A Jazzy thing

For the 1 minute advert assignment I chose this (picture above) non-fiction book. Well I firstly was searching for an average but fun cook book, but being bad in research I found none and so I opted for a musical book. Being a novice piano player and jazz lover I tried searching for a book that fits both and I found this one to be an interesting product for an advert.

The benefits it offers as suggested by vast reviewers is that it's designed for beginners to teach in simple and fun steps to understand and play jazz on piano. It inspires music students into the world of jazz with activities and exercises, which eventually lead to solos, rhythm and improvisations.  This without doubt is this products USP for it opens a new and vast musical opportunity with an easy to follow guide.

The book also comes with a full-length CD  which apart from having audio representations of what the student is supposed to do, it provides interesting exercises and some accompanying trio tracks for the student to experiment and jam. Not many books about jazz for piano provide anything like this. Actually I have found none, but I guess my research doesn't count since I'm not good at it.

For does who seek a more advanced approach in playing jazz on piano, this is not their book. It is strictly for beginners and teachers (to use in their lessons), though the same author (Charles Beale) has his own franchise of jazz books in teaching piano, most of which target a more advanced audience.

I already got some ideas on how to tackle an advertisement for this but I won't work on them until further research on a target audience and such, is conducted.

Giovan out!

Film Appreciation...NOT

Every Friday at 10:00 am we (media students Ext Dip) gather unsupervised in the media auditorium to watch a selected film, which we have to finally analyse, discuss and report in our reflective journal. I personally found the idea quite interesting and helpful. At last I watched a De Sica film (which I never had the chance to search for and actually watch), Ladri Di Biciclette and the Godfather trilogy (still ongoing). It is a smooth experience to look forward to every week since everybody is so interested, quiet and mature during these hours... Yeah right! Here's an example of what truly happens during these film appreciation hours:




I blurred the video on purpose, I didn't want anyone to take this personally. But you can still see/hear people gathered round, talking about whatever. Another playing randomly the piano, two reenacting a fight from Fight Club  and others just walking dementedly around the class. All of this and more happened during part 2 of The Godfather...
"What!? How can anyone not care about The Godfather!?"
Strange but true, and the worse part is I couldn't understand shit what the characters were saying and what was actually happening. Some even packed everything up in a rush, as if Vito Corleon himself came out of the screen with an F'ing Uzi to turn us all into pulp, when at 2/3s of the film it faded to black into a brief pause, and were like "oh come on will this movie ever end!?" when it started out again. Some may say that they already saw the film or that they're not interested in that type of film, even brought up the excuse it had no subs which is fair enough because the films sound isn't that much clear.  Still I think it no excuse to interrupt people like myself from trying to watch it, right?

I feel disgusted by this behavior and am thinking of not coming to this class anymore and watch the chosen films comfortably at home were there's no one jumping around, randomly playing the piano and the rest, not even from my 3 year old niece. I guess the only solution for this chaos would be the company of a lecturer during these films. At least some control could be obtained... or not. Whatever the case I felt that this had to come out of my living skeleton chest, and before I hear that anything HAS changed for the better I won't be attending the class, I don't have the problem of loosing stipend because the "whoever takes care of it" decided I was not "eligible". So, that's it I guess. If anyone finds this post offensive, unethical or inappropriate for the blog just comment, leave your feedback and if said to delete it I will do so.

Giovan out!

Something about Infographics

Infographics- short for information graphics- is basically when a set of information and/or data is given in a graphical/pictorial presentation. The picture above is a simple but good example of how things we see everyday are presented in picture instead of text. The pictures are generally simple for the eye to recognize what they present without reading .

Text can be quite an issue when for example a business man is presenting the marketing success of a company. That's where infographs come in, to simplify the said presentation for the audience attention and understandability. Also it makes life a lot easier for the presenter to explain whatever he/she is try to.

I could go into more detail but it's as simple as that basically .
Giovan out!