Crowd Simulation in Films

Crowd Simulation in Films This dissertation is about the study of crowd simulation and why the crowd simulation is in need in the movies. Particularly concentrating about the computer generated movies simulating a large crowd is the most difficult task in the production pipeline. So finding a better way to give the audience the feel of crowd is the challenge. Researching about the silhouettes and its uses will help to implement the silhouette to establish the crowd. Silhouettes helps in many ways to create a mystic mood. . As implementing silhouette in the crowd simulation will helps to reduce the secondary animation and facial expression. As there are so many softwares exist to helps the crowd simulation, This paper will focus on a procedure which will create a crowd simulation by transferring the animation from one character to another character in a simpler and easier way. Chapter 1: Introduction Animation gives the life to the character. Animating a particular character takes a long time to give the feel. This dissertation is about researching the animation, animating the entire crowd is the difficult task in the animation pipeline. So this dissertation is mainly carried out to find a way to transfer the animation from one character to another character in a simpler and easier way. Crowd simulation is a process of simulating a group of members, objects or characters. When simulating a large number of characters in a live feature film is not a big deal. Man power is more important in simulating a crowd in feature film. Particularly concentrating on the computer generated movies, replicating the characters animation and behavior from one character to many character is a big deal. A lot of research is done about the crowds and the formation of crowds in society. For example, social gatherings, meetings, assemblies, religious ceremonies and sport events. 1.1| Aim: The main aim of the project is to achieve an essential method for crowd simulation for animation. 1.2| Research question: The research question for this study will be. What is crowd simulation? Why we need crowd simulation? Researching the existing crowd simulation method. Disadvantages of existing crowd simulation method. How silhouette helpful for the animation poses? How silhouette will be useful for simulating a crowd? 1.3| Statement of problem: Animating the entire crowd is the most biggest problem. Technically, creating the crowd is not a big deal but at that same time transferring the animation to each and every character with the different timing is the big deal. The another problem is that the rendering the whole scene with lots and lots of character in a particular scene will make the scene the most complicated one. So finding a better solution for creating the entire scene in Maya with lots and lots of character which has the different timing in their animation. There are several methods for the development of crowd simulation. The major method is using Mayas Dynamics. There are several external softwares which helps to simulate a entire crowd. But the method which said by this dissertation is quite simple and easier than comparing to another external softwares and Mayas Dynamics. 1.4| Objectives: Various types of crowd simulation method. Silhouette/ Various types. To study the golden poses for animations. Explore the secondary motion for animation. New methods of producing crowd simulation. 1.5| Significance of study: Most of the computer generated movies currently released like Madagascar, Horton hears a Who, had a clear idea about the crowd simulation. The focus of the study in this dissertation is about the simulation of crowd in a simpler and easier way and developing a simple procedure for transferring animation from one character to multiple characters. This study is carried out for developing a better technique for crowd simulation in future upcoming CG projects. 1.6| Hypothesis: The hypothesis of this dissertation is an animator can easily transfer the animation from one character to multiple character for simulating a crowd and also using the silhouette to visualize the crowd shot with a different perspective. Chapter 2: Review of literature This chapter will discuss about the article, books, Internet websites, publications which are related to this dissertation. There are few important topics are covered related to the cinematography, photography, silhouette, animation poses, crowd simulation. 2.1| Book and Internet websites: 1. Malcolm Le Grince,2001.,Experimental Cinema in Digital Age It explains about the experiment carried over Cinema from olden days to modern age. This book mainly concentrated about the cinemas that are experimented in modern ages. They experimented using the different types of cameras and various shots that enhances the scene. 2. Bordwell, David and Thompson, Kristian,2001.,Film Art- An Introduction It explains about the art of film making, this gives the introduction about the film making. This book is referenced particularity to study about the lights and its uses. This gives a clear idea about the back lighting is and how essential to shoot a silhouette shot. 3. Beazley, Mitchell and Ang, Tom,2008.,Fundamentals of modern photography It explains about the photography and how photography helpful to convey the moral to the audience. This book concentrates about the camera and its uses for the photography. Rules and techniques for achieving the Silhouette stills. 4. Frost, Lee,2003.,Photography It explains about the various types of photography in various mood setup. How different light setup enchants the scene. This book clearly explains about the advantages and disadvantages of different styles in photograph in different environment. This book is mainly referred to study the advantages and disadvantages of silhouette shooting. 5. Emma Rutherford, Lulu,2009.,Silhouette: The Art of the Shadow It explains about how the silhouette is oriented with the art and craft. This book gives a simple definition for the silhouette as Silhouette is the simplest of art forms. This says about the fascinating history of art and craft in Europe and America. 