#if I get rejected 100 times I’m switching to self publishing | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

zukalations · 5 years

Text

THE Otokoyaku: Cosmos Troupe Edition

THE Otokoyaku was a Kageki feature from 2016 featuring Top Stars talking to younger up-and-coming otokoyaku in their troupes. The Cosmos Troupe interview was published in October and features Asaka Manato and Sakuragi Minato.

This talk seems to have been recorded early in performances for the 2016 Cosmos Troupe production of Elisabeth, so there is considerable discussion of their roles in that show.

THE Otokoyaku: Cosmos Troupe Edition (Asaka Manato and Sakuragi Minato)

Asaka: I think that Zun-chan (Sakuragi) is the person I've had the deepest connection with since transferring to Cosmos Troupe.

Sakuragi: Same here. Maa-sama (Asaka) is the senior actress I'm closest to. (Making a deep bow)

Asaka: You're bowing so deeply! (laughs) You often had my roles in junior performances, so of course I would take an interest in you.

Sakuragi: I had [your] role of Kirchheiss in the first junior performance after you moved troupes, for Legend of the Galactic Heroes @ TAKARAZUKA, and ever since then you've done so much for me. I was ken-4 at the time, and it was my first time being given a large role, so it was all stuff I didn't understand at all. And then, even when Maa-sama would talk to me, I would get so nervous that I'd stutter. But even so you would listen to me so kindly, and also you went so far as to tell me about how you got into character so thoroughly.

Asaka: I remember that. It was my first time performing with Cosmos Troupe as well, so all kinds of things were really new to me, and I wasn't sure what everyone on Cosmos Troupe would think of me, so I was like "This is me!" and putting myself out there fearlessly. At that time, Zun-chan was the one closest to me and helping me out, too.

Sakuragi: Yes.

Asaka: My first impression of Zun-chan is that you were a really cute kid. You have a cute face, and you were so diligent and earnest...although you did stutter a little (laughs), I was sure you would have a lot of progress. And now it's a sort of strange feeling to think that I'm performing together with that kid as Der Tod and Rudolf in Elisabeth. But even though it's a bit strange, I had always been thinking that things would end up like this someday, so it doesn't feel uncomfortable at all. And when I see you and the senior actresses in the role switch* mutually encouraging each other to improve, it makes me feel like you've become a really reliable person, so that makes me very happy.

Sakuragi: Thank you so much. But it's also because Maa-sama taught me so much that I was able to come this far.

Asaka: You're saying such nice things... Is there something you're after? (laughs)

Sakuragi: No way, no way (laughs). While you always tell me such valuable things during each and every performance, and I have a lot of memories of that, the thing that sticks with me the most is from the rehearsals of Gone With the Wind. I was allowed to be in the Finale "Saint Louis Blues" number, but I couldn't manage to do the dance stylishly enough, so the director got angry and was calling me out by name. I stayed behind all by myself to rehearse afterwards, and Maa-sama told me "As long as you're doing your best, there's definitely someone who will see you," and totally boosted my spirits.

Asaka: I don't remember that! (laughs)

Sakuragi: (laughs) Ever since then, when you would reach out to me it would make me so happy, and it made me feel like I needed to meet those expectations, so I really wanted to grow and become someone who could be a support for the rest of the troupe.

Asaka: Wow, hearing that makes me so happy. I've had my eye on you since Galactic, and in junior performances you had my roles one after the other, like Ashley and Giroudelle.

Sakuragi: That's right.

Asaka: In Gustav III, you were able to experience a junior performance lead, and when you played Radames I thought "Oh! She's sparkling so much, this is great!" After that, in the Hakata-za performance of A Song For Kingdoms, I felt like you seemed a bit different. When you were given a Bow Hall lead**, I felt like you had really developed a sense of responsibility.

Sakuragi: I just dived into it heart and soul. In this show, that finale number where I can dance wearing a black tailcoat opposite Maasama, that number is like a dream come true, I always feel like I have to do it right so I always put more focus into it.

Asaka: Since the production has begun, it seems like you're putting out more and more in that number, so as we're dancing together I can really tell that you've absorbed a lot and gained more confidence. Even in the rehearsals, out of the three of you, you were the most junior but since you were in a central role, I felt like you needed a huge level of determination. And within that, you were able to take how you wanted to perform and make it happen. That level of expression and amount of energy...I feel like you came to understand that if you 100% fill yourself with that and then release it, even if you're not doing something gradiose you'll still be able to communicate to the audience.

Sakuragi: I still can't really tell whether or not I'm coming across to the audience, though... During the rehearsals as Rudolf, you told me that I couldn't just say the lines if I wasn't totally overflowing with emotion. You said "I thought you had a bigger range of emotions than that," and all kinds of things to make me improve myself. I think it's because you really understand me that there is that progress and reaction.

Asaka: Progress...reaction...it's like you're studying for the entrance exam (laughs).

Sakuragi: (laughs) In rehearsals, you weren't just playing Der Tod, but also Sisi and Franz.

Asaka: In order to help you create Rudolf's inner self, I had you do his role starting with child Rudolf***. In Elisabeth, the drama and the songs are fixed--it might not be 100% exact but in general it's the same. But if you don't do it with your own feelings, it starts to feel like you've borrowed what someone else is doing. Acting is lying, but it's how genuine you can make that lie look that's where the fun comes from.

Sakuragi: Yes.

Asaka: Day by day your performance has become deeper and more intense. It's fun to see and it's also helped to bring out new emotions in my performance as well. You smile so nicely in the 'Dance of death' scene. I wish I could show the audience.

Sakuragi: What!? I smiled?

Asaka: Yes. You know, I think that helped me understand that Rudolf had no regrets, and he had put everything he had into his life.

Sakuragi: Thank you so much. In this show, when I was playing Rudolf, his instability and other aspects were really different from me personally. This made putting the character together difficult and I really struggled with it. Maa-sama, how do you handle creating your character when you're playing someone really different from yourself?

Asaka: First of all, I don't focus on a role being different from me. I go from what is written in the script, and try to dig into what is between the scenes. Even if I think they're different from me, as I get closer to the role, I try to become more like that myself. In order to find those feelings, I try to go further in my imagination that even just finding things I can relate to in the character. Of course, it's important to find those points that I can relate to, but what is there to relate to in the god of death? (laughs) But, he loves, and even though she does't look back at him, he spends decades thinking "I want the living you to love me"; that, I feel that I can understand in a way. So I do it like that, I don't reject anything, I just accept everything and try to become the character, I suppose.

Sakuragi: I see...

Asaka: If you start out thinking it's different, it's hard to make up ground from there, right?

Sakuragi: It is. "I don't like this", "That's not it", "I don't get it"; that becomes a chokepoint and makes it take a long time to get things started.

Asaka: If you think about it like that you're going to waste a lot of time, don't you think. But it's okay! You really made Rudolf your own.

