AT WAR Film - Trailer 3

AT WAR Film - Trailer 3

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At War - Coming in January
Video by Scott Kesterson
Produced by David Leeson
www.atwarfilm.com

Fall 2007 "Visual Journalist" Staff ~ Daily Egyptian

Fall 2007 photo staff, from left: Stepehn Rickerl, James Durbin, Brandon Chapple, Ryan Rendleman, Thomas barker and Edyta Blaszczk; front row from left: Jason Johnson, DuVale Riley and Sarah Lathrop.

finals and such

So, I might not have a whole bunch blog posts for awhile. Finals are this week. I have one Tuesday morning at 7:50 am and three on Friday at 7:50, noon, and 5:50. I wont be going home from school early at all, but I also have some time to waste/study until Friday. The last issue of the Daily Egyptian for the semester is Tuesday, followed by a Semester in Photos issue on Wednesday. I don't know what pictures they're going to use for the SiP, but I hope they use a couple of mine.

My only assignment this week was the Southern Illinois Children's Choir performing at Shryock Auditorium at 3 pm on Saturday, right about the time the Salukis were starting their last football game of the season, a loss against Deleware 17-20, just one win away from the championship.

So I may have a few posts here and there, but I will probably keep it pretty lax until I start up at the Hutchinson News in Kansas next semester!

TB

my favorite toys

JRNL 310 Project

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Here's a short, seemingly pointless video I put together in about 3 hours today for my JRNL 310 class. It couldnt be any longer than 60 seconds, and it had to be about my beat for the semester, which is the library, so It couldn't really be all that in-depth. It's just to prove that I know how to make MULTIMEDIA!

Also I met these fun people at a toy store when I was there getting pictures for a story about recalled toys. Their names are Sam and Suzanne Cox and they own the store "My Favorite Toys" in the University Mall in Carbondale. They kept showing me all these new toys they have and they were so excited about them and it was funny and I bought something for Amber. She's not going to get it forever though because she won't come visit me this weekend.

I have to ship some senior pictures to the Minors in Effingham and I have to finish working on Amber's brother's and cousin's pictures, so I think I'm going to do that now.

kk bye

mayors and mayhem

Here's some interesting images from last week that I never really posted. This one is Carbondale Mayor Brad Cole talking to City Manager Jeff Doherty at a special city council meeting they called at Alongi's Italian Restaurant at University Mall where they ate lots of food and loosely talked about random things and got gift baskets. They were all dressed up and I was waltzing around in a sweatshirt and pullaway workout pants lol. It's so amusing to see old people think they're important!

This is AMANDA! For real, I was on a gameshow thing at the WSIU studios where the reporting and copy editing classes competed in a quizbowl kinda thing where we had to find AP stylebook errors in articles and advertisements and hit our little buzzer things and answer and it was all video taped in the fancy studio and we had clip-on microphones and we, Oliver Witte's class, totally blew away Wendy Weinhold's class 570-270, and then we faced Eric Fidler's copy editing class, and finding errors is like all they do, but luckily only one of them showed up and a guy from wendy's class joined him so it was us four on the two of them and we barely took the lead in the end and won like 370-330 or something like that. It was vicious, but WE WERE CHAMPIONS! and we each won free specialty pizzas and 2-liter sodas from Papa John's.
This one's more recent. In fact, it's like 7 hours old. I took it while I was leaving work for the first time and there was a pretty fiery sunset behind the communications building and I happened to have a tripod with me so I took some long exposures like this. Nothing all that awesome, but it's the thought that counts. It was ISO 100 for 10 seconds or something at like f/32 so you can see assloads of gross sensor dust all over the image, all in focus and dark, too.

Also, this is a picture of Dave Magallanes that I found on my computer! He's a photographer turned accountant who lives in Texas and hates his best friend Tom and never comes to visit him at SIU. Plus, he's single!

I took some pictures at a Delta Xi Phi Race & Reconciliation Panel today! What's that you say? Well, they had a guy speak and show a presentation about racism and stereotypes and there was a panel of people who talked about racism stuff and discussed it with the audience and it was pretty interesting and entertaining. I don't have those pictures though, because theyre on my camera and I dont feel like getting them off.

Also, anyone who owns THE OFFICE season 2 on DVD should go to the deleted scenes on disc 3 and watch the scenes for the 3rd episode and watch Dwight shoot out a window in the warehouse with his spud gun, cuz it made me laugh so hard I died.

