Arts and Entertainment

Fall Show

By Hailey Mallah

Photo Courtesy of Jonah Mayer This year’s fall production was Clue! Many of you are most likely familiar with this popular board game in which this show is going to be based off of. The plot of this play follows almost verbatim to that of the game, with a few changes- extra characters and interesting touches here and there. The play follows the mystery of a recent murder, taking unexpected turns on the journey to find out who the killer is. Blind Brook High School’s production of the show will take place on Friday November 19 as well as Saturday November 20. There will be two separate casts for each of these shows, showcasing a bunch of different talents! While there are a good amount of freshmen and sophomores taking part in the play, the cast mainly consists of juniors and seniors. This year’s cast consists of 23 actors along with the helpful crew members. Playing one of the lead roles of Wadsworth is Kyle Grindstaff. He walks the audience through the story and acts as a narrator. Wadsworth is a butler in this production. This year’s fall show will not contain any songs, or as stated in previous years, “There will be no music in this production, simply just a play.” (Aviella Kibel Grade 9) The entire cast and crew have been working extremely hard to make this play happen. Everyone in this production is extremely passionate about the play and has been devoting their hard work and time into this masterpiece. During the month of October practice was typically two days a week after school, yet moving into November the cast will be beginning to practice three days a week, plus every day during tech week. The props in this show are slightly different to other plays in previous years. While it is typical that the props be put on and off the stage, this year’s props stay on the stage entirely and act as the different rooms like in the original board game. These props will be highlighted with lighting, which is a key component to this set. There will be different portions of the stage that act as the rooms typically seen in the board game. This makes that set unusual and excit ing because instead of the changing set, different parts are brought focus to. As for COVID protocols, the play has returned almost back to normal this year, apart from the standard mask wearing in practices. There were allowed to be the typical auditioning process, along with call backs. The pl-ay will be in person and students and parents alike will be able to attend. The play is also the same time of year it normally is and did not need to be pushed back at all. Later this year in the spring the actors will be producing a musical as usual. The students and teachers alike have put in so much work to make this show incredible, and I’m sure it will be truly amazing. We are so excited to see this year’s annual fall show and know it will be spectacular!

Squid Game:

Transformation Through DubbingBy Olivia Zahl

Photo Courtesy of Netflix

Squid Game, a Korean TV series, started streaming on September 17, 2021. Just 4 days later, it hit the number 1 spot on Netflix. Squid Game follows a group of extremely poor and indebted people in South Korea. They are suddenly given a mysterious opportunity to win money. With this, they enter a tournament where they have to play childhood games. What they do not know is that losing a game equates to death. These people are desperate, however, and they continue in the tournament at all costs to win the prize money in the end. It is strange to think that a non-English language series has become so popular. Why has Squid Game become such a hit? Audiences are captivated by the thrill and violence within the show. Also, audiences become quickly connected with the characters. We learn the ins and outs of their lives and sym pathize with them. Watching them participate in the games and face death at every corner is extremely entertaining and nail-biting. Moreover, this series presents many prevalent social issues. It implements problems such as poverty, debt, social-class differences, and violence. These are problems that we face and deal with in our everyday lives, so, when portrayed in the show, it grips and engages the audience. However, since Squid Game was dubbed to English, the way we perceive the show may not be totally authentic. A lot of controversy has sparked over the fact that there are clear misinterpretations in our English version from the initial Korean version of Squid Game. For example, there is an instance in the show where a character is trying to prove her intelligence. She says, “I’m not a genius, but I still got it worked out. Huh.” This is the English translation, which is close but not one hundred percent. The real line is, “I am very smart. I just never got a chance to study.” The translation is similar if you pick apart the line word for word, but the meanings of these lines are completely different and portray unequal ideas. The issue with this alteration is that the English-speaking audience is misunderstanding Korean culture. The initial intent was to explain the unfortunate circumstances for poor Koreans. They may have a lot of potential for success, but without any money they are incapable of taking next steps. The English version of this line does not illustrate that idea whatsoever. There are many other instances like this one,

Photo Courtesy of Emily Tian

where the English translation is slightly tweaked from the original dialogue. Our perception of characters and their personalities, our understanding of Korean culture, and the significance behind the show itself has all been altered. Due to dubbing, the Netflix series has triggered a lot of debate and disagreement. Squid Game has been transformed as there are countless ways to interpret the show. Squid Game is definitely a bit disturbing, but it is engaging and compelling. I would absolutely recommend this show. But, in order to get the real and full Squid Game experience, look out for erroneous dubbing and do not believe something just because it is what the subtitle says.