6. Popular Mechanices (Hadly, Paul, 1947.,Silhouettes for salons,From Pg No. 171 to 173) This book meanly concentrated on the mechanics of machines in 1947. But from the page 171, this book has a quote about the silhouette photography. Hadly had a clear definition for the silhouette photography and he particularity chosen the early morning and late evening time because that light sources will be perfect for silhouette photography. This light sources naturally become the back lighting when the still is taken by aiming the sun. 7. Thalman, Daniel.,Crowd simulation This book is referenced for the purpose to have an clear idea about simulating a crowd and crowd AI. Artificial intelligence is applied on the crowd with speed control, locomotion control and personification control. This book explains from the modeling to the final rendering of the simulated crowd. Also this book gives an idea about simulating the environment sources like clouds, skies, plants, lakes and terrains. 8. Brinkmann, Ron.,The art and science of digital composting: Techniques for visual effects This book is referenced to have a clear study about the digital compositing in the post production pipeline. It has a clear idea about the replication of the rendered mesh. This consumes the render time the 3D softwares like Maya, 3D Max and so on. Simulating a crowd in the post-production level is more better than production level. 9. http://www.digital-photography-school.com/how-to-photograph-silhouettes (Accessed on 02-10-10) This website is analyzed to study about the ways to achieve the silhouette photographs in a simper and easier way. This website gives a tutor to the viewer about the ways to take silhouette photography. 10.http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/85-free-high-quality-silhouette-sets/(Accessed on 02-10-10) This website is referenced to study about the poses of different anatomy models in silhouette mode. Professional animators use the silhouette mode to value the animation key poses. This website has a library of silhouette poses of props, male, female, mammals and so on. 11.http://www.cgtutorials.com/t3343/Autodesk_3ds_max/Crowd_simulation__biped__with_AI_implant(Accessed on 02-10-10) This website is referenced to study about the crowd AI. Artificial intelligence is one of the most important guide to achieve the realism in simulating the crowd. This website gives an idea about the particle effects and the collusion. Energy control, Personification control, direction control, locomotion control is easily achieved in AI. 12.http://www.creativecrash.com/tutorials/how-to-create-a-simple-crowd/page2(Accessed on 02-10-10) This website gives a method to create a simple crowd using the particle simulation. The basic idea in this tutorial is developing a crowd with low mesh ans defining a collision point using locater. The character is animated using the clip and four different clips is imported to 15 characters. These characters are guided using the expression editor. This method is based on the MEL(Maya Embedded Language.) 2.2| Interpretation: By reviewing the literatures like books, magazines, articles and Internet websites, the researcher had a better idea to develop a simple procedure to simulate the crowd and a crystal clear vision about the crowd AI (Artificial Intelligence). This literature review is also concentrated on the silhouettes and its uses in the production field. Silhouette is the best way to represent the enthusiasm. This research helped the researcher is present the entire crowd in the silhouette mode for the enthusiastic feel. Chapter 3: Research Methodology 3.1| Types of research: Analytical This dissertation is of qualitative and quantitative analysis of the title,Silhouette an essential method for crowd simulation animation. This research document carries the content from the Internet website, books and articles. This research is mainly done to develop a procedure to simulate a entire crowd in a simple and easier way and also to research about the silhouette is how essential to visualize the crowd to get a enthusiastic feel. This dissertation is carried out with the information collected through different sources like: Magazines Journals Forums Research papers Books Internet Websites Articles Google search engine and wikipedia are the two major sites helped a lot to gather information from various websites around the web. 3.2| Population: The people who are suitable for this population are Animators, cinematographers and visual effect artists. They were examined by series of questions regarding the simulation of an entire crowd using the silhouette. The population of this research work carries the production experienced person, students, Animation tutors. 3.3| Sampling: Judgment Sampling 3.4| Scope and limitation: This research is limited to the simulation of crowd. Chapter 4:Crowd Simulation 4.1| Definition A crowd is defined to be collection of people or group of people[1]. The term crowd is mainly referred to the collection of humans as well as animals[2]. Crowds in also defined as the sharing of emotional experience. A crowd can be named by the purpose or different types emotions, such as riot, social gatherings, meetings, assemblies, religious ceremonies, general meetings and sport events[3]. 