On a cold Saturday in New York City, the world’s largest train station came to a sudden halt. Over 200 Improv Everywhere Agents froze in place at the exact same second for five minutes in the Main Concourse of Grand Central Station.

Here are a couple of pictures of the hotel and the surrounding lounging areas. Notice the storm brewing in the last picture.

Royal DeCameron Montego Bay, Jamaica

These are some pictures of the area just outside the hotel. You [...]]]> I took a few random pictures around the hotel and then in the airport before we left the country.

Here are a couple of pictures of the hotel and the surrounding lounging areas. Notice the storm brewing in the last picture.

These are some pictures of the area just outside the hotel. You have to sign out with the security guard whenever you leave so that if you’re not back for a couple of days they can send a search party. In the first pic you can see a store called “Strawberry’s” which is where we bought all our souvenirs.

One last drink in the airport before heading out! Here were some interesting “spellings” we found. “Wata” (Water) is pretty obvious. Can you guess what “Farrin Cyaad” is?

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It ended up taking a while to get [...]]]> Alright…so this was [one of] THE stories of the trip. When we left Montreal, we decided that one day we would spend the entire day drinking and whoever lasted the longest would be the “winner”. We figured we would have a drink every 30 minutes as of 13:00.

It ended up taking a while to get our drinks sometimes so rather than 30 minutes, it ended up being “you took a drink as soon as you finished the last one (or even before)”. When we were on our 10th drink, E was making fun of us for drinking “girly mixed drinks”; little did he know that our drinks were much, much stronger than the beers he was taking. We had specified to the bartenders that we were Canadian as soon we we got there, so they knew what to do!

“Get Me Another Beer!”

Anyhow, I don’t put up with trash talk so I recommened if E was so brave, that we all take a shot of 63% rum without a chaser. E agreed…the minute we took the shot he puked. The minute he finished puking he had another beer! LOL We ended up convincing a bunch of people (about 10 more) to play our game with us! A gentleman from Texas came up to me and said (in a thick Texan accent): “Maaan, when ah saw yo friend pukin’, ah knew this was gon’ be a goood week!”

The Results

To make a long story short…this went on for the rest of the afternoon. Mo dropped off after ~12 drinks, E dropped off after 20, Daniel after 23. In the end, the only 2 left were myself (representing Montreal) and Andrea (representing Toronto). I lost by one drink. I finished up with 35 drinks in 5 hours and she had 36! That’s a drink every ~10 minutes, non-stop for 5 hours. Surprisingly, I wasn’t sick or even hung over at allthe next day! I drank a lot of water and ate a lot of rice at dinner! This folks, is probably why my tolerance is so high these days. I know my parents weren’t too proud of this story, but hey, we were on vacation…it’s all good!

Here’s a pic of Daniel, Eason and I before our competition started. Amber (in the 2nd pic) took part as well and in the last pic is Heather a [very cute] dentist I met on that day. Yes, you’ll notice I busted out the Sweden shirt to represent! Coincidentally, Amber’s mom was Swedish. The next day people told me that they were stunned that I was able to maintain completely normal cohesive conversations that evening.

The Chicken Fight

Making The Band

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You can pay 11 euro to take an elevator to the top or you can pay 3 something, walk up to the second floor, then if you want, pay the balance to get to the top. I wanted to walk up, so [...]]]> The second night, we decided to go up the Eiffel tower. Here’s the story:

You can pay 11 euro to take an elevator to the top or you can pay 3 something, walk up to the second floor, then if you want, pay the balance to get to the top. I wanted to walk up, so I got to the second floor, took some pics and waited in line.

I waited in line for about an hour and then noticed there was a second line on the other side. I realized that the line I was in was for people who had already paid 11 euro!! I took my chance and waited till I got to the front figuring I would explain myself if the guy gave me trouble. I handed the guy my ticket and luckily he didn’t say anything. I got to the top for 3 euros. On to the pics:

Here are a few pictures at the base of the tower.

This is something I found interesting: I’m used to cities like Montreal and Toronto where everything is lit up so I was expecting to see a lot of lights when I got to the second floor. I was wrong: there weren’t that many lights. In fact, the whole city looked a little grey, but it was nice.

These pics were when I arrived at the top and the last one is a shot of the structure as I was coming down the stairs.

The Eiffel Tower at Night

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“…Injured, Crippled or Killed…”

This was probably the scariest part of the day. We had to sign our names about 12 times on death waivers forms that [...]]]> I finally did it. I jumped out of an airplane at 3,000 feet on Saturday at the Parachute School of Toronto! Here’s how the day went…

“…Injured, Crippled or Killed…”

This was probably the scariest part of the day. We had to sign our names about 12 times on death waivers forms that kept repeating how dangerous this sport was and the high risk involved. It’s one thing to die, but I would NOT want to end up crippled!

