Monthly Archives: October 2015

Lessons I Learned from Monsters

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I’m a long time horror fan. It’s a genre that’s been really influential in my life… mostly in positive ways. (Contrary to what some people would have you think about horror.)

Today I talk a bit about some of the lessons I learned from the classic Universal horror films I grew up on. Sometime down the road, I’ll probably do a few more like this, touching on some of the other big influences from the horror genre.

Odd things in today’s process:

  • Used a different mic, a lapel one, because there was too much noise coming from various neighbors. Not sure I’m completely digging how it sounds. One of these days, I’ll do some post-production on the audio… maybe…
  • When I went to write this, I discovered all of my websites were down. Apparently my entire hosting account was having some undocumented issue. An issue that resolved itself (after at least 20 minutes of me checking, double-checking, and triple checking things) by the time I got into a tech support chat (only a couple minute wait time). That was annoying.
  • The image of the monsters in the YouTube preview was grabbed some somewhere random online. It’s actually a crop of the cover of the Universal Classic Monsters: The Essential Collection [Blu-ray] (which I own and is awesome).

I didn’t get ahead like it’d planned over the weekend, so I’m, once again, flying by the seat of my pants, day to day. This may be a problem in a couple of days… we’ll see if I can crank out some extra content tomorrow and Wednesday.

For now, though, check out what I have to say about horror films making me a better person.

Don’t forget that you have some say over what goes on for the next 100 days… click the big green button below here to get to the page where you can submit topic suggestions and questions (so I know what kinds of things you want to see go on in these videos).

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Time… It Gets Away from You

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Really, I had a plan to get more done today.

But… I felt compelled to watch three out of four of the Scream movies last night, starting around 11 p.m. and, well… there went the rest of my day. (Especially considering I had to watch the fourth one, too, just to be complete.)

So now I’m nowhere near as far ahead on things as I’d planned on being. And I still have to figure out how I’m going to do the more complex bits of vlogging that I have ideas for without those getting in the way of the daily schedule. (And without giving into the temptation to buy a whole lot of neat toys to maybe use in the process…)

So, here’s today’s vlog, a quick look at Blood & Oil, a show I’ll definitely be tuning in for the second episode of, but don’t plan on watching regularly.

Don’t forget that you have some say over what goes on for the next 100 days… click the big green button below here to get to the page where you can submit topic suggestions and questions (so I know what kinds of things you want to see go on in these videos).

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Poking Fun the Right Way

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When it comes to TV–and entertainment in general–I tend to have a problem with mean-spiritedness. Sadly, that seems to be the baseline for “comedy” for a while now.

Every now and then, though, something comes along and does a really good job of poking fun at things. Galavant did a good job last season making fun of the musical and fantasy adventure tropes. Now, Scream Queens does that with everything horror.

This is more or less the successor to the classic Scream films (which leads me to wonder a little about the new Scream series I haven’t caught yet) and does a flat-out fantastic job of blending satire, trope-bending, comedy, and utter farce into a murder mystery plot full of characters that are fun to hate and would fit right in to a bunch of films I’ve seen over the years (few of which created such stereotypes–and humor–on purpose).

I held on to this review for a while, since I wanted it to be part of October’s spooky stuff… and it struck me as a good lead-in to talking about horror films in general. I think I’ll do a little of that tomorrow.

For now, though, check out today’s vlog.

Don’t forget that you have some say over what goes on for the next 100 days… click the big green button below here to get to the page where you can submit topic suggestions and questions (so I know what kinds of things you want to see go on in these videos).

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Heart Goes A Long Way

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I watch a lot of TV. Always have, probably always will.

All of you people who don’t watch TV? I’ve got you covered, don’t worry.

I used to be a huge fan of sitcoms. Going all the way back to Ozzie and Harriett. I grew up on the classics and basked in the glory that was the 80s and early 90s, “Must See TV” era.

And then, things changed. Somewhere along the way, sitcoms became… mean. They became self-centered. They became… Seinfeld. (Except most weren’t even vaguely funny to me.)

Sure, there were some ones that I watched… and even some I enjoyed… but, for the most part, I was more than happy to see them go and unpleasantly surprised when they got renewed (I’m looking at you, Last Man Standing). The few I did like were, more often than not, cancelled before they finished their first five episodes. (The back half of the seasons these days get dropped to Hulu, which, thankfully, usually lets us see the best–and never-aired–episodes of those shows.)

In today’s vlog, I talk about two of the new ones I kind of see potential in. (I’m also attempting to schedule the posting of this, since I’m not going to be home after work… let’s see how that pans out…)

Don’t forget that you have some say over what goes on for the next 100 days… click the big green button below here to get to the page where you can submit topic suggestions and questions (so I know what kinds of things you want to see go on in these videos).

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Made it to Ten! Now on to the Weird Stuff.

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So… we’re one tenth of the way into this project. I’ve learned a bit about Premiere Pro and how much time it actually takes to produce a ten minute video. (Man, those processing times are killer.)

It’s also October… which means we’re well on our way to Halloween. It’s the season for strange and unusual things. Now, those who know me, I’m into a lot of strange and unusual things. This is the time of the year when it’s actually acceptable.

That means I’m going to take the opportunity to share some of that here. Maybe even with some guests on here. I’ll be trying a few new tricks to make that happen… like pulling in video from Google Hangouts and/or Skype and maybe multi-camera setups.

But, before we really get into all that, there are a few more TV show reviews to go.

Today, though, here’s the vlog talking a little about the mini-milestone.

Don’t forget that you have some say over what goes on for the next 100 days… click the big green button below here to get to the page where you can submit topic suggestions and questions (so I know what kinds of things you want to see go on in these videos).

[jbutton size=”xxlarge” color=”green” link=”http://durosia.com/vlog-questions” newpage=”yes”]Come Ask a Question Here[/jbutton]