It's Vidcon!

Hey,
it's only about 10 hours left!!!!!!!!!
I can't tell you THAT much about Vidcon. I can try though. I'm not a successful Youtuber. I wish I was.
Let's start with this: Anthony from Smosh answered my tweet a few hours ago!
I just asked how they can edit 3 videos during the week. The answer was: "Lots of sweat. Lots of tears. And lots of blood." Now, that's a word. Because isn't it aweful how long any video needs to be uploaded, cut or converted?!

What is Vidcon? Don't tell me you don't know what that is o.O
It is the biggest meeting of vloggers and internet artists in the entire world. It is, where else, in Los Angeles. And I tell you: It is huge!!!!!
No idea how many poeple will be there, but they have about a hundred speakers. Get the entire list here:
http://www.vidcon2011.com/speakers/
Is your favorite Youtuber in there?
But be careful, they are introduced by their real names, not their nicknames. For example in Meekakitty's text her alias is not even written. I recognized her on the picture. I mean, who wouldn't recognize that hair? =-)

What is Vidcon about?
Well, Internet videos of course. If you are there, you can learn how to script, shoot, edit them and make them popular. There will be experts about programms like FinalCutPro (wish I had it), there will be comedians and singers. In the freetime people hang out, chat and - of course, vlog^^

Remember I started with the tweeting between Anthony and me? What the firetruck! They are not having a speech at this year's Vidcon!!!! Well, they probably already had a lot. And there are many more good Youtubers.

Some of my faves:
Charlieissocoollike

Danisnotonfire (on the left)

Elmify

 

Coldmirror

Freshhaltefolie

and of course Smosh......

Nigahiga is good, of course, but it's so.....well, everybody knows / loves it. It's the same with Shane. Somewhen it's just getting boring.

Look through the homepage of Vidcon. It's awesome.
Or maybe some of you are even visiting it =)
Tell me.

http://www.vidcon2011.com/

Avada Kedavra! - end of an era

Who didn't hear it yet?
"It is...like....the end of an era."

That is exactly what many Potter-fans say after they've seen the 8th and last movie of the series.
The books are already many years old. I remember my mom read the first one to me and then when the second got published I made a deal with her:
We'll switch with the reading. One chapter she read for me, the next one I have to get through by myself. It took quite a while, but it worked. The third one I read almost all alone. 4th and 5th were done very fast, 6th and 7th took me a time. I got a bit bored by the long discription of the characters' past.
The movies are long, too. But don't tell me you could read a Potter in 2 hours! :-)

Last Tuesday my best friends and I met in the city to watch HP 7 part 2. Stupid title. Let's say just: The epic end.
It was epic. The whole picture is dark, filthy, intense. Voldemort got a huge armee. In Hogwarts there's choas. People die and buildings get destroyed.

The best parts still are the ones up in the air. There is a big white dragon that rescues Harry, Ron and Hermoine without even noticing this. Later they are in that magical room in the school (I don't know the English name for it) and get chased by creatures made of fire. They find some brooms and escape the flames. It looks amazing.
The film is, of course, in 3D. It's not that kind of 3D-movie where they throw things in your direction for a fascinating effect. The third dimension is just built in the movie; it belongs together. It gets impressive when they race down a rollercoaster underneath Gringotts, but otherwise it just makes the film look more realistic and exciting. It should not disturb from the action.

If you're a Potter-Fan you will love the movie. If you're in love with book-details you won't. My friend's brother was mad that they cut the story of Dumbledore's sister or Sirius' letter. What the h***!!! They already made two movies out of one book! Somewhere they have to cut things!

Instead of every sentence from the book you can find emotion. Harry sitting in front of Dobby's grave, Ron and Hermoine becoming a couple, Neville and Mrs.Weasley having their hero-moments, Harry understanding Snape's actions and sufferings..... there is a big focus on those  human topics - which I think is just perfect. But that's maybe because I'm a girl.

At this point there is left to say: My friend and I suddenly realised: "Why is everybody in that movie so ugly?" Jup, they all look a little run-down. But when you think about it, it's clear why. They fear. They fight. There is not much time for shopping and beauty evenings. The Malfoys, Weasleys or Harry himself, they all have greasy hair and blood in their faces, dirty clothes, a tired look.
Well, it is not a model show. In the end: who cares?

We are the generation that grew up with the Hogwarts-kids. They have always been around our age. And before I was eleven, like many other fans, I hoped to get a letter from an owl. But I never wanted to go to Griffindor. It seemed to me that everybody got there, so it would be boring mainstream. Don't say I'm odd ^^

If you didn't see the movie yet: Do so!
And if you are going to: Wait to the very end. The last scene is the best one. You'll see why xD

I love cats - and there's no doing anything about it!