Sakuragi: Yes, thank you so much.

~~~~~~

Asaka: You're a big unusual, aren't you, Zun-chan. One would think you were a really naturally chipper person but you're actually a bit moody, aren't you?

Sakuragi: Wah~ you know everything (laughs).

Asaka: So you'll show your dark side when people would be expecting you to be sunny all the time. But then you can turn on your sunny side, like when you played Radames, or like in Sky Stage programs, there are times you show a silly side too.

Sakuragi: (laughs)

Asaka: Having Yin and Yang, possessing those two sides, is a really interesting thing for an actor to have, so I want you to make sure you don't lose that and learn to control it.

Sakuragi: Yes. I've always thought of Maa-sama as the sun, and when you were playing Radames I felt like you were a sun god. Everything around you had such a bright atmosphere, and everyone in the troupe was smiling too. And this time around you're playing Der Tod—the incongruity of that person I saw as the sun playing the darkness really made me think how amazing the breadth of your acting abilities must be. In Der Letzte Tanz, I was singing an off-stage solo****, so I was trying to become more attuned to how Der Tod felt, and I started to see so many new sides to Maa-sama, and felt like those things were part of your appeal too. I hope I can also come to control those dark and light elements like you do.

Asaka: Zun-chan's grown in the four years since I've come to Cosmos Troupe has been amazing. Not just your skill and abilities as a performer, but your inner self has grown as well, which is helping your onstage performances improve. As you carefully pile up all of these things, you find new barriers. Then you put in the effort that it takes to get over that barrier, which brings you to the next thing, and you engage with that just as carefully; I think that aspect of you is amazing.

Sakuragi: It's what I've been given to do, so...

Asaka: After you clear one thing nicely, then the next thing comes along. This might be taking liberties, but I think that in terms of personality you resemble me, Zun-chan. So I understand how you're feeling and I'll think "Do your best!"

Sakuragi: Thank you so much! Is it alright if I ask you a few things about your offstage life?

Asaka: Go ahead!

Sakuragi: What time each day do you feel the most relaxed?

Asaka: When I get in the bath after the last performance ends, maybe.

Sakuragi: Ah, I get that!

Asaka: Especially in the summer, it's still light outside so it feels really luxurious. You still haven't been in the Uni Baths*****, right?

Sakuragi: Yes. I'll do my best so I can make it into that world quickly!

Asaka: Well, in this one case you'll be stopped by your year level, and that's a barrier you can't get over (laughs).

Sakuragi: (laughs) Also, in your own residence, is there something you're focusing on in your interior decorating?

Asaka: Right now, I'm into a West coast beachy style, so I'm working on organizing my room so I can redecorate. I love this painting I bought recently based on a photo of the ocean, and I have it sitting on a white wood shelf. You can come over to hang out if you want.

Sakuragi: That would be great, I'd love to!

Asaka: Come over, come over~ (laughs).

Sakuragi: I'm so happy I could ask you so many different things today. Besides obviously everything you've said and taught me, I've stolen everything I can from you by watching and learning from you onstage. Although I'm on the smaller side, I came to want to have such a big presence, like you have, that I can change the atmosphere of the stage and make people not notice my size.

Asaka: That makes me really happy to hear. But, your physical size doesn't have anything to do with it. Thinking back on it now, when I was a junior actress I was just tall, I didn't have any substance. It was after learning from experience and accumulating that learning that I was able to perform confidently onstage, I think. I think it was watching the senior actresses onstage that I learned the most from, so hearing that you were studying that way makes me really happy. Of course if I notice something I'll say it, and I think there are things you can notice from people telling you, I think the very best thing is to watch on your own and learn from that. Zun-chan, you already have a good sense of that, so I look forward to see more from you. Please continue to grow more and more as someone who supports Cosmos Troupe.

Sakuragi: Yes, thank you so much!

* Sakuragi Minato was the youngest of three performers sharing the role of Rudolf. The other two performers were Sumiki Sayato and Sorahane Riku.

** The 2015 show Portrait of the Heir.

*** Rudolf is played by two separate actresses in Elisabeth.

**** There are a few lines in one section of Der Letzte Tanz that are from Der Tod’s perspective, but performed by an off-stage singer.

***** There are multiple bathing areas for performers in the Takarazuka Grand Theatre complex. They are divided by seniority, with the Uni Baths being restricted to the most senior performers.

#takarazuka #article translation #mag: kageki #troupe: sora #sienne: asaka manato #sienne: sakuragi minato #show: elisabeth

28 notes · View notes

douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years

Text

OK, I'LL TELL YOU YOU ABOUT PROBLEM

I'm pretty sure that to people 50 or 100 years in the future. But this isn't true. As Marc Andreessen put it, software is eating the world, and this trend has decades left to run. As you've probably noticed, they have a single format. The practice seems to have begun in China, where starting in 587 candidates for the imperial civil service had to take an exam on classical literature. Law used to mean that if your software was slow, all you need are the people. Probably not. Whereas Pittsburgh has the opposite problem: plenty of nerds, but no one person would have a complete copy of it. Their first site was exclusively for Harvard students, of which there are only a few jobs as professional journalists, for example, so competition ensured the average journalist was fairly good. Companies ensure quality through rules to prevent employees from screwing up. Arguably it's a sign of weakness. When people hurt themselves lifting heavy things, it's usually because they try to lift with their back.

Since there's a fixed cost each time you start working on a program, it's more efficient to work in a big company in the expectation of fairness goes away. When you have small children, there are at least some users who really need what they're making—not just people who could start startups, so it's not surprising to find they'll also push their scruples to the limits for them. A round. What nerds like is other nerds. The other problem with pretend work is that it often looks better than real work. Conversely, a town must have an intact center. They all say they cared too much what other kids thought of them. But we're not these people's bosses. They switch because it's a rich market, and if the difference between them will be less than the measurement error. One of the artifacts of the way schools are organized is that we get on average only about 5-7% of a much larger number. If you can make a graph of all the things we'll get in the next 50 years as they did in Ming China and nineteenth century England just as much as in present day South Korea.

None of them are run by product visionaries, and empirically you can't seem to get those by hiring them. The really dramatic growth happens when a startup only has three or four of the eight startups we funded will make it. Ironically, hackers have brought this on themselves. A lot of the reason I laughed so much at the talk by the good speaker at that conference was that everyone else did. The usual motives are few: drugs, money, sex, revenge. One of the mistakes novice pilots make is overcontrolling the aircraft: applying corrections too vigorously, so the aircraft oscillates about the desired configuration instead of approaching it asymptotically. For example, I'd tell myself I was only going to use the Internet twice a day.

This turns out not to be in as good physical shape as Olympic athletes, for example, so competition ensured the average journalist was fairly good. They all know about the VCs who rejected Google. My rule is that I can spend as much time just thinking as I do it on that computer. But when he rides the Segwell, they shout abuse from their cars: Too lazy to walk, ya fuckin homo? Microsoft could have, will you convince investors? But there's more going on than that. Apple's not going to generate ideas as well as your own. Stuff used to be valuable, and now he's a professor at MIT.

It's easy. For the young especially, much of this confusion is induced by the artificial situations they find themselves in. Certainly some rejected Google. Often users have second thoughts and delete such comments. When I ask myself what I've found life is too short for something. But when he rides the Eunicycle, which looks exactly like a regular unicycle till you realize the window has closed. They're so earnest and hard-working. The SFP was just an experiment, instead of taking a class on entrepreneurship you're better off taking money from an investor than an employer.

It's not aimed at producing a correct estimate of any given individual, but at least half the startups we fund could make as good a bet a few months I realized that what I'd been unconsciously hoping to find there was back in the US at least they don't have the clean, sparse feel they used to. If Bill Gates and Michael Dell were both 19 when they started startups, they decided to get into second gear. When someone contradicts you, they're in a sense this is historically inaccurate, it is in other ways more accurate, because when someone is being an asshole it's usually uncertain even in their own minds why they like or dislike startups. I suspect professionalism was always overrated—not just in the literal sense of working for money. Which means local TV is probably dead. I can't think of one. Are some people just a lot more independent than others, or would everyone be this way if they were sentient adversaries—as if there were a little man in your head always cooking up the most plausible arguments for doing whatever you're trying to convince investors of something very uncertain—that their startup will be huge—and convincing anyone of something like that must obviously entail some wild feat of salesmanship. Hmm, I wonder what's new online. Hacking is something you learn best by doing it. This way, they were guaranteed a social event at least once a week. The people who are young but smart and driven can make more by starting their own companies than by working for existing ones, the existing companies are forced to fall back on.

Even if the product doesn't entail a lot of energy released. If investors get too involved, they smother one of the most admired Web 2. I think they fail because they select for the wrong people. Ideally the answer is that life actually is short. It wasn't always this way. I could probably tell you exactly what he said, to learn how to deal with tedious problems or get involved in messy ways with the real world, programs are bigger, tend to involve existing code, for example—can't help but look smug. Older founders only make the first mistake. And investors can tell fairly quickly whether you're a domain expert by how well you answer their questions. The main value networks supply now is ad sales. In addition to the direct cost in time, there's the cost in fragmentation—breaking people's day up into bits too small to be useful. If you try to solve? Their lives are short too.

Plus there are probably all sorts of regulations to comply with. Clinton found he was feeling short of breath. But it's not because liberals are smarter that this is the exact moment when technological progress stops. But it would have advantages even if it didn't: you have to select 20 players. VCs, and we think as it spreads outward it will help later stage investors as well. Once credential granting institutions are no longer in the self-fullfilling prophecy business, they'll have to work that way. I'd like to suggest an alternative word for someone who publishes in a weblog format, but anyone who publishes online. B for getting startup ideas. Though the idea of fixing payments. College is an incomparable opportunity to do that.

0 notes

oliverphisher · 4 years

Text

Becca Van

Becca Van is the creator and the author of the Terra-Form series of fictional novels. The series first became available to readers in 2011. That is when the debut novel in the series came out. It is titled Alpha Panthers.

Becca lives in the southern part of Australia, Geelong, Victoria, which is about an hour south of Melbourne.

She began writing in 2012 with a previous publisher under the name of Becky Wilde. Her first books weren’t great, but after switching to Siren BookStrand I learnt a lot.

Alpha Province: Puppet Strings (Siren Publishing Menage Everlasting) By Becca Van

Her 99th book titled, Alpha Province: Shining Beacons was released with Siren BookStrand on the 4th of December. Her 100th book will be released on December 27. She is really looking forward to this milestone and have been running competitions for readers to win a copy of the last few releases of her books.

What are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?

The Magic Faraway Tree By Enid Blyton

I loved Enid Blyton’s books as a kid. The Magic Faraway Tree and other books Ms. Blyton wrote. I would read them every night without fail.

The Sands of Time By Sidney Sheldon

Two books that I read as a teenager which I thoroughly enjoyed and still remember to this day are Sidney Sheldon’s The Sands of Time and

Tara Kane By George Markstein

Tara Kane by George Markstein.

What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months (or in recent memory)?

This probably isn’t what you’re after, but I’d have to say wrist supports. Typing so much five days a week for last nine to ten years was catching up with me and I was getting sore forearms and wrists. My chiropractor suggested I purchase the supports which I did, and I have to say within a week I was no longer in constant pain. It was great because I love writing and didn’t want to end up with permanent damage.

How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success?

When I wrote my first book, I submitted the manuscript to over thirty publishers. I received rejection after rejection and nearly gave up, but I persisted and sent it to another publisher whom to my abject excitement, agreed to publish my first story. I haven’t looked back.

