from there.

There are a lot of great books on film out there. Don't listen to other possible saying watch YouTube or wrote your own screenplay. Well, do those things too, but learn some wisdom from some of the masters while you're at it.

You are going to want to read the following:

Hitchcock by Truffaut (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0671604295). One of the greatest directors of all time, interviewed by another of the greatest.

In the Blink of an Eye by Walter Murch (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1879505622/ref=aw_d_detail?pd=1), one of the greatest editors ever. A pretty great director too.

On Directing Film by David Mamet (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0140127224). A great book on directing by one of the great writer/directors.

Rebel Without a Crew by Robert Rodriguez (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0452271878). He wrote this after El Mariachi, before he went on to big budgets. It's one of the most inspiring books you'll ever read-- you'll want to make a film tomorrow. Basically, how to make a movie wit nothing but enthusiasm.

This might be a silly question in the age of the internet, but do you know about the hidden mickeys? If by chance you haven't, do a google search and look for sites that give hints to their whereabouts.

As someone who was married to a Disney Employee, you have to find ways to make visit #197 entertaining and I found that through seeking out some of the "hidden gems" like u/tikiroomofprogress mentioned. I'd also recommend reading the small tour books that were done by the Imagineers. They have them for each of the major parks. You can read them before the trip to get yourself geared up or use it in the park to learn neat facts as you take a somewhat guided tour :)

I'd also recommend reading the book "Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination" (http://www.amazon.com/Walt-Disney-Triumph-American-Imagination/dp/0679757473). I thought it was a very facinating story and once again it got me itching to go back to Disneyworld, hehe. Good luck and I would say to not worry about Space Mountain this time and still have it be exciting for your younger sisters.

Oh, also try to collect all of the crushed pennies in the park. Those can be fun to track down :)

TL:DR Go have fun!

> Murs doesn't require part 95 to my knowledge

It says so right here on fcc.gov. 47 C.F.R, Part 95.

Every radio service besides amateur radio (governed by Part 97) requires equipment to be certified for that service. Hams have the unique privilege of using whatever equipment we can get our hands on, including homebrew stuff. But of course that only applies within the ham frequency ranges, and we are responsible for ensuring the equipment meets the technical requirements for clean output, etc.

> how is one to tell the difference of the radio I'm using by listening.

Well, I said it's illegal, not that you'd get caught. I personally don't get my panties twisted about people using Baofengs on FRS/GMRS/MURS. I believe in being a good neighbor, not in following the law for the law's sake. But I also believe that you should know what the law is before you break it :)

That said, building repeaters is riskier both in terms of getting caught and in terms of causing issues for others. All the more reason to get a ham license.

> Yes I would love to get a ham license. And a gmrs license so I can make use of other gmrs repeaters in the area. I just don't know where to start.

To get the GMRS license you just fill out some paperwork and pay the FCC. I haven't done it, but this looks like a reasonable walkthrough.

The ham license involves passing a multiple-choice test. For VHF/UHF you only need the lowest grade of license (Technician) which is not very hard to get, and there are tons of study materials available. It's possible to cram for the test in just a few hours, but a lot of the material is actually useful stuff that will help you use radios more effectively, so I recommend learning it properly. I read through the ARRL book, which is very comprehensive, but there's also a free No-Nonsense Study Guide. HamExam.org has you covered for practice tests. I also got the "Ham Test Prep (New)" app for Android so I could drill on exams while I was on the train.

You can find an exam session here. The test is a lot cheaper than the GMRS license, somewhere between $0 and $15 depending on which VEC is running your session. Once you pass Technician, you'll be given the opportunity to attempt General right then and there, at no additional cost. Some people pass even without studying. If you think you might want to get into HF bands (good for super long-range communication) then even a little General studying could pay off, since General is required for almost everything on HF.

Some other links:

• Beginner’s guide to amateur (ham) radio for preppers
  
• ARRL guide for beginners
  
• HF on a budget
  
• New ham radio operator
  
  Feel free to ask me more questions. Good luck and have fun!

One thing I'm taking away from this (so far...on #3) is the sense of community that dance parties create. Yeah, I know, it's almost cliched. But it's the realist sense of group comrade that I have ever encountered. I was at a party last weekend that exhibited this same level of compassion. I live in the Detroit area, have a lot of friends who are artists, promoters, or just plain enthusiasts, but the fact remains that this vibe is real. It's more than the music. It's the sense of family that keeps every body together. The same people from week to week with the same good sense in music that binds it all together. It makes me proud to be a part of the scene. Places like the Paradise Garage or the Music Boxx really laid the ground work for the rest of the world to enjoy nightlife as we know it.

BTW, David Mancuso really needs a movie all to himself.

edit 2:Francis Grasso, wow, there getting deeper than I expected! We should all be reading Last Night A DJ Save My Life as a primer to this. Seriosly, it's the best book I ever read (about djing)!

Couple ideas off the top of my head:

You could incorporate some of the elements from the Karazhan game board. You mentioned the stage, but the broomstick, candles (floating, even, if you get those little electric tea lights), or the orb lights that are in the top right corner. Maybe some sort of large tome or hand-drawn runes that could be hung up as decoration. The broom is sweeping up broken purple crystals, you could grow those quickly and easily and would add a sort of magical decoration to the mix.

A playlist with music from Warcraft or Hearthstone would add to the ambiance. The Hearthstone theme is pretty low-key and there are lots of youtube covers and renditions. TGT also has a great jingle, and I know I have at least one Warcraft album that has some very low-key ambient tunes from various towns and pubs in-universe. I have a TON of warcraft music, please PM me and I would be happy to send you some.


There is a World of Warcraft cookbook that surely has some good ideas for food. Regardless, just make sure you serve some guac :)

Good luck with the party, take some pictures and post an update!

I'm going to interpret your question a little bit differently and provide some books that are not directly RPG related but will help you to be a better role-player or Game Master. Then, I will finish off with some more RPG specific suggestions.

The essential reads are the following:

• All of HP Lovecraft
  
• Anything you can read from Tolkien
  
• Robert E. Howards stories about Conan the Cimmerian
  
• Fantasy/Sci-Fi Art Collections (subjective based upon the styles that inspire you and that reflect your campaigns)
  
• Collections of Legend or Mythology
  
• A book or two about acting and/or improvisation, I recommend Impro: Improvisation and the Theater
  
  For GM-specific materials, I really love the spirit conveyed by Dungeon World and Fate Core (and the Fate System Toolkit for that matter). If you learn nothing else from Dungeon World, learn the GM principles and how to set up Fronts. Fronts (or something similar) are the way you should be preparing as a GM that very few other books convey. The Alexandrian has a lot of amazing materials. I know that Play Unsafe was recommended here, but it was a little short and basic for my taste... much of the same principles will be covered by reading the other recommended texts in my post. If you absolutely must learn about improvisation as a skill in and of itself, read Impro. The author of Play Unsafe drew heavily from this text and most of the truly unique ideas can be found within Impro.

This has been my biggest focus for the last few months.

1st realization was "Networking events" weren't a place where you join the hive-mind, exchange emails and share secrets on openings in the job market. You're basically are making friends. Get them to think: "This would be a good person to work with. I better answer his message so they'll answer mine"

John Sonmez (Author of Soft Skills: The software developer's life manual): https://simpleprogrammer.com/

Toastmasters: https://www.toastmasters.org/ This is like a public speaking club for anyone to join. My place is filled with 8 nice sweet, old people who want to speak better at church. I feel pretty comfortable speaking there.

This has been my 3 step plan:

1. Practice your speaking out loud. Practice speed, flow and volume first. Then add emotion as you read. I read to my girlfriend David Foster Wallace's Essay: Shipping Out
   
2. Learn how to tell stories. John Truby’s 22 Steps notes
   
3. Give speeches and powerpoints.
   
   
   My youtube story telling playlist
   
   Books/Audiobooks:
   
   
4. "Brag! The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn Without Blowing It" by Peggy Klaus audible link The audible book is abridged because chapters 4 through 8 have little value.
   
5. The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller by John Truby
   
6. The audible Summary of "How to win friends and influence people" by Dale Carnegie
   
7. The audible Summary of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Steven R. Covey
   
   
   

Oh man do I have a list for you!

Joe Murray's Creating Animated Cartoons with Character is an amazing read and he gives some information on the creation process for his shows.

Nancy Beiman's Prepare to Board! talks about story development and character creation, but she mostly covers storyboarding in the book. Beiman also has exercises included as you read, so it feels a bit more interactive.

Jean Ann Wright's Animation Writing and Development covers writing for TV animation. Wright talks mainly about how to land a job as a writer for an ongoing show, but he does cover character in the book.

Bryan Konietzko and Michael DiMartino's Avatar: The Last Airbender (The Art of the Animated Series) talks a bit on character creation for the show and how the show kept evolving until they finally arrived at Avatar: The Last Airbender.

But you shouldn't just stay with finding books on how to create characters for animation. It shouldn't matter if they are animated or not, we need to believe in these characters!

Lajos Egri's The Art of Dramatic Writing
is my personal favorite on character development. Although this book is mainly about writing a play, Egri covers dialogue, characters, character motivation, and story development perfectly. I keep returning to this book everytime an idea pops into my head. I cannot express how much this book has helped me in creating believable characters and conflicts.

Blake Snyder's Save the Cat! is a book I have never gotten around to reading, but I feel it worth mentioning as most of my colleagues and friends keep recommending this book back to me.

And again, although you will learn many new things from these books and they will help you view stories and characters more analytically, you won't get better until you start to create more and more characters and stories. You may also start looking for interviews of your favorite creators and look for what they have to say about character.

Hope this helps!

The Division. I like this game. It's best with friends and doing the main missions in hard.

You can totally do a holy trinity if you want, but the nice thing is you can chose your points and perks at any time. I don't usually care for pvp stuff, I only went in the dark zone once, and never really met any people so I dunno. I'm lvl 15 and play a tanky smart cover/shield build guy with LMG/shotgun/sawn-off.

The shooting feels good and the mods that give you better accuracy and stability actually are noticeable. The cover system is great and I love that moving between cover is just "look at where you want to go and hold A" and you will go there. And that "moving between cover" is a thing the game knows you can do, and thus has perks based upon it (like reduced damage during the move, or increasing damage based on the distance moved)

The side missions are copy paste but that's fine for me. Walking around the city by yourself and exploring to get lootboxes and collectables is fun since the environmental design is amazing

Also iwant to shout out to the book "The Division: New York Collapse" which isn't your typical tie-in novel. It presented as an actual survival guide that the protagonist finds and uses as a diary by writing in the margins. Then she realizes that the fictional author must have known about the virus that hit NY cause of all these clues she finds in the book. So it's an actual urban survival guide on top of reading about this woman's life post-collapse, on top of doing puzzles and figuring out the conspiracy how the author new about the virus. It even has feelies! Remember those! I was able to grab a copy at a local Barnes and Noble since it seems to be sold out online but you can also buy directly from the publishers website

http://www.amazon.com/Tom-Clancys-The-Division-Collapse/dp/1452148279#immersive-view_1458063874363

Urban Chaos. This is an older game from '99 featuring a black lady cop. It plays a bit like GTA3 with some Tomb Raider-esque platforming. The story seems bizarre as it opens with a Nosferatu Nostradamus quote about the end of the world. And then in a cutscene some religious zealot assassins try to murder the cop and her partner. Right now I'm just beating up and arresting gangmenbers waiting for the story to take the turn it hinted at in the opening, but it's fun to walk around and talk to people, and explore to find hidden triggerable cutscenes and stat-increasing powerups.

-----

I'm one of those weird people who doesnt "get" streamers. I don't have time to watch someone play a game unscripted. I'd rather play games myself. And if I want to watch a game played I'll watch the preplanned/edited/produced videos like giant bomb or YouTubers like mathas, markiplier, or patrick klepeck where I can set it to 1.5x or skip forward when i get bored. I follow one person on twitch and its my personal friend so I can directly chat to him on steam and comment what he's doing in game. And even then I don't watch with rapt attention since its just not entertaining or enthralling to me. The most I got into his game was watching him play system shock 1 and helping him out with stuff since he was being a baby and complaing about not having waypoints or objective list after completely ignoring the 20 audio logs that told him exactly what to do and where.

I thought long and hard about finally pulling the trigger on Star Wars: Imperial Assault. I've been wanting that game for quite some time, and was really just waiting for it to finally be discounted. With this special, I was able to get it for $71 total after tax because a local retailer was selling it discounted. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that my wife, who is my primary gaming partner, just isn't going to be that into it, so in the end, I decided against it.

​

Instead, I got Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game and Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective: The Thames Murders & Other Cases. Walmart had them both for about $35 each, so in total after tax, I got both for $62.74. I've never played a mystery game like these, but I did very thoroughly enjoy Tom Clancy's The Division: New York Collapse, which was a supplementary book that tied into the popular video game. I was already a mega fan of the game, but I was especially surprised at how fun that book was. Basically, it's primarily written as a survival guide, but it's supposed to look like a used copy you found during the apocalypse. It contains notes from the previous owner speculating about what caused the disease outbreak and her geneticist husband's role in the whole debacle. But most importantly, the survival guide actually contains hidden messages encoded throughout predicting the apocalypse, and it's up to the reader to finish deciphering the clues with help from the previous owner's notes. So it's this incredibly deep layered meta experience where you're reading a survival guide, piecing together clues, solving puzzles, and learning about the outbreak and characters. It's arguably the best video game tie-in media ever created, but I'm guessing it didn't make much of a splash because it comes across as a really niche product for hardcore fans. However, as soon as I heard about those 2 mystery games, they immediately reminded me of that book, and I knew I had to get them at some point. I'm glad I was able to pick them up for such great prices with this promotion.

