New Album

wassup world!! SGM presents Damone - Love. Lust. Lies

please download and support my music!!

Love. Lust. Lies

Album/Mixtape Cover!!

Check out the cover art for my mixtape/album Love. Lust. Lies
Coming July 25th!!

Don't forget about my music Here and listen to it all!!

Photographed by: L.A.M.E.

Edited by: Shawn Carter

New Song!! "Stay"

Hello anyone who actually visits this page.
I have released the Love single off of my mixtape "Love, Lust, Lies"
Check it out!

If you like it, please share it and also >> Download <<
Show me love!!

Extra Credit Soundscape

The soundscape I made is about a city under attack by an evil monster.  It starts with a woman getting ready to start her day in her New York apartment, when all of a sudden, chaos releases itself on the city and destroys everything in it's sight.


Hope you enjoy it!!


Problem: sooo, Blogger doesn't allow audio uploading (HUGE FLAW!!!) so here it is in streamed from via Audio Farm.

New Song

Hey Guys
If you have time to check out my new song you definitely should!!!

                                

And if you like it, here is the link to Download!!!

Mixtape comes out Early July called "Love. Lust. Lies" so look for it!!

Twitter is @GenuinelySmooth so follow me!!

Animation Deconstruction

The two shows that I chose to write about are Family Guy and Nickelodeon's new show Legend of Korra.  I chose these two shows because they are of different genre and format.  Family Guy has a more American style drawing style, while Legend of Korra uses the popular Japanese style of anime.  Both shows have comedy in them, but Legend of Korra is more drama based than Family Guy, which is usually pure comedy than it is serious.

The color used in both shows range from all the colors in the book, but they each have a set focus of colors in the pictures provided above this explanation.  In the pictures of Legend of Korra, (bottom two) they use the hues of brown and red the most.  These colors are strong and give a feeling of power.  They are also bright and use little saturation from the original colors.  Saturation is used in the fire picture just to show the intensity of the fire being thrown around.  In the Family Guy pictures, (upper pictures) the hues are a bit more diverse.  The hues dabble in green, blue, pink, yellow, red and white.  Saturation is used pretty heavily in these only because the colors have to be brighter because it is a happier show.  The main difference in color between the two cartoons is the brightness in both.  Family Guy has brighter colors because it is a comedy and is made to make you feel good.  Bright colors help bring out that feeling.  Legend of Korra uses darker colors to show the seriousness of the show and to show that it is not something to usually be taken as a joke.

The lighting is not similar at all between the two shows.  They're actually the exact opposite of each other.  Family Guy has bright lighting for the most part with having dark parts on occasion. legends of Korra has more dark parts than bright, but like i said before, it is a more serious show.  

Movement for both is pretty horizontal.  This is because they are both cartoons and there is not much you can do with movement in a cartoon.  There are points where they overlap each other but it is not very often that it happens.

Storyboard

Storyboard

Overhead Shot

In this scene, the director follows all of the rules of camera placement throughout the scene.  If you do not know what scene I am talking about, take a look at my third post to watch and compare.  They did not take the camera past the 180-degree line while the two characters were in the house.  The camera did change in rotation in the house, but did not cross that line to make the shot inconsistent.  It did break the 180-degree line when they shot outside by doing a complete turn to behind the character.  It was a good break of the rule because it gave the scene a different point of view from both the actors inside and the actor outside getting questioned.  Rule of thirds was not really used for this scene.  I did notice it being used during the outside and inside scene.  When the camera was centered behind Reggie outside, the way the camera is placed makes you focus on Marcus on the right and Mike on the left.  This was a good use of the rule because the back of someone’s head is not something you want to focus on during a shot like that.  The 30-30 rule was not really used in this scene so much because there was not any real face to face dialogue, and the dialogue that was swiveled on a 180-degree angle and not a 30 degree angle.  The director did break the role for the 180-degree line but it was very effective, also the use of the rule of thirds was very effective.  The actors where chosen to perfection for the shot and made the camera angles work for them and to move forward the movie.  Also, this is one of my favorite movies so if you have not seen the whole movie, I advise you see it and enjoy it.

Song Deconstruction

For this blog i will be using the song Somebody That I Used to Know by Gotye and There With You by Ne-Yo

Goyte – Somebody I Used to Know

Phase 1

Tempo: Medium

Source: The percussion is supplying the rhythm.

Groove: Makes you feel the person’s pain that he goes through with the song

Phase 2

Instrumentation: Guitars and drums and the funny little pad sound in the back are what make the song.

Organization: The song starts off slow and picks up with intensity as it goes along and drops back to silence

Emotional Architecture: It starts off slow and gets strong at the emotional part where you’re supposed to feel the most pain.

Phase 3

Balance: Both high and low frequencies were used interchangeably.

Width: The song was balanced for the entire song, not a lot of panning going on.

Depth: Song used many instruments at different parts of the song with level volume.