Are there any quotes you think of often or live your life by?

Treat everyone the way you wish to be treated. We’d have a much happier peaceful world if everyone lived by this motto.

What is one of the best investments in a writing resource you’ve ever made?

Although I know this isn’t what you mean, I’d have to say besides my laptop which needed to have a fast processor to deal with all the editing notes so Word didn’t lag when I was typing corrections and edits, lots of notebooks to jot down ideas and to keep my characters and stories in order.

What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?

I talk to myself often. Since I work from home it can get a bit lonely. Sometimes my adult son and his fiancée will hear me if and when they are home and will ask if I’m talking to them or myself. Shrug. Talking to myself helps keep me sane. Lol.

In the last five years, what new belief, behaviour, or habit has most improved your life?

I’m not a very confident person, however, I do believe if you work hard, put your heart and soul into something, that you’ll eventually be rewarded.

What advice would you give to a smart, driven aspiring author? What advice should they ignore?

The advice I’d give to an aspiring author is to never stop writing or reading. It doesn’t matter if you think what you’ve written is drivel and you end up deleting it. Continue to write everyday no matter the content or how many words you get down on paper, or on your computer. I’ve deleted whole chapters because I wasn’t happy with them.

I also read constantly. I’m not a huge TV fan and would rather read than watch the television. Nonetheless, I do occasionally sit and watch a movie or a show I like.

Ignore all negative criticism but listen to all constructive criticism. It may take a while to learn the difference, but your intuition will tell you who to listen to.

What are bad recommendations you hear in your profession often?

I don’t hear of too many recommendations good or bad. So, I can’t really answer the question. One critique may tell you they don’t like your story, but the next one may say they love it.

Everyone enjoys different genres and has different likes and dislikes. Just because one person doesn’t like what you’ve written, doesn’t mean everyone will hate it.

In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to (distractions, invitations, etc.)?

Actually, I’m not great at saying no. I often do things I don’t want to do to keep everyone happy. I’m a peacekeeper and would prefer to do something I don’t wish to rather than upset anyone.

Nevertheless, I’m getting better at limiting visitors who knock on my door during my workday. Instead of letting them stay for as long as they want, I’m now limiting them to half an hour, especially if I haven’t reached the wordcount goal I’ve set myself each day.

What marketing tactics should authors avoid?

I don’t pay to market my work. I have a great publisher who markets all their authors and stories. There are so many authors who do pay for marketing. I think that it’s necessary if you’re self-publishing. Of course, everyone is different and is allowed their own opinions on what works for them.

What new realizations and/or approaches have helped you achieve your goals?

I actually had a new realization last week thanks to my wonderful husband. I’ve never thought about myself as a successful author, but my man told me how proud he was of my achievements.

I just think of myself as an avid worker who is too stubborn to let someone, or something, get in the way of what I love doing.

I write between five and six thousand words every weekday and I don’t deviate from that goal even if I have interruptions.

I also let my mind wander when I’m not writing or reading and sometimes a great story will pop into my head. I’ve used dreams and nightmares I’ve had as a basis to a plot. I’m a dreamer and probably don’t live in the real world as often as I should, but if I didn’t have a good imagination, I wouldn’t have written so many books.

When you feel overwhelmed or have lost your focus temporarily, what do you do?

I walk away, make myself a cup of black coffee or green tea and give my mind a few minutes rest. Then I’ll mull over where I’m up to, where I want to go and get back to work.

Any other tips?

Read as many books as you can of differing genres. Write whenever you can, no matter what and observe your surroundings when you’re out and about. You never know when something you see or hear will strike and give you the basis for a plot.

________

Enjoyed this Q&A? Want to discuss in more depth? Join Community Writers. You'll get access to 100+ exclusive writing tips. Q&As with successful authors, an exclusive ebook on building an audience and much more. Sign-up for free as a community writer here

source https://www.thecommunitywriter.com/blog/becca-van

#Writing WriteMotivation WritingAdvice

0 notes

politicoscope · 4 years

Text

Donald Trump Biography and Profile

New Post has been published on https://www.politicoscope.com/donald-trump-biography-and-profile/

Donald Trump Biography and Profile

Donald John Trump Sr. (born June 14, 1946) is an American business magnate, investor, television personality and author. He is the chairman and president of The Trump Organization and the founder of Trump Entertainment Resorts. Trump’s extravagant lifestyle, outspoken manner, and role on the NBC reality show The Apprentice have made him a well-known celebrity who was No. 17 on the 2011 Forbes Celebrity 100 list.

Donald J. Trump is the very definition of the American success story, setting the standards of excellence in his business endeavors, and now, for the United States of America. A graduate of the Wharton School of Finance, President Trump has always dreamed big and pushed the boundaries of what is possible his entire career, devoting his life to building business, jobs and the American Dream. This was brought to life by a movement he inspired in the people of America when he announced his candidacy for President of the United States in June 2015.

This movement would ultimately lead to one of the most unique Presidential campaigns in history. Ever the leader, Trump followed no rule book and took his message, “Make America Great Again” directly to the people. Campaigning in historically democratic states and counties across the country, Trump was elected President in November 2016 in the largest electoral college landslide for a Republican in 28 years.

“We will make America strong again. We will make America proud again. We will make America safe again. And we will Make America Great Again!” – President Donald J. Trump.

Who is Donald Trump?

Trump was born on June 14, 1946, in Queens, New York. He was an energetic, assertive child. Trump was raised Presbyterian by his mother, and he identifies as a mainline Protestant. In the 1950s, the Trumps’ wealth increased with the postwar real estate boom. Trump is the son of Fred Trump, a wealthy New York City real-estate developer. He worked for his father’s firm, Elizabeth Trump & Son, while attending the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and in 1968 officially joined the company. He was given control of the company in 1971 and renamed it The Trump Organization.

At age 13, Trump’s parents sent him to the New York Military Academy, hoping the discipline of the school would channel his energy in a positive manner. He did well at the academy, both socially and academically, rising to become a star athlete and student leader by the time he graduated in 1964.

Trump entered Fordham University in 1964. He transferred to the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania two years later and graduated in 1968 with a degree in economics. During his years at college, Trump worked at his father’s real estate business during the summer. He also secured education deferments for the draft for the Vietnam War and ultimately a 1-Y medical deferment after he graduated.

Donald John Trump, a gifted self-publicist (no doubt a comment he would savour), Donald Trump is a rich, colourful property developer and casino owner based in New York who has seen as many newspaper column inches devoted to his private life as to his business interests.

While he has a long record of appearing in the gossip columns, he had no record of political activity. But with his personal fortune of an estimated $1.6bn, he could have run a formidable campaign and has reputedly considered putting up to $100m behind a campaign.

Many of his buildings bear the name Trump, including the anticipated Trump World Tower, soon to go up in New York, controversially next to the United Nations headquarters. He is also rumoured to looking at investing in London property. Trump had said he would put his business interests aside during a presidential campaign but his critics say that his candidacy is simply a case of the master publicist doing what he is best at – promoting himself.

Trump would also have had to consider that his two former wives will reveal any skeletons in the cupboard if he chooses to run. One of the women, Marla Maples, had threatened to tell all.

Democrat and Republican Trump, registered as a Republican, switched parties several times in the past three decades. In 1987, Trump registered as a Republican; two years later, in 1989, he registered as an Independent. In 2000, Trump ran for president for the first time on the Reform platform. In 2001, he registered as a Democrat. By 2009, Trump had switched back to the Republican party, although he registered as an Independent in 2011 to allow for a potential run in the following year’s presidential election. He finally returned to the Republican party to endorse Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential run and has remained a Republican since.

Before opting for Ross Perot’s Reform Party, Trump was known as a Republican with socially liberal but economically conservative views. He backs abortion rights – a stark contrast to his Reform Party opponent Pat Buchanan – tax cuts and universal health care. He supports free trade – but only with the US getting tough with countries that refuse to open their markets.

“Japan for many years has ripped off the United States, big league,” he once said. “England has been a terrific partner.

“France has been a terrible partner, a terrible team player.”

While he had said he broadly favoured tax cuts, he also proposed a surtax on every person and trust valued over $10m, the proceeds of which would go to paying the national debt. He had said that would mean he would have to stump up some $700m but economists say his figures didn’t add up. Donald Trump made clear his distaste for the personal campaigning that he would have had to do had he won the Reform Party nomination.

“I’m not a big fan of the handshake. I think it’s barbaric, shaking hands, you catch colds, you catch the flu, you catch this, you catch all sorts of things,” he told US TV channel NBC.

Art Deal In 1987, Trump published the book The Art of the Deal, co-authored with Tony Schwartz. In the book, Trump describes how he successfully makes business deals.

“I DON’T do it for the money. I’ve got enough, much more than I’ll ever need. I do it to do it. Deals are my art form,” Trump wrote.

The book made the New York Times best-seller list, although the number of copies sold has been debated; sales have been estimated at between 1 to 4 million copies to-date. Schwartz later became an outspoken critic of the book and of Trump, saying he felt remorseful for helping make the president “more appealing than he is.”

Donald Trump and His Wealth

Over the years, Trump’s net worth have been a subject of public debate. Because Trump has not publicly released his tax returns, it’s not possible to definitively determine his wealth in the past or today. However Trump valued his businesses at at least $1.37 billion on his 2017 federal financial disclosure form, published by the Office of Government Ethics. Trump’s 2018 disclosure form put his revenue for the year at a minimum of $434 million from all sources.

In 1990, Trump asserted his own net worth in the neighborhood of $1.5 billion. At the time, the real estate market was in decline, reducing the value of and income from Trump’s empire. The Trump Organization required a massive infusion of loans to keep it from collapsing, a situation which raised questions as to whether the corporation could survive bankruptcy. Some observers saw Trump’s decline as symbolic of many of the business, economic and social excesses that had arisen in the 1980s.

A May 2019 investigation by The New York Times of 10 years of Trump’s tax information found that between 1985 and 1994, his businesses lost money every year. The newspaper calculated that Trump’s businesses suffered $1.17 billion in losses over the decade. Trump later defended himself on Twitter, calling the Times’s report “a highly inaccurate Fake News hit job!” He tweeted that he reported “losses for tax purposes,” and that doing so was a “sport” among real estate developers.

Trump’s Tax Returns Trump’s net worth was questioned over the course of his 2016 presidential run, and he courted controversy after repeatedly refusing to release his tax returns while they were being audited by the Internal Revenue Service. He did not release his tax returns during the election, and he has not to date. It was the first time a major party candidate had not released such information to the public before a presidential election since Richard Nixon in 1972.

After Democrats regained control of the House with the 2018 elections, Trump again faced calls to release his tax returns. In April 2019, Congressman Richard Neal, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, requested six years’ worth of the president’s personal and business tax returns from the IRS. Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin rejected the request, as well as Neal’s follow-up subpoena for the documents.

In May the New York State Assembly passed legislation that authorized tax officials to release the president’s state returns to the chairmen of the House Ways and Means Committee, the Senate Finance Committee and the Joint Committee on Taxation for any “specified and legitimate legislative purpose.” With New York City serving as the home base for the Trump Organization, it was believed that the state returns would contain much of the same information as the president’s federal returns.