Listening is a vital skill in amateur radio, so I suggest starting now. You don't need any equipment to do this - online SDR receivers allow you to tune in to the amateur HF bands using your web browser. This handy chart shows the frequency bands available to amateurs and lists common callsign prefixes. Just tune around the bands and listen in to some contacts to get a feel for things, even if you don't understand what's going on.

I'm assuming you're in the US, but if you're not then let me know and I'll try to provide advice more relevant to your country.

I'd recommend joining your local amateur radio club as soon as possible. You don't need to have a license to join a club. There's a tradition in amateur radio of informally mentoring new hams - we call these mentors "elmers". A good elmer can be a huge help when you're learning the hobby and working your way through the exams.

There are online video courses for the US Technician test available from KE4GKP, KE0OG and KB9OKB. These courses cover pretty much everything you need to know for the exam. The ARRL License Manual is a very good guide and will remain a useful reference book after you've passed. You can see the entire pool of questions for the technician exam or take a practice exam via the ARRL website.

When you think you're ready, take the technician exam. The exam fee is typically no more than $15, so don't be afraid to give it a try.

Once you've got your technician license, you'll want a radio. Technicians mainly have access to the VHF and UHF bands. Baofeng radios are a very popular choice for these bands - they aren't the best radios, but they are incredibly cheap, costing as little as $30. If you have a bigger budget, take a look at the handheld radios from Yaesu and Icom.

Don't stop at the technician license. The more you learn, the more you get out of the hobby. The HF bands are crucial for making international contacts, but technicians only have access to a small fraction of it, mainly the morse and data only bands. Moving up to the general, advanced and extra licenses will give you increasing access to the most exciting aspects of the amateur radio hobby.

For headphones, recording (often quiet) sound effects, headphones with good isolation is important. The Sennheiser HD280's work quite well for that, better than say, Sony MDR7506's.

The H4n is probably your best choice around that price level, it's the only one of those three that offers XLR input. It also has pretty decent stereo mics, and can be plugged into a computer as a audio interface. It doesn't have the best/quietest preamps, but that's as good as you'll get near that price.

I see you want a mono mic. For recording sound effects, a shotgun mic is probably what you want most of the time. The RØde NTG-1 or NTG-2 are both good options (mostly the same, but the 2 has battery power). You may want to supplement that with another fairly inexpensive cardioid mic, possibly even hyper/supercardioid (Avantone CK-1 for example).

For wind protection, you can go with a softie-type mount, where the windjammer goes directly on the mic, but they're not much cheaper than Rycote's S-series, which is awesome... I use the S-330 on my NTG-2, and it sounds great even in fairly high wind.

Don't forget batteries and a charger for whatever you're using- Sanyo's Eneloop (pre-charged NiMH) batteries are awesome.

Get some kind of sturdy bag to carry your gear in, and some way to hold your recorder when you're recording. I've seen either bags/harnesses or strapping the recorder to your arm work.

Something for cable management is smart, like these carabiners

The pistol grips for most wind protection will be for a 3/8" mount for a boom pole, so if you plan on putting that on a mic stand, you might need an adapter like this

Lastly, if you haven't already, get The Sound Effects Bible, and read it. It's a fantastic resource for all things SFX related.

Not on a very regular schedule, but yes. I'm happy to hear that -- now you simply must read Johnstone's books! :-)

Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre is his first book, and more "theoretical", I would say (that is, using improvisational theatre as a vehicle for expressing ideas that apply in many other contexts). It discusses (to repeat my other post) teaching, human interaction, creativity/spontaneity, storytelling, self-perception, among other things; it demonstrated (directly, to me) things about my own (creative) thought process, which is always fun.

Impro for Storytellers is his other book, which is more "practical" (that is, several chapters that are lists of exercises with discussion) and more focused on theatre, which is why I didn't name it initially. Even so, it's a great book to read even without ever performing directly, just to understand oneself and the process involved.

In a way improvisation has a lot to do with Taoism (as I understand them), and I appreciate them for similar reasons, like constant doublethink/unthink, living in real-time, and acceptance of the irrational/imagination (which is a surprisingly difficult thing).

(After you read these books, by the way, your opinion on them would always be appreciated. :-) )

Like the other poster mention, something that you can transition into that's light hearted. Just look for whatever thats on or around them that catches your eye, that you want to talk about.

So lets take the physics book example. With this situation, we're just going to assumptions a about physics. Also, once you break the ice, introduce yourself, then continue talking. Assumptions are good because it removes you from constantly asking questions, like if you're in an interview mode.

"I see you're studying physics. I'm BoobieHunter by the way. Physics must be DRIVING YOU Craaaaaazy." I exaggerate the state to create tension and and be animated. She may say, "Yeah, it's horrible." or "I love it." Then you can share what you feel. "It'd drive me crazy. The only useful physics for me would be to jump off the cliff."

Don't be serious. Be over the top with your statements so she knows you're not serious.

I'll be the first to tell you that I'm not a funny guy. I'm the serious type. I'm not witty. But this book really helped me out:

http://www.amazon.com/Comedy-Writing-Secrets-Best-Selling-Edition/dp/1582973571/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1371875775&sr=8-8&keywords=comedy+book

The gist of the book is how to create tension. The reason tension is important is because it'll get the other person to smile and laugh. This here, I can do. You can do it by create tension by over exaggerating statements. Being animated, and creating fun situations with what's before you. Refer back to the verizon and CVS. It's like you're doing an improv skit on the fly. Look at what you have in the situation and make role play, improv performance out of it.

That book above changed my life. I literally couldnt sleep for 3 nights. That book rewired my brain and helped me understand humor and how to create it.

Here's the thing. You're gonna need practice. Every time you gotta go buy something at the store, make it your goal to make fun situation with what's before you at the register. Sometimes stating the obvious is funny. You see the cashier tired with eyes glazed over. "Man, you look like you're about to pass out. I know I would. You should go and pull out a blow up mattress behind there and sleep after I leave." Make stuff up. The best thing about cashiers are they're gonna be nice to you.

edit: errors

I did standup comedy for about 8 years and I can tell you that being the funniest in your group of friends is miles away from being "professionally" funny. I've seen more funny friends crash and burn on a stage in front off all of said friends because they figured they were going to be able to just walk in and turn it on. Which is not at all to say it can't be done. They are just two different genres of funny and you'll need to learn about how to channel your "funny friend" humor into "funny writer" humor.

Two books I recommend are:

The Comic Toolbox: how to be funny even if you're not
And
Funny on Purpose: The Definitive Guide to an Unpredictable Career in Comedy: Standup + Improv + Sketch + TV + Writing + Directing + YouTube

The Caribbean New York link is often cited as one of the key factors in the formation of hip hop. I strongly recommend you read Jeff Chang’s book Can’t Stop Won’t Stop to find a more detailed narrative on the link. It dedicates a chapter to the socio-economic conditions in NYC the late 60s and early 70s and another chapter to sound system culture in Jamaica which really set the scene what how and why hip hop emerged.

As a fan of early hip hop, I just want to stress that in 1970s in NYC the Caribbean influence was present in not only in rapping style, but in DJing style too, perhaps even more so. It was really the sound-system DJ culture of Jamaica that first made its way into the parks, streets and house parties in New York. It was the rapping that followed. This interview with DJ Kool Herc gives some indication of how one led to the other. The book “Last Night A DJ Saved My Life illuminates this further.

Lastly, while there is a strong Jamaican link to the origins of rapping, it is important to note that it was not only the source of influence. There were many other American artists from different backgrounds included raps and spoken word in their songs.

As a record collector, some of the more interesting examples that I have come across in my time include.

• Pigmeat – Here Comes the Judge 1968
  
  
• Lightning Rod – Sport 1973
  
  
• Last Poets – the Courtroom 1976
  
  
• Adriano Celentano – Prisencolinensinainciusol 1974
  
  Also, rap made some appearances in country music too.
  
  
• Joan Baez – Time Rag 1977 Also look at this interview when she calls it “Talking Disco Blues”
  
  
• Mac Davis – Lucas Was a Redneck 1974
  
  P.s. the first rap record is generally regarded to be
  Personality Jock by King Tim III and the Fatback Band not Rappers Delight, which was released a couple of months later.
  
  EDIT: I Just noticed you mentioned you were from the UK. You might be interested in checking out this website and articles by DJ Greg Wilson. He gives a good overview of the musical landscape in the UK in the late 70s and early 80s when hip hop was first being made. Of particular interest to you might be how US hip hop made it to the UK, and the role that of Caribbean kids in that movement, and subsequently dance music in the UK. He doesn't go into this in detail, but does allude to it. You should give him call, I'm sure he'd be happy to discuss.
  

The Lion King! I absolutely love Disney movies, but I can't justify this purchase myself since I own it on VHS...but man, I really want to upgrade all my Disney VHS's to DVD's and join the 21st century! and for Sunday Funday, a (new) paperback copy of this book would be AMAZING! I love Parks and Rec, and would just love to have this book--it's supposed to be hilarious :D

I pickkkkkk lucky number 62!

I can recommend two books:

The Sound Effects Bible which is excellent for giving you tips on how to listen to sound, not just hear it, not just hear sounds. and Sound Design by David Sonnenschein
which is more theory andform based, but is excellent for giving you ideas in terms of narrative structure and flow through a story using sound design.

If you're interest is more than a little serious, I would also strongly recommend buying a stereo field recorder, like a Zoom H4n or something similar. it's completely self contained so all you need to do is point and record. It's really good for recording sounds and ambiences on the spot and impromptu recordings. (You'll need an SD card, get a big one, you'll want to record everything!!!)

This is how I got started and I've certainly not regretted it, even from a hobbyist point of view it's not a bad thing to be spending your life doing in my opinion.

Hope this was useful.

Edit: link code fail.

> What books should I read?

Starting out, the basic how-to book I recommend is ["How to Shoot Video that Doesn't Suck" ($8.99 for Kindle)] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0051NHJFU/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0051NHJFU&linkCode=as2&tag=battleforthew-20) [Referral Link].

This book was written by Hollywood writer/director [Steve Stockman] (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1870021/), who directed Sally Field in [Two Weeks] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000TV1ST2/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B000TV1ST2&linkCode=as2&tag=battleforthew-20) [Referral Link], and is a great introduction to visual storytelling.

Here is the trailer for the book: http://vimeo.com/24147165

Reading Steve's book will save you a lot of time and money - and make your movies better right out of the gate.

Once you're past the beginner stage, Mascelli's 5 C's of Cinematography ([$17.13 for Kindle] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00H29MO6U/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00H29MO6U&linkCode=as2&tag=battleforthew-20), same price for paperback) [Referral Links] was the standard when I was in film school back in '77.

I think they're reading newer books now, but Mascelli teaches the basics.

Once you've read Stockman and Mascelli, you might be interested in books from producer/directors who have made profitable movies, such as [Referral Links]:

• [Rebel Without a Crew: Or How a 23-Year-Old Filmmaker With $7,000 Became a Hollywood Player - $10.56 in paperback] (http://www.amazon.com/Rebel-without-Crew-23-Year-Old-Filmmaker/dp/0452271878/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&keywords=Rebel%20Without%20a%20Crew&qid=1462414414&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1&linkCode=ll1&tag=battleforthew-20) - by [Robert Rodriguez] (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001675/).
  
  
• [The Power Filmmaking Kit: Make Your Professional Movie on a Next-to-Nothing Budget] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/024081021X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=024081021X&linkCode=as2&tag=battleforthew-20) - by Emmy winning director [Jason Tomaric] (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0866388/), who made [Time and Again] (http://www.amazon.com/Time-Again-Jennie-Allen/dp/B0006AZ4OQ/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ll1&tag=battleforthew-20) for $2000.
  
  
• [11 Simple Steps to turn a Screenplay into a Marketable Movie: or, How I got a $10k movie to gross $1 Million through Warner Bros - $0.99 for Kindle] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009YKJ5UI/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B009YKJ5UI&linkCode=as2&tag=battleforthew-20) - by [Vince Rocca] (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1455690/), I have read this book - and it is worth a lot more than I paid for it.
  
  I have not read this one, but [The Reel Truth] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003MQLZKS/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B003MQLZKS&linkCode=as2&tag=battleforthew-20) is next on my list - it consists of interviews with over 100 successful indie filmmakers who detail the mistakes they made - so the reader can avoid them. It is extremely well reviewed - literally 75 out of 75 reviewers on Amazon have given it five stars.
  
  Hope this is helpful and good luck!

Are you just learning to art or do you have goals?

Dynamic Figure Drawing The early bits of learning to draw focus on correct proportions, but just knowing the facts doesn't mean you understand what you're looking at. Learning about weight and line of action can make figure drawings a lot more interesting.

If you're interested in comics Understanding Comics helps you understand how they work, but not how to draw them.

Do you have access to art classes? Have you done any art history? Art history is pretty great for knowing about the masters and the people that paved the way for today's artists. The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern This book tries to give a short and succinct summary of most of the art movements, but it's worthwhile to get deeper into parts that interest you. The Ninja Turtles (Michaelangelo, Donatello, Leonardo, Raphael) are icons of the Renaissance, and I imagine the 11 pages for that time period fail to cover quite a lot of the Renaissance. Art is more than the paintings, it's the culture that is responsible for patronizing their work, it's the lessons they learned in pursuit of grander and grander works (The Monalisa represents a lighting choice - twilight hours with indirect lighting; On either side of her is two-point perspective and atmospheric perspective), the men and women that created these works, how these ideas traveled through the regions, and what their work meant to the artists in the time period they lived in.