4.2| Crowd: Scholars differ about what classes of social events fall under the rubric of collective behavior. In fact, the only class of events which all authors include is crowds. Clark McPhail, who treat crowds and collectives as synonyms. His important contribution is to gone beyond the others to carry out empirical studies of crowds. He finds them to form an set of types. The treatment of crowds is Gustave LeBon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1896), in which the author, a frightened aristocrat, interpreted the crowds of the French Revolution as irrational reversions to animal emotion, and inferred from this that such reversion is characteristic of crowds in general. Freud expressed a similar view in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1922). Authors thought that their ideas were confirmed by various kinds of crowds, one of these are the virtual economic. In Holland, during the tulip mania (1637), the prices of tulip bulbs rose to astronomical heights. An array of such quotes was quoted by the authors from the different part of the world. Mainly and other historical odds is said by Charles MacKays Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841). At the University of Chicago, Robert Park and Herbert Blumer approved with the speculations of LeBon and other that crowds are formed by emotional. But a crowd is capable of any emotion, not only the negative ones of anger and fear. A number of authors modify the common-sense of the crowd to include episodes during which the participants are not assembled in one place but are dispersed over a large area. Turner and Killian refer to such crowds, examples being Billy Grahams, their expanded definition of the crowd is justified if propositions are compact crowds do so for diffuse crowds as well. Some psychologists have proved that there are three fundamental human emotions: fear, joy, and anger. Neil Smelser, John Lofland, and others have proposed three corresponding forms of the crowd: the panic (an expression of fear), the craze (an expression of joy), and the hostile outburst (an expression of anger). Each of the three emotions can characterize either a compact or a diffuse crowd, the result being a scheme of six types of crowds. Lofland has offered the most explicit discussion of these types. 4.3| Types of Natural crowd: There are already many types of crowd in the society, mainly they are classified into businesses and projects based crowd formation. But when we study about crowd sourcing and the crowds that influence it, we always like to the talking about one big crowd, one only crowd type that can fulfill every task. Well thats not what happens in reality, and Author Nicholas Carr had a interesting blog post which states about this and his mind thoughts over the typology of crowds, after studying about the crowd sourcing we can find a piece for the PBS Digital Nation site. He suggests the following 4 types of crowds in crowd sourcing: Social production crowd: consists of a large group of individuals who lend their individual talents to the devolved creations like Wikipedia or Linux. This one basically fits in the most examples of crowd sourcing. Averaging crowd: classifies exactly as a survey group, giving an average judgment about some complex matter in some cases, is more accurate than the judgment of any one individual person in the society. Nicholas Carr defines that prediction markets are a typical examples of this different types of crowd, or even the stock market for that matter. Data mine crowd: A large group that, the basic common knowledge and understanding of all its members who produces a collection of behavioral data or information that can be collected verified by the authors from various country put under a series of examine in order to gain insight into behavioral or market patterns. The example are defined here is the crowd that are mainly feed Googles search engine and Amazons search engine. So here we all are involving ourselves in this crowd sourcing effort without knowing that were particularly helping the system. Networking crowd: a group that exports and import information through a shared communication system such as the phone network or Internet service. Internet service are mainly concentrated on the social networking like Orkut, hi 5, Facebook or Twitter. Here were not aware about being members of information collection, and if not handled carefully by the companies, could put a backfire on this type of services. After these 4 types, two were suggested. One by Clay Shirky, who was also, involved in this discussion, and another one from a suggestion by a commenter on the blog, Tom Lord. Thats crowd sourcing working right there! Transactional crowd: a group used to coordinate what are mainly point-to-point transactions, such as the type of crowd collected by eBay, Match.com, Innocentive, LinkedIn and similar services. Event crowd: A group organized through online communication for a particular event, which can take place either online or in the real world and may have a political, social, aesthetic, or other purpose. Crowd Simulation in Films Crowd Simulation in Films This dissertation is about the study of crowd simulation and why the crowd simulation is in need in the movies. Particularly concentrating about the computer generated movies simulating a large crowd is the most difficult task in the production pipeline. So finding a better way to give the audience the feel of crowd is the challenge. Researching about the silhouettes and its uses will help to implement the silhouette to establish the crowd. Silhouettes helps in many ways to create a mystic mood. . As implementing silhouette in the crowd simulation will helps to reduce the secondary animation and facial expression. As there are so many softwares exist to helps the crowd simulation, This paper will focus on a procedure which will create a crowd simulation by transferring the animation from one character to another character in a simpler and easier way. Chapter 1: Introduction Animation gives the life to the character. Animating a particular character takes a long time to give the feel. This dissertation is about researching the animation, animating the entire crowd is the difficult task in the animation pipeline. So this dissertation is mainly carried out to find a way to transfer the animation from one character to another character in a simpler and easier way. Crowd simulation is a process of simulating a group of members, objects or characters. When simulating a large number of characters in a live feature film is not a big deal. Man power is more important in simulating a crowd in feature film. Particularly concentrating on the computer generated movies, replicating the characters animation and behavior from one character to many character is a big deal. A lot of research is done about the crowds and the formation of crowds in society. For example, social gatherings, meetings, assemblies, religious ceremonies and sport events. 