My name is bluecatpaw. So don't tell me you didn't know I love cats.
I not only love the animals. The musical is fantastic as well!

It was in early spring when I found videos of the Cats DVD on Youtube. I did not really watch them in order. Just the way I liked it. I didn't wanna watch the part with the Pollicles for a long time for the simple reason that Rumpus Cats looks so unbelievably stupid. I think, he hurts the honor of the Jellicles.

If you want to know:
The musical is already 30 years old. Webber was so young, when he wrote this.
The lyrics, by the way, are NOT by Tim Rice! They are from the poet T.S.Eliot. He collected them in "The Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats". I bought the book shortly after I became a Cats-Fan. Webber just added some melody to it and said,
he is very happy that Eliot's poems had such a musical rhythm. This made the job easy for him.
Is it really easy to write the score of songs like "Memory"?! Also amazing sound: "Old Deuteronomy".
My personal favorite song is "Magical Mr.Mistoffelees". You have to frickin watch this! It pays!

Last Sunday, July the 17th, it was THE day:
I was in the musical with my parents!
Never expected that, but Cats is still touring through Germany. They had so much request, they added a full week of shows in Mannheim. That's why I got lucky.
So we were in that tent, and I already knew every song (except "Growltiger's Last Stand", because that's not in the movie), but I was sooooo excited. It was nice in there. We sat in row 4. Very close to the stage. The actors run all over the place anyway.

Cats is just wonderful! The costumes are so confusing, after a while you forget, there are humans in there. The stage is almost round, has a lot of oversized trash and old cars, wheels, even an oven on it. The cats use that stuff to dress up as bugs, mice or dogs. At the very beginning a shoe falls from the ceiling. I guess a person threw it because the cats were meowing too loud at night^^
There is not a big story in cats. It's more about the music, the dances, the characters, the props. Basically the Jellicles meet once a year to select a cat, who gets the honor to earn another life. Of course they all want to have it. Grizabella is a cat who once was beautiful and famous. She sings the heart-breaking "Memory". All the cats hate her at first. But of course, in the end, she gets the new life.
Meanwhile the evil Maccavity kidnapps the leader Old Deuteronomy. It's not for sure, but fans say, Maccavity is Old D's youngest son. The older ones, Munkustrap and Rum Tum Tugger stayed friendly; just the youngest one freaked out. The magical Mr.Mistoffelees uses his powers to rescue the cat-daddy.
In the end, they are all happy.

I got you guys some pictures of my favorite cats. Part of them even is the German cast. But of some I couldn't find good pics. (alphabetical order)
So, here we go......

Bombalurina is a female cat who sings so amazingly in "Maccavity". Her sister or best friend (not sure) is Demeter. Bomba is always flirting with Tugger, Demeter hates him. But Bombalorina is a great singer and dancer and has a pretty red color.

Also many guys like her, for she moves elegantly and acts a little nasty. Some say, she's the kitten of Gus and Jellylorum. Do you think so?

This is Elektra. She is one of the young kittens. She doesn't play a big part, but I just think, she is cute and so normal. She dances, plays, laughs, is excited about the Jellicle ball,....she somehow reminds me of my best friends o.O

I give you: The marvelous Mr....Mistoffelees!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! *pang*

Even in the musical there were little light explosions when that kitten jumped around the junkyard. He is such a good dancer and has the most pretty jacket, with sparkling stones all over it. Misto is the hero of the story, because he brings Old Deuteronomy back to the Jellicles.

In the Internet there are rumors, he and Tugger would be gay. Well, maybe they are bi, but Misto likes Victoria and if the Tugger is gay, then I am Santa Claus!

Munkustrap - he is the oldest son of Deuteronomy and has the second highest position on stage. He leads through the story from beginning to end and does all that important stuff, like fighting Maccavity or telling the story of the dogs.

I love Munkustrap's coat. Grey tiger. Sadly there is no song about him.

For some crazy reason, Skimbleshanks was the one who made me think:

I want to perform Cats with my musical group.

The performance to the song with the train and stuff must be soooo fun. We'd even have somebody who could play him. And that's NOT a defamation! I'm serious.

For those of you who don't know: Skimble works at the train. He's a "Railway Cat".

Even if you wouldn't admit it:

Who does not like the Rum Tum Tugger?!

If you hate how he acts like a macho, then see how he plays the bagpipe, cuddles his dad or talks about his friend Misto. Tugger may be nuts, but he brings action on stage.