This is basically as big a hobby if not bigger than you can get to with prepping. So the way I started I will tell you how I got started. I got the tech manual. Picked up a boafeng and found a weekly radio net in my area and started listening. You can legally listen as long as you don't transmit. I read the book, started doing a bunch of quizzes online at http://www.hamstudy.org the best website I can think of to learn the material.

I found my local club and scheduled a test session with them by emailing the president and he suggested why not try for your general. It was about a week before the test and I was already getting good marks on the tech questions so I added the general questions. I managed to pass the tech and general in the same night. I tried for the extra but didn't make it. I am no an extra however after 3 attempts.

The hobby can be extremely fun and rewarding in and of itself. This video here has a pretty good example of what they call Fox Hunting, or attempting triangulate a signal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EST2vxIXCCs If you have any further questions don't hesitate to PM me I'll be more than happy to help.

Glad I could help!

I'm glad you asked about books. Advice from the internet (including mine :)) has its limits. Here is what I recommend [Referral Links]:

• The first book I recommend for beginners is: "[How to Shoot Video That Doesn't Suck] (http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0051NHJFU/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=B0051NHJFU&linkCode=as2&tag=hybrcamerevo-21)". Here is the trailer for the book: http://youtu.be/jF0z9k93Y9Q
  
  
• Since you're most interested in dance video and not cinematic storytelling, the next book I recommend is "[Making Video Dance: A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Dance for the Screen] (http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0415379504/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=0415379504&linkCode=as2&tag=hybrcamerevo-21)"
  
  
• If you have time, and really want to get into cinematography, your school library will probably have the standard texts, such as Mascelli's "[Five C's of Cinematography] (http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/187950541X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=187950541X&linkCode=as2&tag=hybrcamerevo-21)" and Ascher's "[Filmmaker's Handbook] (http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0452297281/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=0452297281&linkCode=as2&tag=hybrcamerevo-21)"
  
  
• You should also read up on sound - the sound primer I recommend is "[The Location Sound Bible] (http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1615931201/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=1615931201&linkCode=as2&tag=hybrcamerevo-21)"
  
  Again, hope this is helpful and best of luck!
  
  Bill

not yet. but there's something that's been on my reading list for a while now. reviews are good, and a friend that i trust with this sort of thing told me about it.

Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre

i skimmed a bit, and there's a section (abut 1/4) of the book on status play, which seems like it's full of good/interesting stuff. some of it probably relevant for seduction, or just social interaction in general.

also, "yes, and..." seems like a good mindset to be in. especially in a group setting when you're trying to be fun.

Thanks, if you are really interested in antenna systems, then you should pick up The ARRL Antenna Book. If you want to get your Ham liscense then you should also pick up the License manual as well. I briefly covered the SWR and the Smith Chart in the first videos. It's kind of hard to jump into antenna design without a background in electronics, physics and mathematics, but I'll try to explain everything the best I can. In a nut shell, you want to match the antenna antenna to the transmitter/receiver. For the series I am assuming transmitter/receiver impedance to be 50ohms. The closer the match, the lower the SWR and the more efficient the power transfere becomes. An SWR under 2 is a common goal. SWR is not everything and you'll need to research common geometries when deciding on what type of antenna you want. In order to know what the radiation pattern will look like, you'll need to use NEC antenna modeling software or plot it in a FCC type lab that prevents reflections and interference. Without test equipment or software it's really all about experimenting and what works best for your application, which is totally fine. You can get a general idea of antenna designs online, but unless you used the exact materials and conductor diameter, your performance will differ. The radiation pattern will remain very similar to others you see online so if you make a 1/4 wavelength monopole, the radiation pattern will still look like the one I showed in the video even if you're a little off of optimal performance. I'm trying to keep the videos under 5 minutes so once the videos are all done it might make more sense. After the series is done, I'll do a write-up to fill in all the gaps of information.

You seem like you want to prepare. I'm also a person who prepares, so here are things you can do to come feeling like you have:

Email (or text or whatever) the GM and ask what version you're playing.

4th edition, D&D 3.5, Pathfinder or 5th edition are all very likely candidates, and all play different enough you will want to know a bit of the difference. The first night you don't necessarily need to have your own copy of the book, but it will be a lot easier if you do going forward.

If the group is totally new, everyone will be rolling characters. If you meant the group is new to you, and they're already playing, ask what character classes they have already.

You may be happy looking up what 'good' character classes are for that edition are (depends on how competitive you are)

Bring a cheat sheet on it the edition you're playing, a small notebook, 2 mechanical pencils, and a set of polyhedral dice

Cheat sheets:

5th Edition: http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpgdownloads.php?do=download&downloadid=1042

4th Edition: http://kassoon.com/dnd/crib-sheet/

Pathfinder Edition: https://sites.google.com/site/paolospathfinderpage/cheat-sheets

3.5 Edition: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?231897-3-5-Rules-Cheat-Sheets

You really need to look into which version it is to get specific recommendations from /r/rpg that will be at all helpful. Once you do get that answer on what edition you're playing, find 2 easy to play classes by asking here, or looking up "tier lists" on the internet.

If you're really up for it, after finding out what version it is, go buy the players handbook for that version, read it, and watch an hour or two of "Actual play" on the internet for that version.

__

Most of D&D is about 1> Standing in the right place 2> Hitting the baddie with your big stick/magic spell 3> Not falling into traps 4> Getting loot. The game is incredibly oriented on loot and small magical items that give bonuses to attack and defense. So when an item comes up that's appropriate to your character, ask for it! Don't be a hog, but don't make the mistake of not taking enough.

When making your character, there are a lot of okay choices, a couple really really bad ones, and some superlative ones. You're unlikely to figure out the superlative ones without looking them up, but you'll probably be able to avoid the really horrible ones.

If you're worrying about the Roleplaying part, instead of the game playing part, the book "Impro" is excellent at explaining how to play characters well (the chapter on status is worthwhile on life in general)

I have a lot of thoughts about it, but there's nothing I can say quickly. There are some great books by much smarter people than me on the /r/comedywriting reading list:

• Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters - Ted Cohen
  
• Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life - Steve Martin
  
• The Comic Toolbox: How To Be Funny Even if You're Not - John Vorhaus
  
• And Here's the Kicker: Conversations with 21 Top Humor Writers on their Craft - Mike Sacks
  
  There's also /r/standup. Doing standup has greatly informed my writing. I highly recommend it for anyone who thinks they're funny.

Yeah, I agree that Dream Worlds does leave a lot to be desired as far as explanations, but it definitely helped point me in the right direction for deconstructing and analyzing a scene.

I'm currently reading another great book called Force, that I thought would be mostly technical figure drawing, but actually ended up having a lot of really great advice for overall design. A lot of the info felt like tips I would get at a very expensive seminar.

Keep up the good work!

Here's where you can find a testing center near you:
http://www.arrl.org/find-an-amateur-radio-license-exam-session

The test is based off of this book:
http://www.amazon.com/The-ARRL-Radio-License-Manual/dp/1625950136

You can practice at a number of sites, this one helped me years ago:
http://www.eham.net/exams/

This is a newer collection, created by a user here (Sorry, I forget who):
https://hamstudy.org/

Cost of the test is $15, and there are 3 different levels (see below). If you pass Technician you can take General for free, and if you pass General as well you can take the Extra exam at no cost as well. Your $15 pays for as many tests as you can take in a day, until you fail one... and there are only 3 level of tests. If you fail the test, you're free to pay another $15 to try again but please be mindful that the people giving the tests are just us ham radio operators, we're not paid and we're taking the time to try and get others certified. If there aren't a lot of people there and the VE's seem okay with you trying for General (if you haven't studied) after you pass your Technician, ask them and they'll likely tell you to go right ahead. If it's busy and you haven't studied for it, please be mindful or others time is all we ask.

• Technician (1st level, pretty easy) gives you UHF/VHF and some HF to play with.
  
• General (2nd level, also pretty easy) gives you most of the HF frequencies.
  
• Extra (Very difficult if you don't know electronics, can be moderate if you do know electronics) gives you about 10% more than General. Not a lot, except for a few perks. Better call signs and you don't have to worry about where you are in the band you're talking in.
  
  Any questions please ask. We love this hobby and it's really no bother.

Sure. Well, structure doesn't really matter a whole lot if you're not telling a classic build->punch joke. The situation is the buildup, so all you're really looking for is a solid punchline.

I don't think I can cram enough information into this post to help you personally, but I can recommend a few books that are incredible.

Firstly Comedy Writing Secrets. I originally bought this book to learn more about writing specific things (like sketch and screenplay), but it's packed full of comedy theory that's helped in a lot of other areas.

Secondly The Comic Toolbox. This book is actually more helpful in the creation of comedy, but there are plenty of exercises to help your brain recognize and understand comedy.

The ARRL Ham Radio License Manual is a good place to start as it prepares you take the Technician level test, which is actually pretty easy to pass with a little bit of studying. Beyond that you'll need to find somewhere near you that offers the exam (one of your local radio clubs almost certainly does) and $15 to cover the cost of test materials.

Places like HamStudy.org offer online practice tests, if you find that you're acing the Tech level pretty easily I'd highly recommend studying for the General as well. If you pass the Tech, your examiner will usually encourage you to immediately take the General, even if you fail the General you've still earned your Tech so there's no harm in trying. It's worth it just so you don't have to go back later when you realize that the HF bands are even more fun than the repeaters!

If you want more information, /r/amateurradio seems a lot more active than this subreddit and there are plenty of new techs and old Elmers there who are more than happy to answer your questions.

This is actually a highly debatable topic that has strong arguments on both sides. Most of the time people would like topics to be fun and entertaining, but sometimes that can't always be the case.

There was a topic in /r/Teachers that talks about this. Some things in life can't be taught in fun ways. It's unrealistic to make every topic engaging.

There's also a book called Amusing Ourselves to Death that talks about the possible negative consequences of incorporating too much entertainment into all aspects of our lives, including education.

As I've gotten older, I've strayed away from things being fun in my learning process. It adds a layer of extra fluff that lengthens the time it takes for me to get through the material, and in some cases actually dumbs down the material. I like to understand the topic quickly and in depth so I can start using the knowledge to make cool stuff right away.

This is different for a student that has been living in classrooms since they were 5. That student yearns for an interesting and fun lecture because they have to live through them everyday. Their end goal is learning the material instead of doing something with that material.

I work as a location sound recordist, typically drama but I take what I can get when there's not much work(corporate, documentary etc.)

Started out originally doing music production but after helping out a friend on a short film I decided I'd much rather be doing sound for film. I find it alot more rewarding, sure the works harder and the days are longer sometimes 14+ (good overtime though) but you go all over the place for it and you're not stuck in a studio working 9-5 everyday.

If you're interested in it i'd recommend reading these two books:

The Location Sound Bible: How to Record Professional Dialog for Film and TV

The Sound Effects Bible: How to Create and Record Hollywood Style Sound Effects

Made this one for my (vegan) mom, she caught onto the project and said she'd love to try one, even if it had meat in! She loved it!

This one was super easy to make and SUPER tasty! Definitely one to try out yourself ;) You can order the book here if you want; https://www.amazon.com/Bobs-Burgers-Burger-Book-Recipes/dp/0789331144/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1486060693&sr=8-1&keywords=bob%27s+burgers

Next week we'll be going "Totally Radish"!

Theres a 15 part documentary on Hulu called The Story of Film: An Odyssey. It's excellent, and it will give you a very broad understanding of the history of film.

As for lists, one good way to start is to watch all of the movies on the [AFI 100] (http://www.afi.com/100Years/movies.aspx). That will give you a very broad picture of the history of American movies. Just set aside one day a week and watch one movie on the list every week.

Don't just watch them. Try to find out WHY each movie is revered as it is. After watching it, then read as much as you can about it. Read Roger Ebert's review, read it's entry on Filmsite.org, and start trying to contextualize each movie in its place in cinema history.

That will take you two years, but you'll have a much deeper appreciation than you do now.

After that, I suggest watching the BFI Sight and Sound Top 50. That will give you a more broad understanding of foreign film as well.

As for books I assign these to my class:

Film Art: An Introduction
This is the textbook that the department assigns. Its pretty broad and a decent overview.

Hitchcock In the 1960's Francois Truffaut interviewed Alfred Hitchcock and covered his entire filmography in detail. Fantastic, indispensable read.

What Is Cinema?
Andre Bazin was a french film critic, and the originator of Auteur theory. This is one of the original film theory books.

The American Cinema
Andrew Sarris is the American analog of Bazin. This is also a fundamental Film Theory book.

That should give you a solid start.

The human body is made up of the phi ratio. http://www.goldennumber.net/human-body/

Knowing the actual relations isn't as important as knowing that all of the parts of the body are proportionally related to one another. Keeping that in mind, practice building the figure from related measurements. As basic as it is, I found this video extremely helpful once I realized this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVBAPGBlnls

Of course, practice, being able to visualize the body in your head, and knowing underlying anatomy are all required to make good use of this. You need to take figure drawing or at the very least practice online. https://www.youtube.com/user/onairvideo these are videos of models posing which is better than stills but not as good as a live model in front of you that you can walk around and see in 3d space.

I used to scoff at using stick figures to build the body because I felt it robotized the pose, but if you build gesturally around the lines, they really help give your work a feeling of life and realness that it can be extremely hard to replicate intuitively.

