Week 6 of classes

Lat week I got part of my project done. I did an essay on the genre of horror. I really enjoyed doin this essay beacuse i like horror films so I had fun looking up horror films from the past and learning about when horror began. The first horroe film was only two minutes long and was made in 1896 titled `Le Manoir Du Diable´. Earlier horror films were usually set in old mansions or castles and were about the supernatural. More modern day horror films are associated with collge students. Horror films play on people worst fears. the atmosphere in them is created by dark shadows, scarey music and heavy breathing. The next part of my project is to design a poster for a horror film. I think that this will be lots of fun.

In film comedy this week we watched a movie called `Duck Soup´ (1933) by the four Marx brothers. This film was surprising for its time and was a failure at first because people didn´t understand it. But now it is a huge classic and future directors were influenced by it. It changed the way film makers approached comedy. Actors could now express comedy through what they said and not just by their actions. This film also made fun of musicals. I enjoyed this film at the beginning and thought it was funny but after a while it became anoying and I couldn´t wait for it to be over. The main character acted more like a stand up comic which got a bit irritating after a while but his jokes were still funny. There were two characters in the film who were spies and they REALLY annoyed me. They were funny at the start but this wore off very soon and they became anoying. They acted like children at times and were very stupid. One of them didn´t talk and used props to communicate. He was like a character from a silent film. I was happy though that there was sound in the film as you can only watch so many silent films. Here is a link showing the two spies. You might find them funny or annoying. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-NqUsKFnRU

For history of design this week not very many of the class showed up. I think it was because it was lashing rain outside and people decided to stay in bed. We braved the rain though and made it in, event hough we got absolutely soaked on the way. Its not suposed to rain in Spain (so I thought). Anyway, because no one really showed up the lecturer jus talked to us about the fallas festival. She gave us a sheet of paper and we had to write down our experience of it and whether we enjoyed it or not. Then afterwards we all discussed our own experiences with it. I didn´t have a particulary good experience as you can see from my previous blog post but it was interesting to hear about what other people did and how they enjoyed it. That was it for the class really beacuse she didn´t want to go on with more work without most people missing.

Later that day our effective presentation class was also cancelled because no one showed up. I think there was about five of us there out of 20 so the lecturer also didn´t want to move on with work. Our second effective presentations class went ahead though on friday. We were split into groups of two and given a sheet with a small amount of information on it and we had to make a presentation out of it. I feel like I learned a lot from this. The lecturer took notes as we all presented.I was told afterwards that i didn´t make eye contact and was reading off the sheet the whole time. This was because we didn´t have much time to learn off the material but I did´n´t think it would be noticed that much so I know now that eye contact is very important and I need to work on that for the next time. The lecturer told us that we will do lots of exercises like thins to help us prepare for our final presentation at the end of the year. I think this is a great way of learning because he can point out to us what we do wrong so we don´t make that mistake when it matters. I was also way more nervous doing this then I thought I would be so hopefully practising in front of the class will stop me from being nervous on the day. 

At the start of the week we also did a no technology day for our social context of technology module at home. I really thought I´d die without my phone but as it turns out I´m still alive. I enjoyed this day as a ONCE off. It was interesting to see how I coped without my phone and internet. For the whole day I did feel like something was missing but I did enjoy spending the day actually talking with my friends instead of sitting in silence watching television. But I hope to never have to go another day without technology. No electricity is bad enough without taking other forms of technology off me.

Fallas Festival

This weekend was the Fallas festival in Valencia and the erasmus office organsied a day trip into Valencia for it. This is a festival that’s on every year from the 17^th til the 20^th of march. Thousands of people come from all over the world for it. Most of the streets are closed down and there´s people everywhere. Loads of food stalls are set up all over the city and there´s a great atmosphere around the place. Everyone can walk around drinking in the streets. The Fallas is a competition where people build massive statues representing something and they are displayed in different locations all over the city. On the Thursday the winner of fallas is announced and then on the Saturday all the ones who didn’t win are set on fire so you have these massive fires happening throughout the city. On the Thursday they also build the “Virgin”. This is a massive statue of a woman made from wood and flowers. There are constantly parades happening and each person in the parade brings the flowers to the virgin to she can be built.

Every morning of Fallas there is a marching band walking through the streets at 8 in the morning and fireworks been thrown to wake everybody up. There is a firework show at 2 o´clock everyday. You can´t see them because is it bright but they are there just to make noise. All day long for the whole weekend people are constantly throwing fireworks so it gets very loud. There is also a proper firework display at night. It was amazing to experience this and was a welcome change from Paddy´s day. But at about 10 o´clock on the Paddy´s we had to give in and go to an Irish bar. There was so many people there and we got talking to loads of Irish people so we really ended the night on a high. During Fallas the trains go back to Gandia all night so you can stay out in Valencia for as long as you like.