1.1| Aim: The main aim of the project is to achieve an essential method for crowd simulation for animation. 1.2| Research question: The research question for this study will be. What is crowd simulation? Why we need crowd simulation? Researching the existing crowd simulation method. Disadvantages of existing crowd simulation method. How silhouette helpful for the animation poses? How silhouette will be useful for simulating a crowd? 1.3| Statement of problem: Animating the entire crowd is the most biggest problem. Technically, creating the crowd is not a big deal but at that same time transferring the animation to each and every character with the different timing is the big deal. The another problem is that the rendering the whole scene with lots and lots of character in a particular scene will make the scene the most complicated one. So finding a better solution for creating the entire scene in Maya with lots and lots of character which has the different timing in their animation. There are several methods for the development of crowd simulation. The major method is using Mayas Dynamics. There are several external softwares which helps to simulate a entire crowd. But the method which said by this dissertation is quite simple and easier than comparing to another external softwares and Mayas Dynamics. 1.4| Objectives: Various types of crowd simulation method. Silhouette/ Various types. To study the golden poses for animations. Explore the secondary motion for animation. New methods of producing crowd simulation. 1.5| Significance of study: Most of the computer generated movies currently released like Madagascar, Horton hears a Who, had a clear idea about the crowd simulation. The focus of the study in this dissertation is about the simulation of crowd in a simpler and easier way and developing a simple procedure for transferring animation from one character to multiple characters. This study is carried out for developing a better technique for crowd simulation in future upcoming CG projects. 1.6| Hypothesis: The hypothesis of this dissertation is an animator can easily transfer the animation from one character to multiple character for simulating a crowd and also using the silhouette to visualize the crowd shot with a different perspective. Chapter 2: Review of literature This chapter will discuss about the article, books, Internet websites, publications which are related to this dissertation. There are few important topics are covered related to the cinematography, photography, silhouette, animation poses, crowd simulation. 2.1| Book and Internet websites: 1. Malcolm Le Grince,2001.,Experimental Cinema in Digital Age It explains about the experiment carried over Cinema from olden days to modern age. This book mainly concentrated about the cinemas that are experimented in modern ages. They experimented using the different types of cameras and various shots that enhances the scene. 2. Bordwell, David and Thompson, Kristian,2001.,Film Art- An Introduction It explains about the art of film making, this gives the introduction about the film making. This book is referenced particularity to study about the lights and its uses. This gives a clear idea about the back lighting is and how essential to shoot a silhouette shot. 3. Beazley, Mitchell and Ang, Tom,2008.,Fundamentals of modern photography It explains about the photography and how photography helpful to convey the moral to the audience. This book concentrates about the camera and its uses for the photography. Rules and techniques for achieving the Silhouette stills. 4. Frost, Lee,2003.,Photography It explains about the various types of photography in various mood setup. How different light setup enchants the scene. This book clearly explains about the advantages and disadvantages of different styles in photograph in different environment. This book is mainly referred to study the advantages and disadvantages of silhouette shooting. 5. Emma Rutherford, Lulu,2009.,Silhouette: The Art of the Shadow It explains about how the silhouette is oriented with the art and craft. This book gives a simple definition for the silhouette as Silhouette is the simplest of art forms. This says about the fascinating history of art and craft in Europe and America. 6. Popular Mechanices (Hadly, Paul, 1947.,Silhouettes for salons,From Pg No. 171 to 173) This book meanly concentrated on the mechanics of machines in 1947. But from the page 171, this book has a quote about the silhouette photography. Hadly had a clear definition for the silhouette photography and he particularity chosen the early morning and late evening time because that light sources will be perfect for silhouette photography. This light sources naturally become the back lighting when the still is taken by aiming the sun. 7. Thalman, Daniel.,Crowd simulation This book is referenced for the purpose to have an clear idea about simulating a crowd and crowd AI. Artificial intelligence is applied on the crowd with speed control, locomotion control and personification control. This book explains from the modeling to the final rendering of the simulated crowd. Also this book gives an idea about simulating the environment sources like clouds, skies, plants, lakes and terrains. 8. Brinkmann, Ron.,The art and science of digital composting: Techniques for visual effects This book is referenced to have a clear study about the digital compositing in the post production pipeline. It has a clear idea about the replication of the rendered mesh. This consumes the render time the 3D softwares like Maya, 3D Max and so on. Simulating a crowd in the post-production level is more better than production level. 