This book helped me loosen up a lot and taught me some ways of breathing life into sketches. http://www.amazon.com/Force-Dynamic-Life-Drawing-Animators/dp/0240808452 Some very useful tips in here, a lot to do with line confidence, that you don't find copy/pasted everywhere. Not as much to do with anatomy, but all the anatomical knowledge in the world won't necessarily help you draw something that looks alive and natural.

Hope this helps!

Well I started by taking a class in college and finding it so much more interesting than other audio work, but you're probably looking for something more economical. haha

There are a ton of great open source programs you can get to mess around with things that have to do with sound design. Stuff like Audicity (editing software), bfxr (sound generator), or even just messing around with FMOD in Unity (both have free versions.)

I would also suggest you read Rick Viers's, The Sound Effect Bible. It's mostly about sound recording techniques, film sound, and it's a bit out of date, but there's a lot of great information in that book.

You could also hop into /r/gameaudio for more information!

I'm into comedy. I took writing training at Second City, I recommend that if you get the chance. I've also done improv lots of places in the Midwest for the last decade. I have spent countless hours studying the art of comedy, is what I'm saying.

Don't give up on yourself. In my years I have met fewer people I believed to be unteachable of comedy than I can count on one hand. You are not one of them. I know this because they all possessed the same trait, they wanted to win, all of the time. All of them thought they were showing their power, and intelligence. That you ask these questions at all, OP, proves you can be what you wish, that you lack the only poison that can damn a mind to humorlessness.

Check out /r/comedywriting It's mostly self promos now but sometimes discussions. The books listed in the sidebar are gold, however. This book I highly recommend in particular, and it's byline is very fitting to your question. There really aren't any books that teach comedy well, but this one has been the gold standard secret for the last two decades. My Second City classes introduced me to this book, and it was like someone had put everything I had taught myself about comedy in a textbook. Don't ever say you've given up on being funny again until you've read this book.

If you need something that you can mention at a party or in an interview that'll make you feel smart, I'd suggest Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. It's the kind of book you can bring up to make yourself seem smart, but unlike Atlas Shrugged it's actually interesting to read and has some (largely) insightful ideas about technology.

Alternatively, if you need something more fun to read, I would suggest Jim Butcher's Codex Alera series. It's a pretty fun fantasy romp that is largely enjoyable to read if you want to turn off your brain.

Here's something I posted elsewhere a while ago, but both Harmon's rant on structure, and this link to an article about the latest screenwriting book "Save the Cat", are given with the advice to know the rules so you can break them properly.

----

Dan Harmon, creator of Community, is a student of Joseph Campbell and the use of the hero's journey in storytelling. Dan wrote about Story Structure on the channel101 forums years ago. The article's images seem to be missing, and he was writing to inspire 5 minute episodes for channel101, but it's still a great read.

• Story Structure 101 - Super Basic Shit
  
  
• Story Structure 102 - Pure, Boring Theory
  
  
• Story Structure 103 - Let's Simplify before Moving On
  
  
• Story Structure 104 - The Juicy Details
  
  
• Story Structure 105 - How TV is Different
  
  
• Story Structure 106 - Five Minute Plots
  
  There are books that go over the "Hero with a Thousand Faces" and storytelling, so you might want to check those out too if you're inspired by the idea.
  
  YouTube - The Matrix - Joseph Campbell Monomyth
  YouTube - LOST - A Hero's Journey
  [YouTube - Dan Wells on Story Structure]
  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcmiqQ9NpPE)

I'd have him read something to get himself situated with the filmography and technical aspects of a scene, shot, and film as a whole. This is what distinguishes a good film from other mediums (I'd recommend The 5 C's of Cinematography, which can be found free online, or in print.)

Then just show him films you enjoy. Point out why you enjoy them. Long shots, editing, acting, whatever. Once he finds something he enjoys, he'll go out and find his own favorites and be able to intellectually convey why he believes they are good.

Besides drawing naked figures as much as possible, id recommend books aswell. You didnt put it in your post but i find them to be a lot more helpful than quick youtube guides.
This book is great along with a more constructive method like Loomis/Hampton.

Good luck!

Really great write up. I bought the game and loved the 1-30 progression, minus the same things you mentioned (clunky ui, not great mechanics). The atmosphere, visuals, VA work, and premise all make up for what it lacks to make it worth it. It has such potential to be a phenomenal all time best game ever, but it's just missing something. Like they had an internal divide on what the game should actually be (it should be a pvp game! It should be an immersive open world story game! it should be a tactical shooter!). If they just focused on one aspect and fully fleshed it out, man, what a game it could have been.

That being said, for 10 bucks (which is what I picked it up for), it was a great time. So good, I even bought a physical version of the book you find in the game. It's a good stand alone read even if you haven't played the game.

I like books, so maybe we should have a book section? We can include:

• How to DJ Right: The Art and Science of Playing Records for technique.
  
• Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey. Not necessary but probably interesting for DJs.
  
  We should probably include things about turntablism too. Here's a tutorial video series for that. And links to documentaries? I found Scratch to be pretty entertaining. Or would this stuff be more suited for the turntablists subreddit? r/DJs has more subscribers...
  
  Harmonic mixing seems like it would be a good thing to throw in there.
  

My buddy bought this book for me to make fun of me saying I wasn’t funny. Jokes on him, I am now not only not funny, but also have all of the fundamental knowledge of what makes stuff funny and the tools necessary to grind out jokes.

The Comic Toolbox: How to Be Funny Even If You're Not https://www.amazon.com/dp/1879505215/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_AKFPCbCDNY86N

Seriously tho it’s a great book and gives you the formula for creating quality bits

This book helped me dramatically:

Comedy writing secrets

Be warned, once you really get into this, it will change how you view comedy and jokes as you will be able to understand the reasons why they are funny.

The great thing about the book is there are plenty of exercises, so will give you a chance to learn your own comedy skills, rather than reading a dry book on the subject.

There are other books (eg. "The Naked Jape" by Jimmy Carr) but this one is by far the best as far as I can recommend.

I am not sure how you would get into the industry, but you could start by writing sketches. Perhaps approach some people on youtube who already have a channel and see how they came about forming together, or even send them a couple of samples of your work.

Hope that helps.

I believe this is what you are looking for:

The Comic Toolbox: How to Be Funny Even If You're Not

>This is a straightforward, often humorous workbook approach to comedy writing as creative problem-solving. In it, veteran Hollywood comedy writer John Vorhaus offers his tools of the trade to writers, comics, and anyone else who wants to be funny. Among these indispensable tools are Clash of Context, Tension and Release, The Law of Comic Opposites, The Wildly Inappropriate Response, and The Myth of the Last Great Idea. Readers will learn that comedy = truth and pain (the essence of the comic situation), that fear is the biggest roadblock to comedy (kill the ferocious editor within and rich, useful comic ideas will flow), and much more.

Girls got me a bit excited about comedy again. Then I went to a comedy show that turned out to be mostly improvised, which is so fascinating! Started watching some long form improv videos on YouTube (UCB, etc)... Then I bought the e-book of Keith Johnstone's Impro, which turned out to be a great, great book (and relevant to this forum if you ask me). Johnstone mentioned Kozintsev's King Lear, and I realized I haven't seen any Shakespeare plays except Romeo and Juliet (in Baz Luhrmann's version, which I admit to loving). Hamlet always attracted me—I had some suspicion that I might be something of a Hamlet type, i.e., moody, brooding, somewhat insane—so I decided to watch that first.

A quote from Impro:

> "I now feel that imagining should be as effortless as perceiving. In order to recognise someone my brain has to perform amazing feats of analysis: 'Shape ... dark ... swelling ... getting closer ... human ... nose type X15, eyes type E24B ... characteristic way of talking ... look under relative ...' and so on, in order to turn electromagnetic radiation into the image of my father, yet I don't experience myself as 'doing' anything at all! My brain creates a whole universe without my having the least sense of effort. [...] It's only when I believe my perceptions to be in error that I have to 'do' anything. It's the same with imagination. Imagination is as effortless as perception, unless we think it might be 'wrong,' which is what our education encourages us to believe."

Walt Disney is exactly the kind of great American that we need to Make America Great Again. It's the absence of men like him that has led to the decline we're currently in.

Do yourself a favor and read Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination great book, very inspirational.

But having discussions on important events is something we do far too little in our society. We need to encourage discourse and critical thinking so as to better ward ourselves against things like the recent Catholic Schoolboys VS Indigenous peoples march ruckus.

We already avoid political conversations, at least in the US, far more than we should. We even have large sections of the population that claim their ignorance on politics like it's a badge of courage and not one of shame.

The Greek root of the word idiot is very relevant to todays age. I've known several idiots who will tell you their political ideas followed promptly by an exclamation that they don't follow politics and don't want to discuss them as a defense of having their lacking values scrutinized.

So yes, have debates with strangers online. Encourage rational discourse. Push into uncomfortable topics that put people on edge because we do that far too infrequently and the human brain is very much like a muscle. We don't exercise our mental capabilities enough. We indulge in worthless mental sweets like reality television and shy away from behaviors that are healthy for our mental faculties. We are literally Amusing Ourselves to Death. We as a people don't benefit from not talking about real issues.

Well first off ya got an ace attitude wanting people to be brutal and critique, that'll get you far! But from what I can see, you seem to draw the outlines of the characters rather than the shapes that a body is and this limited me personally for years. This book did me absolute wonders, https://www.amazon.co.uk/Force-Dynamic-Life-Drawing-Animators/dp/0240808452 (Force: Dynamic Life Drawing for Animators), it was the only one my tutor at animation school recommended to me as 100% worth it and I just kept going over it again and again until I got better and I actually did, it got me thinking about body shapes and how they merge into each other and made it really fun!:) For me in this particular sketch you've done it's the fact that the arms are quite straight, straight lines on a drawing of a body always look odd, cause we're curvy squidgy creatures even when we're skinny! But yeah this book gets you swirling the pencil more and not worrying about being neat to begin with, you can always go over it afterwards. Don't be precious of your work, just keep creating!:))) Looking promising though!:))) Best of luck!

Have you ever seen this? It's a novelized journal of a person inside the universe of the game The Division. It's a really cool depiction of how things happened in that game and how that person survived (and another person ended up with the journal and used it to survive).

Anyway, your story reads a lot like that and would make an amazing book if you turned your journal entries and your stories (you and your friends) into a book that could also serve to educate others about what you did well and what you probably should have done better now that you've come through it. I would totally buy it.

Thanks for telling your story, can't wait to hear more if you're willing to share!

First things first, different areas are going to call different things different names. Never be ashamed about asking what people mean by a term, as clear communication is critical in this industry.

Next, three books that will help you.

1. Backstage Handbook while a little outdated, this is the stagehands bible.
   
   
2. Electricity for the Entertainment Electrician and Technician this is a good reference for how electricity works. Less of a what things are and more of a how things are. Good book regardless.
   
   
3. A Practical Guide to Stage Lighting also more of a how things are, this details more of the design and communication side of lighting. Also a very good read, as it details out paperwork for shows.
   
   As far as what equipment and systems you should be familiar with? ETC EOS family is a good starting point. It’ll get your mind familiar with how to program lights and is a pretty universal starting point. ETC Sensor Racks are also fairly standard for dimming. For moving lights, that’s really going to depend on what you’re able to get your hands on. If there’s a production shop nearby to you, call them up and see if they’re willing to take you on as an intern so you can learn things, or just ask them to spend a couple days showing you how everything works. Or see if there’s an IATSE chapter that’s nearby to you, they’ll also be able to help point you in the right direction.

To get insight into the genius of Hitchcock the best way is to read the superb Hitchcock/Truffaut in which Trauffaut through a long intervew with Hitchcock brings great insight into Hitchcock and movie making in general.

I myself feel as David O. Selznick left maybe to much of a imprint on this movie for into to compare to the greatest Hitchcock movies(for me the best is "The Wrong Man") but it's still a great movie so read the book and see it again and maybe by seeing it in the perspective of it being made in 1940, a year before Citizen Kane, and with the help of Truffaut you will se why it's so highly rated.

If you don't want to read the full book. Here are the audio outtakes of the interview regarding Rebecca and other things Les Debuts Americains Rebecca.

I second /u/wrightde's suggestion of seeing as many shows as you can. You'll start to build a vocabulary that you like, discover how other people make it happen, and just as importantly, you'll see what doesn't work.

Lighting Design is a mix of the artistic and the engineered. /u/wrightde is correct that you shouldn't get bogged down in the technical - the artistic should come first - but the artistic still has to be translated to the technical, so you need that knowledge as well.

My go-to recommendation is Steve Shelley's book: A Practical Guide to Stage Lighting. It covers a lot of great craft - from design meetings, to how to calculate coverage, to how to use/draw a plot and section, and a host of other subjects.

Good luck!

Chapters are as long as you want them to be. :) There are no rules for chapters in books - your chapters can be 40 pages long or 3 pages long if you want. Typically, a chapter should end when something changes or an event occurs - when the big bad shows up, when a character says something revealing, when the character moves to a new area etc. This includes mundane things, like leaving the house, going to sleep, setting up camp etc etc - you don't want your story to be filled with action packed moments or surprises and new chapters every couple of pages, because you need down time inbetween important events!

You can even have no chapters if you like, there are no concrete rules.

For reading, read your own favourite fantasy books and authors! There's a reason why your favourite author is your favourite. Consider why. What about their writing, stories, world and plot do you like the best? Why do you like that author more than another? Do you want to write classic high fantasy, 'low' fantasy, urban fantasy? Find the most popular authors in those genres and give them a read.