During the day on the 17th the trip the erasmus office arranged was a bit of a disaster. We got a bus in at half 11 (we wer told to be there pormptly at 11 or we would miss the bus) We ddint get into Valencia until around one o´clock because the traffic was so bad. We got off the bus and walked t the train station and hung around there for a while (for no reason). We were then told to go do what we like until 3 o´clock when we would meet back at the train station to go to and aquariam. We decided to go for something to eat and then to see the fireworks which were happening at two o´clock. after this we didn´t know what to do so we just walkd around looking at some of the fallas statues. when we met back at the train station it was half three before everyone got there. We were then brought to the see the winner of fallas and given five minutes to see it and take pictures. After this we met back at the train station whoch was around 4 o´clock. We then had to walk to the aqiuariam. We were told this takes 20 minutes. It actaully took an hour. I was wearing very uncomfortable boots for walking as we were not warned to be prepared for walking. We paid 11.20 ro go to the aquariam and we wer promised a dolphin show at half 4. We didn´t get there until five so we missed the show and the aquariam closes at 6 so we paid that money to look around for an hour. And by the time I got there I wasn´t even in the mood for it after all the walking, my feer were in soooo much pain.

So 6 o´clock came and we then had to walk back to the main square (also another hour away). I refused to do this and myself and four others decided to get a taxi. In the long run thia was a bad idea because we lost the rest of the group. But I physically couldn´t have walked. We were texting and ringing the organiser but he would´t give us a sraight answer as to where they where. We ended up jus going to see the virgin ourselves. We eventually bumped into them on the street and they were just hanging around doing nothing. I was in such bad form as this is what I had been doin all day. We wer also told we were goin to a medieval market which didn´t happen. Myslef and one of the other girls got so fed up we just left to go to the Irish bar, this was 10 o´clock at night after walking around doing nothing all day. The rest of the eramsus gang stayed and went to an erasmus concert which we heard was a big dissappointment. So we were glad we didn´t stay.

All in all the day was a disaster they were very unorganised. No one would tell us what we were doing and we were just told to follow. I was very excited about the day beforehand and it ended in a big dissappointment..thank god for the irish bar in the end!!

Some pictures of the Fallas statues and the burning of them..

Here´s a short video just to give you an idea of what it´s like to be there

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sF1HBNfiYCk

Week 4

Unfortunately this week I was sick for my film comedy class so didn´t make it in. So my first class of the week was history of design where we learned about the industrial revolution. The industrail revolution brough with it railroads, steam ships and steam machines. It affected the lives of workers, urban life and brought aboutsocial reform. I found this class very interesting. For the first time during the industrial revolution, women were now starting to work and children would also work instead of going to school. However both women and children got paid less then men and people would work 18 hours a day and therefore have no social lives. I couldn´t beleive this as I couldn´t imagine just spending your life working and have no social life. Nowadays people live for their social life whereas back then peope lived to work. Now people complain about working 8 hour days. During this time people also moved from farms to cities to be closer to work. George Stephenson (1781-1864) built the first locomotive. Before this there was only wooden trackways where horses pulled carts. I would imagine that it was something like this..

With these advanced trains and steam ships came the development of tickets, posters and publicity..

We also learned about steel and the skyscrapper. Henry Bessemer (1813-1898) produced steel. George A.Fuller, an architect (1851-1900), then built the Tacoma building (1889) in Chicago.

And in 1902 the first skyscrapper was built in New York, the Flatitron building.

In a few weeks time we have to get into groups with people from our country and do a presentation on a designer from Ireland. So we will have to spend some time over the next few weeks researching a good designer and preparing out presentaion. I think this will be very interesting as I don´t know any Irish designers so hopefully I will learn about a number of them during our research of picking the best one.

For out effective presentaions class this week we handed up our presentaion outlines so hopefully we will gwt some feed back on those next week. I have decided to do my presentaion on Thailand. I´ve travelled round Thailand for six weeks and think it´s an amazing country so I would like to use my presentation so inform people about the country and hopefully convince them to go there. I will also inform them of the cost of living, getting arounf things to do and places to stay. I will also include a small part on how to volunteer in the country. I think my presentaion will be very revelant to my audience who are a group of young erasmus students who like to travel. In class this week we learnd about body language and how it can distract your audience and take attention away from the message. The most important thing is to be yourself. If you are not yourself and try to be someone else who is funny or outgoing when your not your audience will know straight away and loose interest. You need to be enthusiastic about your subject, at some point try to make eye contact with everybody in your audience, (this is difficult for large audiences but my one will be small so I think it´s possible), and project your voice so the people down the back can hear you clearly. You also need to enunicate cleary. I think this is very important for me as I will be speaking to a group of people who´s native language isn´t english so they will find it hard to understand me if I mumble or run words together. I think this will need lots of practise :(