Tegenwoordig zul je bijna nergens nog een hoorspel tegenkomen. Niet op de mainstream radio zenders in ieder geval. Als je goed zoekt zul je misschien nog ergens één of twee zenders tegenkomen die nog hoorspellen uitzenden. Het is dus een vrij oud concept wat vooral populair was toen de televisie nog helemaal niet bestond (of een te grote luxe was om te betalen). Vandaag de dag kijken we TV series, in 1930 luisterde je op vrijdag avond naar een spannend hoorspel, bij wijs van spreken.

De Opdracht

Aan ons dus de taak om de nostalgie van het hoorspel terug te brengen. Om te beginnen moesten we, uit een lijst verhaaltjes, het verhaal kiezen wat ons het leukst leek om uit te voeren als hoorspel. Uiteindelijk hebben we (mijn kleine groepje) het volgende verhaal uitgezocht.

Politie op afroep

Een man ligt net in bed, wanneer zijn vrouw tot de ontdekking komt dat ze het tuinlicht heeft laten branden. De beste man is de beroerdste niet, dus gaat hij op zijn pantoffels naar beneden. Wanneer hij door het raam naar buiten kijkt, ziet hij onbekenden bij zijn garage naast het hij. Ze sjouwen met spullen. Inbrekers!

De man belt onmiddelijk de politie. Een agent aan de andere kant van de lijn vraagt hem of de inbrekers van de garage het huis in kunnen komen. “Nee, alle deuren en ramen van het huis zitten op slot”, antwoordt de man.
De  agent verteld dat alle agenten met andere zaken bezig zijn, maar dat hij een patrouille zal sturen zodra er weer agenten vrij zijn.

De man hangt de telefoon op, telt tot dertig en belt terug. “Hoi, ik belde jullie net om te melden dat er inbrekers in mijn garage staan. Nou, jullie hoeven niet meer te komen want ik heb ze neergeschoten.”

Binnen vijf minuten staan er drie politieauto’s met gillende sirene bij de man voor de deur. De agenten grijpen de inbrekers meteen in de kraag. Eén van de agenten roept de man ter verantwoording.
“Ik dacht dat je ze had neergeschoten!”

Hij antwoordt: “Ik dacht dat jullie zeiden dat er geen agenten beschikbaar waren.”

Het script voor het hoorspel is inmiddels klaar en is erg leuk geworden. Hoe we het bovenstaande verhaaltje gaan uitwerken in het hoorspel zul je te horen krijgen over een paar weken. Het MP3tje zal dan ook te downloaden zijn via deze website.

Robin

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After watching Outbreak there have not been a lot of movies that dealt with the contagious virus idea. At least non that I felt were decent. Then in 2008, game developer Valve released the game Left 4 Dead, which revolves around a highly contagious Rabies infection that turns people into mindless killers. The story is told during the course of the game in the form of wall writings by other non-infected who try to make their way to safety as well as other details integrated in the maps that tell you what happened. Ever since the game came out I have been loving Left 4 Dead. Each time I play through a location I notice new things and a new part of the story gets revealed. Then I found out about the movie this game was partially based on.

28 Days Later

Apparently there has been an awesome movie in existence since 2002 which I had no clue about. 28 Days Later tells the story of the incredibly dangerous Rage Virus. Originally meant as an experiment in primates, the virus is unleashed onto the United Kingdom when animal activists try to set the animals free. From there the virus spreads incredibly fast and within two weeks the government starts a nationwide evacuation. The UK is left abandoned, now home to thousands of infected and just a handful of survivors. 28 days after the initial infection we meet Jim, who wakes up in a hospital after having been in a coma for over a month.

Besides having a story I really like, this movie has other qualities I can respect. For instance the shots of a completely deserted downtown London are creepy to look at to say the least. Especially because there were no sets used for a large part of those shots. They actually sealed off parts of downtown London for 20 minutes at a time to shoot the footage.

Also the music in this movie is extremely good and well placed throughout the movie. It really sets the mood in a lot situations, particularly the mansion scene near the end of the movie. I love it when image and audio come together like that and the director of this movie, Danny Boyle, did an outstanding job on it. I have just found another favorite director.

