My intention to blog Tolstoy’s War & Peace chapter-by-chapter in Dan Bergstein style got derailed. War and Peace turns out to be a fascinating read. I was all the way to chapter 5 before I remembered why I started reading it. By the end of Book I, I realized I wasn’t going back and starting over just to blog it.
This fall I took an online course, Adobe Generation Professional:Digital Creativity in the Classroom. The creativity theme overlaps nicely with CMC 11 and keeps challenging my notions of playing by the rules.
The week 3 video assignment (in Premiere of course) was to do a 30-second book trailer. Below is my tongue-in-cheek try at the assignment – and my first use of Adobe Premiere Pro.
I had 60 seconds worth of ideas that are crammed into the allowed 30 seconds. I cut out some and compressed other parts. While I’d like to rework both a longer and a cut version, I must move on to the next week’s assignment.
In the interest of clarity, the full script for the disclaimer originally read: Warning: may contain scenes of nineteenth century moral impropriety, implied violence, and extreme cruelty to horses and wolves. Readers may suffer disorientation and confusion. Names are impossible to pronounce and even more difficult to remember. Lead character may be referenced by surname, Christian name, familial pet name, title, rank or patronymic or any combination thereof. Portrayals of nobility and serfs are not necessarily approved by the People’s committee for equal opportunity. Dueling with pistols should only be attempted under responsible adult supervision. Winter attacks on Moscow should only be attempted by those who have achieved global megalomaniac status.
Loved it Jim…last year I started reading War and Peace (have read most other Tolstoy and taught some) in daily installments from Daily Lit, but fell behind, pushed the pause button and have yet to get back. Maybe it is because I have been a Dostoyevsky at heart for over half a century. Now you’ve got me thinking about getting back to the book …bucket list and all that. After all, I am already used to all the names… even if I kept cheering for Anna to push that jerk under the train and run off with his batman to make a new life in NYC where she would become an acclaimed designer of fabulous hats.
By now I can no longer tell courses apart…everything seems to merging into one stitched together Frankenstein course…
Thanks for the feedback Vanessa. Love that take on Anna Karenina. I found Dostoevsky first and delayed getting into Tolstoy for several years.