9. http://www.digital-photography-school.com/how-to-photograph-silhouettes (Accessed on 02-10-10) This website is analyzed to study about the ways to achieve the silhouette photographs in a simper and easier way. This website gives a tutor to the viewer about the ways to take silhouette photography. 10.http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/85-free-high-quality-silhouette-sets/(Accessed on 02-10-10) This website is referenced to study about the poses of different anatomy models in silhouette mode. Professional animators use the silhouette mode to value the animation key poses. This website has a library of silhouette poses of props, male, female, mammals and so on. 11.http://www.cgtutorials.com/t3343/Autodesk_3ds_max/Crowd_simulation__biped__with_AI_implant(Accessed on 02-10-10) This website is referenced to study about the crowd AI. Artificial intelligence is one of the most important guide to achieve the realism in simulating the crowd. This website gives an idea about the particle effects and the collusion. Energy control, Personification control, direction control, locomotion control is easily achieved in AI. 12.http://www.creativecrash.com/tutorials/how-to-create-a-simple-crowd/page2(Accessed on 02-10-10) This website gives a method to create a simple crowd using the particle simulation. The basic idea in this tutorial is developing a crowd with low mesh ans defining a collision point using locater. The character is animated using the clip and four different clips is imported to 15 characters. These characters are guided using the expression editor. This method is based on the MEL(Maya Embedded Language.) 2.2| Interpretation: By reviewing the literatures like books, magazines, articles and Internet websites, the researcher had a better idea to develop a simple procedure to simulate the crowd and a crystal clear vision about the crowd AI (Artificial Intelligence). This literature review is also concentrated on the silhouettes and its uses in the production field. Silhouette is the best way to represent the enthusiasm. This research helped the researcher is present the entire crowd in the silhouette mode for the enthusiastic feel. Chapter 3: Research Methodology 3.1| Types of research: Analytical This dissertation is of qualitative and quantitative analysis of the title,Silhouette an essential method for crowd simulation animation. This research document carries the content from the Internet website, books and articles. This research is mainly done to develop a procedure to simulate a entire crowd in a simple and easier way and also to research about the silhouette is how essential to visualize the crowd to get a enthusiastic feel. This dissertation is carried out with the information collected through different sources like: Magazines Journals Forums Research papers Books Internet Websites Articles Google search engine and wikipedia are the two major sites helped a lot to gather information from various websites around the web. 3.2| Population: The people who are suitable for this population are Animators, cinematographers and visual effect artists. They were examined by series of questions regarding the simulation of an entire crowd using the silhouette. The population of this research work carries the production experienced person, students, Animation tutors. 3.3| Sampling: Judgment Sampling 3.4| Scope and limitation: This research is limited to the simulation of crowd. Chapter 4:Crowd Simulation 4.1| Definition A crowd is defined to be collection of people or group of people[1]. The term crowd is mainly referred to the collection of humans as well as animals[2]. Crowds in also defined as the sharing of emotional experience. A crowd can be named by the purpose or different types emotions, such as riot, social gatherings, meetings, assemblies, religious ceremonies, general meetings and sport events[3]. 4.2| Crowd: Scholars differ about what classes of social events fall under the rubric of collective behavior. In fact, the only class of events which all authors include is crowds. Clark McPhail, who treat crowds and collectives as synonyms. His important contribution is to gone beyond the others to carry out empirical studies of crowds. He finds them to form an set of types. The treatment of crowds is Gustave LeBon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1896), in which the author, a frightened aristocrat, interpreted the crowds of the French Revolution as irrational reversions to animal emotion, and inferred from this that such reversion is characteristic of crowds in general. Freud expressed a similar view in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1922). Authors thought that their ideas were confirmed by various kinds of crowds, one of these are the virtual economic. In Holland, during the tulip mania (1637), the prices of tulip bulbs rose to astronomical heights. An array of such quotes was quoted by the authors from the different part of the world. Mainly and other historical odds is said by Charles MacKays Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841). At the University of Chicago, Robert Park and Herbert Blumer approved with the speculations of LeBon and other that crowds are formed by emotional. But a crowd is capable of any emotion, not only the negative ones of anger and fear. A number of authors modify the common-sense of the crowd to include episodes during which the participants are not assembled in one place but are dispersed over a large area. Turner and Killian refer to such crowds, examples being Billy Grahams, their expanded definition of the crowd is justified if propositions are compact crowds do so for diffuse crowds as well. Some psychologists have proved that there are three fundamental human emotions: fear, joy, and anger. Neil Smelser, John Lofland, and others have proposed three corresponding forms of the crowd: the panic (an expression of fear), the craze (an expression of joy), and the hostile outburst (an expression of anger). Each of the three emotions can characterize either a compact or a diffuse crowd, the result being a scheme of six types of crowds. Lofland has offered the most explicit discussion of these types. 