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Jim Groom's Known World

Jim Groom

The Wire on Vimeo

"I animated this piece as an homage to my favorite show"

Jim Groom

The Wire - Characters Saying the Opening Quotes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqNNpGlUKHw

Jim Groom

I watched Fred Zinneman's <em>Day of the Jackal</em> (1973) last night, and Paul Bond reminded me of this bit from <em>The Wire</em>:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Olf8J_z3snM&feature=youtu.be&t=1m3s

Jim Groom

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New blog post: "Inspired: The Wire Scrolls" http://bavatuesdays.com/inspired-the-wire-scrolls/

Jim Groom

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Wire 106: S03E08 – “Moral Midgetry” http://bavatuesdays.com/wire-106-s03e08-moral-midgetry/

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New blog post: "NYC and the Visual Design of Season 2 of The Wire" http://bavatuesdays.com/nyc-and-the-visual-design-of-season-2-of-the-wire

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"Wire 106: S02E06/E07/E08 “All Prologue,” “Backwash,” and “Duck and Cover” http://bavatuesdays.com/wire-106-s02e06e07e08

Jim Groom

"Wire 106 Radio: S02E03/E04/E05 “Hot Shots,” “Hard Cases,” and “Undertow" http://bavatuesdays.com/wire-106-radio-s02e03e04

Jim Groom

D&D alignment chart for The Wire #ds106 #wire106 via @joefromkenyon

Joe Murphy on Twitter: "Is there enough creativity in making a pop culture D&D alignment chart for a create? version: http://t.co/g2DS38f2HW" https://twitter.com/joefromkenyon/status/516650260350136320

Jim Groom

UMW really should have a class on The Wire #wire106

Imran discovered this on Yik Yak and sent it my way and I was like "What is chopped liver?" http://ds106.us/tag/wire106

Jim Groom

"Wire 106: Week 6 - The Design of Things" http://bavatuesdays.com/wire-106-week-6-the-design-of-things/ Here we go again!

Jim Groom

New blog post: "From Radio to Television to Wire 106 or, Why I teach" http://bavatuesdays.com/from-radio-to-television-to-wire-106-or-why-i-teach/

Jim Groom

Love this graphic representation of <em>The Wire</em> Paul Bond pointed me to here: http://known.raptnrent.me/2014/wire106---comic-book-style-ds106-wire106

Jim Groom

New blog post: "Wire 106 Twitter Watch Along" http://bavatuesdays.com/wire-106-twitter-watch-along/

Jim Groom

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New blog post: Listen Along on ds106radio (#4life) http://bavatuesdays.com/wire-106-listen-along-on-ds106radio-4life/

Jim Groom

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Freamon on The Wire

Jim Groom

Interview with The Wire Sound Editor Jen Ralston (@someotherjen) for #wire106 #ds106

This is the interview Paul Bond and I had with sound editor Jen Ralston about her work on The Wire and more. She has a series of brilliant insights, and does a few close readings of scenes from season 1. It's an excellent resource for thinking more deeply about sound, which is appropriate given we will be introducing sound in this week.

Alternative link:
http://bavatuesdays.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/wire106_jen_ralston_interview_original.mp3

Jim Groom

The Wire Everywhere: The Pay Phone #ds106 #wire106

I was at Westmoreland State Park with my family today and I saw a pay phone by the visitors center and immediately thought of The Wire Everywhere assignment for ds106. It's interesting how the pay phone is becoming a vestigial technology in a society where a majority of folks carry one in their pocket (in addition to an extremely powerful computer).

I love the aesthetic of the pay phone, and it's a staple of The Wire season 1, so I figured I would capture just that. It's interesting how something as ubiquitous as this technology 25 years ago has vanished in the wake of the mobile revolution. The idea of vanishing technology like the pay phone is fascinating, and the idea that Grant Potter set it up so that you could broadcast to from a pay phone back in the day was one of the most interesting marriages of old and new technologies I've ever seen.

Jim Groom

Archive of discussion w/ @phb256 and @awallac2 of S01E13 of The Wire "Sentencing." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1bRweRdfqs

Jim Groom

Pager Paranoia on the GIF Wire #ds106 #wire106

1 min read

This is my attempt at the "Summarize A Wire Episode In GIFs." I chose to pull six (actually seven) animated GIFs from episode 5 of Season 1 of The Wire: "The Pager." It's one of my favorite episodes because the theme of being watched and a more generalized sense of paranoia creeps into the episode constantly. 

This is one of the earlier, if not earliest, episode where we hear the refrain: "Omar's coming!" As we all know, "the cheese stands alone!" ---and he'll be coming for Avon soon.

cheese_stands_alone 01 

There's a lot of warnings in this episode, and I found an interesting parallel between Omar's raid on the East Side stash, and the young hopper's in the pit calling the warning for "5-0" that Stringer Bell and D'Angelo hear while talking about there being a snitch in D's ranks. Again, this constant sense of being watched, betrayed, and generally under someone else's control.

