Author: filmscore80

The Music of Final Fantasy VI – Act III: Maria and Draco

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By Michael W. Harris

Celes' Aria
Celes’ Aria

“Oh my hero, so far away now.
Will I ever see your smile?
Love goes away, like night into day.
It’s just a fading dream.”

That is how Celes’ famous aria, the “Aria di Mezzo Carattere,” begins in Ted Woolsey’s translation for the original American version of Final Fantasy VI. And it will always be how I remember the lyrics.

It is hard to overestimate just how powerful this scene was for me as a fourteen-year-old music nerd. I had been playing musical instruments since I was in either Kindergarten or first grade (hard to remember exactly when I started), and by the time FFVI rolled around I had already learned piano, clarinet, and bassoon. I listened to classical music because I honestly loved it, and had been in love with film music for as long as I could remember. Continue reading “The Music of Final Fantasy VI – Act III: Maria and Draco” →

The Music of Final Fantasy VI – Act II: The Opening Sequence

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By Michael W. Harris

Opening Screen
Opening Screen

As soon as you insert the Final Fantasy VI cartridge and turn on the Super Nintendo, you immediately see that this game is different. While many games with have some logos and then give you an option screen, FFVI instead blasts you with dramatic organ chords as the game logo comes on screen, the letters are colored with fire set against a stormy sky. From there, there are some narrative screens giving the background of the world, followed by the game’s first scene. After that you have something that is rarely seen in video games: opening credits. But these credits also play over the journey of the three characters just introduced to the city of Narshe, where the game proper begins. All of this plays BEFORE the player see the actual first option screen (new game, save game, etc). You are plunged into the game world first, and if the player doesn’t press a button, in theory this sequence could play on an infinite loop. Continue reading “The Music of Final Fantasy VI – Act II: The Opening Sequence” →

The Music of Final Fantasy VI – Act I: The Importance of Music in FFVI

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By Michael W. Harris

My small-ish collection of Final Fantasy music discs. I have a few other releases in digital only format.
My small-ish collection of Final Fantasy music discs. I have a few other releases in digital only format.

There are a few recurring things that appear in (almost) every Final Fantasy game: chocobos, some character named Cid (usually a non-playable character), and Nobuo Uematsu’s “Prelude” theme. In some ways, these, and a few other, elements are the only thing that tie the series together—at least until SquareEnix decided to start doing spin-offs and entire “series” based upon games in the core series. The Final Fantasy series isn’t an on-going story, rather it is an anthology series, and as such features more thematic ties than on-going character stories. Continue reading “The Music of Final Fantasy VI – Act I: The Importance of Music in FFVI” →

The Music of Final Fantasy VI: Prelude – A Brief History of Me and Final Fantasy

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By Michael W. Harris

I first heard about Final Fantasy VI (or III was it was called back then, and for the sake of my sanity, I will just call it VI in this post and the ones that follow) in an issue of Nintendo Power. I’m not sure of the date, but it was probably back in 1994, when the game was first released. I, of course, was already aware of the series, but was by no means a die-hard player. I had already played the first two Final Fantasy Legend games for Game Boy when they were released (though never actually beat them) along with Final Fantasy Adventure (which I did beat), and I remember having played the original game on NES before I sold the system to buy a Super Nintendo. However, my RPG roots actually lie in a different franchise. Dragon Warrior (or as it is now known in US by its original Japanese name: Dragon Quest). Continue reading “The Music of Final Fantasy VI: Prelude – A Brief History of Me and Final Fantasy” →

What I’m Reading: 14 July 2016

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Ars Technica has a fascinating article today about Jimmy Carter’s involvement in saving the Space Shuttle program. I was born during the waning days of the Carter administration and had no idea that he was fairly lukewarm on NASA’s manned spaceflight program. It is a wonderful glimpse into this key period of development for the shuttle, and the author even got a few words from President Carter himself for the story.

Check it out here.

Device Consolidation, Technology Ecosystems, and the Internet of Things: Thoughts after Watching “Steve Jobs”

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By Michael W. Harris

jobs_posterI first saw Danny Boyle’s biopic Steve Jobs during its rather lackluster theatrical run in late 2016, but I just re-watched the film last night and would like to work through a few things in this forum.

To me, there are two big things to take away about Steve Jobs as portrayed in the film (I make no claims as to the accuracy of that portrayal): 1) Jobs was a difficult person to be around. Unwaveringly sure about his vision, refusing to admit mistakes, and uncompromising with his ideas. 2) His vision of the future of computers and technology (his belief in end-to-end control and the closed system) was, in the end, right.

In short, he was high maintenance to deal with but he was also correct in what he wanted, just a bit ahead of the curve. To quote The Dude from The Big Lebowski: “You’re not wrong, Walter, you’re just an asshole!” Continue reading “Device Consolidation, Technology Ecosystems, and the Internet of Things: Thoughts after Watching “Steve Jobs”” →

Reflections on Voyager and the Golden Record: America’s Greatest Achievement

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By Michael W. Harris

The Voyager Golden Record seems to float into and out of my life and consciousness at the most random of times. Recently, I encountered it when I was finally reading a New York Times article by Chuck Klosterman from May about who will be the one rock and roller remembered when all of us are but “dust in the wind.”

Klosterman mentions Berry at the end of his article and frames it in the context of Berry’s inclusion on the Golden Record affixed to the Voyager probes now traversing the dark of interstellar space. Like Klosterman, I feel like there is no better distillation of what rock and roll is and was than Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode.” Ask any former rock history student of mine and they can (hopefully) tell you that I share most of Klosterman’s reasons for his selection of Berry. Continue reading “Reflections on Voyager and the Golden Record: America’s Greatest Achievement” →

The Mystery of Count Leopold Ferri of Padua – Library Archeology and the Stainforth Catalog

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By Michael W. Harris

When the members of Team Stainforth discuss his library, we always like to say that it was one of the largest collections of women’s writing in the nineteenth century. But there is always the qualifier of “one of the” because we can never really say for sure.

The one library that the Team knew about and have always compared his library to is the collection assembled for the 1893 World’s Fair held in Chicago. At that exhibition, there was a “Women’s Building” that housed a library of works by women authors, representing twenty-four nations and included some 8,000 volumes, all arranged and cataloged by librarians handpicked by Melvil Dewey, he of the famous decimal system. (Read about that collection here.)

Recently, however, another library came to the attention of project director Kirstyn Leuner from an unlikely source: George Eliot’s Middlemarch. Continue reading “The Mystery of Count Leopold Ferri of Padua – Library Archeology and the Stainforth Catalog” →

What I’m Reading: 22 June 2016

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This article is a few weeks old, but I finally got around to reading and watching the video in its entirety during lunch today.

Buzzfeed version of the title: What happens when a filmmaker and a computer programmer get together and let an AI write a script? The results may surprise you.

I find this interesting on a number of levels, not only for the computer programming portion, but more so about what the results (i.e. script) say about the sci-fi medium. As the article points out (and what is apparent just by watching the film), so much of the dialogue centers around “I don’t know what you mean,” as so much sci-fi dialogue does in order to allow for the explanation of things to the audience. It is a mirror to our culture.

Via ArsTechnica.