In September 2019, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. subpoenaed the accounting firm Mazars USA for Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns dating back to 2011, prompting a challenge from the president’s lawyers. A Manhattan federal district judge dismissed Trump’s lawsuit in October, though the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit agreed to temporarily delay enforcement of the subpoena while considering arguments in the case. A few days later, that same appeals court rejected Trump’s bid to block another subpoena issued to Mazars USA, this one from the House Committee on Oversight and Reform.

In December 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments over whether the president could block the disclosure of his financial information to congressional committees and the Manhattan district attorney.

Donald Trump Lawsuits and Investigations

Fair Housing Act Discrimination Trial In 1973, the federal government filed a complaint against Trump, his father and their company alleging that they had discriminated against tenants and potential tenants based on their race, a violation of the Fair Housing Act, which is part of the Civil Rights Act of 1968.

After a lengthy legal battle, the case was settled in 1975. As part of the agreement, the Trump company had to train employees about the Fair Housing Act and inform the community about its fair housing practices.

Trump wrote about the resolution of the case in his 1987 memoir Art of the Deal: “In the end, the government couldn’t prove its case, and we ended up taking a minor settlement without admitting any guilt.”

Trump University In 2005, Trump launched his for-profit Trump University, offering classes in real estate and acquiring and managing wealth. The venture had been under scrutiny almost since its inception and at the time of his 2015 presidential bid, it remained the subject of multiple lawsuits.

In the cases, claimants accused Trump of fraud, false advertising and breach of contract. Controversy about the suits made headlines when Trump suggested that U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel could not be impartial in overseeing two class action cases because of his Mexican heritage.

On November 18, 2016, Trump, who had previously vowed to take the matter to trial, settled three of the lawsuits for $25 million without admission of liability. In a statement from New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, he called the settlement, “a stunning reversal by Trump and a major victory for the over 6,000 victims of his fraudulent university.”

Donald J. Trump Foundation Later, in a separate incident related to Trump University, it was reported that Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi decided not to join the existing New York fraud lawsuit. This came just days after she had received a sizable campaign donation from the Donald J. Trump Foundation, which was founded in 1988 as a private charity organization designed to make donations to nonprofit groups. In November 2016, it was reported that Bondi’s name was on Trump’s list as a possible U.S. Attorney General contender.

As a result of the improper donation to Bondi’s campaign, Trump was required to pay the IRS a penalty and his foundation came under scrutiny about the use of its funds for non-charitable activities. According to tax records, The Trump Foundation itself was found to have received no charitable gifts from Trump since 2008, and that all donations since that time had come from outside contributors.

In fall 2019, after Trump admitted to misusing money raised by his foundation to promote his presidential campaign and settle debts, he was ordered to pay $2 million in damages.

Impeachment Donald Trump on Wednesday 18 December 2019, became the third U.S. president to be impeached as the House of Representatives formally charged him with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress in a historic step that will inflame partisan tensions across a deeply divided America. The Democratic-led House’s passage of two articles of impeachment on a mostly party-line vote sets the stage for a trial next month in the Republican-controlled Senate – friendlier terrain for Trump – on whether to convict and remove him from office.

No president in the 243-year history of the United States has been removed from office by impeachment. That would require a two-thirds majority in the 100-member Senate, meaning at least 20 Republicans would have to join Democrats in voting against Trump – and none have indicated they will.

The Senate’s top Republican, Mitch McConnell, has predicted there is “no chance” his chamber will remove Trump when it holds its trial. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said after the vote she would wait to name the House managers, or prosecutors, until she knew more about the procedures for the Senate trial. She did not specify when she would send the articles to the Senate.

“So far, we haven’t seen anything that looks fair to us,” Nancy Pelosi told reporters.

Donald Trump, 73, is accused of abusing his power by pressuring Ukraine to investigate political rival Joe Biden, a leading contender for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, as well as a discredited theory that Democrats conspired with Ukraine to meddle in the 2016 election.

Democrats said Trump held back $391 million in security aid intended to combat Russia-backed separatists and a coveted White House meeting for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy as leverage to coerce Kiev into interfering in the 2020 election by smearing Biden.

The second article accused Trump of obstruction of Congress by directing administration officials and agencies not to comply with lawful House subpoenas for testimony and documents related to impeachment.

Trump, who is seeking another four-year term in the November 2020 presidential election, has denied wrongdoing and called the impeachment inquiry launched by Pelosi in September a “witch hunt.”

At a raucous rally for his re-election in Battle Creek, Michigan, as the House voted, Trump said the impeachment would be a “mark of shame” for Democrats and Pelosi, and cost them in the 2020 election.

“This lawless, partisan impeachment is a political suicide march for the Democrat Party,” Trump said. “They’re the ones who should be impeached, every one of them.”

During a daylong debate before the vote, Pelosi read the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance and said: “We are here to defend democracy for the people.”

Donald Trump Family

Melania Trump Trump is currently married to former Slovenian model Melania Trump (née Knauss), who is more than 23 years his junior. In January 2005, the couple married in a highly-publicized and lavish wedding. Among the many celebrity guests at the wedding were Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton.

Ivana Trump In 1977, Trump married his first wife Ivana Trump, (née Zelnickova Winklmayr), a New York fashion model who had been an alternate on the 1972 Czech Olympic Ski Team. She was named vice president in charge of design in the Trump Organization and played a major role in supervising the renovation of the Commodore and the Plaza Hotel.

The couple had three children together: Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka and Eric. They went through a highly publicized divorce that was finalized in 1992.

Marla Maples In 1993 Trump married his second wife, Marla Maples, an actress with whom he had been involved for some time and already had a daughter, Tiffany.

Trump would ultimately file for a highly publicized divorce from Maples in 1997, which became final in June 1999. A prenuptial agreement allotted $2 million to Maples.

Children Donald Trump has five children. He and his first wife, Ivana Trump, had three children together: Donald Trump Jr., born in 1977; Ivanka Trump, born in 1981, and Eric Trump, born in 1984. Trump and his second wife, Marla Maples, had daughter Tiffany Trump in 1993. And current wife Melania Trump gave birth to Trump’s youngest child, Barron William Trump, in March 2006.

Trump’s sons — Donald Jr. and Eric— work as executive vice presidents for The Trump Organization. They took over the family business while their father serves as president.

Trump’s daughter Ivanka was also an executive vice president of The Trump Organization. She left the business and her own fashion label to join her father’s administration and become an unpaid assistant to the president. Her husband, Jared Kushner, is also a senior adviser to President Trump.

Donald John Trump Biography and Profile

#Donald John Trump Biography and Profile #Donald Trump #Donald Trump Biography #Donald Trump Biography and Profile #Donald Trump Jr. Biography #Fiona Hill #Fiona Hill Biography #Melania Trump #Melania Trump Biography #President of United States #U.S. President #US President

0 notes

brilliantbiz · 4 years

Text

New Post has been published on Brilliant Breakthroughs, Inc.

New Post has been published on https://www.brilliantbreakthroughs.com/debbie-leoni/

Allow me to introduce Debbie Leoni

Allow me to introduce: Debbie Leoni

Learn from Debbie Leoni, as she reveals how to master your stress levels to improve YOUR Business’s Performance. Today’s blogging guest, is Debbie Leoni of Being Fearless. Her mission is to help people move beyond their fear and step into their potential. As Small Business Owners learn how to do this, their performance will improve and their business with grow.

Debbie Leoni is one the members of the Brilliant Breakthroughs for the Small Business Owner #1 Bestselling Book Series Author Team. On November 13, 2019 a group of 8 Brilliant Practicing ExpertsTM lead by Maggie Mongan, will be releasing their book to coincide with National Entrepreneurs Month. It is written specifically for Small Business Owners, by Small Business Owners, to help you learn how to win BIG at small business in the 21st century!

Want to learn more about how to get your hands on the book: Brilliant Breakthroughs for the Small Business Owner: Fresh Perspectives on Profitability, People, Productivity, and Finding Peace in Your Business, AND our app for the book to get direct access to our authors, AND our podcast? When you go to: BrilliantBizBook.com you’ll get 100 Tips for Small Business Owners Success Report to start working into your business until the book comes out!

To give you a glimpse of a couple different chapters, I invited our co-authors to write a short guest blog to learn about why their chapter topic is important to YOUR Business Success.

I’d like to introduce you to Debbie Leoni, Coach, Speaker, and Author

Debbie Leoni, Expert of Being Fearless, wants you to know this possibility for your business and you.

In Brilliant Breakthroughs for the Small Business Owner: Fresh Perspectives on Profitability, People, Productivity, and Finding Peace in Your Business (Vol. 3), Business Author Debbie Leoni shares her wisdom by introducing “The Top 3 Fear Busters: No More Playing Small”. Debbie interviewed successful Small Business Owners to share their challenges and their transformations because they moved beyond their fear. Additionally, Debbie provides some coaching exercises at the end of her chapter to assist you to stop playing small.

Debbie Leoni is a nationally recognized speaker, coach, and author on the topic of Being Fearless. She moves people through and beyond their fears with such grace and finesse!

The following is what Debbie Leoni wants to share with you:

Is It Time to Redefine Success?

It seems when I ask this question to the business owners who I coach, they immediately go to their income goals. While it’s true that how much money you make is reflective of your sense of achievement, there’s so much more.

I work with Small Business Owners who are accomplishing many important aspects of the work they do. Money is no longer tight like it was when they opened their business. They’ve expanded and feel good about the direction things are going at work. They are very dedicated to putting in the hours necessary to run an efficient business and feel good about their results.

Except!

Their spouse is losing interest.

Their health has been negatively impacted.

They don’t sleep well.

They have little to no downtime for self-care.

They feel stuck because they are afraid that if they take the necessary actions that will offer work/life balance, they will fail.

Until!

They decide to get the support they need and realize they are not in alignment with what matters most! Nine times out of ten I’m told what matters most is family; however, when they stop to assess the hours they are spending with family, their eyes pop out and they begin to comprehend their actions are in no way reflective of what they say is most important.

And the culprit is:

FEAR!

When a Small Business Owner contracts coaching with me, I start by guiding them to gain a clear vision of what they most want. Then we talk about everything that has been in the way of this vision. What they soon realize is their mindset is filled with fear-based thoughts and beliefs. They might sound like: “I’m not as good as my competition. I’m too afraid to say no. If I step out of my comfort zone, I will be rejected.”

These thoughts and beliefs, (most often unconscious) are preventing them from taking time for self-care, their family, spouses, and an overall feeling of balance.

They start to feel empowered as we unpack the mental obstacles which are having them feel frustrated and oftentimes, depleted. The empowerment comes from the realization of being able to control of their thoughts. This means they can create new thoughts and beliefs to enhance life.

The fear is there; however, now they no longer allow their fear to be in the driver’s seat. As they make that switch; they put fear in the passenger seat and the biggest, fearless version of themselves in the driver’s seat, magic happens!

They start to set and maintain clear boundaries with their employees, and everyone around them so they can let go of being responsible for everyone else.

They’re making healthier choices with their meals and exercise.

They sleep better.

Their spouses and kids are happier.

Things at work become more efficient.

They become happy and fulfilled!

Debbie Leoni, “Feeling this victorious is possible!”

OUTCOMES!

Because of the new thoughts and beliefs they have adopted, and the new actions they have taken, their definition of success has morphed into one that still includes money. Yet they now are very clear that success having balance, the willingness to take risks and living in integrity is their new and improved definition of success.