Training

After signing all the forms I was fairly relaxed! There were about 25 people in the class and most of them were young. The last picture is the practice airplane where the showed us where to position our hands and legs before the jump. It’s a full day (10:00-17:00) of training to make sure you’re well prepared for the jump.

First pic is my cousin Johann and I getting strapped into the practice harnesses. In the second picture, the guy showed me a parachute malfunction and started shaking the harness (you feel turbulence when your parachute doesn’t open!). The last picture is when he showed me what happens if the cords get twisted. Apparently this “complication” happens about 50% of the time, so of course it happened to me when I jumped! Good thing we were well trained…

Waiting to Jump

Here’s a pic of my cousin and I, then a pic with his coworkers Sheila and Julian. Finally, in honor of the world cup, they were kicking around a soccer ball for a while. Portugal did end up winning that day, right Sheila?

Getting in the Plane

This was the plane we were going up in. I’m glad we were also trained on potential aircraft malfunctions! The second picture is with our “Jump Master” who came up in the plane with us. The last one is once we were loaded up into the aircraft. I’m in the back because I was jumper #4.

“Get Ready…GO!”

This is the command the Jump Master gives you at 3,000 ft. before you exit the aircraft. People suggested not looking down. I looked down with a big smile and thought: “This is going to be NICE!”. Although we were trained to arch our bodies and do a count apparently
first-time jumpers never count. I didn’t arch properly OR manage to do the count! As I mentioned earlier, my wires did end up tangled so I had to do the procedure where you pull the harness apart and scissor kick your legs until the cords get untangled.

The Landing

Once you’re out of the plane, you free fall for about 6 seconds before the parachute comes out. After that, you’re floating in the sky for ~3.5 minutes; it’s one of the most amazing, peaceful feelings in the world. Oh yes, if your parachute (and reserve) fails, you have 21 seconds before you hit the ground…what a pleasant thought. When I jumped out of the plane I had NO idea where I was, but we’re equipped with one-way radios and we get directions from people on the ground as to where we have to go. Apparently first time jumpers usually don’t land on their feet, so we’re trained on how to fall properly. I insisted on [attempting] to land on my feet. It didn’t work quite well as you’ll see in the video. I landed on my feet but fell over after about 2 seconds.

You can hear the gentleman giving instructions to number 4 (that was me! ). “Prepare to land! Feet and knees tight together, looking out near the horizon. Ready, ready, flare! Feet and knees together, together, all the way down, ta…ARGH! [this was when I fell] OK, stay still number 4…”

It was so amazing I’m hoping to do it again when I’m back in Toronto in a few weeks. If anyone in Montreal or TO would like to join let me know, I HIGHLY recommend it!

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Studies have shown that music is an integral part of filmmaking and can have a profound effect on the audience. However, only until relatively recent times has more intensive research been conducted. One example of this was an experiment by Oliver Vitouch titled “When Your Ear Sets the Stage: Musical Context Effects in Film Perception” [...]]]> Background

Studies have shown that music is an integral part of filmmaking and can have a profound effect on the audience. However, only until relatively recent times has more intensive research been conducted. One example of this was an experiment by Oliver Vitouch titled “When Your Ear Sets the Stage: Musical Context Effects in Film Perception” (summarized here). The Vitouch experiment demonstrated that the audience’s perception of a film and its further development could be systematically influenced by the music. The Vitouch experiment was the inspiration for this research project.

Aim

The purpose of this experiment was to investigate what influences the emotional perception of a video, but more so, whether the altering of audio or visual cues had a greater effect.

Method

Four different video clips were made from a sequence of color and grayscale pictures taken from the 2004 Tsunami and combined with two different soundtracks: (1) color with a Hip Hop track, (2) grayscale with a Hip Hop track, (3) color with a piano track and finally, (4) grayscale with a piano track.

The first song used was the instrumental version of “Locked Up” by Akon and the second song was an acoustic piano version of “Numb” by Linkin Park. Instrumentals were selected so that respondents would be less likely to recognize the songs. Sad songs were intentionally selected to enhance the sad emotions felt by viewing the images alone. Hip Hop is not normally associated with sadness however this song was appropriate for the images as the song was tense, dark and gloomy. The piano song was selected due to its slow tempo and high legato which made it much more different than the Hip Hop track.