I think an important read for any writer is The Writer's Journey. It's a really great easy to read text on structure in writing and the various 'Archetypes' of characters. Knowing HOW to structure a story is the key to be able to write a good story.

I'm not sure if it's still relevant since I read all this when I was a kid, but Elfwood has some great world building resources and 'tutorials.'

Interaction Design

• About Face 3 by Alan Cooper
  
• Designing Interactions by Bill Moggridge
  
• Designing Interfaces by Jenifer Tidwell
  
• Designing for the Digital Age by Kim Goodwin
  
• Making Things Talk: (2011) (2007) by Tom Igoe
  
  Interior Design
  
  
• The Decoration of Houses by Edith Wharton and Ogden, Jr. Codman
  
• Domino: The Book of Decorating by Deborah Needleman
  
• Design*Sponge at Home: A Guide to Inspiring Homes by Grace Bonney
  
• The Vintage/Modern Home by Katherine Sorrell
  
• The Fundamentals of Interior Design by Simon Dodsworth
  
  Landscape Architecture
  
  
• Landscape Architectural Graphic Standards by Leonard J. Hopper
  
• Landscape Design: A Cultural and Architectural History by Elizabeth Barlow Rogers
  
• Landscape Graphics by Grant W. Reid
  
• Cities for People by Jan Gehl
  
• Design with Nature by Ian L. McHarg
  
  Lighting Design
  
  
• Stage Lighting Design by Richard Pilbrow
  
• The Architecture of Natural Light by Henry Plummer
  
• Painting With Light by John Alton
  
• Made of Light by Anthony Tischhauser
  
• Color, Environment and Human Response by Frank H. Mahnke & Rudolf H. Mahnke
  
  Product Design
  
  
• Sketching: Drawing Techniques from Product Designers by Koos Eissen
  
• Design for the Real World by Victor Papanek
  
• The Craftsman by Richard Sennett
  
• Mythologies by Roland Barthes
  
• Cradle to Cradle. Remaking the Way We Make Things by William McDonough & Michael Braungart
  
  Product Design
  
  
• In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World by John Thackara
  
• The Experience Economy by B. Joseph Pine II & James H. Gilmore
  
• Universal Methods of Design by Bruce Hanington & Bella Martin
  
• Cradle to Cradle. Remaking the Way We Make Things by William McDonough & Michael Braungart
  
• Mental Models by Indi Young
  
  Sound Design
  
  
• Sound Design: The Expressive Power of Music, Voice and Sound Effects in Cinema by David Sonnenschein
  
• Designing Sound by Andy Farnell
  
• Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen by Michel Chion
  
• The Sound Effects Bible by Ric Viers
  
• Sound Theory Sound Practice by Rick Altman
  
  Urban Design
  
  
• The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs
  * Cities for People by Jan Gehl
  
• A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander
  
• The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler
  
• The Image of the City by Kevin Lynch
  
  Web Design
  
  
• Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug
  
• HTML & CSS: Design and Build Web Sites by Jon Duckett
  
• The Principles of Beautiful Web Design by Jason Beaird
  
• Responsive Web Design with HTML5 and CSS by Ben Frain
  
• Hardboiled Web Design by Andy Clarke
  

Whoosh.....

It's like if you asked a musician how to write a song and they responded...play notes.

There is a lot to post audio. Here are the broadest strokes...

​

Dialogue Editing - Use fades to smooth out transitions from one clip to the next. This helps with room tone shifts and hard edits. If there is a gap in audio between two lines of dialogue...add room tone that matches both sides to fill the space. Clean out clicks/pops and any unwanted sounds...cloth rustling, mic hits, radio mic breakup, director talking.

Sound Effects Editing - Add sounds that you either record or find in a sound effects library. These can be broken down into a few categories.

• Hard Effects - .door close, phone ringing, car engines and things like that.
  
• Design Effects - Sounds that are less tangible. Like whooshes or other synthesized sounds.
  
• BGs (backgrounds) - Room tones, wind, eerie tones, birds, crickets, rain. Anything that is used to create atmosphere.
  
• Foley - Very specific and sometimes subtle sounds that are usually too specific to find in a library. Footsteps, cloth movement, prop movement like belts clothing accessories, things that the actor holds and interacts with. A glass being set down on a table for example.
  
  Music/Score:
  
  This is usually handled by a composer but an editor may need to smooth edits between music transitions.
  
  After all of the audio has been editing to your liking it's time to mix.
  
  Mixing (just a few bullet points) -
  
  
• Balance dialogue levels so they are even from one clip to the next. Two people having a conversation should be relatively the same loudness. There are obviously situations where someone is softer or louder based on what is happening. But the mix is the time to set these levels.
  
• Use EQ to enhance dialogue. This could be to make the audio from two different takes or mics sound the same or it can be used for creative effect to make someone sound further away or behind a window or something like that.
  
• Set music levels. It could be really loud to carry a scene or loud at the start and then comes down when people start talking...or it could be music that is supposed to be coming from a radio. In which case you would use EQ and some other treatments to make it sound like it is coming from a speaker.
  
• Balance sound effects
  
• Pan whatever you want to be panned
  
• Futz things....make it sound like it's coming out of a phone or TV.
  
  This is a very basic look at what post audio entails. I suggest you use this to look up how each of these things is done individually. There are many different techniques and everyone has their own way of doing things. People spend their entire lives mastering this craft. It's really not something that can be summed up in a single post.
  
  Resources that have helped me over the years....
  
  
• www.pro-tools-expert.com
  
• www.groove3.com
  
• www.lynda.com
  
• Dialogue Editing For Motion Pictures (Book)
  
• Sound Effects Bible (Book)
  
• Audio Blocks....A cheap way to start finding sound effects. Not great but a good start.
  
• SoundSnap....Another sound effects subscription website.
  
• Also check out the related subreddits on this sub.

Joseph Campbell.


One key thing to remember: Campbell's work is descriptive, not prescriptive. What I mean is that he was describing and interpreting the trends that he found in mostly ancient folklore, myths, and legends. He had no intention of creating a formula for storytellers to refer to, although this is now common practice.


Also, "Star Wars closely follows the monomyth" is really not a topic. You need to answer the "So what?" question. Why did Lucas do that? Where does he deviate from the monomyth? How does he use these common trends to tell a unique story? How does it reflect the time in which it was produced? You don't have to answer all of these questions, but you do need to address something beyond simply plugging in Star Wars characters and situations where appropriate.


You should probably seek out the Joseph Campbell-Bill Moyers collaboration The Power of Myth*. Lots of libraries have a copy. It is much, much easier to digest than Campbell's original work, unless you are already familiar with a great number of myths and extensive academic terminology. The tv series by the same name is pretty good, as well. For a book that uses Campbell's monomyth but updates it with examples from modern media (and a prescriptive purpose), pick this up.


Source: Wrote master's thesis using Campbell scholarship as a resource.

Ah, The Giver is a good one.

I'd say Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. A lot of people compare it to 1984, but there are some fundamental contradictions between the two that can't be ignored. 1984 proposes that people are destroyed by what they fear(e.g. Big Brother), while Brave New World emphasizes that people are destroyed by what they love(e.g. soma).
In modern society, surrounded by the comfort of our developing technology and ever-increasing communication, I'm more and more inclined to believe the latter. It really is a wonderful book, though.

If you're interested in reading more about it, I'd highly recommend taking a look at this. Postman describes the phenomenon far more eloquently than I could ever hope to.

I recently discovered Making Movies, written by one of the most innovative American directors of our time, to be a great layperson's walkthrough of the experience (from a director's point of view, from pre- to post-production).

This is a little more technical and specialized, but The Five C's of Cinematography is a great breakdown of how and why cameras affect a movie.

Otherwise, I'd say looking up BTS featurette videos gives some fascinating insights. HBO released one for a very complex sequence in the latest episode of Game of Thrones (spoiler alert, obviously) here

Each book approaches sound design from different angles. Sonnenschein and Chion talk more about sound design theory than technique, while Yewdall covers more of the post-production process in Hollywood (though is becoming sightly dated since technology and working conditions are still shifting).

They're all good books, and there are others as well (see http://amzn.com/1932907483), but I'm inclined to recommend Sonnenschein's book - besides giving a peek into the minds of some excellent sound designers, it does a good job of explaining a lot of the "why of sound design" that you may be looking for.

I would recommend almost everything in this thread, but I'd like to suggest Hitchcock by Francois Truffaut. It is one of the greatest interviews with one of the greatest filmmakers, any aspiring filmmaker MUST read this.

Lololol, no, sir, YOU are the one who REALLY, TRULY, isn't getting it. I don't have to read anything to know if something completely different is good or not, but thx.

For your leisure I'd like to recommend a few books about basic screenwriting so that you don't get stuck in something like this again:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Writers-Journey-Structure-Edition/dp/193290736X

http://www.amazon.com/Save-Last-Book-Screenwriting-Youll/dp/1932907009

http://www.amazon.com/Your-Screenplay-Sucks-Ways-Great/dp/1932907459

http://www.amazon.com/Screenwriting-Dummies-Laura-Schellhardt/dp/0764554867/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1418859323&sr=1-2&keywords=screenwriting+for+dummies

Let me know when it clicks! :-D

I personally love board games. Our local redditors get together every Wednesday for gaming. Usually my boss creates fucking crises that prevents me from going out most weeks. A good boardgame is one where you can lose and still have fun losing. Chess is not "a good boardgame". Magic the Gathering is a fun card game, but stuff like blackjack or poker makes me think so hard that my head overheats and burns off hair.

/r/Denver/ and in particular, posts by /u/rDenverPosts.

As for improv, I find that it helps to train me to be a more outgoing person. In particular, I strongly recommend the book Impro. While the book is aimed at helping actors, and improvisational work, if you've ever come across any sort of silly interview question such as "fizz buzz", if you read Impro, you'd recognize fizzbuzz as a improv exercise.

I am a programmer, and that has been my income for more than 20 years. Introverted? You can change that. I ran for elected office a few years ago and will run again in 2016. All programmers are weird. If you check my post history, you'll see odd interests, and if I checked your post history, I bet I would think some of your interests to be odd as well.

Avoid becoming sedentary. If surfing and Tae Kwan Do is what it takes to make you active, then for fucks sake, do them. I live 2 miles from my office and walk to work as much as I can. That little bit of exercise was enough to lose 35# since September. I'm still fat, but the blubber is on its way out.

Avoid becoming stagnant. I'm working on my 3rd bachelors degree. This one is in accounting and includes courses for becoming an actuary. Our workgroup/office makes software for accountants and actuaries. In addition, many of the programmers older than myself have found that they hit a brick wall (career-wise) around 54-55 years old. Many of the ones who hit the wall treated education as a vaccine - once you had it, you never had to have it again. So one of my "hobbies" is to always be learning. Do you remember that scene in Glengarry Glen Ross? Always be closing? That is what your career plan should be - always be learning.

My next hobbies will be:
home brewing beer.
home distilling moonshine/liquor.
making kimchi.

Future hobbies might include:
learning some manicure/pedicure skills at the local beauty school.
relearning massage.

Have you ever seen Whose Line Is It Anyway? If you haven't, the idea is that a bunch of actors get on stage, take suggestions from the audience, and create wildly creative set pieces on the fly. Improv seems like an unachievable creative feat--but it's not.

In his book Impro, Keith Johnstone demystifies improv and narrative play. At one point, he has a lady who insists she's not creative participate in a narrative game. She asks plot questions about an unwritten story, and he answers yes or no depending on the way she phrases her questions. In the end, this "uncreative" creates a story about giant killer ants seemingly from nothing!

The key to creativity is being open to stupid ideas. People have ideas all the time. Deciding to put hot sauce on your pizza is an idea. Deciding to cut through Park Lane while on your morning commute is an idea. Deciding to dance the funky chicken after reading this comment is an idea.

What makes an idea creative? That's a toughie. A lot of times, you'll feel it in your gut or sense it in the approval from your audience. But you normally don't reach that creative peak until you get through some duds. :)

Creativity is easy. Creativity is hard. Anyone can come up with ideas. It's the editing--and the follow-through--that makes the difference.

I think you could benefit from checking out Impro from your local library. The last third of the book is pretty weird, but the first third goes into great detail about social status signalling and status transactions. Understanding that, you can analyse the status plays in effect at IHOP, and proably play around with a situation like that the next time it happens--dealing with it in a high-status way or a low-status way, and vice versa.

Have a look at this chart.

This is the emotional course of a typical story. Like I said before, you don't have to follow this strictly but I found that it helps to get you moving in the right direction.

Take a look at the scenes and story ideas you already have and see where they fit in this chart. When I start a new story, in my head I always feel like I've got the whole thing figured out. Then when I start outlining I see that really only have maybe 25% of it.

So the work begins to figure out what's missing, scenes, characters, story arcs, etc... Who is your protagonist, antagonist, what do they want? What's stopping them from getting what they want?

A pretty good book I can recommend is The Writer's Journey.

Thanks man :)
You can see where I started if you go back to some of my 2012 videos. One in particular was called "Winter Camping in the Meadow 2012" I was really bad at editing etc. I've also done a lot of studying of film techniques for the past few years and it has helped :) I recently found a good book too which I could suggest if you are interested. "5 C's of Cinematography" which applies more to film but you can apply a bit of the techniques...
http://www.amazon.com/Five-Cs-Cinematography-Picture-Techniques/dp/187950541X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1458232324&sr=8-1&keywords=5+c%27s+of+cinematography

assuming you were talking about filming skill :P Cause i dont consider my bushcraft skill that superb ;) My filming skill needs work still too but I know i've gotten better :D

If they like to cook then I definitely recommend getting them the WoW cookbook

https://www.amazon.com/World-Warcraft-Official-Chelsea-Monroe-Cassel/dp/160887804X

It has great reviews and some people have posted their creations from it on this subreddit.