4.3| Types of Natural crowd: There are already many types of crowd in the society, mainly they are classified into businesses and projects based crowd formation. But when we study about crowd sourcing and the crowds that influence it, we always like to the talking about one big crowd, one only crowd type that can fulfill every task. Well thats not what happens in reality, and Author Nicholas Carr had a interesting blog post which states about this and his mind thoughts over the typology of crowds, after studying about the crowd sourcing we can find a piece for the PBS Digital Nation site. He suggests the following 4 types of crowds in crowd sourcing: Social production crowd: consists of a large group of individuals who lend their individual talents to the devolved creations like Wikipedia or Linux. This one basically fits in the most examples of crowd sourcing. Averaging crowd: classifies exactly as a survey group, giving an average judgment about some complex matter in some cases, is more accurate than the judgment of any one individual person in the society. Nicholas Carr defines that prediction markets are a typical examples of this different types of crowd, or even the stock market for that matter. Data mine crowd: A large group that, the basic common knowledge and understanding of all its members who produces a collection of behavioral data or information that can be collected verified by the authors from various country put under a series of examine in order to gain insight into behavioral or market patterns. The example are defined here is the crowd that are mainly feed Googles search engine and Amazons search engine. So here we all are involving ourselves in this crowd sourcing effort without knowing that were particularly helping the system. Networking crowd: a group that exports and import information through a shared communication system such as the phone network or Internet service. Internet service are mainly concentrated on the social networking like Orkut, hi 5, Facebook or Twitter. Here were not aware about being members of information collection, and if not handled carefully by the companies, could put a backfire on this type of services. After these 4 types, two were suggested. One by Clay Shirky, who was also, involved in this discussion, and another one from a suggestion by a commenter on the blog, Tom Lord. Thats crowd sourcing working right there! Transactional crowd: a group used to coordinate what are mainly point-to-point transactions, such as the type of crowd collected by eBay, Match.com, Innocentive, LinkedIn and similar services. Event crowd: A group organized through online communication for a particular event, which can take place either online or in the real world and may have a political, social, aesthetic, or other purpose.

Whats Wrong with Black English

When I was young growing up I was teased because I was told that I spoke â€Å"white†. Unfortunately in my case, I taught myself to speak the way everyone else spoke and I regret it to this day. At the time I felt if I spoke the same way everyone else did I would be accepted as everyone else. Now that I have reached a level where speaking incorrectly is not acceptable, I have to practice speaking. Rachel L. Jones and Amy Tan both made excellent points on different backgrounds having their own way to converse, but also being able to speak professionally. Amy Tan stated â€Å"I was ashamed of her English. I believed that her English reflected the quality of what she had to say. † My father has always made fun of the way I speak and I believe he underestimated my intelligence. Recently over spring break I had to write an essay for an internship I was applying for. When he read my paper he admitted to how amazed he was at how well I wrote it. Since I don’t speak correct English all the time he assumed writing was not as strong as he saw it to be. From elementary school to now I have always been told you write the way you speak. I feel that is not necessarily true. I feel when writing you have time to think on what you have written and being able to proofread helps also. When conversing with someone, there is not any time to think about the correct way to say something. I too feel English is a point of view and there is not one perception of it. There are many ways and different accents but one accent is acceptable in the professional world. In â€Å"What’s Wrong with Black English†, Rachel explained that she does not agree with William Labov quote â€Å"It is the goal of most black Americans to acquire full control of the standard language without giving up their own culture. † I would have to also disagree with Labov because I feel he is expressing that African Americans speak incorrectly. People of all races all do not speak correct English; it seems as if it is a stereotype of what African Americans try to acquire. African Americans need to learn speaking incorrectly is not our culture. Our ancestors were not taught to speak correct English so it became a cycle. Now that we are allowed to receive the same education as everyone else, we need to not allow Rachel stated â€Å"Knowing the price that was paid for me to develop my abilities, it’s infuriating to hear that some young blacks still perceive clear speech as a Caucasian trait†. Many people my age today still think speaking properly means speaking as a Caucasian would. My younger sister who speaks correct English always is mad fun of. My sister is very intellectual for her age and I have always stood by her side when someone tried to make her feel bad for being smart. I refuse for my sister to do what I have done to myself. Since I am the oldest I must guide her onto the correct path and I am proud of her. Jones and Tan’s thought of correct English is a controversy that needs to be taken seriously.

