Personal assignment
To improve my English, I challenged myself to read a book in English. I will make better by reading the 4 books of the Twilght saga. I chose these books because I love the film ! Everyone says that it’s for teenagers but I don’t care, I like this sort of films 
My recording
I found an interesting podcast with its transcription about the Iphone launch.
you can download my recording at this address : http://etudiant.univ-mlv.fr/~tphan07/Anglais/recording.mp3
The podcast is at this address : http://www.businessenglishpod.com/2007/07/08/business-news-11-iphone-launch/
The transcription :
Today, werre talking about Apple’s new mobile phone – the iPhone – actually it’s a combination of phone, iPod and internet browser all rolled into one gadget. We’ll be looking at the hype – or massive publicity – surrounding the launch of the iPhone and taking a closer look at the vocabulary we use to describe product launches and the retail market.
Article:
After six months of unprecedented hype, thousands of people last Friday finally got their hands on the iPhone, the new cell phone that Apple is banking on to become its third core business next to its moneymaking iPod players and Macintosh computers.
By early evening Thursday, short lines of eager customers were camped out at Apple and AT&T stores across the nation. Thegadget, which combines the functions of a cell phone, iPod media player and Web browser, went on sale in the United States at 6 p.m. last Friday.
At Apple’s flagship store in New York City, the trickle of customers that began queuing on Monday grew to 100’s by late Thursday, ready to brave yet another rainy night on the pavement of Fifth Avenue, outside the only 24-hour Apple store.
The gadget with a 3.5-inch touch-screen display, which Apple CEO Steve Jobs has touted as “revolutionary,” has been the focus of endless media speculation and has been parodied on late-night TV. Since its unveiling in January, expectations that it will become yet another blockbuster product for Apple has propelled the company’s stock up more than 40 percent
Apple itself has set a target of selling 10 million units worldwide by 2008, gaining roughly a 1 percent share of the cell phone market.
And despite the handset’s price tag of $499 for a 4-gigabyte model and $599 for an 8-gigabyte version, some bullish Wall Street analysts have predicted sales could hit as high as 45 million units in two years.
Teethed chikens city
Thus far, chickens had no teeth. Among all the chickens worldwide, we’ve found one ! Now it’s being held in our lab. Don’t worry ! No need for a PETA’s demonstration ! There will be no outrages, we will not deprive it of food. Rather, it will grow up in an open space and wait to reach out to other chickens like it. Whether you find one or hear about it, okease bring it to us. We aim to flock all of them. We are about to open the first teethed chickens city !
The perfect man !
We’re about to present you our Perfect Man ! First, we will see its physical aspect. Next, we’ll talk
about its qualities and finally, we’re going to learn how can we use it every day…
I. Physical Aspect
The basic structure of the Perfect Man is quite intuitive : it has a head, two arms, two legs…
When you order it, you can pick up the origin (Caucasian, Mediterranean, Asian, African etc.), the
color of the eyes and the age.
When you unwrap it, it has the shape of a regular man. Then, it’s up to you to customize it.
1. The head :
You can choose the length and the color of the hair. It can be straight or curly.
2. The body :
Do you want more 6-pack ? Well you can adjust the volume of muscle of your perfect man,
with a pump !
You can also choose whether you want it hairy or not.
II. The perfect man is… perfect !
It’s open minded and it’s always ready to listen to your fabulous stories
It can cook, it’s really good for massage, it’s lovely with your mum, it does the washing up…
There’s a ‘mute’ mode for when you’re tired.
It doesn’t snore…
In order to obtain more qualities, you can buy extra-modules, like the shopping “one” !
III. Everyday use
Use your Perfect Man to show off with your friends !
Your house will be clean as never before !
Say goodbye to Valentine’s Day on your own…
What job is he apply for ?
- Hi ! Thank you for coming. Let’s go straight to the point. Do you like children ?
- Yes of course, I love them
- What is your experience with them ?
- I watch my brothers and sisters every weekend
- Do you often go to speak with strangers ?
- Yes I have a good communication, I like to meet new people
- Are you in a good shape ? Because what you will have on your shoulders is a little bit heavy
- I go to gym three times a week
- And what are your hobbies ?
