Adam - a short film created with Unity

Get ready to trip out. 

Here's a fantastic short film called Adam that was produced using the Unity gaming engine. I don't know when this might become a real game, but I think they could just take my money now...

The beginning of the film reminds me of the beginning of the film Pandorum, where a character is awakening from some kind of dormancy or sleep and having a difficult time figuring out where they are. Adam, whom we are led to believe is the mechanical being we see at the beginning of the film, appears to just be discovering that he/she/it is no longer a human being, but rather has been turned into a robot. We see Adam stumble out of the room where he awoke (like a baby emerging from a womb), only to discover more beings just like himself. We see a large industrial complex that Adam and the others are walking away from as well as humans who appear to be herding them.  We then see the two characters who we imagine Adam was dreaming of (or envisioning) at the very beginning of the film. They appear well-armed, but also worn from their travels. They also appear to be robotic beings themselves. As these characters approach, warning klaxons go off and the humans flee (what are they afraid of?). The two characters approach, playing Chopin's Nocturne in E-flat major Op.9 nr.2, and then the larger of the two interacts with the computers within Adam and the other mechanical beings. What does he do there? Whatever he does inspires Adam and the others to follow.

Here's some info from the designers on the world of Adam:

The film is set in a future where human society is transformed by harsh biological realities and civilization has shrunk to a few scattered, encapsulated communities clinging to the memory of greatness. Adam, as our main character, was the starting point of our visual design process. He was designed to provide a glimpse into the complex backstory of the world, by revealing himself as a human prisoner whose consciousness has been trapped in a cheap mechanical body.

You can find a lot more info about the design of the film and the characters (for instance, we learn that the two approaching characters are named Sebastian and Lu) on the blogs at Unity.

No well is an ordinary well

Do you remember the well in Final Fantasy?
The "ordinary well" that gave this message:

...Well I beg to differ. 

Every well is a hole drilled into the Earth in pursuit of the sustaining fluid of life. Some wells are drilled in hope of finding water. Some wells are drilled where knowledge and experience have told us there will be water. Some wells have dried up long ago and now present nothing more than a vertical cave created by humans. 

Some wells are small and some are big, some supported by brick or metal, while others are drilled in rock strong enough to support itself. Some wells support entire communities of people while other wells have provided for a sense of fulfillment of individual dreams and wishes (even if that seems like idle hope). No well is an ordinary well. 

Toastmasters: Video Game Voice-Overs and Public Speaking

At a recent Toastmasters Leadership Institute training meeting, I attended a workshop presented by Brooke Chestnut that dealt with the topic of attracting millennials to Toastmasters. 

Millennials, as you may know, are people of the generation who were born roughly between the early 1980s and the early 2000s (a group for which I am technically a member). Our generation has become a powerhouse of creativity and entrepreneurship, although we're also known as a boomerang generation since many of us tend to put off traditional rites of adulthood until later in life. 

Actually, our generation has unfortunately mostly come to be known as a generation of children who feel undeservingly entitled (if you don't believe me, try telling one of the children in America who has gone straight to college after high school that they actually have to read books and do homework to earn good grades and see how they react).

I enjoyed Brooke Chestnut's training session. There were times when it felt a little insulting (I am a millennial after all), but the message was clear: millennials are an important cohort of people who can be benefitted by the improvements in public speaking and leadership that come through Toastmasters membership. During the workshop, we talked about a lot of the thing that are of common interest among those of us in our teens to early thirties. These are things like social media, technology, and video games. 

Video games specifically I thought were an interesting topic to bring up. I've been playing video games my whole life, and I know how important they can be to many in my generation. One thing that I thought about during the workshop was how many great voiceovers have been done for modern video games. These days, video game productions can be massive undertakings and many high-caliber actors and speakers have started taking on voiceover roles. For instance, here's a video with five awesome voiceover parts from some common video games (the video says Top 5, but I don't necessarily agree with that ranking):

The games and voice actors from this video are, in order:

Mass Effect (voiced by George Szilagyi)

Civilization V (voiced by William Morgan Sheppard)

Fallout 3 (voiced by Ron Perlman)

Killzone (voiced by Brian Cox)

Gears of War 2 (voiced by Charles Cioffi)

Due to the nature of video games, many of the great speeches and monologues come before or during some kind of battle. Just as real leaders need to find ways to motivate their "troops" before a serious engagement, it's entertaining to have a great speaker buildup a battle before you enter into it within the digital realm of a video game. To empower the gamer, the voiceover actor needs to use their speaking skills to make the character feel real and dynamic. That's why video games are a growing source of great speaking examples.

Here is a video with Carver's end speech (voiced by Ricardo Chavira) from Dead Space 3:

Here's another voiceover, this time by Jen Taylor at the end of Halo: Reach. It's nice to conclude a game with something more than just the credits:

These video game voiceovers offer some great examples of the power of the speech. With video games continually growing in the scale of their production and their use in society, I imagine that we'll see many more great speeches from video games in the future. For myself, I'll be paying closer attention to the voice overs in the video games that I play, to listen for great writing and great speaking when it pops up. By knowing the ways in which speaking appeals to others, we Toastmasters are better able to share our approach of improvement through practice with a wider audience. I think video game voiceovers may offer some of the great speeches that people will look back on in the near future.

I'll leave you with one more video. Here's a video that someone put together showing Charlie Chaplain's wonderful speech from The Great Dictator set to various video game sequences:

Because everyone needs some awesome in their lives: Taylor Davis and Lindsey Stirling playing tunes from Zelda on violin

I was just working through my daily dose of free writing and listening to my "Beats for Studying" station on Pandora when a tune from Zelda, as played on the violin by Taylor Davis, came on. I loved it. I'm a nerd. I'm cool with that. 

Anyway, I thought I'd share. Here are some sweet videos from both Taylor Davis and Lindsey Stirling playing violin (they're both excellent musicians!):


Gerudo Valley (Taylor Davis)

A Zelda Medley (Lindsey Stirling)

A Zelda Medley (Taylor Davis)

And then one more; this one isn't from Zelda, but rather is Taylor Davis playing "The Hanging Tree" from the film The Hunger Games: Mockingjay. It's pretty freaggin' awesome.

The Hanging Tree (Taylor Davis)