28 Weeks Later

Obviously I’m not the only one who thought this movie was great, otherwise it would not have spawned one of the best movie sequels I have seen in a long time. Normally a sequel sucks compared to the original, this sequel is probably even better than the original! I will not give away too much of the story for those who still want to go and watch it, but you’ll be pleased to know that the awesome London scenes are still there, the awesome music is still there and the amount of gore in this movie has been increased quite a bit from the original. I loved it and hated it at the same time, haha. The only grudge I had against this movie was the ending, which was kept open and incredibly sucked. When they were making this movie they did not even know if there would be another sequel, so making it that open ended really pissed me off.

28 Months Later

Luckily Boyle is not done with the 28 movies yet. A third movie is said to be in development and is likely to hit the theaters in 2011. What it will be about is unknown up to this point, but Boyle has stated that it will try to move the story forward from where the second left off. If Boyle stays up to his standards then we can expect a movie which is even better than the second one, which should be great.

Trailers

Words can not really describe the mood these movies are set in though, watch the trailers below if you really want to experience what these movies are about.

Robin

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Last year I went to the Open School Night since I was in fact looking to join the Media department. I knew what I wanted, so I had planned to just go there, get what I need and go home. But when I got to the Media stand the first thing I heard was ‘the department is full, we don’t take new registrations. We can put you on the waiting list, though.’.

Really?! If it’s full then why the hell did you put a damn stand there? No way in hell I’m going to wait 2 years to do a damn study. I was twenty for crying out loud. Obviously I did manage to get in eventually, otherwise this blog would be a whole lot of wasted server space.

Anyway, yesterday was no different from the night I had gone there to register. The media hallway (as it is known to most people in the department) had taken every piece of equipment we have from storage to create a very awesome display in our TV studio, obviously meant to show off the kind of stuff we do around here. Absolutely everything was there, from the expensive moving lights to TV cameras and even an auto-cue (I have no clue why we have such a thing at our school). It was very impressive to see when you walked inside, but you couldn’t exactly see anything going on from the main hallway. To solve this, me and a friend from class came up with the idea to set up a simple audio installation in the hallway, indicating to people that something was going on. And it worked, in less then five minutes from setting up we attracted a lot of curious people from down the hall.

We played some music, had two girls from another class do some chit chat over the microphone and generaly just had a good time. That day I think I was at school for a good twelve hours.

Pictures
Taken with the camera phone as usual, excuse the quality.

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Robin

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This video stands out to me because of the singing done by one of the game characters. The creator of this video used a program that came with the Source Development Kit to make the character lip sync to the song, which makes this video more special then any other music video based on a game. And there are plenty out there, some more horrific than others.

More details about I’m Still Seeing Breen can be found on the official Machinima.com page.

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Enjoy!

Robin

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After a little speech, detailing how they got their hands on some of the latest equipment for the school (ten audio mixers and twenty eight speakers), it was time for some hands on experience with mixers and speakers. Our objective: Set up two speakers and a mixer.

In groups of two we got to work and in a few minutes time we had an entire row of speakers and mixers with a whole lot of cables dangling between them. One little tip when you’re setting up professional equipment; tape off any dangling cable. Obviously our teacher gave us an ear full for just leaving the cables like that where anyone could trip over them and take down some pretty expensive equipment along with it. But since this was just a quick test it wasn’t that much of a problem.

Some other teachers came to watch and we got a few group photo’s. If I manage to get my hands on to them (which shouldn’t be too hard) I’ll make sure to post them up here.

Sold!

Remember that I moved house a while back? Well tomorrow is the final wrap up concerning the old house. Signatures will be put on paper and I will finally receive the money for my old house so everything can get back to normal. Happy days!

Well, pretty random entry for today but don’t have much more to share right now.

Robin

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Yes we did! Yesterday’s performance by RED! made the local paper! Here’s a quick translation of the article:

Popstars turn ROC upside down

The crowded cafeteria of the ROC in Hilversum was completely turned upside down during a one time performance by Steffie, Déon and Brandi, AKA the winners of Popstars! Especially Déon gave it all he had during the 45 minute performance, because he is an ex student of the health & sport department at the Hilversum branch of the ROC of Amsterdam. ‘He really felt right at home and didn’t think he’d enjoy it as much as he did,’ Sandra Kamminga, the groups agent, said. RED!, the name of the popgroup, performed a number of songs among which was their own hit ‘Step Into The Light’. After the performance RED! held a Meet & Greet. (Picture by: Teunis Versluis)

Check out the news paper clipping!