Earn an amateur radio license. Challenge yourself & see if you can attain Extra-class by the end of summer. It'll help you learn the electrical & electromagnetics side of things, opens the door to hands-on projects & social geekery, and could even open career opportunities.

Starting points:

• Find an exam scheduled near you: http://www.arrl.org/find-an-amateur-radio-license-exam-session
  
  
• Drill on exam questions via free Android app "Ham Test Prep" by iversoft.com from the Google Play Store
  
  
• Great book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1625950136/
  
  If you do nothing more than drill on the pratice app while you're in the bathroom, you can be ready to pass the Technician exam in a couple of weeks.
  
  (Caveat: Technician-class license exam questions change at end of this June)

Ooo I've always wanted to go as a super tall Ent/tree creature!

I've had it planned out in my head forever lol. I'd get some stilts, probably about 5-6ft, and collect a ton of twigs and branches and bark. I'd glue and sew and staple and tape all the sticks and leaves to the costume so it looked legitimately like a tree. Then I'd do some killer face makeup like the guy in The Hunger Games did lol. Lastly, I'd stand in my yard very still and wait for tiny children to walk by on the way to the door. Then I'm "come to life" and scare and amaze them!

I'd love this beautiful Avatar: The Last Airbender hardcover art book!

Thanks for the contest!

In the meantime, draw everything. Everything. EVERYTHING.

Keep a sketch book with you always! Draw people waiting for the bus, cars parked outside, city blocks, landscapes, trees, ideas, concepts, doodles, nonsense.

Take pictures of things and use them for reference. Constantly! Can't figure out how an arm looks like in a certain pose, get someone to pose the same way and take a shot with your phone. Its not "cheating" and most artists worth their salt will stare at you like you're insane if you told them to do a large scale project with no live or photo references.

Go to figure drawing meetups. There's usually some at art schools or in any big city. You will be terrible at first but drawing people is a good way to train your eye.

Copy your favorite artist. Not just draw from, but try to copy a whole piece of art, from start to finish, line for line, as closely as possible. Do this a lot! It will help you understand why they put this thing there, and put that thing here, and drew that thing like this.

Its the same reason musicians practice other people's work before they start composing their own!

Figure out who their influence are, and do the same thing with them.

If you're looking for books to get you started, here are some good ones.

I love this idea. I actually just bought the survival guide book IRL (New York Collapse) and have really liked getting to know the story more. I found it a little difficult to follow the details of the story in-game because of how it's presented, collecting phones, incident reports, and survival guide pages out of order. Anyway, I definitely enjoy the April Kelleher character, and I think playing with her as an AI companion would be very fun!

Designing with Light is a great introduction to design, the price is criminal https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Light-Introduction-Stage-Lighting/dp/0073514233/ref=dp_ob_title_bk

A Practical guide to Stage Lighting is one of the best and most complete books on the subject https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Guide-Stage-Lighting-Third/dp/0415812003/ref=pd_sim_14_4?ie=UTF8&dpID=51wHNTlRvuL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR124%2C160_&refRID=F1TC2GN49HDAM9GJ75ZZ

The Design Idea is a great book on design https://www.amazon.com/Lighting-Design-Idea-Wadsworth-Theatre/dp/1111836868/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1465919421&sr=1-1&keywords=linda+essig

Stage Lighting Design: The Art, Craft and Life is another great book https://www.amazon.com/Stage-Lighting-Design-Craft-Life/dp/0896762351/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1465919500&sr=1-1&keywords=richard+pilbrow

There are my top 4 lets see what others suggest.

Neil Postman could answer this one. Despite his book [Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business] (https://www.amazon.com/Amusing-Ourselves-Death-Discourse-Business/dp/014303653X) being written in 1985, it's pretty much 100% on point with the direction main stream media has gone over the last few decades.

Essentially television is one of the worst mediums to deliver important information due to it's reliance on imagery and entertainment. It's easier to become distracted as flashy, interesting, images will trump the any verbal/written content. This isn't always true, and when done properly it can still handle serious topics... however, the majority of the people enjoy the headlines and breaking news. Long form discussion is just too boring for modern television, and that's not to say people don't want it, but they're by far in the minority. Additionally, all the visual cues will subtly influence your opinion. Attractiveness and confidence heavily influence credibility.

Podcasts are actually a decent medium for this type of thing, because it removes the reliance on imagery from television. The listener has to actively listen in order to follow the discussion and extract useful information. Written text goes a step further in that it presents the content in a slower pacing and it strips the entire discussion down so it can be judged purely on content.

Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey

It's really the only book about music I've read, but it's an amazing read. Definitely recommended for anybody interested in any of the culture's many facets.

I’d say merch is the way to go.

Try here for DOTA2; https://valvestore.forfansbyfans.com/title/dota-2/category/all-dota2.html

And here for WoW; https://gear.blizzard.com/us/game/world-of-warcraft

Here’s a cool WoW themed cookbook!; https://www.amazon.com/World-Warcraft-Official-Chelsea-Monroe-Cassel/dp/160887804X/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1543613443&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=world+of+warcraft+cookbook&dpPl=1&dpID=513CWP1-hLL&ref=plSrch

As a last resort you could try a Steam gift card. Hope I gave you some ideas!

I'm in film school right now, and most of my production classes are good because they give me a chance to use pretty good equipment to make films. You can't really teach people how to come up with stories, and that's what a filmmaker really is: a story teller. So, just keep writing and making films with whatever equipment you can. Keep practicing and working on your craft. Here are some books I've found helpful: This book has a lot of information on the technical aspects of filmmaking, from very basic to terribly detailed.
This one is helpful in learning how to format and write scripts as well as treatments and concepts. Here is another book that is full of techniques to shoot better films.
Anyway, I hope this is helpful.

Fresh air:

It's not like any RPG I've ever played. Its setting is unlike any game I've ever played. There's story/PVE elements AND a unique PVE/PVP zone. It's a unique take on a genre that usually follows set themes. Plus, it has other aspects that are VERY realistic and immerse you into the world; the weather, time of day changes, NPC interactions, etc. It's all just really cool. I've seen bits of it in other games, just not all these different elements in one game. It's cool, I don't feel like I've played a game similar to the Division, so it's a fresh video gaming experience.

Tom Clancy in title:

Like all of the video games with his name in the title, they're losely based on story elements from his books. There's a lot of creative license in all of the video games, but a Tom Clancy book was the source of inspiration for themes/content.

Tomy Clancy provides ideas on story lines, not game mechanics. RPGs are not for everyone. If you don't like them, no biggie. Go check out Rainbow Six: Siege (if you like PVP). It's very realistic.

If you really like cooking.. well, there's always the Warcraft cookbook:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/160887804X/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1523337369&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=warcraft+cookbook&dpPl=1&dpID=51xcjAX01-L&ref=plSrch

(I hope the link works.)

I'm honestly not certain all of what's inside, but there could be something fun to make for him!
There may be some food connected to an area he loves in game, or his main character's race, or something along those lines.

Definitely read "The 5 C's of Cinematography" before anything else. http://www.amazon.com/Five-Cs-Cinematography-Picture-Techniques/dp/187950541X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1367884793&sr=1-1&keywords=5+c%27s+of+cinematography

I love "New Cinematographers" which has been a very inspiring book for me as it reminded me why I love working in the film industry at a time when I was contemplating quitting altogether. http://www.amazon.com/New-Cinematographers-Alex-Ballinger/dp/1856693341

The Eye is Quicker. http://www.amazon.com/Eye-Quicker-Editing-Making-Better/dp/0941188841/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1367884818&sr=1-1&keywords=the+eye+is+quicker

Motion Picture and Video Lighting. http://www.amazon.com/Motion-Picture-Video-Lighting-Blain/dp/0240807634/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1367884852&sr=1-4&keywords=grip+and+lighting

The Camera Assistant's Manual by David Elkins. http://www.amazon.com/Camera-Assistants-Manual-David-Elkins/dp/0240818687/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1367884939&sr=1-1&keywords=camera+assistant

It's funny because I was tempted to correct your initial summation Campbell's work but decided against it since I was also in the process of admitting how shitty it is to correct someone on something that's not even part of the point they were making.

But to say that Campbell's work is a simplification or "plebeian bastardization" of Jung's work is not accurate. It's common practice in academic writing for a scholar to build upon the work of another. So it's more accurate to say that Campbell was influenced by or that he built upon Jung's writing on archetypes and the collective subconscious. But while Campbell is writing on the nature of myths, Jung was a psychologist building upon Freud's earlier work to a completely different end.

Ultimately, what I'm trying to say is that the sentiment in this sub regarding Campbell's work being derivative and therefore less valuable is unfair because it is the nature of academic writing to build upon the writings of your predecessor.


The Hero with a Thousand Faces is the seminal work in the field and clearly the source of Harmon's inspiration. I'd also recommend Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey as the best and most succint interpretation and analysis of Campbell's ideas as a framework for contemporary story and writing.

Read the whole series. Then this. And this. I used to be the same way. I got a little better using Freytag's triangle, but it wasn't specific enough. These resources helped turn me around. I still love great prose and toil over every word. Words are all we have. But beneath them, the story has to be there.

You may not see this, but I completely agree with you. As an information medium, television is built for propaganda. This is a great read on the subject.

Democracy was far better off when we read our news and opinions.

The internet, in my estimation, is a good alternative source for information--at least for the time being. However, there is some concern about bias due to the fact that information consumers tend to only consume information that confirms--rather than challenges--their viewpoints.

I'd love to see what sort of movies Buster Keaton could make using today's technology... and, thinking along that vein, I'd be really excited to see where Walt Disney could take Disney Co. were he in his prime (side note: before I read this book i used to think that Walt Disney would've hated the way Disney has moved toward, but it really opened my view of him... apparently he was a huge proponent of "pushing the medium" which if I had taken some time to think about it I probably could have seen myself. Steamboat Willie was great, but soon the Silly Symphonies wasn't enough, and eventually he couldn't care less about them. He had moved on to full length cartoon movies. Snow White blew audiences minds... eventually that wasn't enough, and he kept pushing and pushing... leading him to movies like Mary Poppins. So I think he would've embraced digital animation)

I'd just like to point out that I'm not a film maker in any way shape or form so it would be nice if somebody could verify what I'm about to say.

I've been watching a lot of videos by FilmmakerIQ.com on Vimeo and have learned a lot from them. Anyway, they have a list of recommended books that I haven't checked out yet but would like to. I'll just list them out here:

Painting With Light

Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need

The Hollywood Standard: The Complete and Authoritative Guide to Script Format and Style (Hollywood Standard: The Complete & Authoritative Guide to)

Set Lighting Technician's Handbook: Film Lighting Equipment, Practice, and Electrical Distribution

Master Shots: 100 Advanced Camera Techniques to Get an Expensive Look on Your Low-Budget Movie

Cinematography: Theory and Practice: Image Making for Cinematographers and Directors

The Camera Assistant's Manual

The Makeup Artist Handbook: Techniques for Film, Television, Photography, and Theatre

Special Makeup Effects for Stage and Screen: Making and Applying Prosthetics

Grammar of the Shot (Media Manuals)

Rebel without a Crew: Or How a 23-Year-Old Filmmaker With $7,000 Became a Hollywood Player

Cinematic Storytelling: The 100 Most Powerful Film Conventions Every Filmmaker Must Know

The Five C's of Cinematography: Motion Picture Filming Techniques

MY FAVORITE IS ALADDIN AND THE KING OF THIEVES BECAUSE ALADDIN'S DAD IS AWESOME! OK... sorry... moving on...

You might like this...

See ya real soon!

I am 100% OK with used items :)

My favorite memory of Disney World was when my sister was wearing a mud shirt and there was a talking garbage can wheeling around, it said to her, "You got mud on your shirt, lots of mud!" It was funny...

Does Adventure Time count as fantasy? It does to me, but it may not to others.... Anyway, there are two cookbooks for Adventure Time:

Official Cookbook

Unofficial/Inspired By

Also? The same lady who did the GoT cookbook has a WoW one out, too: WoW

Finally, my favorite one: Nanny Ogg's Cookbook

I'm not sure if you or he are Star Wars fans, but there are these cute little kid books of Darth Vader with Luke and Leia. There's one specifically about each and one joint. Maybe buy the one that matches baby's gender? Boy and girl. :) They have them at Target and probably any book store.

Other than that, gendered onesies or socks!

edit: also, congratulations!!

Lots of us like HamStudy as the admin is a member of this sub and takes feedback/suggestions from us from time to time. It's focused mainly on practice tests although there is a good amount of explanatory information alongside the questions.

Some aspiring hams still like paper books... the most popular one is the ARRL License Manual which has a lot of the underlying theory, I also like the Gordon West books which are basically a paper version of hamstudy.org

> Dont even get me started on Zuko's mom...

Have you seen the artbook? In the introduction for the book, the creators of the show say:

> The question people more often ask us about Avatar: The Last Airbender is "How did you come up with the idea?" The second most asked question is "How did you make the show?" And the third most asked question is "What happened to Zuko's mother?" Our goal for this book is to fully provide an answer for the first two questions. Sorry, the last one will have to remain a mystery for now.

They also said at a comic con after the show ended that they had storyboarded something for a Zuko/Ursa reunion but then they decided to take it out. I'm hoping this is another thing that gets covered in the new graphic novels when they come out.