What if, today, you created some downtime to: hit the pause button and reflect on how you have defined success and what your new and improved definition might be. Whatever it is, it will be an invitation to bust through any fears that might be holding you back; to feel your fear and do it anyway!

Chapter 8 of Brilliant Breakthroughs for the Small Business Owner is titled, “The Top 3 Fear Busters: No More Playing Small.” I explain more in my chapter about how you can turn fear energy into fearlessness.

There’s no better time than now to purchase the book (releasing Nov 13, 2019) and use your new definition of success to make the biggest impact you ever imagined! ~Debbie

SMALL BUSINESS SUCCESS NOTE:

Want to purchase the #1 Amazon Small Business Bestselling Book: Brilliant Breakthroughs for the Small Business Owner – Vol. 3? Click here: BrilliantBizBook.com. Then sign up to get your 100 Free Tips and we’ll email them to you AND another email to let you know how to get your book for only 99 cents on November 13, 2019. Thank you readers for helping us become a #1 Amazon Bestselling Small Business Book Series!

THANKS FOR ALLOWING ME TO HELP YOU IMPROVE YOUR BUSINESS!

Brilliant Breakthroughs, Inc. helps Small Business Owners Simplify Strategies & Align Actions to further Profitability, Peace, & Potential Call Maggie (262) 716.7750 for YOUR No-cost Consultation

Blessings of Success to YOU ~ Maggie Mongan, Brilliant CEO & Strategist Brilliant Breakthroughs, Inc. Direct Dial: 262-716-7750 LinkedIn: MaggieMongan

p.s.: Being fearless supports being peace-filled. This is a power strategy to calm your mind and be able to make better business decisions in real-time. Don’t minimize the power of this to support YOUR Business Success!

Copyright owned by Brilliant Breakthroughs, Inc. The internet is about sharing. Please share this post in its entirety with full attribution to www.BrilliantBreakthroughs.com. Thank you.

#achieving goals #Business Growth #Business Success #businesses struggle #fear #Improving Performance #leadership #motivation

0 notes

cattheologian-blog · 5 years

Text

What was I Thinking? (Autobiography)

Yes, the nightmare started April 23rd, 2002, when my mother wanted to take a bowel movement and found out it was just me. I would never show this to her, not with her temperament.

Now to be honest, I could not remember much from my earliest days. You shouldn’t be able to. You think you rot a little inside remembering the stupid things you did and said back in high school? You would implode like a pressurized grape if you were to remember the things you did and said when you were still 4. I’m lucky I didn’t remember much. I was told we were dirt poor and that would just add to a pile of already unwanted memories.

I remember very little except for the time I learned how to use the remote control. Before then, my grandfather had left me in his chair without switching back to the Disney Channel as I had requested. I found myself watching National Geographic for over four hours that day. After that, when I did learn how to work the remote, I found myself less and less attracted to the annoying way Mickey Mouse talks and more and more fascinated of how this German guy killed 6 million Jews because of a dream he had. It was probably too early for me to start watching the History Channel, but at that point I wouldn’t let go of the remote. Or so I was told.

I grew up in a family that demanded high standards of excellence; at least, that’s how our matriarch thought. My grandmother might as well have been the family matriarch. She handled everything, every aspect of family life from legal cases down to monthly expenditures. Everything was under her wing. She was a teacher, and at her time, the highest ranking pedagoguess in her district, with influence shadowing that of her puppet supervisor. The now fully grown men and women whose ears she used to pinch and wrists she used to hit all stand in attention and fearfully call her ‘ma’am’ whenever she addressed them, like they used to when their faces were still young and their uniforms, still quite fitting. The local DepEd unit heaved a sigh of relief when she finally retired in 2016.

She would be one of two people who molded my early tentative years, but she was not the first. This was Evangeline. The first would be Rita, a family friend, but whom nonetheless I lovingly called Tita La.

She was a family friend. Not a blood relative. Our family then was dirt poor and my grandmother looked to her for a helping hand. We could not even put food on the table ourselves, and that were she selflessly invited us to share the food on hers. I could remember her nieces calling me a ‘leach’ or referring to me as ‘kagaw’ along with the rest of my family. This was long before I was born. Tita La even stepped in and sent my father to college for free. My grandparents would spend the next few years paying her back the money, money she virtuously refused, but my grandparents insisted she take for all the trouble she went through. In return, my father and mother gladly worked for her and their family until they were able to get jobs of their own. It was because of her philanthropy and loving kindness that my cousin’s and I thought that we were actually related and she was actually our grandmother, even believing for a while that she was Lola Evangeline’s sister. It didn’t make a difference when we eventually found out she was not. Lola or not, she was still Tita La.

I still remember the day Tita La died. She was a fat woman. She loved cooking, she loved eating and she loved it even more when we would cook and eat with her. This however, got the best of her. Diabetes was the diagnosis and she secretly went through it for a year before we found out, eventually worsening her case. She was immediately hospitalized and after a week had passed, she had died on November 2008. I was on my mother’s back on her motorcycle on my way home from school. She told me on the way. I remember not crying, because Tita La always told me she might die ‘any day now’. Whenever she would say that, I would cry. Turns out she was just making me cry on purpose, so when she actually did die, I’d have no more left to cry out. And it worked. I arrived at her funeral, but snuck out during the wake. I went to my house, which was across the road hers, and sat on my lawn. There I saw a grasshopper. I knew who that grasshopper was and that grasshopper knew who I was. As if it was Tita La saying goodbye.

Tita La was responsible for tutoring me in English comprehension, writing, reading and rhetoric. When she died, that responsibility went to Lola Evangeline. She Taught me math, Filipino and cursive, all of which I was bad at. She was a strict teacher. I could not remember a tutoring session that a pen did not fly and knock something over somewhere. But that strictness paid off, in a way. I passed elementary and junior high school without a hitch, and I only had to sleep outside once.

Of course this had affected me in many ways. But it was really in junior high school where I found out which amalgamation of bits and pieces of other people’s personalities and traits I really was. It’s a hard time to remember. My parents did my best to afford me every luxury I asked for, but around grade 8 I started feeling guilty. It was then when my monastic thinking kicked in. I started being more frugal with the things I wanted and finding ways to make money. This is strictly off the record, but throughout grade 8 to grade 10, I was a ghostwriter. I would write your essay, do your assignment and make your project for an agreed upon fee. Projects and diorama’s were negotiable, but essays and papers followed a strict price scaling system, with a base price and an additional for every 100 words. I have stopped this now since our families fortunes have improved, seeing my father off abroad just a few years ago. But this life, however little of it I have still lived, is already strife with experiences of poverty and defeat. This engraved a pragmatist mindset in me.

To start off, I don’t have dreams, passions, ambitions or goals or at least I pray every night that they would go away and leave my head. Whenever I used to talk about my ambitions to my parents, I could see in their eyes a hesitancy to support it, and I could not blame them. You spend your life sending your only child to the best school only to end up wanting to be a teacher like you or worse, a Filipino scientist. That does not strike as sweet or endearing, that strikes disappointment and wasted potential. Up until recently I wanted to teach and become a professor. That was shot down when I initially resisted their plan for me take Geology in favor of Education. I was hit by my mother’s “bahala ka, oi”. Then and there I knew that dreams were but expensive adventures that led to dead ends should you follow them. I have since stopped such foolishness.

I had realized that all these ‘creative outlets’ were but a waste of time and money. I had spent years trying to hone my artistic skill and I am still very bad at it. I was a member of GUHIT Pinas, still a member now but inactive. They were generally kind and very respectful about their constructive criticism, until my horrid art found its way there. I couldn’t blame them. I would laugh my ass off too at the sight of a talentless try-hard, so why shouldn’t they?

But it was in 2014, when I was featured in smear article, that I finally resolved to give up art. It was not a rude comment, not a slur, not a mocking paragraph, it was a smear article, about the ‘Top 10 most embarrassing mistakes bad artists make and how to avoid them’, with my illustrations featuring in three out of the top ten. And yes, I am proud to say my last illustration made number one. The website sent me an electronic apology, but by then I had already burned all my paintings and sold all my materials.

When that happens, take it as a sign from God himself saying you should give up.

I have spent years writing, all with awful feedback and critiques; with the most professional editors saying my talent is simply ‘non-existent’. I have great story ideas, I’m just ‘crude and unskilled’ in my execution. My book was rejected so many times I had to self-publish in August of 2018, and when I read the reviews I realized why none of the publisher’s wanted to take my book on. I had visited a combined total of 180 publishing houses, firms and groups, and I was rejected by all of them, starting from December of 2016 to June of 2018 at the time of final rejection. My biggest failure was not the book and its infamy, my biggest failure was not giving up after the 179th rejection and thinking to myself ‘there is still the next one!’ I regret now bragging about that book online, blowing it out of proportion. Thankfully, only family and close friends bought it. I could sneak in and steal them back so they could be banished into the pits of hell, never to return.

I dabbled in poetry around the middle of 2018, at least I’m fairly decent at that. One very popular and important poet once called my poetry in general ‘middle-of-the-road’ one September evening that very same year. I was so flattered, until I found out the term meant bland, boring and unengaging. Until then, my poetry was posted up on my Instagram, which are no longer there as of 2019 (both the poetry and the account).

When that happens, take it as a sign from God himself saying you should give up.

Secondly, I don’t believe in love. The only true love is God. Your partner will betray you, you’ll eventually hate your spouse and your family is only keeping you around out of respect. If social standing was not a thing, I’d be kicked out of the house as a liability I’m pretty sure. But God’s love is everlasting. That’s the only love you should ever pine for and turn to when all other kinds of love fail you.

And I’m not bitter. I knew love did not exist the first time my parent’s fought when I was 6, and all the crushes I ever had since then, I’d tell myself they’ve already rejected me to save the trouble.

When that happens, take it as a sign from God himself saying you should give up. And I firmly believe that…

Why? Why would such a good and loving God put such beautiful and creative thoughts in an unskilled, dull, and subpar mind. It’s like putting a dish of food in front of a chained dog, barely outside its reach. I wish I could give away this stupid unnecessary ambition and creativity to a mind and hand that actually knows what to do with them. Why give creativity to the talentless? Why give dreams to the underacheivers? The only theological explanation is that this is not gift of God, but a mistake of frail, flawed and erring human nature.

I surrender to my parents’ plans and orders and later to that of my superiors, but most importantly to God. I burn a candle every night, hoping that my ambition, passion and dreams would burn along with the wick and evaporate into the sky like the smoke that rises.

I thought I could be a scientist, I thought I could be a teacher, I thought I could be loved, I thought I had worth, I thought I could be an artist, I thought I could be a writer…

What was I thinking?

0 notes

feministasfrida-blog · 6 years

Text

JULIE ANDEM E MARI MAGNUS, MEDIAMORFOSIS BRASIL 2017

Palestra apresentada por Julie Andem e Mari Magnus durante o evento Mediamorfosis Brasil 2017, em 16 de setembro de 2017, em São Paulo, Brasil.

Transcrição por Leticya Bernadete.

Mari Magnus: It’s worth mentioning that we work in NRK which is Norway’s Public Broadcaster and SKAM is a drama series that runs daily online trough this web page. It’s told trough clips, or scenes, screenshots of texts between the characters and also different social media platforms, which the characters live on.

Julie Andem: So you could say it’s a mix between a blog and a drama series, in a way.

MM: And it also runs in real time, which means if something happens in the story Friday night, 9:30, we would publish that content Friday night, 9:30, and today it’s Saturday 16th of September, 2017, right? So, if SKAM would still be running now, it would be September 16th in SKAM as well.

JA: So you get the point. They have the same time as we do.

MM: So, here’s an example from season 4 of the content we published. The audience never knows when new content can come, we’re online, like, 24/7, and new content can come out at anytime.

JA: Sometimes we will say, give them a hint, say maybe something someone’s meeting up at 5 and we know it will probably be a clip, but other than that, you’ll never know.

