Some fun things if you get bored

[Kenren]

<sub>So I'm in an Equine Exercise Physiology class, and we learn a lot of stuff that might be interesting/useful to people here, so I thought I'd share. Plus this is getting me to look through my notes for my exam on Friday.

To start off, this class is taught by Dr. Brian Nielsen, a really cool guy and one of only probably 30 people in his field worldwide. He gets invited to give talks all of the world, yadda yadda. Basically this guy knows his stuff. He does a lot of research for the university (Michigan State), most of it having to do with bone/tendon/ligament/how exercise affects these things. He was a jockey until recently, mostly in Quarter Horse races though he's trained/exercised Arabians, Thoroughbreds, and Standardbreds as well. He currently owns/trains/races Standardbreds because that's all we have in Michigan lol. So anyway, these are just some fun things I've learned in class. Enjoy~


- Humans do something called 'blood doping' sometimes before races - injecting red blood cells into their system before a race to give them more oxygen capacity. Horses do this naturally, their bodies producing more red blood cells when they are exercising.

- 50% of all genes in TBs come from 10 horses, 80% come from 31 horses.

- Swim-training horses is a great way to give horses strong muscling, but should never be used as the primary source of training. It creates a weak skeleton.

- "Interval" training, where you gallop the horse, slow it down, gallop, slow, is absolutely useless, frustrates the horse, and effectively slows it down physically by changing muscle fiber types to give it too much stamina, not enough speed.

- Once a horse is fit, not much is needed to keep it that way. That's why top racehorses are only worked (ie run at race speed) every two weeks or so, and other than that have short 'maintenance' gallops.

- Some feel that months of slow training is necessary to increase bone strength, when in reality short sprints do more for bone very quickly. Slow training doesn't hurt, but makes no difference when it comes to bone.

- In a study, weanlings sprinted over concrete at very short distances (something like 82 feet) experienced less osteochondrosis, or bone chipping/loss, than those who were not.

- The previous is because of something called 'loading' - impact to the bone makes it stronger. This is why swim-training makes bones weak. This is also why astronauts lose bone mass while in space.

- Keeping a horse stalled with no access to pasture tremendously weakens bone. Training doesn't make up for the horse being stalled, especially in young horses - they aren't being ridden with any speed, and that's what's needed to strengthen the bone.

- Only truly matters to horses who put strain on the bone - racehorses, jumpers, barrel horses, etc. Dressage, trail, pleasure, halter, etc horses will probably be fine.

- The key is those first 5-10 seconds of running strides when a horse is turned out. That's all that's necessary to strengthen the bone if it's given daily.

- Partial turnout is fine, and perhaps even better than full turnout - if the horse has been stalled overnight, it is more likely to give those running strides.

- Basically, pasture trumps stalling, but in the horse racing industry as well as others, people want the horses to look good for sales, so yearlings are stalled to keep their coats nice and keep them from getting bite/kick marks from other horses. It would be better to turn them out, at least as far as preventing future injuries.

- Multiple studies show that horses that race as two-year-olds experience less injuries than those started later in life. This is because they get that necessary loading on their legs earlier in life, giving them stronger bone structure. Of course, if they aren't managed correctly there can be problems, but the studies are pretty conclusive on this point. So racing two-year-olds isn't just about monetary incentive - it's actually healthier for the horse.</sub>

[Deleted]

I'm studying TV and Film at a Media College and I've done all the theory part of my assignments up until Christmas, just got to film the practical part which all links into recreating a scene from Harry Potter, and creating a 4 minute long short story in groups, which will lead to us all creating our own short story, as well as a music video next year.

I've been doing four different subjects, not including Seminar, which is an hour of tutor talk each week. I recently had to study in Post Production Technology, which is basically video editing and the theory behind it.