And I definitely want a mane like this! That must be great for winter. And also: did you know, Tugger is the last cat on stage before the musical ends? It doesn't really make sense. He just stands there and swings his tail in circles. I did that on my last Joseph-Show in the "King's Song" with a part of my skirt (it was made of scarves).

This is Tumblebrutus. I guess, nobody of you ever heard about him. He's never singing a solo and is never sung about. But he's great. From the way he acts, you can tell he is very young. The older toms have to stop him making fun of Bustopher Jones or Jennyanydots. He loves Deuteronomy almost as much as Tugger does and nobody makes such perfect somersaults, backflips and jumps as Tumblebrutus.

You can recognize him on his face, which is half white, half brown.

This is the best pic of Cats that ever existed!

It shows Etcetera, and she is not in the German Version of the musical.

Like Elektra (her best friend) she does not have a big part. She is just very very crazy (for Tugger).

In the original she is the one who screams so hysterically. And most of the time she has a stupid looking smile on her face. She is just funny, has so fuzzy arm warmers and pretty colors.

One word: cute.



Tumbling through sports and the web - but on stage she's ace!

Hi y'all.
I've got a friend from South Carolina. Her name is Hannah.
Hannah may be on national TV soon! She would deserve it!
She was in my grade in High School, she was in a musical with me (Joseph) and in the theater play "The Mousetrap" she played the part of the Stage Director.
Hannah is great. In my SC-year she was one of my best friends and now I think you should have the chance to get to know her.

Hannah loves music and is singing for years. She even wrote a lot of songs. Lyrics and melody.
You may know her from Youtube as singergirl246.
Today I got so lucky to be able to interview her. May all those "struggling unsigned artist" get famous! That's a dream of many. And who knows, whether not that particular girl from the Southern States will be the next superstar?

When did you start to play the guitar?
I've been playing for about 4 and a half years.

What's your favorite song to sing?
I love singing anything by Aretha Franklin or Christina Aguliera. They're both belty singers like me and I love their songs.

Which is the best musical you've ever seen/ been in?
 Seen Wicked, Been in High School Musical.


Which topic would you like me to blog about? I think it would be cool if you did a blog about struggling unsigned artists in the music business.

What are you unknowing about or untalented in?`I am untalented in every area of sports. lol Seriously, I can't do anything when it comes to sports.

 Would you go to a casting show like American Idol, The Voice or The X-Factor?Yes, I would. I'm actually going next week to audition in Charleston for American Idol. 

What are you going to do after High School? I want to definitely go to college and I want to study Musical Theatre or Music CompositionWhat's your favorite website?
 My favorite website as of now is Tumblr. I love the environment and you can just blog and blog about anything and everything. It's a fun tool to use.
My youtube profile is www.youtube.com/singergirl246

Here's the videos for my two favorite songs that I've written
My Emotionhttp://youtu.be/hdGtlIN2nKM

Youhttp://youtu.be/qqKmqtfrN6I


She is so right!
Young or plainly unsigned artists are really struggling. They are so talented, but it doesn't help, if nobody knows them. Please guys, subscribe to singergirl246. She is one of the people who made my exchange year a great experience. Spending time with her backstage is just great.
When there was the talent show in our school, I couldn't go there, because I already was invited to visit a Dance Show by the Fine Arts Center. Nevertheless, I heard Hannah singing after school and before theater practise started. I walked along the hallway and all I thought was: Who is singing that amazingly?!
How could I not regocnize her voice, until I opened the backstage door and saw her standing on the mike, singing "Natural Woman".
Go Hannah! You'll rock the nation!.

...but I wont stop until that dream is mine!

Hey y'all!

Did you ever dream of making a movie? Or did you dream of being in the picture? Or about going to the Empire State?
I sure did.
For many years I'm in that choir which performs on Gospel Concerts, in our town's theater or we are producing real musicals. They are only once every 2 years. I missed the last one, because I was in South Carolina. So I got to be on only one show with that choir. I mean, I was in a musical in SC as well. Joseph and the amazing technicolor dreamcoat. It's a long name for a musical, don't you think so? ^^
But it definitely was fun. And just by the way: I got the gypsy coat!