- Sport, cinema, music and photography
- Why want you to work with us ?
- Because I love your universe which follows me since my childhood
- Give me three of your qualities
- Dynamic, responsible and enthusiastic
- What is your favourite character ?
- Isma, she is so diabolical
Big transcription
Andrew Stanton :
When i was coming up with their idea my? new Wall-E will be a big space action film so egally? unique sound design was an absolute necessity to given to the sci-fi of it. And so you starting who the ex done that before and really it’s just Ben Burtt
Ben Burtt :
Every sound designers has to create some several worlds in sound and of course it’s most inspiring when the whole movie essentially requires an original new world of sound
Jim Morris :
Ben has won many academy awards doing sound and sound design. This is a perfect f?? he worked in Star Wars movies.
Andrew Stanton :
He’s the father not only R2D2 but of all the sounds in the Star Wars universe, the Indiana Jones universe and thank godness he said yes.
Ben Burtt :
I spent lots of time recording a lot of sound effects. We need the all kinds of crashes and mechanical sounds. Most of the all kinds. And when I was on Ebay I found an army radio generator ?? of the need sound ??? use on high speed
Andrew Stanton :
It was such a tree to work with them. It’s really hard to keep it together when you work a hero like that
Ben Burtt :
I think what appears ?? the most about Pixar is that with so many good people here people just so talented I don’t know how they do it may the sound seems so much better to me when I saw with the animation and I said myself privately you know “Uh pretty good stuff !”
Jeff Earley :
We usually start out with a brainstorming session to come up with the every considerable sound we can think of with a couple of guys doing mellow and once you cut a brainshout and someone says something and then somebody says “hey what about this ?” and then create the whole underline of thought and one idea will lead to another idea and then to another idea and those were brainshouten and keep going in. End up with the end of the day with my half-fifty thousand sounds we can go through and to cut the figure out which ones gonna go to the library
Micheal Mavrikios :
My plan was to just accumulate as we go. Collect sounds constantly and some of the best sounds that I captured were, it’s just so happen is the right word. For example, I give you an example. For sound fx III when we thought about the whether effects, when we were doing the plan, all I said is : “Florida hurricanes season”.
Jeff Earley :
Working with Mavrik on the sound effects librairies have been great because he has the real passion to go out to the field and do things that some other people might not do like sitting awaiting on the perfect lightning strike.
Micheal Mavrikios :
I’ve had all the recording equipment with me at the house one day and it’s just so happen, it was the perfect timing, there was a huge thunderstorm coming through and I could hear it for the long it’s timing back I could hear all these lightning strikes for the distance. So immediately I just grab my pole in my equipment and I just jump on the roof of the building and waited out there and until I got close to about a hundred strikes and lot of those, some of them I was just so close and so intense that it makes …
but the fact is that I need to get those sounds, bottom line, and sometimes you just got to go, you know, a little crazy.
Michael Ocampo :
My name is Micheal Ocampo and I’m the lead mixer at this … I’ve been actually mixing record as a DJ for fifteen years and, you know, I’ve just been toasted around and I thought that scratches would be really cool sound effect to add you know a category to add into the … for editors to use in productions. I live, eat and breath and mix, and listen audio day and day out.
Scott Davis :
Hi my name is Scott Davis and I’m the audio engineer for ??juice. With sound fx III I primarily did the coordination of sound effects to the animation so just jump backs and motion design element. Working on each animation has his own unique details that I had to really pay close attention to. Each one has his own feel and his own personality that has his own, uh.. It becomes a live when you apply the sound effect to it.
Mike Brassell :
hi, Mike Brassell, your record worship music and I can attribuate vocal waves?riffs? to sound fx III. For vocal riffs? what we think was that the mind behind vocal riffs really was to give our user the ability of be able of picking choose different types of ad libs that you would normally have to maybe hire a singer for but you need some nice vocal stab, vocal… So we try to come up with the nice list of what of vocal list could do and of course it was the booth. When you get in there it’s a inspiring kind of thing because you hearing something in your head and want to lay it down so you ask engineer … and let you go and you do your thing so you kind of surprise that something is came out but I like it, I enjoy this … effect.