• One of the first early editing machines was called the ‘Upright Moviola’. It was originally designed in 1917 as a home movie projector which was going to be sold to the public.
• In it’s first few years – linear/tape to tape editing was the only way that was available to edit tapes. It wasn’t until 1990 that non-linear editing computers were available. This opened up a new aspect of editing.
• One of the first people to begin to experiment with editing was Sergei Eisenstein. Eisenstein described five methods of montage in his first essay. They consisted of Metric, Rhythmic, Tonal, Over-tonal and Intellectual – which have all been named differently now – There are now five types of ‘edits.’ The first of these five is the Action edit – this is the motivation from new information when often revealed.
• People wanted to tell stories using different locations, but they didn’t have a way of editing the footage as in the early 1900’s, editing didn’t exist. Everything was shot in a linear fashion throughout the scenes. Stop the camera at the end of one scene, and start again to resume filming from a different angle or position to make a second scene. Camera’s back in this day had no light, or even composition. As camera and sound technology developed slowly but surely, so did editing.
• The next is the screen position edit, which relies on movement, or action in the first shot, which draws the attention from one side to another at the cut point. Then theres the Match Edit, which is a cut from a shot which has a pronounced shape or colour to another shot, which has a matching shape of colour – a dissolve is normally used to emphasise.
• A concept edit makes a suggestion as a visual metaphor – which means the effect of something that happens, and joining two shots together can produce a new meaning and a concept in the viewers mind, i.e a woman in a hospital bed with a clock could make you think she’s going to die… or the same woman in a hospital bed with a baby cot could make you think she’s just had a baby. Finally, there’s the combined edit – or as Eisenstein called it, the Intellectual method. This simply combines two or more types of edit.
• Soon, there came tapeless editing – this is using a camcorder that is used with digital recording instead of tape. They are stored as computer files, i.e MPEG-4 – and they are capable of capturing still images to JPEG formats too.
• Some purposes of video editing can include transitions, different camera angles, and many more. There are many different camera angles that you can use when it comes to filming.
• The low angle shot can create an effect of making someone look big, powerful and quite menacing. It is positioned below the eye level, and is pointed up at the subject that is being filmed.
• There is also the high angle shot which has the opposite effect to the low angle shot. This can be because a high camera angle is good for showing the viewers and the audience of the film an overview of what is expected from the film. Looking down on them can either make someone look small, or even to give the audience a sense of loneliness and gives the subject a lack of power.
• Next there’s the close up. The close up can be used to show emotion and detail. This is why it is used to emphasise a characters emotional state, where as a mid-shot or a wife shot is better use for facts and normal information. Close-ups exaggerate facial expressions which can show emotion and share what the person is thinking, and their feelings.
• There are many transitions that you could use when it comes to editing. First, there’s the cut. This is the most commonly used shot when it comes to editing. This is used when the action is continuous and it goes generally unnoticed by the audience as it is used when the action is uninterrupted – the only reason you wouldn’t use this is if there isn’t a dramatic change of impact, which is most action cuts, there is.
• The next transition is the fade. The fade is a gradual transition from an image to a black screen, or vice versa. Fade out and fade in are basically the same thing, but they are simply the reserve of each other. Then there is the mix. The mix, or the dissolve as it is commonly known as is the art of overlapping two clips onto each other – you can use this whenever you want to make a point of the passage between one shot and the next, so it links to tell a story.
• Finally, there’s the wipe. This is an incredibly noticed transition between one clip and the next, which has been mainly used in the Star Wars films. This is used as a fun, cool and decorative effect when it comes to films, and even though it is fun to use, use with discretion as it doesn’t look professional when it comes to realistic film editing, which is why most people use the ‘cut’ as it is the most popular cut out of them all.
• The 180 degree rule involves an ‘imaginary’ line that once your set up, you must not cross. This helps with the continuity of the film. The only time the rule can be broken is for effect – so the camera must always be on one side of the line. Crossing the line during filming over the shoulders means that the eye lines of the characters don’t match. The eye lines must always remain the same to give the viewer the impression that they are looking at each other without actually knowing they are two separate shots. The motivation of this shot is when people speak, the camera is on the person speaking at that moment in time, but the viewers also want to see what the other person’s reaction to this will be.
• Subtle zooming in this kind of effect makes the scene and the shot more suspense, and no music in the scene can also show emotion, as well as a close up shot. After something in the scene happens that could either relieve tension or make the tension worse, it would look good to cut it back to a wider shot with distance, to relieve the tension caused in this scene.
• Finally, split editing. This involves staggering the picture, which can create a more fluent edit. Audio cuts can start with scene introduction. There are two types of split editing – J cut and L cut. J cut is where the sound starts before the image of the next scene is up, mainly seen in soaps, and L cut is when the picture changes, but the audio continues. To simply put it, they are opposite to one another.

Sorry for the length! But I really enjoy doing what I do,
so I thought I'd also share my studies with you all.
I should be in Year 13 at sixth form now, but I'm doing 1st year college instead :P