That is all.

TB

nothing

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I haven't been blogging much. It's the end of the school year and I've been studying studying studying for all those exams and turning in revisions of my papers and working extra hard on lots of productive activities! LOL YEAH RIGHT! Actually I've just been playing Call of Duty 4 so much I can barely see straight anymore! It's great, I don't even have to go out! I have a few assignments this week and I need to turn in a video Tuesday and finish a paper for Tuesday, so hopefully I'll have some things to post. I can't believe it's only 11:22, I feel like its 3 in the morning. I guess that's what happens when it rains all day and you fill up on Irish Creme and rank up on COD4 10 times before going to sleep.

Also, I'm working on senior pictures. and reading a book. and reading another book. and recording some music for video. and planning a trip to Cairo this week to record audio.

That's it.

TB

cars and balloons

Okay, I haven't blogged in awhile. Mainly because I've been reading a book and writing this paper about it for my Islamic Civ history class. Also, I've been playing Gears of War and reading Stephen T. Colbert's new book " I AM AMERICA (AND SO CAN YOU!). " Lots has been happening though! These images are from the SIU Automotive Technology Labs in Carterville, part of the College of Applied Sciences. The whole SIU automotive program is out there. They have lots of cool cars and state-of-the-art equipment, but the buildings were built in pre-war 1930s and are crumbling on the outsides.

And, anything negative about SIU gets top priority at the DE so, STORY! I got to go out to the auto place and tour around with some professors/administrators and take pictures of the crappyness surrounding the place. It's a really great program (they get $250k worth of new cars donated to them to screw with/learn on every year) and it's a shame the facilities are so old and run-down. I would love to see them get paved lots, new brick garages with working doors and classrooms and offices with working climate control and plumbing.

There is this one building that used to be the welding lab, but it's so deteriorated that they can only use part of it for storage. The rest of the building is useless, because the ceiling's caved in and there's water everywhere and the walls are so soft you can put your fingers through them.


Most the cars that had been donated to the school were new or close to new, like this '07 pontiac solstice. They also had a nice '07 eclipse spyder that had been given to them because the factory didn't like its color scheme. Lots of newer hondas, fords, toyotas, just about anything. Almost makes me want to take auto classes. They don't offer a minor though, and the program's pretty tight. They only accept about 45 new students every year, and they've already had 70 some apply for next fall.
I think a picture from this story is running in tomorrow's paper.

This is Vanessa Webb. Vanessa had a son named Corey Williams. Corey died almost 8 months ago when he was struck by lightning on the Carbondale Community High School track. Today would have been his 19th birthday. They had a small memorial gathering in memory of him and sang happy birthday and released 19 balloons into the air with happy birthday messages written on them with sharpies. Vanessa said she's cried everyday since Corey was killed.

Vanessa cried as she spoke to reporters and students about Corey. This photographer, from the Carbondale Times, had apparently spent some of the day in the school and with Vanessa because she came out with her when they first arrived.

This is one of Corey's little brothers, who I believe is also named Corey, only Corey Webb instead of Williams. There were two little brothers, a little sister, and the mom and dad, along with 30 ish students at the memorial, which was held after school got out.

This is students writing messages on balloons, along with Corey's other little brother, who I think is named James. You can see Corey's little sister in the back right.
This is Vanessa handing out balloons just before letting them go.

This is 12 of the 19 balloons, floating away into space. Not a very good picture, I know, but just to show what everyone saw as they stood silently for a long time watching them go. It was a sad shoot. One of the guy's from the Southern Illinoisan had a really nice Canon HDV camcorder that I wanted to swipe and run away with. Not too much nicer than my A1U, couple grand or so.

In other news, I GOT AN INTERNSHIP! That's right! Got the call back today from Sandra at the Hutchinson News in Hutchinson, Kansas, and I'll be moving there in January to work 40 hours a week as their photo intern until May! I'll get 6 credit hours for it and take a couple classes online I think, So i'll remain a full-time student and keep all my financial aid moneys. 40,000 people live in Hutchinson and the paper serves 39 counties stretching across the Colorado and Oklahoma borders. So some travel might be involved! Good thing I have a new Camry. Also, January through May in south central Kansas might get me some awesome weather features! A great place to start real-paper staff experience I think and I'm so excited I wish I could move out there now.

That's it for tonight. I'm tired. Bedddd.....