Ne-Yo – There With You

Phase 1

Tempo: Medium Tempo

Source: Rhythm comes from the piano and the percussion

Groove: Gives off of a comforting vibe to the song as well as a relaxed tune.

Phase 2

Instrumentation: Many different instruments: piano, guitar, bass and drums.

Organization: It keeps the same tone throughout the song so the organization is pretty straightforward.

Emotional Architecture: Feels relaxing and calming. It wants to take you away to another land with its melody.

Phase 3

Balance: All frequencies were used in sync.

Width: the piano seems to pan left to right pretty rapidly.

Depth: everything is level and at a good volume.

These songs are two completely different songs, each from a different genre and different artists.  However, they do have some similarities with the fact that they both talk about past pain from other people.  The song Somebody That I Used to Know has to deal with people who were once close, but are now complete strangers.  It explores the pain of both the man and the woman in the situation and how one has moved on while the other has not.  In the song There With You, Ne-Yo sings about the girl he is talking to, and how she wants to get away from the world that she lives in to a paradise better and beyond.  The woman is hurting from her environment and longs for something better.  Both songs share a certain aspect of pain, but the lyrical content of them as explained above is entirely different.  As looked at by the listening phases above this, the songs are from two different genres with the melodies moving in different ways.  The first song uses its melody to make you feel the pain that the artist is portraying with its lyrics.  In There With You, the melody attempts to take you to another land and into the mind of the woman he’s talking about.  Both of the melodies in my opinion succeed in their uses of the melody.  I can feel the pain of Gotye in his lyrics and the melody to accompany his feelings of being forgotten after something beautiful had ended.  Ne-Yo takes me away into the fantasy world of the woman’s mind and her want to be taken away to another world, to her utopia.  Goyte uses intensity a little more than Ne-Yo in his song.  For example, during the hook of his song he brings more instruments and turns up the volume on all of the instruments and he screams the lyrics of his song at the top of his lungs to intensify the feeling of his pain.  Ne-Yo just keeps the same mood in the entire song so there is no real change because once you get into the land of her mind, then that’s where you would want to stay.  I like both songs equally so I cannot say that I like one better than the other.

BLOG 3 Reggie

In this scene from one of my favorite movies, the boy in the red is taking Marcus' daughter on the first date, but they're not letting him get off that easy.  The scene uses a casual listening mode because you can see everything that is happening on the screen.  Every sound is heard and you know where it is coming from and what the source of the sound is.
For the space in the blog, it uses both deep space and flat space as well.  Deep space is used when Mike enters the scene and he is deep in the house so his voice sounds farther away than Marcus and Reggie do.
It becomes flat when all three of them are standing in the door way and also when there's only Marcus and Reggie standing in the door having a conversation.

The space of the scene is also shaped with direction in when the characters move from room to room.  When they are far away from the camera they become quiet and when they are closer then they are louder and sound clear.

The space also shaped into an emotion, which comes off to me as fear and comedy.  They want to scare the boy into treating Marcus’ daughter right at the same time, they’re just having fun with him because they can.

Find Your Howl

In the article Find Your Howl, Jonathon Flaum tells two different stories dealing with the same subject: finding your true self.  For this, I will summarize his part II of the article


In the article, Jonathon starts off by summarizing the previous story about Mumon the wolf in his own words.  After that paragraph he goes on to begin his reminiscent series of his fifth grade days.  Here he talks about a student by the name of Nick Thompson and his teacher Ms. Horowitz.  He isn't too fond of his teacher and even still after so many years later.  Nick writes a story about a tiger, which ends up being filled with deeper meaning and he becomes the teaches favorite and the only one to get an A on the assignment.

There is apart of the song US Placers by Child Rebel Soldier that speaks to me as a creative person and it is the hook of the song.  It goes as quoted: (But they love it and they love it). The more you try to erase me, (And they love it and they love it). The more that I appear, oh, (and they love it and they love it). The more, the more you try the eraser, The more that You appear.  This part of the song speaks to me the most because that is how I would like to be as an artist in the media world.  I want to be the one that everyone loves to hear about all in a good way.  I want to be the one that people want to not see all the time, but cannot avoid me because of my popularity. 

Keeping this quote in mind gives me inspiration to continue to be the best that I can in what I do and to never give up trying.  The song is performed by two of my favorite rappers, Kanye West and Lupe Fiasco, and it also features one of my favorite producers, Pharrell.  I look up to these guys to be as good and as great as them one day.  I want to be an inspiration to other upcoming artists like they are to ones coming up now.  If I am lucky, I will be able to work with them on some of my future projects.

Another reason this line inspires me, not only because of the context of the lyric, but also the way the song is made.  The instruments are used in such a unique way that it makes you want to listen to the song over and over until you learn all the words yourself.

Overall, the song is great and it is one of my inspirations to continue to be an artist with media, and I hope to go as far as I possibly can during my lifetime.