Supply and Demand in the Art Industry

By Andrew Margolis

Imagine you are going to the movies and your favorite theater announces that all movie tickets are going to cost half of their normal price. This cutting in price will theoretically cause people to see movies until they have seen enough to their satisfaction. After people are satisfied with the number of movies they’ve seen, movie theaters will gain less societal traction, causing overall interest for movies to decrease. This is a perfect example of the concept of supply and demand. In simple words, the supply and demand law signifies the number of goods or services available compared to the amount needed. So how is the art market affected by supply and demand? Supply and demand dominates this industry due to the fluctuation regarding the necessity of art compared to the desire of it. Supply and demand in the art market all revolves around pricing. If artwork isn’t properly priced, no one will purchase it. One major factor that contributes to the pricing of artwork is where it is being sold. There are two types of markets in which art is sold: the primary market and the secondary market. The primary market refers to “initial sales” such as consignment to galleries or selling directly to a collector. The secondary market refers to the resale of artwork such as auctions. When it comes to the secondary market, the artist makes no profit off sales, and for the reseller to make a profit, they jack up the prices. This is why buying resale for art is much more expensive than getting it from a gallery firsthand except for auctions. Now that pricing of artwork has been established, it is necessary to look directly at how supply and demand are illustrated in the world of art.

How is Blind Brook Promoting Arts Education?

By Jacob Moore

Like many other high schools in America, Blind Brook takes part in having opportunities for its students to learn and practice various aspects of the arts. There are classes, after school programs, and clubs. Blind Brook has its options for students to pursue learning in the arts of their choice, and in this article I will be discussing some of the ways Blind Brook promotes arts education. Firstly, Blind Brook has educational opportunities implemented into the curriculum. It starts with classes like art or photography, and expands into more advanced understandings and studies of said mediums. I myself am taking an advanced photography option called portfolio. The photography route has you start with film, an older style of photography, having students understand the basics of lighting and framing. It then expands into digital working, understanding more intricate attributes of photography. It is very similar to the arts (painting, drawing, etc), though instead of building up skill in the medium, it allows students to express their dynamic creativity and imagination. Blind Brook allows students to initiate and start their understanding of certain art mediums, and expand upon them as they progress through grades. Blind Brook also has after school programs for those interested in the arts, particularly the performing arts. As tradition has it, Blind Brook has the option for students to perform or work backstage on the school play. The production takes a couple months, but both the middle school and high school have a yearly play. The middle school begins to find the skills of the performing arts in students, so once they get to high school, if they continue to pursue the medium, they begin partaking in more advanced dramas, more mature productions. Blind Brook has an emphasis for the performing arts, it’s a staple of the school year for there to be a production. This promotes stagecraft and performing education for students. Lastly, Blind Brook allows for artistic clubs to be formed and to function for its students. Students are allowed to choose clubs they want to partake in, and clubs have a variety of subjects that one could cover. Some artistic clubs can include the newly introduced Blind Brook video broadcasting club, as it has students experiment and practice with cameras. It is a newly formed club, so the details of how it functions are sparse, but the goal is to allow students to use video and photography to document the school and other current events. Mainly though, clubs oriented to more other forms of practice and experience, like debate or model UN, but that doesn’t mean it is