TB

SIU 30, EIU 11

First round of the playoffs for the Salukis today, victory over Eastern. It was cold. And somewhat of an uneventful game. Salukis move on and play again at home next week. Didn't have any long glass available, so I shot it with my 70-200 and 2x converter.


TB

Nov. 14

Here's the feature photo I turned in today of Louis Butcher of Carbondale putting up Christmas wreaths and trees down University Avenue. An hour or so later Anthony came in with shots from a motorcycle accident, so my feature got bumped to the inside of the paper somewhere near the back, printed black and white. Oh well, at least it ran.

Here's Paul, a homeless guy wrapping a cigarette, at the only homeless shelter in Carbondale, the Samaritan House. I went to the shelter with reporter Dave Lopez (he and I have been paired up a lot lately) for a story that will run Friday about national homeless rates dropping and how that doesnt reflect in Carbondale because it's sort of the oasis of southern illinois when it comes to humane services.

This is Larry Fink, a homeless man from Normal, Ill., stopping in for lunch. I was really intimidated by a lot of the folks having a meal at this shelter, but Larry seemed open enough to talk to about his life.

Sharon O'Daniell, a worker at the Samaritan House. She was working in the kitchen and handing out meals to people coming in. She complained a lot about how hot it can get in there during the day and how the place is always too cold or too hot, no inbetween. I realize in all these pictures, the subjects are on the right side of the frame, but not all the pictures from the trip are like that.

This is a picture I took today of the Dean of the College of Engineering William Osborne who's retiring in January. He's only been here at SIU for two anda half years, but he's had some heart problems and he's gonna retire early and take a year-long cruise called "the North American Loop." I called his office today and had to leave my number for his secretary to call me back, but an hour or two later I was running out of time so I went there myself and was able to get some shots of him writing a letter at his desk.
Heres another shot I took today once again on assignment with David Lopez at Trueblood Hall, a dining hall over by the Towers (dorms) where Carbondale and SIUC police officers were sitting out in the cafeteria so students could come up and ask them anything about what they do and why they do as they do. Only problem was, no one came up to ask them anything. They were there an hour anda half and nobody in the dining hall knew why. I guess they do it every month and they advertise it in the residence halls, but they don't always have much interest from the students, which seems to be the focus of Dave's story.

That was really it from today. Alex, Scott and I went to Lone Star and had lots of appetizers and beers. Also, Jason bitched like he always does.

He knocked on my door at about 11 p.m. and was like ' is this ur pizza box and ice cream thing out here?' (yes.) 'You want to clean it up?' (no.) 'Seriously?' (seriously.) 'Well we have this inspection tomorrow and you need to clean up your shit and we never see you do fucking anything and you need to step it up' so I go out there just to humor him, overlook alex's pizza box on the floor, overlook Scott's pizza box on the counter, and get mine off the table along with the little ice cream cup next to it and throw it in a trash bag, throw the spoon in the sink full of dirty dishes i've never used, and say ' doing nothing's better that bitching all the time' and he's like ' so you do both? ' and I ignored his idiotic comment and went back in my room.

At least two times a day, literally, he asks me to turn down my music and/or game I'm playing, because he's always sleeping during the day and for some reason he thinks that means everyone needs to be quiet. He shuts my door. Even though my music's never half as loud as his is, I turn it down for him because I actually give (gave) a shit about how he feels, like a good roommate should. But, when he's awake, he plays loud as hell music, comes out, bitches, goes back in, plays more loud as hell music. repeat. Right now, it's 2 am. on the nose. 2. I hear his music playing in his room and I hear him walking between the bathroom and his room constantly shutting doors.

He's constantly complaining, he has no consideration for his roommates, he plays loud disruptive music 12 hours a day, he doesn't pick up his mail because he expects us to bring it to him, he always asks for rides, and he pisses on the damn toilet seat. Seriously, Jason. Grow up or get the fuck out of our apartment. We've wanted to sign the form to get him moved all semester, and I think soon we're gonna do it. Soon, like tomorrow.

TB

faces of the DE

I didn't really take any pictures today. I went out looking for homeless people to take pictures of for this story about how national homeless rates have dropped or something, but the only homeless guy I found was walking along the highway and he looked really scary so I didn't stop. I took my digital rebel with me to the 4 o clock meeting for some reason, with my 50 1.4 mounted on it and took some pictures of DE staff standing/sitting outside and in the office. Pictured above is photo editor Ryan Rendleman, left, and photojournalism instructor Phil Greer. The 50 1.4 is a really sharp lens, and even though the autofocus on it is broken, I like to use it every now and then or force myself to use it and I usually come up with nice images. Ryan couldn't quit looking at this picture, he said it was like a senior picture and he wanted copies.