(By the way, the artbook is fantastic, and I totally recommend everyone to get it.)

Here's the original scanned as a PDF. If you need it in other formats, the free graphic program GIMP is able to open and manipulate it however you'd like.

I also did this one as a PNG to make the background transparent and add a slight Gaussian blur to account for the printer spots in the original.

By the way, I cannot recommend highly enough the Avatar: The Art of the Animated Series book this comes from. It's only $19 for 200 pages of concept art, which I think is a pretty good deal.

My suggestion: I think you guys may all need to chill out a bit. A game of Fiasco would be a great break for a game instead of hopping right back into this system/scenario. It might also teach you how to meta game WITH each other as players for entertainment even when your characters are at odds.

I'm guessing you may get a little too attached to your ideas of how things will go, and don't roll with the punches an optimal amount (and I'm guessing your DM could use a trip through Play Unsafe)

Impro is a good book for you to learn to accentuate people's changes like this.

Check out Steve Shelley’s book Practical Guide to Stage Lighting. I learned a fair amount about contracts from it, enough to write my own.

The above comment about consulting a lawyer is also wise, but most lawyers are going to know your business like you do. If you come to them with something to look over, you’re more likely to get a positive and meaningful reaction.

http://video.foxnews.com/v/4003531/entire-jon-stewart-interview/

I absolutely love this interview. Sadly, people don't take the time to watch things and get the full context. The exchange at 9:30 is pretty funny.

There's a great book that I'm working through right now called Amusing Ourselves to Death which gets into a lot of problems that we see with news media - namely that the ease of information transfer has been a double-edged sword. While we can disseminate more, there are certain things you lose when you transition to new media. In the case of tv - it was that more of the message is transmitted through how things look/soundbites/etc. You don't get good debates - you get a series of soundbites. You don't get topical news - you get whatever draws eyeballs for ads. Etc, etc, etc.

Apple Notes is great for sketching, if you want to go further then yes definitely Procreate, best bang for your buck and my personal favourite.

I can't recommend any apps for learning how to draw, but I can recommend these books to get you started, that is if you'll be interested in designing characters or drawing people etc;

Bridgmans Complete Guide Drawing From Life

Force by Mike Mattesi

The Silver Way by Stephen Silver

As suggested, start watching other funny people and deconstruct why their humor works. If there's no improv class, pick some improv games from online and practice with a trusted friend. Learn how to tease women and practice.

Also, I haven't read these books yet but I've heard great things: The Comic Toolbox and The Comedy Bible.

If you're interested in the storytelling side I would recommend The Writers Journey which is based upon The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

Also some great YouTube videos from Kal Bashir.

>e "/I/ am too smart to be affected by media, unlike all the rest of you"

It's this one, and this is the greatest.

Because half of all the advertising/propaganda out there has the easily seen subtext of "I know you think advertising is ridiculous because you're so smart and this will never work, but (INSERT AD HERE.)"

Neil Postman wrote a whole book about it in the 80s
http://www.amazon.com/Amusing-Ourselves-Death-Discourse-Business/dp/014303653X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1418335118&sr=8-1&keywords=Amusing+OUrselves

He called it "The Hipness Unto Death," which is awesome.

In the time since he wrote this, this advertising style has become nearly universal, and much more sophisticated. After you read this book, you will not be able to stop seeing it.

Where do you live?

If you want to do it, just try and get a job working as a PA on student films or something shooting in your area. You don't need experience, you don't need a degree, and the hardest part will be getting that first job.

I've seen too many of my friends in the business crippled by student loans that were unnecessary and actually counterproductive to their success. The people the did the best in the industry now actually dropped out of school 2 or 3 years in because they saw school was getting in the way of the work they were getting.

I hope you like reading, because while you're trying to get a job you should read these books.

Five C's of Cinematography
(http://www.amazon.com/The-Five-Cs-Cinematography-Techniques/dp/187950541X)

Set Lighting Technicians Handbook
http://www.amazon.com/Set-Lighting-Technicians-Handbook-Distribution/dp/0240810759

Camera Assistants Handbook
http://www.amazon.com/The-Camera-Assistant-Complete-Professional/dp/0240800427

Placing Shadows
http://www.amazon.com/Placing-Shadows-Lighting-Techniques-Production/dp/0240806611

Then watch these DVD's - They're expensive, look for them on eBay or used or something.
http://www.hollywoodcamerawork.com/mc_index.html

Have you made a movie before? If not, start churning them out. They don't have to be good, you just have to finish them. Believe it or not it is quantity, not quality, as the first few movies are going to be filled with the most stupid terrible mistakes you'll ever make, mistakes that will totally prevent you from telling a bearable story.

So if you combine all these...you look for a job, you start working as a PA, you read whatever you can get your hands on, especially those books listed, and you start shooting your own movies and applying what you learn from books and work to those films, you'll be in great shape.

Okay, Pete Tong is basically THE Legendary dance music Dj, his show on Radio 1 has been the place where global records break for the last 20 years. He is anything BUT 'some random BBC radio guy' If this is what you think/know about Pete Tong then you need a dance music education BADLY! :) ( I like Dennis Ruyer from Dance Department too. )

An EXCELLENT and essential book is Last Night a Dj Savedmy life it details the progression of dance music from its inception to about 2000...

As for finding the individual tracks, you can do it if you're resourceful. I'm a little envious of your potential journey of discovery. There is so much amazing stuff just waiting to be discovered! :)

If you love the lore, can I recommend this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tom-Clancys-Division-Collapse-Survival/dp/1452148279/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1540908601&sr=8-1&keywords=new+york+collapse

Absolutely brilliant story and some puzzles to solve too.

Hiya! Where have ya been?

Ok so if you normally like to tease him:

[The Comic Toolbox: How to Be Funny Even If You're Not] (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1879505215/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_O2eVAb1688K79) and [Law School in a Box: All the Prestige for a Fraction of the Price] (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1594741468/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_m-eVAb9K1X382)

Or if you want to encourage him: Step by Step to Stand-Up Comedy and [The Tools of Argument: How the Best Lawyers Think, Argue, and Win] (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1481246380/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_zbfVAb6E6NG1V) and you can write him encouraging notes inside the covers.

It all depends on what kind of design you want to get into? Concert/music design is totally different than theatrical, even within theatre musicals and plays often have different design principals.
I'd check out Steve Shelly's book https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Guide-Stage-Lighting-Third/dp/0415812003/ref=pd_sim_14_1?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0415812003&pd_rd_r=QMEV3MMX5JMSDAZPBNNT&pd_rd_w=uh8vJ&pd_rd_wg=jKgB8&psc=1&refRID=QMEV3MMX5JMSDAZPBNNT
as well as this one. https://www.amazon.com/Stage-Lighting-Handbook-Francis-Reid/dp/087830147X/ref=pd_sim_14_6?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=087830147X&pd_rd_r=YG5RCJMEPDWJ7E98CBCZ&pd_rd_w=QJmxz&pd_rd_wg=ZQ1Dr&psc=1&refRID=YG5RCJMEPDWJ7E98CBCZ

My biggest suggestion for someone who's just getting started is to not buy any equipment. Equipment is mostly cheap to rent, a PAR can is $3 or $4 a unit, and it's someone else's problem to fix it and buy lamps for it. You're not going to be able to afford quality gear, so you'll end up with cheap Chinese crap that's just going to disappoint you. The other thing to remember is that intelligent lighting is relatively new to lighting, lots of fantastic shows were lit without anything fancy. It's far better to master your color and angle work then get in to using movers than it is to just start throwing strobes everywhere and pray that it works. Learning to make choices and which choices are stronger than others will get you a lot further in life than being able to spit out flash and trash like everyone else can.

Walt Disney was an ENFP. There are a lot of biographies about him and much of his adult life was documented. If you want a good read, this book is a great place to start.

Hope that helps. Marty McFly from Back to the Future and JD from Scrubs are also both ENFPs.

Orwell is a better writer, but Huxley's genius is more true to reality. I recommend Amusing Ourselves to Death, which is about just that.

Well, it isn't solely on Disneyland, but I've read 'Walt Disney: The Triumph of Imagination' by Neal Gabler and recall that the construction of the park was covered very extensively in it. The book itself was a great read too!

Understanding the three act structure is imperative. If you can think of something that you've written in the past and can apply it, or at least place the details and events in the structure, that should help a lot. McKee is a good read. It should answer a ton of questions.

The Writer's Journey is great too. But if you can write and you understand the structure that is looked for in visual media, you should be good.

>So if I link to a bunch of books peripherally related to a topic at hand, and you refuse to read them, does that make you willfully ignorant?

First, those books look to me to be more than merely peripherally related to his points. He was talking about Paul's attitude toward the law, and he linked you to scholarly studies of Paul's attitude toward the law. Second, and to reply to your question, yes. If I refuse to make myself at least provisionally aware of the information you are giving me, I am being willfully ignorant.

>His books do not begin to answer the question of the OP.

Yes they do. They address the hermenuetical assumptions made by OP.

>Then, by your own admission, you are here for meaningless debate.

Correct. I peruse this sub from time to time, but rarely, if ever, feel intellectually challenged or satisfied by it. That's what I read books for. This just isn't the medium for discussing such matters.

>"The issues you raised cannot be settled by a few short comments."

>I disagree.

You don't really think an anonymous internet forum will have more success than professional biblical scholars, do you? You can't be serious.

>Read the following books about debate before you respond. Otherwise, I will have to assume you are willfully ignorant.

Have you read all of those books? (I'm assuming you haven't.) They don't address the issue of online mediums and their impact on meaningful debate, which is the matter currently under discussion.

I can't speak for /u/ses1, but I only link to books that I either have read, at least in significant part, have read numerous reviews such that I am aware of the argument, or know that they are highly regarded by experts in the field. I doubt any of those conditions pertain with regard to the books you linked to. Not that you'll ever read it anyway, but if you truly are interested in the effects of mass media on communication and discourse, I would highly recommend Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in an Age of Show Business.

Probably the best book ever written on the subject .

Short, concise chapters packed with practical information and exercises to write pretty much any style of comedy from sketches to greeting cards. Includes guides and tips on how to get paid doing each kind of comedy writing.

Try it and find out.

It doesn't MATTER what model you use. None of them magically make your script great.

Here are some others you can think about. Experiment and find out what feels most comfortable for you and seems to work best with the story you're trying to tell.

Three Acts

A really old (but still useful) model of story-telling structure involves three acts:

• Act 1: A character (or group) is in a situation. A problem/goal arises.
  
• Act 2:  The character/group confronts that problem/goal. Complications ensue.
  
• Act 3: The character/group succeeds or fails.
  
  Occasionally, like with Job in the Bible, shit just happens to a character. But it’s usually much more interesting when a character actively tries to solve a problem or achieve some goal.
  
  Probably the most famous explainer of the three-act structure for screenwriting is Syd Field in Screenplay.
  
  A similar model is in How to Write a Movie in 21 Days by Viki King.
  
  

  Hero’s Journey
  

  
  Another really old (but still useful) model of structure involves a “hero’s journey.”
  
  Joseph Campbell is often associated with this model, but it’s as old as story-telling.
  
  Basically, the hero’s journey
  
  >involves a hero who goes on an adventure, and in a decisive crisis wins a victory, and then comes home changed or transformed.
  
  This model was applied to screenwriting in The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler.
  
  

  It’s all about theme
  

  
  Craig Mazin (HBO’s Chernobyl and the Scriptnotes podcast) says structure is all about theme.
  
  He says it’s about asking what your character believes at the beginning, and what you want that character to believe at the end.
  
  The structure of a script thus arises out of the character confronting, and wrestling with, that thematic question.
  
  He talks about it here.
  
  

  The Unified Theory of Screenwriting
  

  
  In this interview, I talked with Ashley Miller (Thor, X-Men First Class).  Here’s what he had to say about structure:
  
  >I’m not a fan of anything that smacks of formula—“If you do this, your screenplay will work.”
  I don’t care if you’re talking about Christopher Vogler, or if you’re talking about Robert McKee, or if you’re talking about Blake Snyder. I don’t believe that’s how the creation process works.
  What they’ve each identified is an analytical tool. They’ve identified a way of looking at a product in retrospect and telling you what the parts are.
  
  In other words, many structure models are autopsies – but they’re not recipes.
  
  Miller combined a bunch of different structure models into a chart that he could apply to his own work – as a diagnostic tool AFTER he wrote one or more drafts.
  
  >I’m not saying, “This isn’t working because it fails to meet any of these standards.”
  What I’m asking is, “Am I getting an insight about what’s making me feel this bump in the story?
  What’s making me hear and smell the gears grinding?”
  
  You can see the chart at the interview link above.

Found 'em (even the bonus character)! Will send after I get it loaded to imgur. . . By the way you look absolutely incredible today. . . really not just schmoozing here :-)!

Here is what I would like if chosen, but I would LOVE anything from my list.

I totally agree with you on the animation ones! My personal favorite is Avatar: The Art of the Animated Series!

I have never heard of those field guides and am excited to check them out. A personal little dream of mine is to one day produce a field guide for one of my favorite video games.

Yeah, I played the closed alpha, the closed beta, and the open beta. Each time the game got better and grew on me a little more as I noticed subtle UI and gameplay changes. This is not your typical Ubisoft title.

The Division will not fail to deliver like Watchdogs and The Crew. Everything was extremely stable during all 3 tests and the game chat is unbelievable.

I couldn't imagine playing this game without the extremely compelling companion book, though.

Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination is a great biography that talks about the artist at Warner Brothers and how they use to take jabs at Walt Disney. It's a great read.


http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0679757473?pc_redir=1408113454&robot_redir=1

I think The Division shot itself in the foot by deciding to make the PC a mute. It limits your engagement in the story considerably and so the cutscenes are just short vignettes into the Second Wave.

I'll admit that Destiny works around that by using the Cortana/Ghost technique. Division's ISAC is only used for UX cues and not narrative.

FWIW, the real world Survival Guide is an interesting read which provides a side story for Division.

But yeah ...

>what destiny on few occasion did manage to do, ok they were never answered but still

The problem is you do that once and the reader forgives you. Twice they question it. Destiny does it constantly, which means I personally stopped caring about what the story was trying to tell me some time ago.

TTK was a slight improvement, with a plot arc that mostly made sense. My brother and I dubbed it "anime like nonsense" as opposed to "just nonsense".

Game of Thrones

https://www.amazon.com/Feast-Ice-Fire-Official-Companion/dp/0345534492/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1481681153&sr=8-1&keywords=game+of+thrones+cookbook

WoW
https://www.amazon.com/World-Warcraft-Official-Chelsea-Monroe-Cassel/dp/160887804X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1481681188&sr=8-1&keywords=world+of+warcraft+cookbook

Hobbit
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0990818802/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I have all of these. Well worth the money. Fun to just read let alone try the recipes. All extremely well done.

A book that has helped me loads with visualizing the human figure is the Force series. It teaches you how to see the forces of the body and be able to push that to it's extremes.. and it's helped me loads with creating dynamic poses without reference.

Torrent it and see if you like it. Thats what I do with all my books.. the good ones end up on my shelf. lol

I work in a gear rental place in London. Mostly you only need high school maths: ratios, proportions etc. But if you know CS you'll have a good handle on the workflow of digital image processing. This can be a lucrative position on big budget shoots. Here they call the role DIT, Red and Alexa cameras are the main ones to know and that can get you in as a PA because on lower budget shoots they often combine the roles.

You're doing the right thing by the way. I see a lot of people come out of film school with big debts only to have to start as PAs anyway. Read books like this and this and this and be prepared to do anything, especially waking up really early.

Good luck.

I highly recommend this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Story-Becoming-Master-Storyteller/dp/0865479933/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331027378&sr=8-1

But don't stop there. There are many good books out there to help you get started writing.

I want to point out that one book i have read says that reading about writing is part of becoming a good writer.

Best book I know on character writing is Comic Toolbox by John Vorhaus http://www.amazon.com/Comic-Toolbox-Funny-Even-Youre/dp/1879505215

The best thing I've done for my character development is take an improv comedy class.

It's almost 3 am where I am. I promise to find something for you in the morning. Bookmark these, it's how I retrieved them for you.Here's a few for now (in no particular order):

Reddit thread about sound effects libraries:

http://www.reddit.com/r/audioengineering/comments/h2nxm/hey_raudioengineering_i_was_wondering_if_there/

Synthesizer research (reviews with sound samples!):

http://www.vintagesynth.com

http://www.vintagesynth.com

Gear reviews:

http://ronansrecordingshow.com/

A cool article about bi-neural sound recording:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13645_3-20026650-47.html

Tips on tightening the low end of your mix:

http://passivepromotion.com/tighten-the-low-end-of-your-mix-with-a-frequency-analyzer

Audio Engineer's Handbook:

http://books.google.com/books?id=y0d9VA0lkogC&lpg=PA1321&ots=APvb9Cd9vK&dq=audio%20ballou&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=audio%20ballou&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=y0d9VA0lkogC&lpg=PA1321&ots=APvb9Cd9vK&dq=audio%20ballou&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=audio%20ballou&f=false

Reddit's musician database:

http://code.reddit.com/wiki/help/faqs/ProductionLounge

A good book regarding recording sound effects:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1932907483/ref=cm_sw_su_dp

Audio product reviews:

http://www.tapeop.com/reviews/category/23/

Test tones:

http://quiztones.net/

Website dedicated to recording tips and tricks:

http://recordinghacks.com/

Microphone techniques:
http://theproaudiofiles.com/microphone-tips-from-recording-hacks/

Some good general mixing tips:

http://theproaudiofiles.com/top-25-a-ha-moments-in-learning-to-record-mix/

Mixing rap vocals:
http://theproaudiofiles.com/mixing-rap-vocals/

Compression tips:

http://theproaudiofiles.com/dynamics-processing/

Getting that internship:

http://theproaudiofiles.com/tips-how-to-get-that-recording-studio-internship/

A cool site I frequent (reviews and tips):

http://thedspproject.com/

Here's a little cheat-sheet for EQing:

http://www.recordingwebsite.com/articles/eqfreq.php

It was the best hamburger I think I've ever made. The fried pickles are great with a beer.

I got the recipe from The Bob's Burgers Burger Book: Real Recipes for Joke Burgers

Two major factors explain this:

1. Screenwriting is a close knit community with laughably streamlined ways of arranging plots. Joseph Campbell's work via Vogler still dominates even as it has turned out same-y stories for 10-15 years.
   Anyone who has written a screenplay has a heavily highlighted version of this on their bookshelf: http://www.amazon.com/The-Writers-Journey-Structure-Edition/dp/193290736X
   
   
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_discovery Sometimes a certain idea is just in the air. It is the idea that is sufficiently f/x for the time: just a little shocking, unpredictable, and forward thinking enough to be alluring. It doesn't break the successful formula of the past too much while still introducing new elements. Spectre did that better in my opinion this time, I could feel the conservative decision making in Mission Impossible.
   Both of these plots seemed like that f/x familiar-yet-unpredictable sweet spot to studio heads when they approved them 2-3 years ago.

...and that is the current state of America. I didn't make it this way, but it is the situation. People want to be entertained and amused ('ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED? ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!'), even when it comes to serious matters like government. Neil Postman said it already, we are 'Amusing Ourselves to Death'.

Vectorworks and Lightwrite are pretty standard for generating light plots and paperwork. WYSIWYG and AutoCAD are also used, along with manually created fixture/patch/color/etc schedules.

I'd recommend this book for an excellent, in-depth guide to the practical side of lighting design.

Keith Johnstone's Impro is the classic work on improv. The section on status is great for any kind of dialogue, and the exercises he mentions are excellent for developing spontaneity and creativity.

There are many books on comedy wrting including http://www.amazon.com/Comedy-Writing-Secrets-Best-Selling-Edition/dp/1582973571/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1406897234&sr=8-1&keywords=comedy+writing and http://www.amazon.com/How-Write-Funny-Step---Step-ebook/dp/B00K9PI7AQ/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1406897250&sr=8-10&keywords=comedy+writing. They might help.

Which comedians do you personally think are funny? Which sitcoms? Which RomComs?

-Cuisine, www.daygamer.net

woosh.

Comedy Writing Secrets: The Best-Selling Book on How to Think Funny, Write Funny, Act Funny, And Get Paid For It

http://www.amazon.com/Comedy-Writing-Secrets-Best-Selling-Think/dp/1582973571

try this or maybe Tetris

I didn't mean internet articles... but, if you're curious about how the idea of the "DJ" has changed over the years:

DJ History here: It also directly addresses the issue of DJ celebrity I bought up in the post.

And short / interesting articles about elecronica in general:

Audio Culture has some great short articles.

More nerdy book on the "culture" of underground electronic music:

Club Cultures

I don't really mind Deadmau5 or Skrillex. I love listening to new stuff. It's listening to people get angry about electronic music not being like a rock show that usually makes me confused.

I'll take it in good spirit, but your post points out to me how little original content I post here.

I'll try to remedy that a little bit right now.

Things I have tried:

• Reverse my approach - If I began top down, maybe with the cosmology, I'll switch to a single town.
  
• Focus on a side character - Maybe the main character was going no where, now enter a foil, or a guide, or even just a companion.
  
• Exercises from Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre
  
• Make a mind map - I use FreeMind.
  Currently my map consists of:
  Physical Environment
  Cosmology
  Races
  Society
  
  Things I'd like to try:
  
  
• Review the tropes associated with the area in question - Start with the most common and/or fundamental/far-reaching ones and maybe dive into the less well known/more specific ones; then subvert them.
  
• The Creative Whack Pack
  
• A game of Dawn of Worlds, Microscope, or Kingdom depending on the area I was stuck on

The most enjoyment I got from The Division was the Tie In book that is a Survival Guide to Urban Catastorphe that was a neat read.

Edit: If you enjoy the in-game lore, this is the Survival Guide that you collect pages for and see April Kelleher writing in one of the holos

I agree with this. The problem with most "How to Draw" book that are geared towards kids is that they teach a process that is too specific to get a result that is too specific.
A more productive approach is probably to buy him some cool art books of things that are visually interesting to him. There are artbooks for all the most popular movies, video games, cartoons... whatever he is into, there's probably an artbook for it.

Thanks for your suggestion. From your links I discovered a related book that fits well with my interest: The comic toolbox: How to be funny even if you are not

Haha, awesome! I was howling when I saw the spatchcock episode.

I feel like you need the official cookbook...

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0789331144/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_jN8FAbH8CK4XR

Check out the book "Force: Dynamic Drawing For Animators." It's been a great resource for me and helped me make drawings that feel more lively and not flat and stiff.

I've heard good things about this book: http://smile.amazon.com/Stage-Lighting-Design-Craft-Life/dp/0896762351/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1408621466&sr=8-1&keywords=pilbrow (And I like Mr. Pilbrow a lot).

I would also push Steve Shelly's book (of field template fame): http://smile.amazon.com/Practical-Guide-Stage-Lighting-Edition/dp/0415812003/ref=pd_sim_b_6?ie=UTF8&refRID=17JEA99XS937A1M5TPEK

I'm not sure there's one solid book for it (but I'd be happy to be wrong). Are you specifically looking for live (e.g., busking) lighting design, or are you just looking for general lighting design?

In the Blink of an Eye (Walter Murch)

Shot by Shot (Steven D. Katz)

Making Movies (Sidney Lumet)

Hitchcock/Truffaut (Francois Truffaut)

Something Like An Autobiography (Akira Kurosawa)

​

Those are all must reads, in my opinion. But this is just off the top of my head. I'm not next to my bookshelf at the moment, so this is the best I can do right now! =)

​

EDIT: Back with round two.

Seductive Cinema (James Card)

Orson Welles's Last Movie: The Making of the Other Side of the Wind (Josh Carp)

A Hundred Years of Japanese Film (Donald Richie)

All the Emperor's Men: Kurosawa's Pearl Harbor (Hiroshi Tasogawa)

Making Documentary Films and Videos (Barry Hampe)

The Haunted Screen (Lotte Eisner)

It's been a few years - I took this picture in August of 2012. I had just finished a really great Disney biography which helped me appreciate the attraction all the more

Buy the technician book from Amazon. Read it during breaks. I read it on a plane ride and two evenings on a business trip. It will not take you long.

At the technician level, it's very much common sense on the rules (once you think about them) and the math isn't anything beyond VERY simple formulas V=IR and P=VI.

You will then spend 15 bucks on a test somewhere in your city that happens at least once every two weeks or month. There are numerous free online practice tests if you need them and are worried you won't pass. The test is < 50 multiple choice questions. It's pretty quick too.

Technician is all you need for VHF and above (which is what you use for RC control, video, wifi, etc).

There's some pretty cool stuff hams can do when you get your ticket.

• Automated Lighting: The Art and Science of Moving Light in Theatre, Live Performance, and Entertainment
  
  
• A Practical Guide to Stage Lighting Third Edition
  
  
• Stage Lighting Design: The Art, the Craft, the Life
  
  
• The Automated Lighting Programmer's Handbook
  
  
• Concert Lighting: Techniques, Art and Business
  
  
• Light Fantastic: The Art and Design of Stage Lighting (Great theatrical resource for history and theory, and beautiful photographs.)
  
  
• Bullet Proof ... I Wish I Was: The Lighting & Stage Design of Andi Watson (The text reads like an design student's pseudo-intellectual wet dream, but the pictures are great.)
  
  
• Photometrics Handbook
  
  
• Stage Design: Concerts, Events, Ceremonies and Theater

Get the book that was featured on the show. It was written by the P&R writing staff and it's hillarious. It's like owning extra episodes. Well worth the money.

Pawnee: The Greatest Town in America

Edit: Also if you go to youtube and type in "Parks and Rec Paley Center" a bunch of videos of panels the cast did over the years will come up.

Well they do have those Dad Vader books around where he's raising his kids and such.

They're ctually kinda amusing in syrupy sweet family friendly kinda way.

Amazing list! All of these are essential. These are also my favorites for animation:

Force: Dynamic Life Drawing for Animators (Force Drawing Series)

Timing for Animation


Bridgman's Complete Guide to Drawing from Life

Bridgman's was a must for me when it came to learning anatomy.

I'm in the same boat in that I haven't read 1984, but I felt BNW had some very strong points.

I won't argue against BNW being weak as a story/plot (setting aside social commentary). It was not particularly engaging but there were a few things that I don't think get mentioned as much as they should. The first being the cyclical symbolism and nature of religion. I felt that this was something that more people should take away from the book. That a religion is something that should change with the times.

I also agree with Huxley in that irrelevance and entertainment would drive us from truth and knowledge. I think if you read BNW you should read Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves To Death. It also gives a strong argument about today and how we are losing any real knowledge to trivial knowledge.

I think I will go read 1984 now....

I learned quite a bit from the Guardian's eyewitness app It combines the best photojournalism with in depth captions to understand why the photo works.

A classic book of cinema is Truffaut on Hitchcock. Definitely recommend checking it out.