MM: So, you see, the week in SKAM runs from Saturday to Friday. (Example on Power Point). In this week in SKAM, Saturday morning was a clip published and then during the evening, some chats between characters. And also on Sunday the audience only got a chat and on Monday though they got two clips and so continues everyday. And we try to make that everyday is a small cliffhanger or end with question, just to keep our audience to continue going online and check the web page if there has come out any new content.

And also, this what I’m showing you now is published on that web page, but SKAM also is told on other platforms. (Shows Posts on Instagram about Eva’s Party). This Friday was a party, so on different Instagram accounts and on Youtube, content got published by the characters.

JA: So, all the characters that attended this party, everybody that had seen that scene, later that night, the characters would report from the party. Posting pictures, or small videos.

MM: Also you can watch SKAM as a traditional drama series, where all the scenes are cased and edited together, like a conventional episode that we publish every Friday on demand and also on Flip TV. But the episode, generally, last from, we have episodes with 15 minutes long to 50 minutes. So we never know before…

JA: We never know. The story decides how long the episode is gonna be. It’s not at all made for linear television. In our case, sounded clear, that they had to work and program around it, because as Mari said, it could 15 minutes or 50 minutes. The story decides.

MM: But the story, the concept, it’s customized on a daily experience and that’s on a web page we want our audience to follow SKAM.

JA: So we think the episodes, the full episodes, are more like promotion, because I believe that most people when they start watching SKAM they start watching the full episodes to just get engaged in the story, but then they keep on watching episodes until that one Friday when the cliff is so strong that they can’t wait until the next Friday and then they go online and then they’re hooked. Then they have to check everyday.

MM: So, Julie and I just finished the final season ever of SKAM, season 4, and SKAM has run for 4 seasons now in 2 years (2 seasons every year, Julie says), because we follow the school year.

So, in season 1 we follow Eva, it premiered September 2015, so we follow the school year, so every semester of the school there’s a new season.

JA: Every season is told by different character. All of these characters go to the same school and exist in the same universe, but the first season was told through Eva’s point of view, so it was her story. And she had an emotional journey as a character and there was a specific story to that character but then the next season the story was about Noora which was her best friend and then you see the universe and you tell the story through her point of view. So every season switches character, but all characters exists in everybody’s seasons.

MM: We’re from Norway, SKAM is made for the Norwegian market, it lives 5 million people in Norway. Our target audience was girls 16-year-old, which is approximately 30 thousand girls.

JA: Exactly, the smallest target group ever. We could call each one of them…

MM: Something happen during season 2 and season 3. For example, there’s a fan group in Brazil with 86 thousand members and during the last day of the episode of season 4 ending, ending this SKAM universe, ‘Thank You SKAM’ was globally trending on Twitter, under the hashtag #ThankYouSKAM, where fans were telling their stories about how SKAM had impacted their life. And then during season 3, I’ll just show you, 180 million views on the Chinese fan Youtube.

We never ever ever expected SKAM to become this big.

JA: So we’re gonna try to explain now why it got this big. We could talk about there’s not one reason, or I don’t think it’s either 10 reasons, I think it’s probably 100 reasons. We’re gonna give you some, or very some of the things we think, that we know have an impact.

The first question people usually ask me is how did you come up with the idea to have a show in real time as a blog? And that really is something NRK has done for since 2008. So it’s nothing that happened overnight. In 2008, I used to work in the children’s department and in 2008 we made a fictional video blog for 12-year-girl. So, it was an actor playing that 12-year-old-girl, playing Sara, and she would talk about her life in the web cam, she would blog, and tell the viewers everything that happened in her life. Everything was written and she was an actor. And then we started also to add small fictional scenes, almost what you have in SKAM, and we mixed that into the blog, and that not really logical, but the target group was 10 to 12 so they didn’t really care or understand so we just did what was best for the story.

And then in 2010, we tried to experiment more, we made the same type of blog, but this time we had 3 different characters blogging on the same page. And that was a mess. That was real messy. That was nobody that could understand that story except from the fans who were really engage in the story.

And lastly, in 2013, this show Jenter, is still running at NRK, I made the first 4 seasons and now someone else is making the last 5 seasons, season 10. It was still a fictional video blog that the characters would blog about their life, they would talk to their viewer through a web cam and we would have small clips and the characters would switch from season to season. So SKAM, that’s where SKAM comes from, because Jenter reach, it was really popular, it reached out from it’s target group and 15-year-old girls, 16-year-old girls, started watching in. NRK, the broadcasters said ‘Wow, maybe there’s a market here’, because they hadn’t made anything for teenagers in 20 years. And the saying at NRK was that ‘they are impossible to reach’. So the target group from 14 to 18 had never had any content made to them in 20 years. So that was what we were trying to do with SKAM.

MM: So SKAM is based on this experience from these productions and as well both us came from the children’s department have never worked with a teenage audience, so we had to do research. So during our 8-month comprehensive research period, we did over 50 depth interview with boys and girls between 15 and 19 years’ old with different religious background, or sexuality, or social background. I think I’ve spend over hundreds of hours stalking them on social media (I’m sorry about the lines, I think we crossed, many times, Julie said).

JA: I don’t know if you know this but I’m really a fan of this method called NABC, and it’s developed I think it was meant for tech companies, so tech companies would use it to develop new gadgets, (Mari complements) anyways, the method is like this: it says that’s instead of going out in the target group and gathering a lot of data and statistic, what you do is you find one representative in that target group and you interview that person trying to find a need, something that person needs. And then when you find a need, you try to meet that need with something techy, or a show, like we do. And that’s the method. So we didn’t use, we didn’t talk to one representative, we talked to many representatives, we talked to many, probably 15, 50 teens. But what we were looking for in our research was a need, what do they need, is there anything we can give them with a show? And I must say that very early, before we even started the research, because we ended up, I think it’s vey obvious we brought a need and knew about this need before we started research, but we didn’t want start look for it, and it was so strong. And that was that we could see that teenagers today are under a lot of pressure, in every aspect of life, in school, with friends, in sports, in music, everywhere there’s thrive to be perfect and the pressure is real. The question we ask, is it possible to make a show that we take away some of the pressure from the teens?

And we ended up with some tools, having some tools that we wanted to give out. One of them being, for example humor and the ability to laugh of yourself, self irony, if you can laugh of your suffering then the pressure is smaller to be perfect. So that was one of the tools we used. Another tool we wanted to use was showing then how human interaction works, because when you’re a 16-year-old and you get reject by a boy you will think that there’s something wrong with you, definitely. But trying to show them how every human being has their own problems and how that affects, how it will affect the people around you and that boy who just rejected you it’s probably, he got his own shit to deal with, so it doesn’t have to be… Interaction. And also, showing them the value of facing fear, to build self confidence, and showing them you always grow stronger in confronting a problem then running away from it, so that was the 3 main things we wanted to try to give them, to take away the pressure trough watching SKAM.

MM: Basically this mission is well down into this sentence which says ‘SKAM aims to help 16-year-old girls’ strengthen their self esteem through dismantling taboos making them aware of interpersonal mechanism and showing them the benefits of confronting their fears’. This is the main mission of SKAM in every part of the production if we were like unsure of anything we would go back and look at this and see if does this help their self esteem? This is our rule.

And also during research we asked our target audience what they watched and watch Game of Thrones, Modern Family, all these big budget drama series from the US and also spending a lot of time on Youtube and other social media, which is tough for our little budget project for us to compete with.

JA: We can’t really compete with Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones, but we have something that the big studios in America don’t have and that is that we know exactly who those 30 thousand girls are. We know what culture they grew up in, we know what they eat for dinner, we know what they watch… So identity was our strongest card and we had to play it really right. And the way to play it right is to have really great characters that the viewers can identify with.

One of the characters in SKAM is named Sana and I had an interview with a 17-year-old Muslim girl before season 1 and I asked her ‘I you could write, if you could decide, if I’m gonna make a character for you, how should that character be?’ and she said ‘Can you please make a strong Muslim girl, that is not suppressed by society, that is not under social control, that has her own opinion and is strong?’ and I made that character, I made Sana.

18:50 – explanation about Russ bus

MM: Creating this web drama genre, we call it, in 2015 was a bit different then in 2008 with the first show Sara. In 2008 the blog format was in the golden age in Norway, every pre-teen girl used blog to express through web cams and blog posts. During research, I knew this from the start that blogging is dead in that sense we used in the previous show, but I remember a girl told me ‘I’m 100% myself on Instagram, just a better version’ which I think it’s kind of true for all of us and that’s when it came to me that we had to include social media in the storytelling. Because the digital identities teenagers have, and I think for all of us, are so important and so involved in out life. So, that became this (shows all of the Instagram’s accounts). Every character in SKAM has an Instagram profile, a Facebook profile, and some are on Youtube and other platform, like Snapchat.

Which we can follow these characters are living 24/7 online during the season, posting pictures from their lives always in character. These characters would never publish a picture that didn’t feel that this was from Sana, or Noora or Eva. It’s true to character. Every character has a mood board, which also is rooted in the research, with the aesthetics of how they take the pictures, the humor, how they write the captions, and which emojis or filters they use. And everyone has their own identity online.

So you could follow these characters just like you do with your friends, and when you’re scrolling down your Instagram feed, watching what your friends are doing, then suddenly a picture of Vilde or the group of girls, then the fiction interferes with the reality and it meets us. And it doesn’t become so important if Vilde is a fictional character or if she is your friend, and that’s how I tried to work with social media to let the audience identify and let them feel authentic as if the character were speaking directly to them like they did in the web cams and blogs in the first [productions].

JA: So we tried to find new ways to create that identification and connection with the audience.

MM: And you can define the how we use social media and the social media accounts we use, we can define it as promotional tools or storytelling tools, and it actually doesn’t matter if it’s either way, because it’s so integrated in the story. Because when we use Instagram it’s a good promotion on the show, we’ll try to show you in a sample how we use social media and real time with the story.

So here we see from season 1 the clip from the bus meeting and season 1 is Eva’s season and her boyfriend is named Jonas. So this clip was published Friday, 6:50, Friday evening and the morning after, if you follow SKAM online everyday that week you would see Jonas and Eva waking together the morning after, we’re not telling how they ended up there, which is not so important, because they’re boyfriend and girlfriend, they sleep together once in a while.

Friday evening Jonas posts this picture on his Instagram, refer asking his best bud Izak if he catch a reference (blah). So Izak replies in the comment section this Friday evening and Izak is on his Instagram and Jonas is on his Instagram, in real life is Julie and me sitting on Instagram. (Could not understand). Izak is of course catching the reference immediately and Izak and Jonas start a conversation in the comment section underneath this picture. And Eva starts to interact with them. And that’s just me with my iPad and my iPhone.

JA: And they start a conversation in the comment section of Instagram and then the viewers start to comment also and the characters start to answer the viewers. (Julie reads the conversation at 30:26)