This is DuVale Riley, photographer, during the meeting .

This is Eugene Clark, city writer, he was trying to look away and would probably be really pissed if he knew this was on here.

Phil.Edyta Blasczyk, photographer. She's from Poland!

Dave Lopez, city writer, once again, would probably be pissed to see this.

I don't remember her name, but shes a Pulse writer I think. Pulse is like our entertainment section.This ones the best. James Durbin, photographer.

There's actually like 55-60 students that work for the DE, so this is in no way a complete photo collection. Maybe if I get inspired, I'll work to take good pictures of everyone and release a coffee table book for everyone to have. Won't happen though. At most, I'd take pictures and put em on here.

I also took pictures of the 14 mm lens because I have to give it back to Phil tomorrow and now anyone who gives a damn can see how crazy lookin it is.
That's it.

TB

re-arranged

I rearranged my room today. Had to clean it first too. Took like 2 hours of work all together. All I really did was trade spots between the computer desk and the bed. Now my bed's by the window. Not sure if I'll really like it. But, change is good. I also moved my little stand thing for all my battery chargers and extra camera whatsits to the corner and left room in my closet for my guitar/violin so thats a good thing too. there was extra space by the end of the bed and i needed something to put there.

Here's a picture I was asked to take yesterday of a lady named Helen Deniston, who's been a Carbondale resident for over 60 years and who's husband was a WWII veteran. That's her framed silk map of France that was sewn into her husbands uniform lining while he fought overseas. We only had about 20 minutes to take pictures, she had somewhere to go so I got some shots of her WWII stuff.


So, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna start shooting standard definition video instead of HD unless I'm really goin for framegrabs, because I only ever really shoot video for web purposes and it doesn't have to be big anyway and it takes forever to convert HDV down to a low-res quicktime movie. It seems I have to export a movie like 6 different times before I get it at a filesize small enough to upload to the web. I wish Final Cut Express had a thing that told you how big the video size was gonna be BEFORE you spend a hour rendering it.

SIU Football vs. ISU

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I shot the whole football game on video Saturday. Salukis won 34-24 against Illinois State, who's a big rival, so that was cool. Didn't turn my 1D on once, thought I had it slung over my shoulder the whole time with my 70-200. I roughed together this video of plays from the game, but I don' think it's gonna be on siude.com, mainly cuz I should've had it done sooner and done some audio with Sean if I wanted it on there.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - "Mile High Club"

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I also have a little more Call of Duty 4 footage for Episode 2 of "Tom playing COD4"! Sure, I've beaten the game 3 times over by now, but I've tried and tried and tried and TRIED to beat the final epilogue mission, a mission after the credits which is a quick run through a hijacked airplane, on the hardest difficulty in which you only have 60 seconds to save the VIP before the plane explodes. I literally tried this mission over and over again for nearly 5 hours the other night and probably 3-4 hours worth today. Obviously a clip on here will only show a fraction of my work and frustration. I've improved/changed my tactics since this video, but it shows the gist of what goes on. You have to run fast, dodge bullets, kill/blind lots of terrorists and get through the plane, up the stairs, and back through the plane within 60 seconds and It's near freakin impossible.

The videos involved with the two paragraphs above ought to be on here soon. They take forever to export and upload, so.. maybe tomorrow.

That's all for today. I went to Wendy's earlier for food and my Pibb was flat.

TB

Tom Playing COD4 - Episode 1

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - "Crew Expendable"

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Ok so I made my own video of me playing Call of Duty and I'll probably make more because it's fun and that way all the people how there that don't play video games or act like they can't afford to buy call of duty 4 will get to see what they're missing.

This is Episode 1! It shows the opening Prologue mission right after a short training session where the SAS attack a ship carrying a WOMD. The whole mission takes 7-10 mins to play through, but I've shortened it to 4 mins or so to reduce filesize. For some reason the background rendered for 9 mins, so the last 5 minutes of the video is blank. You dont have to watch that part.

It's pretty low quality and I wish I could host my own videos without size restrictions cuz it sucks having such a nice video camera and only being able to show shit quality video.