Sam Allison :
My name is Sam Allison, I’m the mixing engineer for ??juice and for sound fx III I recorded the music elements. For sound fx III we got together and we just found some instruments that would complement our librairy our existing librairy and just intruments that we could really go for the acoustic sound and the actual sound of the instrument and just focus on different playing styles and I had the spanish guitare player playing some flamenco jazz style and we had to …. some mountain style and we had violin do some classical and … do some .. grass and just catching some different styles of music with the instruments we had.
Corrections
Here are the mistakes I found in the other blogs :
Vinvent B. :
Hi Vincent !
I found some mistakes in this post.
“<b>I’ve found</b> an <b>interting</b> website with several vidéos on the subject, especially on Special FX jobs”
I think you should write “I found” and I’m sure you have to write “interesting” ^^
“To work in this field, you must have the technical skills to utilize the computer programs. You need <b>this</b> skills to create and produce special effects.”
“skills” is a plural then you have to write “<b>these</b> skills”
Have a good week end !
Vincent H. :
Hi Vincent !
“Hello this is my definition with help of wikipedia about the job of project manager “
I think that “with the help of wikipedia” is a little more correct.
Enjoy your long weekend !
Virginie :
We can’t post comments on her blog
Yacine :
Hi Yacine !
There are some mistakes in your post.
“I wright” is not correct, the good word is “write”
“which is appear” => appeared
“It’s an article of a forum” => I think you should write “article from a forum”
The “s” is missing here : “It return”
“Next time i search on youtube with “making of” and “ILM” keywords and I find a lot of videos talking about visual effects:”
You can say “After that I searched…..and I found”
And the last mistake I found is “in generaly” => “in general”
Yann :
Hi Yann !
I have to make corrections so…
“the twenty eigth” : there is just a switch between the “t” and the “h”
“I enjoy outdoor to” : if you want to say that you like outdoor activities like our teacher, the “o” is missing “I enjoy outdoor too”
“isn’nt” => isn’t
“The first think” => thing
(I think you wrote it too fast ^^)
The Linguist
Here is my transcription. I swear I didn’t cheat.
“Hello, this is Steve Kauffman here… talk about something little different today, always related to language. We’re here at thelinguist.blogs.com.
Today I went for a haircut. My barber talks a lot. Sometimes he even stops cutting just to talk which I find mildly annoying. On the other hand, I am always entertained for 30 minutes while he cuts my hair. He does a good job and charges me 18 dollars which is not the cheapest but not the most expensive haircut in Vancouver.
He told me that he came to Canada as a 16-year-old, 20 years ago. He went to hairdressing school and then worked for a chain of hair salon for 5 years in different locations in the city. He got to know the personalities of different kinds of clients. He didn’t like working in the heavily chinese district of Richmond because, in his words, the customers would arrive late and expect to be served right away. If they were not served immediately, they assumed that the customer who was being served in their place had pay the extra. He did not like the pressure of that situation.
He eventually opened his own shop in north Vancouver. He said that he made sure to learn all about the subjects that his clients were interested in, from fly fishing to the stock market. He knew that if customers liked him, they would come back.
After 20 years in Canada, dealing with english speaking canadian clients, his english is just terrible. His pronounciation and use of words, structure, you name it, are all quite poor. When he talked about a leading politician and his wife, “he” and “she” were regularely used wrong. I had trouble understanding who he was talking about. People who are not used to chinese accents must have trouble understanding him. His english is poor even by the standards of his native Hong Kong.
So what is the conclusion ? He doesn’t represent everyone but just being immersed in the language and talking the language will not necessarily improve your language skills. You need to want to improve, you need to have a deliberate programm of improvement and you need to listen.
On the other hand, my barber has being been successful at building up a customer base and he did not seem to feel inhibited in any way by his poor english. He was a communicator, lthough a better talker than a listener. I have not suggested to him that he join the linguist. “
Videos about sound design
In the following video, the team of “Soundfx III” talks about sound design :
http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=3CB4WlqrzzM
In this one, we can see how Ben Burtt made the sound design of the movie WALL-E :
Self presentation
Hi ! Here is my first post to introduce myself !
You can hear my presentation here :
http://etudiant.univ-mlv.fr/~tphan07/self_presentation_phan.mp3