Demand is just another word for desire. As more people desire art the price of art increases. While the desire for art in general never really terminates, the reputation of an artist plays a key role in how much their art is desired. In other words, the art of big-named artists is typically more valued than smaller artists. However, as these smaller artists gain a reputation, their art inadvertently increases in value and is marked up in price. This just goes to show how pricing and demand correlate. In other words, artists begin to gain a reputation, the desire for their artwork increases and therefore so does the cost of the art. Supply also plays an immense role in the art market. If there is only one kind of painting available, demand for that particular art piece increases along with its price. However, if there are multiple copies or editions of an artwork, demand decreases along with the value. This is very interesting because it illustrates a strategy utilized by many artists. Sometimes they will make many editions of art or only release one original piece depending on margin for profit. This is why some artists release thousands of pieces of art a year while others only produce a few. Supply and demand plays a crucial role in the art industry due to how it impacts the price of the product: art. As more art is produced, demand decreases along with price, and while production drops, demand increases along with cost. Using this law of supply and demand, artists can adjust their selling strategy to maximize profit. No wonder some artwork sells for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Photo Courtesy of Casey Kelbaugh

How is Technolgy Affecting Artistic Creation and Entertainment?

By Josh Dweck

In the last century or so, new technology has produced some of the most important inventions humanity has seen. Phones, computers, and televisions are things that seem impossible to live without because of how often we use them in our daily lives. This is no different in the world of art, where new technology has completely revolutionized so many areas and genres of art. The music industry has completely transformed due to new technology. Applications on computers have allowed for artists to create songs practically all in their basement. Artists like Daft Punk were huge inspirations for this new movement during the early 2000’s with their innovative digitized dance music, leading to a revolution during this decade. Currently, most-to-all songs in genres such as hip-hop are made digitally. Producers such as Pi’erre Bourne are able to make beats on their computers and sell them to rappers to rap over. Music production as a whole has had a massive increase in interest because of digital music. Students here at Blind Brook are able to take music production classes where they use Garageband, an app for making music. At the end of the day, digital music comes down to preference. Some people love how it sounds and the new genres in music that it created, while others prefer the sound of live-recorded music. Music is subjective, and no one has the same taste. New technology has created a rift in animation. Since its inception and up until around the 90’s, shows and movies were animated by drawing every individual frame of animation and playing the frames sequentially at a rapid pace. Shows such as the original Looney Toons and Animaniacs are examples of this. Due to new technology in the 90’s, however, a new technique was developed that companies quickly realized to be more efficient and cheaper to produce than frame-byframe. This technique is called rigged, or skeleton animation. is used in most modern cartoons ranging from Rick and Morty to Regular Show. The way it works is by importing a character into a computer, outlining specific body parts such as arms and legs, and then telling the computer when and where to move these parts. The result tends to appear stiffer than frame-by-frame animation, and this is because animation is typically exaggerated. For example, when a frame-by-frame character like Spongebob is shocked, his eyes bulge out. Obviously this is unnatural, but this more exaggerated direction is what makes animation so appealing, as cartoons are not meant to be natural. It is a lot harder to do this in skeleton animation, so most shows tend to leave this out. With all of that being said, technology has done amazing things for animation and art as a whole. Studios like Pixar are able to use CGI, or computer-generated imagery. CGI is a tool that is used for and outside of animation. Studios like Pixar use it to create 3D animated movies such as Toy Story, while studios such as Marvel Studios use CGI to create special effects like super-powers in their movies. The combination of technology and art has opened so many doors of possibilities for aspiring creators in places like high school. Aspiring photographers can spend hours in applications such as Photoshop or Lightroom where they perfect their pictures. Aspiring artists can use iPad apps like Procreate to be able to draw with the added benefits of undoing mistakes and working in multiple layers. It has never been easier to get creative with something as simple as a school-provided iPad. Animators and Editors can work on projects in apps like After Effects. While technology and art can sometimes be divisive, the medium of art has never been more accessible, and that is the most important thing.

Photo Courtesy of Impulse

How is Blind Brook Promoting Arts Education?

Continued from page 17

impossible for a student to form a club with artistic intention. While this form of meeting and practice has the least options and promotion for arts education, it still offers the possibility to students to take action themselves, and learn about the arts they want to learn about. While Blind Brook does follow a more typical high school formula, they do offer many possibilities for one to partake in an artistic learning experience. They have classes, after school programs, and clubs that allow students to grow their knowledge and skill in a multitude of artistic mediums. This is how Blind Brook promotes arts education.

Photo Courtesy of Adult Swim