 

5-0-5-0_coming_up 01 

Jim Groom

Are you trying to get The Wire episodes for GIFs? There's a solution I emailed folks earlier this week, did you check your email? Also, a bit late in the game for issues with GIFs and videos? No leaving yourself much leeway for error.

Jim Groom

Wire 106: S01E12 "Cleaning Up"

2 min read

 

For this video discussion of Season 1 Episode 12 of The Wire, "Cleaning Up," Paul Bond and I were joined by UMW internauts Maggie Stough and Imran Ahmed. This discussion was generative because I realized it might be useful to coordinate discussion details with students before we go live. I tend to fly by the seat of my pants in all things, but a bit of structure for these discussions makes sense. I'll be working on sharing an ongoing video discussions document wherein folks can share the particular things they want to talk about for each episode. Iteration 4life!
Another thing about this discussion, and why I am learning to hate Google more and more, is that they threatened to stop the discussion midstream if we shared another clip from the show. We were sharing a couple of minute long clips from The Wire to contextualize the discussion we were having and they threatened to shut us down. Total bullshit. This is an excellent example of how out of control the media lockdown on our culture has become, and how our convenience-driven dependence on third party services reinforces that reality. I have to get our own video setup together for these wire106 discussions soon, because I am so tired of having advertising companies dictate how we interact with the media culture defines us. 
Also, I keep calling this episode "The Clean-Up," but it's Cleaning Up." So much for exactitude.

Jim Groom

"Scenes from the Wire" http://bavatuesdays.com/scenes-from-the-wire-2/ Wire bots for ? Thanks for the inspiration @zachwhalen

Jim Groom

First Wire 106 Lunch

4 min read

After returning to teach ds106 as an online course at UMW for the first time in over a year, I decided to experiment with an idea Mike Wesch mentioned while in Irvine this summer preparing for Connected Courses. He noted that he goes out to lunch with a different student of his every day. I loved this idea. And given that most of the students taking the wire106 version of ds106 this Fall are residential students, I decided to organize group lunches for anyone interested. Today was the first one, and it was pretty awesome.

Maggie, John, Ien, and Meredith joined me at a local eating establishment to get to know each other over lunch. After working through the expected initial awkwardness, we sat down, ordered food and started talking about The Wire. And, interestingly enough, we all got into it. They confessed to binge watching, admitted using ds106 to procrastinate doing other class work (a badge of honor), and generally acknowledged they were hooked on the series. Needless to say, I was fired up. We talked about Wee-Bey's exotic fish fetish, the tragedy of Wallace, the existential angst of D'Angelo, Greggs as natural police and much more. It was fun.

On top of that, we came away with some idea for class activities, assignments, and projects that Meredith was kind enough to capture at lunch before they slipped away.

Live Tweeting Episodes
It even produced some ideas for both wire106-themed assignments and possibilities for coordinating activities for the class to come together. For example, watching episode 1 of Season 2 together by starting it at a predetermined time and live tweeting out our reactions. This is something we need to make happen.

Opening Scene Episode
Take all the opening scenes from the 13 episodes of season 1 and edit them into a video wherein they play one after the other chronologically to see how it would flow as it's own episode.

Beginnings and Endings
Juxtapose the opening and closing scenes of each episode in season 1, noting how much they play off each other in a number of episodes. One good example to start with is episode 10, "The Cost."

Wire Colors
Another assignment that came up was doing an analysis of the use of color in the series. And we're still thinking about how we would frame that as a compelling visual assignment. Ideas?

Wire 106: Messing with the Macguffin
John suggested an assignment that would have a character saying something that changed the nature of the episode, if not the series, all together. Like, for instance, Deputy of Ops suggesting a Bust and Buy on a case with a wire would be out of the question. Poor Kima. Kinda like a Wire 106-themed "Messing with the MacGuffin" assignment.

OG Technology
If you were to change the technology in a scene, how it would be different today. Could there be a season 1 Wire without pay phones?

Where are they now?
Playing off the fact many of the actors in The Wire have gone on to successful careers, do a where are they now assignment that plays with the before and after. Perhaps even creating a fiction story around the changes. This could be very interesting for Wallace, Stringer Bell, Snoop and more.

Clothing Change Ups
A design assignment that has you photoshopping one character’s set of clothing onto another character.

Putting Words In Their Mouth
Giving a quote that one character said to another character.

Wire on the Twitter
Create a twitter account for each character in an episode then tweet the dialogue of that episode. This might be a group project later in the semester, it would take some interesting coordination, and the tweets might be an awesome subtitle to a live projected episode at the end of the semester.

Audio Commentary
Provide a polished, rehearsed audio commentary to an episode. Make it a special feature anyone can download and play as part of their watching of the series.

The idea of coming up with fun assignments over lunch is a really appealing focus for these sessions, at least for me. And it could be one approach we take to these get togethers. But the real goal is to simply get to know each other. The idea of residential online learning that Mike Caulfield has written about is still very appealing to me. An hour and a half lunch with four different students twice a week, over 13 weeks, means I could spend almost 5 hours with every student for focused, relaxed, and  personalized time to get to know them, have a good meal, and get creative about what we can do with the class. That to me is what online makes available for a community like UMW. More time to get to know each other, have fun, and re-imagine how we learn together. And what better venue that !

