Kevin Lau

4/5 Honestly, I could not have picked a better time to start reading this series. I've read snippets of Brian K. Vaughn's work and absolutely love his writing and ideas. Then I came across Paper Girls  when it was on sale for a dollar, the synopsis describing four 12 year olds in late-80's Ohio who come across a supernatural mystery that threatens the town. Still having to wait until Halloween for the second season of Stranger Things  and almost done rewatching Gravity Falls , this comic totally hit the sweet spot for me. Collecting the first 5 issues of the series, this volumes contains the introductory story arc that had me completely hooked from beginning to end with an ending that left me wanting more. The dialogue flows and Cliff Chiang's art is distinct and mesmerizing, enhancing the writing with the page layouts and colors. The only issue I can really point out here is that this first arc should have been one or two issues longer due to how quickly t...

2/5 Jaime Reyes as the Blue Beetle has interested me and been on my reading list for a while. When I first discovered the character watching Batman: The Brave and the Bold , seeing Jaime as a relatable teen arguing with the sentient suit that gives him his powers, his New 52 line had already been cancelled. Then Geoff Johns wrote Rebirth and added a little scene with Jaime Reyes that I thought was both very interesting and promising. In short, Keith Giffen doesn't deliver in this volume until issue #6, where he kind of gives a small splice of what the series could be. Getting the obvious out of the way, the dialogue here is absolutely horrible. I tell myself it feels like a first draft, but then there are moments of repetition and sentences upon sentences of nothing going on. By then, it feels more like a very bloated outline with the characters speaking mostly hot air. The dialogue here isn't flat, it's completely empty. This, in turn, makes all the charac...

EXT. PARKING LOT - NIGHT NATHAN, 20, lies on his back and breathes heavily. A car in the background drives away. A bike sits on the ground, wheel spinning. He tries to get up, but can't. WHITE FLASH TO: EXT. LIBRARY - DAY Nathan sits in a chair and reads a book. He looks over his book and sees TAYLOR, 19. Taylor sees him and she smiles at him. Nathan smiles back. WHITE FLASH TO: EXT. PARKING LOT - NIGHT Nathan turns his head. He sees his phone in the distance. He struggles to turn over and starts to crawl towards it. WHITE FLASH TO: EXT. PARK - DAY Nathan and Taylor sit at a park bench and laugh. They take a selfie . WHITE FLASH TO: EXT. PARKING LOT Nathan continues to struggles. He is a little more than a foot away from the phone. WHITE FLASH TO: INT. NATHAN'S DORM - NIGHT Nathan and Taylor sit in chairs, light from a TV screen illuminates them. They eat some popcorn. WHITE FLASH TO: EXT. PARKING LOT - NIGHT Nathan is le...

Here's the rough cut of a short film I made for class.

Homework assignment: Create a self portrait using the most professional equipment you can get your hands on. Check. My school provides us with a "storefront" where we can check out some rather high end equipment that I could never get my hands on with my current allowance, no matter how much milk money I save. The camera, tripod, and microphone are mine, but the lights aren't. The check-out process was really easy here; just go online, select what you want to check and for what time, then pick up the equipment. I still have yet to return these lights, but I'm sure the process would be fairly simple. Thanks to some experience with professional lighting from the couple times I went to Film Camp, I had a good idea as to how I wanted to set up my lights: a soft, diffused/spread out light towards my back (the light with the umbrella) and a stronger, harsher light facing my front. This creates a balance of light, something I seriously needed since I had a ...