MM: They started to communicate with the fans on there in real time. But it’s important to know, this is the beginning of SKAM. I think there was 20 thousand people, unique users on the web page during that week, and Jonas’ Instagram he had like 200 followers and we knew, ‘okay, probably like 10 people will see this interaction in real time, see the conversation happening at that time’, but for them, who would see, it would feel so strong and so real and authentic that they would be like ‘are these characters real?’ and then they would go talk to their friends and the show would spread throughout the outlets.

JA: That’s kind of how we did promotion in the start.

MM: We wanted to let the target audience find the show themselves. So we didn’t send any big promos or trailer on the linear TV or anywhere else.

Of course we couldn’t continue doing this, because this accounts became very popular, they gained a lot of followers, with a lot of comments, so it would just disappear. But that’s a way of how we tried to work to continue find ways to interact with our audience and something in the storytelling to create a bound between the audience and the characters. And it’s really really easy to interact with SKAM, we don’t need a password or username to go into the website. There’s a comment section in every content that we publish and you can comment anonymously. The storytelling and tools we use in SKAM helps and amplifies the identification to the characters which also brings engagement. Then the audience start hammering on their keyboards, sharing a lot of theories, and emotional reactions, and also they dare to ask questions that they probably wouldn’t dare ask in real life, which becomes really beautiful interactions in the comment sections. We try to read most of the comments on our web page and on different fan forums, but it’s difficult. But it’s like a ongoing focus group, because they’re telling us their predictions, and we’ll go ‘okay, so we’ll try not to do that’, and them they’re telling how they feel about something, and because of that we know our audience really well and the audience knows us also, but we try to know them a little bit better. We’re trying to use all their response and comment section in the story. And we will try to show you some examples on how we use the reactions from the audience in the storytelling.

In season 2, the big love story is between Noora and William, this example is from the second last episode of season 2 and the couple has been trough a conflict, so they’re struggling, but Noora, the feminist Noora, has finally declare her love to her friends for the douchebag William and all of her friends and in whole SKAM universe is ready to see William and Noora together. But just a problem, William is missing in action, he won’t answer on any of her calls or texts messages and the fans are flipping out. Because remember, this is told in real time so, we have to, the audience have to feel what Noora almost is feeling, we have to wait with her to get the answer and we start analyzing why isn’t he replying…

JA: Yeah, everybody started analyzing. At this point, I think this was the first time we understood how big SKAM was in Norway, because everybody in Norway was analyzing what could be wrong with William, why isn’t he answering and what is he feeling? Big cellphones companies started making advertising saying if William had our coverage plan he would have answered by now. The whole public was going crazy. I think it was 2 and a half days or 3 days we waited.

MM: This is the spoiler. Some fans made this web page: haswilliamanswered.no and it would continue going no, not yet, no, no no… And then finally, when he did answer, it was just yes. But ok, it was an intense week. This person wrote this in the comment section ‘I can’t concentrate on my own exam until William has answered’, so what I did, I copy and pasted this line and gave it to Eva and included in a chat between the girls. Now Eva can’t concentrate on her exam until William has answered either. So this shows our audience that we see them and we’re all on this experience together, Eva is desperate to see them together, they’re desperate to see William and Noora together, we are all desperate.

JA: It unifies the characters and the audience. So reality and fiction mixes.

MM: And it’s not so important what is what, or if it’s fiction or reality, because we’re all desperate (could not actually understand 37:38).

JA: So another example, this William character that we talk about, he always enters in slow-mo. I use a lot of clichés in SKAM and one of them being him always entering in slow-mo. And the first time I did it the viewers loved it, second time I did it, they still liked it, third time I did it, they were like ‘c’mon, are you gonna do this forever, are you like, is he always gonna come in slow motion?’. But then I kind of answered that in this scene we’re watching now and you should listen to the lyrics of the song (clip plays at 38:33).

So instead of stopping doing slow-mo we decided to comment it and show that we hear what you’re saying, but we have humor and self irony, the same stuff we’re trying to show our audience.

MM: 40:06 – The last example is this: SKAM has become hugely popular on the SKAM and this is a picture drawn from a big popular talented fan fiction artist, @elleskam on Instagram, and she drew this in the end of season 3 and we got so many mails and comments on this, and hashtags, and people wanting to see this and saying ‘please, can you create this?’. Let us know if you recognize something from the first scene of season 4. (Clip from season 4 at 40:48). So that’s just a way of saying thank you to @elleskam who draws these beautiful pictures from SKAM and engaging with and fandom.

MM: So, we have tried to sum up – 41:25.

JA: Do the research and listen to your target group, take them seriously. Everybody knows that you’re supposed to listen to your target group, but really listen. I didn’t stop asking questions, when I did research interviews with these kids I didn’t stop asking questions until I really understood it, like until I really felt it. Because if they told me about an experience and I could feel and I could recognize something from my own life, and then try to tell that to the audience, then there’s a bigger chance of reaching. If a 16-year-old girl has felt it and I feel it, there’s a big chance a lot other people also have felt it. Try to listen and really understand and like we said, try to get them, I feel there’s a lot of studios and broadcasters that are always discussing how to get teens, but if you flip the question, if ask what can you give them and what do they need?

MM: And working with teenagers today, growing up in this digital world, they have this ease to become their own broadcaster, it’s natural to be heard and have an influence, if they want, they have the possibility to be heard. And I think there’s and expectation from the audience to have an influence and to be heard. So I think it’s important to listen to them and give them a possibility and see that some of the examples we showed you. And also adapt to user behavior, that’s a must I think, and also be willing to experimenting about how to challenge, maybe, the user behavior because it’s constantly changing and I think if SKAM would’ve run for 10 seasons, it would be looking completely different from season 1 to season 10, because how we communicate and how we consume is changing. And also a good story will always be seen.

JA: It’s always this discussion about how to tell stories about (44:25 could not understand) or how to… But if you don’t have a good story or good characters, it doesn’t really matter.

MM: And one more thing: like Kanye West says ‘listen to the kids, bro’.

Question about when Mari is posting on Instagram, or chatting on Facebook, or replying comments. Is she creating, is she improvising?

MM: Yeah, it does have a script. How we cross (?) is that Julie is writing an episode script and we’ll meet up at the meeting and talk through the script and start planning how can we tell this, which precedent should we bring to the online storytelling and that’s not in the scenes. And then I start to write how we can do that. And many people are saying, because I am in charge of all the accounts and writing all the text messages and their Instagram accounts, and people are like ‘How do you do so many personalities?’ and Julie is writing all these personalities in the script as well, which is in some way the same. But then constantly, cause runs in week time and I think it’s really value that we use the reactions that comes immediately in the story. Often I call Julie in the evening and I say ‘Oh, now they’re talking about this, maybe I should write a chat that could just continue it’.

Yeah, I’m listening and have to. I usually compare working with SKAM like in a band or standing on a stage, because it runs 24/7, we almost produce in real time and the response comes immediately, just like if you’re in a band or in a stage, you have to adapt on how the audience is responding on your performance and that’s what we try to do as much as we can in SKAM in use to respond to get a 48:57 (could not understand).

Question about the SKAM team. How does it work, how many people are involved in the process of creating and producing all the content?

JA: I write the script, all the episodes, alone, I don’t have a team. So I’ll write an episode divided into the clips we’ll see, I’ll write the clips and then make sure these clips will work in an episode. And then, Mari and I will sit down, when we have time, when we will discuss the clips and then, because the clips together should work like an episode, so I make sure of that, all of these scenes together work as an episode. But then we try to give all of the viewers who follow everyday, online, more story and that’s what Mari is ready.

MM: It is basically just also, Julie is really, really independent in her writing and then the web content and also, yeah. It’s basically us two who writes.

Question about how the production is their life.

JA: Yeah, that’s right. It’s a 24/7 job (Mari). I think also this is one of the reasons of it’s success, we have a really small team. Everybody in the team is really engaged in the show, they loved working with teens and we have the same vision for the show. So in the last season we had much more people on set and the thing is with more people something it just takes more time. Even though I’ve been working 24 hours a day, I loved working with a small team.

Question about the format of SKAM and selling this format to another company or country.

MM: Like I said, SKAM works in 2015-2017, like how is distributed and published, and like I think, like I said, we have to adapt to consumer behavior, so I hope like it will change and I really hope that telling like this won’t be the main storyteller in a way, because I hope that there will be diversity in how we distribute content and create and continue to develop story.

JA: This works in 2015-2017, maybe in half a year it won’t work the same way, but I believe we will see many examples of it and I think we don’t own this format, that’s NRK that owns it and they have sold it to different places. So we will see variations of SKAM and probably other companies trying to do similar things.

Question about how did it work when an episode had 15 or 50 minutes.

JA: With the work we started in SKAM was an experiment, so we had a really low budget and we were just going to try to reach teenagers. And nobody in NRK, NRK is a really huge production house, nobody really cared about us and that’s a good thing, because they would leave us alone and we could do what we want. So we said ‘okay, we’re gonna make this digital, the target group doesn’t watch linear television, so we’re gonna make it digital, they’re gonna watch it on this page, but we will also create episode in the player every week too. And I think of the episodes, like I said earlier, as a promotion strategy more than the real show. So then one day, NRK woke up and understood ‘oh my god, this is really big’ and then they told us ‘we want to put it on linear television’, and we said ‘no, but we’re making this a digital platform and we can’t change that, so okay, you can have the episodes, but they’re gonna be 15 minutes or 50 minutes, and you’ll have to program around it and we won’t deliver until two hours before it airs’ and they said ‘okay’, because what could they say.

MM: This is part of how we have to like change our mind set from this original media with all these new possibilities. We knew, okay, teenagers, they don’t watch television, so we don’t have to create a show that’s fitted for the television, we created a show that’s, it’s customized for the internet. And then instead of taking something from the traditional and trying to put it in the internet, it should rather be the other way around, like okay take something from the internet and try to put [on traditional media].

Question about how they unmixed reality and fiction.

JA: You can say this was almost a social experiment, because we had done it with younger kids earlier, we knew that it could be big and we knew that the pressure on the actors would be big, they have their own Instagram’s, but we would never let them do press, so they didn’t talk to the press, but we made sure that from the very start, we put them into therapy groups, just to make sure that they would be okay, because it’s true what you’re saying, they are young people and they’re living a life on a stage that is very much similar to their own life. But I think the fandom is old enough to understand that this is fiction, so they understood that, they understand that everybody in SKAM is actors and we never said that they are not actors, on our page it says that everything is scripted, everything is acted. And there was so many news articles about this concept, and so many theories about the actors, because they didn’t do any press, so I don’t think anybody was confused, but it’s just, when you look, you wanna live in the fiction. You want to be able to believe that these are real people, even though people didn’t really believe that.

MM: I think it’s interesting now, because I remember during season 1, in the Norwegian newspaper they were writing ‘NRK is trying to fool kids that these are real people’, which is not true of course, and also our target audience is so intuitive and understanding of the digital concept and they immediately ‘okay, I know this is fake, fictional, but I will interact with it like it was my friends’. Which is interesting, I think, about how they interact.

Question about the characters’ online personas.