Grayscale images typically evoke sadness because as opposed to vibrant colors, which are more intense, lively and exciting, grayscale images are more associated with somberness. Due to this, grayscale images should increase the feeling of sadness when looking at the pictures.

The four different video clips were presented to subjects in the following order: (1), (3), (4) and (2). This order was selected so that the purpose of the experiment would be less clear to the subjects. In order to increase the number of respondents, the videos were put on a website (http://the1truecoolguy.blogspot.com/2006/05/experiment-audio-video-and-emotions.html) with instructions on how to participate. A limitation of this was that the environment (lighting, distractions, sound levels, etc.) could not be controlled as if they were in a laboratory.

The subjects were asked to rate their sadness level for each video on a scale from 0 to 10 in an anonymous survey. The survey also included questions about the participant’s level of musical training, if the participant recognized the songs in the videos and a final open-ended comment field. A total of 62 people participated in the experiment.

Hypothesis

The primary hypothesis was that the video with the grayscale pictures together with the piano song (video 4), would be perceived as the saddest one of the four and therefore would score higher than the others on the sadness scale. The secondary hypothesis was that the video the color pictures accompanied by the Hip Hop track (video 1), would be perceived as the least sad one.

Results

Average Sadness Scores (in descending order)

5.27 *** Video 3 (Piano / Grayscale)
5.11 *** Video 2 (Piano / Color)
4.31 *** Video 4 (Hip Hop / Grayscale)
3.76 *** Video 1 (Hip Hop / Color)

As shown in the graphs, most people felt “Sort of Sad” (scores of 5 or 6) and only 7 of the 62 respondents felt very high levels of sadness (scores of 9 or 10) when watching the videos.

We see that the third video, which was the slow piano song combined with the grayscale images was indeed perceived as the saddest. A respondent mentioned that due to the lack of other instruments in the piano track, those videos felt more “lonely” and thus were sadder. Although a few people commented that color made the pictures appear more ‘real’, the results show that the majority of them believed that grayscale felt sadder. It was also mentioned that grayscale allowed the viewer to focus more on the details of the images, which would make them sadder, rather than being distracted by the colors.

By contrast, the least sad was the complete opposite, which was the Hip Hop track combined with color imagery. This video did not score any 8, 9 or 10s at all. It’s worthy to note that both videos which used the Hip Hop track received 7 “Not at All Sad” ratings. This would indicate (as predicted) that Hip Hop typically doesn’t evoke sadness. Comments were that Hip Hop made the scenes appear more “cool” and “upbeat” rather than sad. On the other hand, many people mentioned that Hip Hop worked well with the grayscale images and perhaps that would explain why the final video (although still Hip Hop) achieved significantly higher sadness levels than its color counterpart.

As expected, the variation in music had a much stronger impact than the visual changes.

Future Research

As mentioned earlier, a major limitation of this experiment was the lack of a controlled environment. Another limitation was that although most respondents (27) didn’t recognize either song, many did and this certainly affected the results. Most of the respondents (39) were musically trained and perhaps they were aware of the emotional cues being used. Finally, the music selected
(Hip Hop vs. acoustic piano) was a drastic and obvious difference, which could be an issue.

A similar experiment could be conducted in a controlled environment, with musically untrained subjects, with music they wouldn’t recognize and songs that are not as different (e.g. 2 acoustic piano songs of different tempos/modes/volumes/timbres/etc.). It would also be interesting to record demographics of the subjects such as age and sex.

Another interesting point would be to ask the respondents about perceived vs. felt emotions (these can be 2 separate experiments). For instance, did the grayscale actually make them feel sad or did they perceive that they should feel sad because grayscale is traditionally used as a visual cue for sadness.

Overall, this experiment demonstrated that altering audio cues (the soundtrack) has much more impact on the audience than simple visual cues (color filters) if the same images are used. However, it would be interesting to try and further isolate (with more controlled experiments) which cues specifically affect our emotions when watching films.

I went to watch a live jazz show in the jazz market. The pianist was fantastic, but the trumpet player was even better! In fact, he was from [...]]]>

Jazz Piano and Trumpet- Sadly, I can’t remember their names!

I went to watch a live jazz show in the jazz market. The pianist was fantastic, but the trumpet player was even better! In fact, he was from New Orleans. They were mostly playing songs from the 1930s and 50s, so of course I didn’t know most of them. It was beautiful nonetheless.

Since I’ve discovered that I can save videos for free on Google Video…I’ve gone a bit video-crazy. If the video doesn’t work, here’s a link to 30 second clip of the jazz show!