Domestic Violence Essay

There are many theories out there that try to explain why domestic violence happens. Some like family violence theory say that it is passed down through the family because basically what you see is what you will do. Others say it’s a chemical imbalance or its based on other things. I believe that it is a little bit of all of the theories but the Culture of Violence Theory is playing a huge role today in helping shape our young children’s minds as to what is now acceptable. During this assignment we will look at four different types of examples of how the Culture of Violence Theory is doing just that. Culture of Violence theory claims that violence occurs at all levels of society and is looked at as a means to resolve a conflict. Violence and force are acceptable and are used even in family disputes. Theories believe that in order to stop a man from beating or hitting a woman then you have to change the way he believes or relies on violence being a means to solve all his problems. I also believe that our culture as a whole is violence driven. As a soldier in the United States Army, I deploy to combat areas and I have meet other new recruits who basically wanted to join the military for that reason. So then the question is why in the world would you want to do something just for the violence? Well we can look no further then what is the main culprit to me and that is the Mass Media. The Mass Media today is the main reason why our culture is so violence driven. First I am going to start off on the news media and movies that are being viewed by our children and young adults. The news media always seems to project negative things. You rarely hear anything about a city not having an violent acts being placed over the news. Instead you turn the news on and your going to see how a father came home and found his wife cheating on him so he beat her to death, then killed all his children before turning his gun on himself. The news always reports the violent acts so that’s what our culture is getting use to see. When we look at the type of movies being depicted that display acts of violence in a family household we look at the movie Precious. This movie won the actress a Grammy Award but in this movie your watching a girl being physically, verbally and sexually abused at home. The only time she was safe was at school. What does this type of information teach? It could teach a positive message but I believe that in reality all it did was downgrade women and especially African American women. Movies and the News aren’t the only means to project violence within our culture. The controversial video game by rock star called Grand Theft Auto has been sparking debates across the nation for years. This is one of the best selling franchises in the video game industry but the message in this top playing videogame for our youth in particular teens is violence. This game depicts family violence, drug selling, murder, extortion, robbery, theft, grand theft auto and many more violent crimes. This game really belittles women I feel because they always use derogatory language towards them. This game always shows â€Å"pimps† and ho’s† and the pimp is always beating on the women. This sends a message that our society is fine with this type of behavior since we generate it for our amusement and entertainment. I am one of those who is at fault by playing this type of games but I do understand that this is not appropriate for our youth because they are still learning and trying to understand what is the wrong and right way to act in society and this doesn’t help them in any way. Our society today is all about technology. Everyone has an internet capable phone and the internet is streaming videos constantly. With that being sad a lot of youth and teens are able to watch music videos either through their phone, laptop or on the television. The new hit song titled â€Å"Try† by Pink depicts two lovers basically having an all-out brawl with each other. They are pulling hair, breaking glasses, hitting each other. This music video shows our youth domestic violence but shows it as a poetry in motion or as just two people really in love with each other so even though they are hurting each other its ok as long as they continue to work it out and try again. So is the message here teaching our society to not harm each other? It doesn’t look that way to me and if this keeps up then we will continue to see the numbers as high as they are. All of the different examples I gave show you how our culture became so violence oriented. From the News stations to the Movies in the theaters to the videogames we buy our children and the music they listen to. What children hear and see is exactly what they will do so yes I believe Family Violence Theory plays a role in my paper but the Cultural Violence Theory is by far the most destructive force we have and we can only blame ourselves. Reference: CJ333 Chapter 3, Research and Theory on Family Violence Video Game Study Reinforces Negative Impact on Youth, Jennifer Leclaire, 4/10/06 Pink gets physical and aggressive in â€Å"Try† music video, Lucas Villa, October 10 2012

Intonation Contour in English Speech