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Today was particularly fun day because today we got to build the stage for the very first time! Together with our teachers from light class we went up to the cafeteria to prepare the stage for a short performance by RED!. We basically had to put the lighting into the stage truss (the construction above the stage) and help out with guiding cables and making sure the stage was ready and safe for the performance.

When the stage is not in use there are generally a few lights on the truss, though not connected to anything. They are mostly there for the show of things and to keep the storage from getting to full. However the lights that are normally up there are generally not used with an actual performance. So before we could put the performance lights in we had to take those other lights out.

When the truss was empty we got together to have a quick look at the light plan. This a top view of the stage and the truss that displays which light is supposed to go where. In this case we were using the standard PAR Lights, MAC 250′s and MAC 300′s. The latter two also being known as Moving Heads since they can pretty much move in every direction and are programmable to even the tiniest little details using a light mixing table.

We spent about four hours getting the lights in position and securing all the cables to the truss. You don’t want to ruin a good stage by random cables dangling from the truss above you. So when all loose ends were literally tied up (or in this case taped down) we could start inspecting all the safety cables.
To make sure a light doesn’t just fall down on someone should it come loose one way or another, every light has to be secured to the truss with a special safety chain or cable. In the case of PAR lights the barn-doors (the flaps you sometimes see on these lights) have their own safety cable.

When we made sure everything was secured as it should be the more experienced light guys could start programming the lights. I watched along a little as they did, but there were so many buttons there that I quickly lost track of what the hell he was doing. In any case, programming those lights is a lot of work.

Before the performance could begin there was only one more thing that needed to be installed: sound. Luckily we were not responsible for providing the sound as RED! brought their own installation for that. We just had to help unload it from the truck and get it up to the stage.

Setting up the audio took the guys only fifteen minutes or so and fifteen minutes after that the show finaly started. Many of the school’s students had gathered in the cafeteria to watch and the good news was: all our lights worked!

It’s pretty cool to see something you’ve worked for hours on come to live like that. It’s to bad it doesn’t last, tomorrow we have to take the entire thing down again. It’s been a very educational experience though and I hope we have many more projects just like today.

Pictures & Videos!

Of course I did take some pictures and shot some video. What would the world be without camera’s in your phones these days, right? Hope you enjoy watching these as much as I enjoyed making them!

Oh and excuse the quality of the photos. It’s just a phone camera afterall.

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Videos

Robin

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During these lessons we also learn about rigging, how to hang lights into a stage rig and how to properly secure them so they don’t fall down on anyone’s head.

The fun thing is that with these lessons we’re actualy going to do some real stage work. Next week we will be the ones responsible for the preperation of the stage lights when the winners of yet another talent show come to our school to perform their ‘singing’.

RED is the popgroup that was formed after the finale of this year’s Dutch version of Popstars. A fun fact is that two of the three group members are students on this very school, which does make the entire thing kind of special, eventhough they still can’t sing.

Their performance is next Tuesday and I will be sure to make some pictures of the construction and of the performance itself with the lights in action. And once I have a way of getting the pictures of my phone I’ll be sure to post them on here.

Robin

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As it happens I’m not your average computer geek because I’m also a gamer, which makes me an ultra super mega computer geek in some cultures. And because I’m a gamer I happen to have an X-Box 360 standing by in my livingroom. And wouldn’t you know? Microsoft is the greatest because you can tell your X-Box to connect to the Media Center on your computer and stream the music from there. The indexing takes some time if you have tons and tons of music, but when it’s done you can just sit on the couch, look for an album and press… wait a minute where’s that folder I had there?

Yes, like about every other multimedia device out there (be it an iPod, MP3 player, MP4 player or whatever) Windows Media Center (and subsecuently the X-Box 360) use MP3 tags to identify which song goes into what folder and is connected to which album. If all the songs in the same folder don’t have the same tags then Media Center is going to disregard the fact that they are in a folder together and just throw them all over the place. And come on, who bothers editing the tags on an MP3 file when they rip the music off their completely legal store bought CD? Nah! You just throw that MP3 file in there with the other MP3 files you ripped from that completely legal store bought CD!

However if you do not want to spend ages finding five songs that are supposed to go together in an album you might want to consider propperly tagging your music from now on. With the right software it’s pretty easy and fast to do. Tagging one album takes less then five minutes and it will save you such a headache when you load them up on your MP3 player later! Just my little piece of advise concerning music.

Robin

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