Still I was sad that I missed the show at home since I just love all the poeple and the location and the way we do our shows at home. So excited about next year!
When I started thinking about going into the show biz I dreamed of taking a camcorder and taping the rehearsals, our backstage problems and enjoyments. Papa-, Paparazzi =D
I didn't get to do it because I didn't have a proper cam until winter 2010, when I was already in SC. Just a few weeks later I got a mail from my friend at home: Another girl from the choir had done, what I was thinking of. Maybe you can say, I copied her idea. She never told me about making such a documentation. It's just that she is already studying Directing for a few years. She was Co-director in the musical I was in. Everybody who was in the last one, got to see her backstage-report. Me not. I was still in the States. So I mailed her and surprisingly she said I could get a copy of the report.
Until right now she's in the middle of her exam work and end-of-semester-production etc. She doesn't have a lot of time. But she promised, when this is done, I'll get a DVD. This means everybody else saw it - but nobody has it at home!

Sure, it will cost, it has to be shipped and it's half a year old. This doesn't matter to me. I'm just excited! This video will surely teach me a lot for own productions. And I can watch it over and over again until I know exactly what happened backstage.

At this point I want to thank the girl for her work and being so nice to me. It's not for granted that she gives me that copy. I could publish and sell it further. But I wont. For nothing in the world.
Good luck with your "exam"!!!!!

bcp

Monopoly

Hey everybody,
I'm sure you once in your life played that game called Monopoly.
There are hundreds of versions of it. I learned to play it with the street festival version called "Monopoly Junior" where you can buy bumper cars and merry-go-rounds. Or so I remember.
At home I have the "Monopoly Europe" where you can buy countries which are members in the EU. It's officially my game, but my brother plays it more often. I don't like the game. I don't give a lot for prosperity and banking. And when we were younger, we always started fighting, because either my lil bro was angry when he was losing or he got stuck up when he was winning.

What I really wanted to talk about is my newest amazing job at work. My boss had the idea to make a Monopoly for every worker in the office in a personalized way. He doesn't know whether his wish is realistic, cause first: It's expensive to make 25 of these games and second: what do you put on the fields? Customers? I don't think so. Collegues? Maybe. But they change. Magazines and websites? Or totally random stuff....like....birds? But that's not my problem. My job is it to write down all the details about the game. How many streets or train stations are there to buy, how much money bills are there of which kind and so on. I tell you: This is a fun job.
I have that big board here in front of me, counting paper money and writing texts about some prisons that will never exist that way. Buy the way I learned some facts about that famous game:

• A guy called Charles Darrow invented the game "Monopoly".
• There was already something similar in the 19.century. They used it in schools to teach business students or even show, how devastating monopolies can be.
• 1904, a person with the Name E.J. Magie made a game called "Landlord Game" which works by almost the same rules.
• Monopoly was "Game of the Century".
• It's printed in over 80 countries and 30 languages.
• By now they have it in a different version for almost every city.

The research-paradox

Meow.
Here's bluecatpaw.

Right now I'm sitting on my desk in my internship. I missed the one in 11.grade because I went to the United States and I wanted to make it up so badly that I applied from the states via a Powerpoint presentation.
It is a PR-agency. It also does a lot of Corporate Publishing (for very big customers even) and Direct Marketing. The first week was very busy. Today I have a little more sparetime. So I can blog - haha!

My jobs here vary. I had to take pictures, organize them on the hard-drive and delete old ones. I create letter heads, collect data from the employees or just listen to some presentation or meeting.
But my main-project is research. I didn't choose that. It just happened to be so, because you can't mess up a lot if you're just looking through the web for information.
It started with a restaurant-guide for the area. Then there came other topics along.
E.G.: Statistics about Social Media, tabloids, Online-Journalism, job recruiting-portals or even locations. For copyright reasons I'm not allowed to publish those statistics here in the blog. I just know that this teaches me a lot about our modern world. All those new words I find.....B2B, B2C, Web 2.0, Volontariat, e-commerce, SEO, Fox-Awards - just to name a few =)

My latest assignment was to research about how journalists use ipad-apps for their research.
You honestly don't find a lot about this o.O
There are just some lists about helpful apps for recording sound and videos, take notes or publish photos quickly. You also get almost every magazine and newspaper per app by now. The web just doesn't say anything about research-apps and how much they are used. Aren't there any? It only tells me about search engines like yahoo or bing - and of course google. Even about wikipedia or wikileaks. And 94% of all reporters use twitter to get their information. Oh yeah, that helps a lot. *sigh*

I'd like to be a journalist my own and I love those Ipads (although I don't own one).
Help me! Do you know any apps that journalists use for scanning through old reports, documentations, news or just facts? If there isn't one, I'm even luckier. This means we will start our app (I mean, it's made by that agency here) and be the only one on the market.

What I found so far: Zite, Meedia, Flipboard