In speech, intonation contour is a distinctive pattern of pitches, tones, or stresses in an utterance. Intonation contours are directly related to meaning. For instance, as Dr. Kathleen Ferrara has demonstrated (in Wennerstroms Music of Everyday Speech), the discourse marker anyway can be analyzed as having three different meanings, each with its own distinctive intonation contour. (See Examples and Observations, below.) See also: Intonation and Intonation PhraseEmphasisParalinguistics, Phonetics, and PhonologyProsodyRhythmSegment and SuprasegmentalStress Examples of Intonation Contours Suppose a secretary would like to know if his or her boss has completed drafting up an important report. He or she might ask, Finish that report? or perhaps the same secretary is telling the boss the list of things he or she planned to do next. He or she might say, Call Frankfurt. Write the memo to Purchasing. Finish that report. Now, perhaps, the secretary is talking to his or her assistant who is word processing this same report. He or she might say, Finish that report.In all three cases, this same string of words, Finish that report, would be said with quite different overall tone contours. In the first case, it would be given a questioning intonation; in the second case, it would be said with a non-emphatic final intonation contour; and in the third case, it would be said with an emphatic intonation contour indicating an imperative. Any native speaker of English would recognize the difference in meaning among these three intonation patterns, though the exact description of such c ontours is far from being a simple matter. . . .The reason intonation contour is so important to spoken discourse cohesion is that participants use their reading of intonation contours in deciding whether or not it is their turn to take over the floor.(Ron Scollon, Suzanne Wong Scollon, and Rodney H. Jones, Intercultural Communication: A Discourse Approach, 3rd ed. Wiley, 2012) The Problem of Terminology One immediate difficulty in consolidating the literature on intonation is the lack of agreement on terminology. If I wish to talk about syntax, I can feel confident that most audiences will understand words such as noun and verb. However, with intonation, terms such as stress, accent, tone, and emphasis may mean different things to different people. Not only are the lay terms different from the linguists terms, but linguists themselves disagree on terminology. To make matters worse, there are even different schools of thought on what counts as a unit in an intonation analysis. Should the intonation contour of an entire phrase be interpreted as a single, meaning-bearing unit? Is it possible to identify smaller units as meaningful? Where exactly does a unit start and stop?(Ann K. Wennerstrom, The Music of Everyday Speech: Prosody and Discourse Analysis. Oxford University Press, 2001)A well-canvassed discrepancy between an American predilection for levels and a British preference for tu nes is only one aspect of the differences that exist concerning how the utterance should be segmented for the purpose of describing its intonation. There is a rough similarity between the categories referred to in the literature as sense units, breath groups, tone groups, and contours, but the similarities are deceptive; and the various ways of further segmenting into nucleus, head, tail, tonic, pre-tonic, etc., compound the differences. The important point is that, whether this is explicit or not, each formulation amounts to a starting assumption about how the underlying meaning system is organized.(David C. Brazil, Intonation. The Linguistics Encyclopedia, ed. by Kirsten Malnkjaer. Routledge, 1995) Intonation Contours in Text-to-Speech Systems In text-to-speech systems, the goal of the intonation component is to generate an appropriate intonation contour for each spoken phrase. An intonation contour is the underlying fundamental frequency (F0) pattern that occurs over time in speech phrases. Physiologically, F0 corresponds to the frequency at which the vocal folds are vibrating. Acoustically, this vocal fold vibration provides the energy source that excites the vocal tract resonances during voiced portions of speech . . .. Listeners perceive an intonation contour as a pitch pattern that rises and falls at different points in a phrase. The intonation contour emphasizes certain words more than others, and distinguishes statements (with falling intonation contours) from yes/no questions (with rising intonation contours). It also conveys information about syntactic structure, discourse structure, and the speakers attitude. Behavioral scientists have been instrumental in basic research demonstrating the importance of intonation in the perception and production of speech, and in developing and evaluating intonation algorithms.(Ann K. Syrdal, Text-to-Speech Systems. Applied Speech Technology, ed. by A. Syrdal, R. Bennett, and S. Greenspan. CRC Press, 1995) Intonation Contours and the Brain There is evidence that intonational contour and patterns are stored in a distinct part of the brain from the rest of language. When someone experiences brain damage to the left side of the brain that seriously affects their linguistic abilities, making them unable to produce fluent or grammatical speech, they often maintain the appropriate intonation patterns of their language. Also, when right-hemisphere damage takes place, the result may be that the patient speaks with a monotone. And when babies who have not yet acquired any words begin to babble at around 6 months of age, they often utter nonsense syllables using the appropriate intonation pattern of the language they are acquiring.(Kristin Denham and Anne Lobeck, Linguistics for Everyone. Wadsworth, 2010) Also Known As: intonational contour