TB

the 14

After a month and a half or so of waiting for Southern Illinoisan intern Claudette to turn in the Canon 14 2.8 lens to the journalism department, I was finally able to check it out! Not only is it the strangest looking lens, but it is the widest piece of glass I've ever shot with. I'm going to shoot a roll of film on it as well, just for fun. It is intensely wide! Wouldn't mind having one if I had an extra $1800 to toss up for it.

And sharp! These are a bunch of pictures I took while walking to class with Scott yesterday. He and I are in the same HISTORY OF EAST ASIA TO 1800 class MWF at 2p.m. I took them while walking, so obviously none of them were planned or thought of beforehand.

The lens is particularly nice for close ups, in my opinion. Close ups of naturey things or people. And of course it's good for landscapey scenes and architecture. It's aspherically corrected, so the distortions are lessened, but it's still 14 mm so it's distorted.


It was a good week for the photojournalism dept. at SIU. Journalism signed on ex-editor for National Geographic Bruce Baughman as a second pj instructor! He'll be teaching next semester and I hope to be in one or two of his classes. He says they're rough and we better be ready for pain and if we don't have a decent portfolio of images before taking his class, we will by the time we're done. He can be seen on the right side of this image and the previously lone photojournalism instructor Phil Greer, ex-Chicago Tribue, can be seen on the far left. I look forward to having classes with both of them next semester (internships pending), because these history classes are killing me.

As far as my actually 'working' shoots for this week so far, they haven't been all that exciting as I talked about saturday or friday or monday, whenever it was. This was a campus minister talking about the different levels of happiness and how they relate to human dignity. It was a very interesting presentation and I enjoyed it. Although i had to miss the 8-9pm handouts of Call of Duty 4 preorders at Gamestop to shoot it. I got the game the next day. It worked out.


This is SIU's Athletics Director Mario Moccia talking to the USG (student government) last night about student fee increases to help pay for a new athletics facility. new football stadium, paying to move other fields, building new fields and courts, stuff like that. i think the senate mostly thought something better could be done with new student fees to improve the school's academics, such as finishing Morris Library and that the new stadium etc. could be put on the back burner. This is Dr. Lietz, at the same meeting, talking to teh USG about other fee increases to help pay for Saluki Way, and was a guest speaker who answered questions the senate had regarding increases.

This is student senator Brandon Allen, who submitted a resolution last night to prevent university staff from wearing Confederate flag clothing while working for the university. The senate held a debate which lasted 15 minutes exactly and held a vote on the issue. 10 voted no, 12 voted yes and 3 votes were invalid. The resolution did not pass because a majority of the senate hadn't voted yes.


The debates were heated and senator Allen was disgusted with how the other senators reacted to his resolution. He claimed to have over 1,600 people backing his resolution and that the opposing senators were responding in a way that reflected their personal opinions, not for the benefits of the students they represent. If you wish to learn more about the resolution, I'm sure you can contact Brandon Allen directly via the SIUC people finder at www.siuc.edu.

Also, today they ran a currents of 'fall photos' that looked like this in the center spread of the paper. They used one photo from each photographer and mine was the one in the bottom left corner of the leaves. I wasn't very happy with it, I thought I had better photos than that and they didn't use any of my feature photos from the weekend. They keep asking for features but every time I turn in some, they don't use them and the next day they're no longer 'fresh'.

Also, today they ran a feature Jason Johnson took of a guy playing with his dog, almost identical to some of the shots I turned in the other day that were never used. I wouldn't say Jason's photo was bad, but he seems to have multiple feature photos in the paper every week.
Oh well, can't complain. I have an amazing job and there's no way I'm going to stop myself from being the best i can be because thing don't go the way I would want them to. Video games, on the other hand, very well may hamper my career as I will never give them up but I spend lots of time on my mac/pc and new playstation 3. I'll save my personal review of Call of Duty 4 for another blog, because it's gonna be good and I've talked a lot already, but I've got to say it's the most amazing game I've ever played. Period. Here's an awesome video off youtube from the prologue of the game, where the opening credits roll and it shows the assassination of the middle eastern ruler through his eyes, but the player does the looking around.

Not only are the graphics "the most photo-realistic... ever seen" (GameInformer), the original score is by Harry Gregson-Williams, amazing composer who did the scores for Kingdom of Heaven, Chronicles of Narnia, all the Shrek movies and all the Metal Gear Solid games.


Out.

TB