MM: Julie wrote the characters before even writing any scripts and we talked a lot about them, and (casted the characters before I wrote them in scripts also, Julie says) so I feel I know the characters really well and I worked real closely with Julie and also the actors and their way of present their character. So developing their digital life, well it was basically to use the character map, that Julie has created.

JA: And also, Mari has a lot of research of how teens act online in social media, she would have boards filled with Instagram pictures from teenagers, so you [Mari] were inspired by real teens when made the characters also come to life online.

MM: Every character in SKAM has a mood board with real persons Instagram pictures. So Vilde is an example of that, her mask is to be like this perfect girl, and she’s working out, sharing these quotes about how great life is and sharing pictures of clothes and make up, and in reality she is a girl that has her own struggles which the audience finally gets to know during the last season. Yeah, their mask, these characters’ masks are often their digital personas.

Question about the male audience.

JA: 01:04:00 – talking about boys as audience against girls.

Question about the topics shown in SKAM, such as abuse, sexuality, and the direct form it’s done. How does that work?

JA: NRK didn’t really interfere, because we did a lot of research. I think that what we tried to do was not to underestimate 16-year-old girls. When we talk to 16-year-old girls they can handle almost anything, you don’t have to go easy on them, because they talk about everything between them. And then, exactly at that age, I believe they are going from being kids, teenagers to becoming adults and we really want to build their confidence on that, so that… My biggest fear was to underestimate them, I sometimes aim a little bit above their head, just to show them that I trust them, that they can take it, because they can. And I’ve never done a scene do provoke, it’s not to be provocative, it’s always to pass a reason or a story, and NRK, I believe trusted that. We haven’t had, I don’t think we had reactions from fans, I think everybody has handled everything perfectly.

#skam julieandem marimagnus

0 notes

graciedroweuk · 7 years

Text

How Heron Preston Went From Making Invitations for Kanye West to His Own Fashion Label

At any given second, Heron Preston is focusing on a number of home-started tasks that move between, and frequently straddle, the sides of artwork and style, equally electronic and IRL. Among his present preoccupations really are a unisex-apparel selection released at Men’s Fashion-Week, in London, earlier this Jan (more on that later) along with a zine full of pictures that his dad, a retired Bay Area officer, required at work.

Preston lately made up countless these images, which depict scenes and convicts. One especially visual picture exhibits a guy having a gunshot injury. A camera was usually maintained by “He ” claims Preston of his dad. “But he ultimately ceased, since he was fed up with getting unfortunate photos.”

About 2 yrs before, Preston had an identical come-to- moment, although under conditions that are much more attractive. Whenever a plastic tote covered facing him he was skating within the Med. In those days, Preston was switching out extremely effective “bootleg” t shirts, which he lined in corporate images that were variety, like these of Coca Cola and Nascar. He turned the Nascar emblem inverted, concocting a tale the tops were manufacturer rejects present in a Tn thriftstore and, cautious of possible lawsuits, sold them. He was also DJing at events and operating being an art representative for Kanyewest, creating visit product and making the machine-covered clothes that offered whilst the invitations to West’s Yeezy style shows—a tough work that Preston remained up through the night, filling 800 coats right into a FoodSaver from Goal to be able to get that completely scrunched-up search that Ye preferred. Subsequently arrived the boating event, where Preston experienced directly the reality that was unfortunate that lots is of rubbish on the planet. Quickly afterwards, he unearthed that the apparel business may be the minute- of the earth.

Didn’t that is “I wish to subscribe to that he claims. I needed to complete better, although “I love creating. We ought to all be performing better.”

a design sporting along with Preston appears from his drop 2017 selection. Manolo Blahnik shoes; jewelry is owned by Preston’s.

Pictures by Wales; Designed by Collet; Hair by Religious Eberhard at Watson Company; make-up by Corbel at Administration + Designers. Established by Pragnell at Signifies.

Whilst the boy of the policeman, 34, Preston, was raised having a heavy appreciation for outfits. He’d long wished for participating with America Postal Service with NASA. (Once The German combined Vetements arrived on the scene having a DHL top, he instantly shelved that strategy.)

“Then I recognized that Sanitation’s Nyc Division includes a uniformed pressure that cares ” he claims. Because it works out, the DSNY was the very first public business with an artisan in home, from 1978: Mierle Laderman Ukeles, a performance artist enthusiastic about preservation, is well-known for the item Contact Sterilization Efficiency, which required trembling the palm of each and every among the DSNY’s 8,500 employees and informing them, “Thank you for maintaining Nyc alive.”

Preston followed Vito Turso, a self appointed commissioner of stuff” that was explaining and also the guy who introduced Ukeles up to speed those years back. He delivered him an email using the topic point “Big Concept,” and pitched an accumulation of altered DSNY outfits. A effort to get rid of waste delivered to nearby landfills from the year 2030 when the division recognized it might earn money off the task to aid 0x30, the officials were offered. “It was really Vito who recommended the selection is presented by us at Fashion-Week,” claims Preston. “Apparently, he usually believed it’d be considered an enjoyable idea.”

A – Model wearing a search from the drop 2017 selection of Preston. Nike sneakers jewelry that is own.

Pictures by Wales; Designed by Collet; Hair by Religious Eberhard at Watson Company; make-up by Corbel at Administration + Designers. Established by Pragnell at Signifies.

And thus earlier this Sept, Preston and also the DSNY put up store in the Spring Street Salt Drop, an architecturally impressive tangible building that houses the sodium employed for de icing roads within the winter, and offered Standard, an accumulation of trousers, hoodies, coats, and tops that were decommissioned from the DSNY or acquired from Goodwill and published with Preston’s title and also the DSNY emblem. The function was a feel good event, with versions and hipsters interacting with public workers and appearing together beside Ukeles’s advanced-searching reflected garbage-truck, The Interpersonal Reflection, which initially debuted in 1983 in the Nyc Art March.

Selection that is “The sold-out,” claims Preston. “And with a few of the cash elevated, we produced the Building Blocks For Brand New York’s Strongest”—a jerk towards the department’s nickname—“which may proceed to teach people on ecological problems, drive the 0x30 effort, and finally assist the DSNY start a museum.”

Certainly, the task received him lots of interest. However, Preston, who began his first apparel line-in senior school, contacting it Heron Preston (his initial and middle name) in the place of Heron Brown (his real name) since he believed it seemed more “regal,” has long-known steps to make a name for herself. In 2004, after shifting to Ny to go to Parsons Faculty of Style, a website recording the vibrant figures of the picture was began by him. Through it, he associated with other custom, DJ, and innovative advisor Virgil Abloh, who had been a factor to a different website, named The Beauty!

“We were these streetwear guys publishing on a single discussion boards Preston recalls. He likewise captured the interest of Al Moran, founding father of the contemporary art gallery Ohwow, who, in 2008, posted The Youthful and also the Knocking underneath the gallery’s mark. That established “unofficial” downtown Ny yearbook functions Polaroids of some 200 awesome children, such as the performer Lucien Cruz and people of the DJ combined Misshapes.

For that start celebration, Preston’s buddies at Nike, where he’d wind up employed by a number of decades like social networking representative and an advertising expert, lent the shop on Elizabeth Neighborhood to him. There, he mounted a senior school that is fake collection, filled with a back along with bleachers -to-college photo-booth. Completely was extended by the point to get involved with the function down the stop.

Survey Heron Preston’s Selection Using The Division of Sterilization

Matthew Williams and Justin Saunders. Were fresh-off the View the Throne visit and were ‘Yo, like, we simply began putting events. It’s named Been Trill; come toss them around,’ ” Preston recalls. From events, they created a that permitted customers to place the Trill emblem over their very own pictures and quickly branched into apparel. Additionally they exposed a pop up store on Channel Road, in a little booth mounted a GIF turbine that instantly submitted shoppers’ pictures towards the consideration, and usually used-to shill knockoff style products. Trill was a chance to experiment Preston claims. “We truly described and published the near future once we were going.”

While Abloh shattered off to begin their own tag, Off White d/e Virgil Abloh, and his to be started by Williams, Alyx did Preston, starting HPC, a webshop, to market different items. But following the project’s achievement, Abloh inspired him to consider up issues a level. “He was like, ‘Dude, you’ve to product it out—have clothes, tops, knits; a complete search, a complete collection.’ I’d never believed like that.” Abloh launched Preston to Fresh Pads Team, a Milan-centered organization that creates and directs Off White, in addition to additional rising manufacturers like Marcelo Burlon Region of Milan and Hand Angels. They closed a in Oct, departing Preston just a couple of of weeks to draw a demonstration over time together . “Fortunately, I’d of what I needed to complete,” he claims advisable.

Required You, the Planet, the 40- collection is equivalent components road and commercial, with growing environmentalism supplying the most popular line. You will find bomber coats with padded heron birds cut from security vests, initially produced by the Nationwide Sectors for that Impaired and sweatshirts, in addition to walking trousers. Spread throughout are fresh items from his cooperation that is DSNY. The manufacturer isn’t 100% lasting, but Preston is currently working toward that.

Have all of the answers—I’m kind as I’m heading,” he claims of understanding. “And easily may reveal what I’ve acquired, that’s a plus.”

The Very Best Small Developers to Look At in 2017

Toggle

Smalls, in a gown; amp & Van Cleef; watch and Arpels brooch Vivier shoes.

Fashion-Week’s Greatest Block Design Receives a Technicolor, Electrified, Lively Therapy

The post How Heron Preston Went From Making Invitations for Kanye West to His Own Fashion Label appeared first on cdnhorseshoes.

from network 4 http://www.cdnhorseshoes.com/how-heron-preston-went-from-making-invitations-for-kanye-west-to-his-own-fashion-label/

0 notes

politicoscope · 4 years

Text

Donald Trump Biography and Profile

New Post has been published on https://www.politicoscope.com/donald-trump-biography-and-profile/

Donald Trump Biography and Profile

“We will make America strong again. We will make America proud again. We will make America safe again. And we will Make America Great Again!” – President Donald J. Trump.

Who is Donald Trump?

Trump would also have had to consider that his two former wives will reveal any skeletons in the cupboard if he chooses to run. One of the women, Marla Maples, had threatened to tell all.

“Japan for many years has ripped off the United States, big league,” he once said. “England has been a terrific partner.

“France has been a terrible partner, a terrible team player.”

“I’m not a big fan of the handshake. I think it’s barbaric, shaking hands, you catch colds, you catch the flu, you catch this, you catch all sorts of things,” he told US TV channel NBC.

Art Deal In 1987, Trump published the book The Art of the Deal, co-authored with Tony Schwartz. In the book, Trump describes how he successfully makes business deals.

“I DON’T do it for the money. I’ve got enough, much more than I’ll ever need. I do it to do it. Deals are my art form,” Trump wrote.

Donald Trump and His Wealth

Donald Trump Lawsuits and Investigations

In fall 2019, after Trump admitted to misusing money raised by his foundation to promote his presidential campaign and settle debts, he was ordered to pay $2 million in damages.

“So far, we haven’t seen anything that looks fair to us,” Nancy Pelosi told reporters.

Trump, who is seeking another four-year term in the November 2020 presidential election, has denied wrongdoing and called the impeachment inquiry launched by Pelosi in September a “witch hunt.”

“This lawless, partisan impeachment is a political suicide march for the Democrat Party,” Trump said. “They’re the ones who should be impeached, every one of them.”

During a daylong debate before the vote, Pelosi read the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance and said: “We are here to defend democracy for the people.”

Donald Trump Family

The couple had three children together: Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka and Eric. They went through a highly publicized divorce that was finalized in 1992.

Marla Maples In 1993 Trump married his second wife, Marla Maples, an actress with whom he had been involved for some time and already had a daughter, Tiffany.

Trump would ultimately file for a highly publicized divorce from Maples in 1997, which became final in June 1999. A prenuptial agreement allotted $2 million to Maples.

Trump’s sons — Donald Jr. and Eric— work as executive vice presidents for The Trump Organization. They took over the family business while their father serves as president.

Donald John Trump Biography and Profile

0 notes

politicoscope · 4 years

Text

Donald Trump Biography and Profile

New Post has been published on https://www.politicoscope.com/donald-trump-biography-and-profile/

Donald Trump Biography and Profile