Jim Groom

Wire 106: S01E11 "The Hunt" #wire106 #ds106

1 min read

Meredith Fierro, Jessica ReingoldPaul Bond and I discussed Episode 11 of Season 1 of The Wire: "The Hunt." This was special for me because it's the first time we had UMW students enrolled in ds106 join the discussions about the show. This will now be a regular, ongoing component of these video discussions, and based on this one it's going to be a lot of fun to start featuring everyone's readings of the series. If you're interested in being part of tomorrow's discussion of episode 12, "Cleaning Up," you can sign-up here to join in.

Jim Groom

Wire 106: S01E10 "The Cost"

1 min read

Paul Bond and I discuss Episode 10 of Season 1 of The Wire: "The Cost." And as you may have guessed, this episode is all about, well, the cost of it all. Also, Wire 106 internaut Maggie Stough provides and awesome look at light and color in this episode, and Paul Bond is up to his usual flights of fancy analysis. We're are all getting pulled into the inescapable gravity of this "Russian novel" of a series.

Jim Groom

The Wire Being Remastered, Rebroadcast in HD

1 min read

Scott Leslie tweeted this article to me this evening. Imagine that, a remastered, HD version of The Wire airing on HBO this Fall. I had no idea, but I guess timing is everything, and Jim Groom's got that in spades! ;)

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At 5:15 PM (EDT) this evening we'll be discussing S01E07 of The Wire: "One Arrest" http://www.wire106.com/live-discussion/

Jim Groom

Here we go! officially underway! Week 1-"The Setup" http://www.wire106.com/digital-storytelling/wire-106-week-1-the-setup/

Jim Groom

Wire 106: S01E05 “The Pager”

2 min read

In our discussion of episode 5, “The Pager,” Paul Bond once again provides a great post that demonstrates how the themes of surveillance and paranoia are reinforced in the set design, shot composition, lighting, and audio elements. He also explores the filmic foreshadowing that you may have missed the first time through. Paul's posts provide a really useful model for close reading these episodes, and an excellent incentive for slowing down each episode and looking and listening closely beyond the dialogue. It's a good exercise to push yourself to think about what is happening in a particular scene, or even shot, beyond the script. The anatomy of scene, so to speak.

The title of this episode, "The Pager," highlights a throwback technology---even in 2002---that underscores a broader cultural critiques happening in The Wire. We already discussed the surveillance society everywhere apparent in this series, and this episode starts to evidence the concomitant paranoia that necessarily accompanies this enw reality. In fact, being watched is not a conspiracy because everyone in this show is already being watched, and we have regular evidence of that. Technology, surveillance and paranoia is a theme that I'll be returning to again and again this semester, and in our current post-NSA climate, it's almost a given we're being watched not only by ubiquitous cameras in the built environment, but everywhere we go in virtual space as well.

Jim Groom

Wire 106: S01E04 “Old Cases”

1 min read

In this discussion of episode 4, "Old Cases," Paul Bond provides a clinic on examining this episodes use of color, visual rhyming, the noir aesthetic, and more. His post here provides some excellent notes for this discussion, or even a great resource on its own. This discussion provides close analysis of the visual themes at work in The Wire that you might miss on the first run.

Another part of the discussion covers this idea of institutional noir in The Wire. In the 1940s film noir provided a vision of a violent, criminal post-war America. Noir was defined by ethically borderline characters that often stood outside institutions. In Simon's series, the institutional power structure are now producing these shady characters. A post-industrial, institutional reality reflecting the dehumanizing horror of late capital. An institutional noir filled with cubicals, high-rises, burnt out projects, and abandoned row houses. A word dystopian world of haves and have-nots that isn't scifi.

And there was even more, so check out the video, follow the links to the posts, or get blogging your own ideas, hippies!

Jim Groom

The Lego Wire---it's all in the game!

1 min read

Could for an interesting class project ;)

The Lego Wire from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.

Jim Groom

Wire 106: S01E03 “The Buys”

1 min read

 

Paul and I discussed "The Buys" last Thursday, and above is the video. We range in our discussion and I just did a pretty extensive post on it that I lost in Known (sometimes I am spoiled by WordPress). I'll keep this one very short. Below are the three video clips we discussed in some detail. After that we explored the recurrence of noir aesthetics through sight and sound that Paul breaks down nicely in this post. I want to talk more about the idea of "institutional noir" ---which I'm starting to feel is one name for the aesthetic of Simon's series.

It Ain't Gotta be Played Like That

All Business
 

King Stay the King

Jim Groom

The Wire Everywhere #wire106

1 min read

While walking around the new building I now work in at UMW---I realized I was seeing The Wire everywhere. Specifically, in the carpet.

The carpet is a constant reminder, at least for me, of the iconic image that is associated with the series on its main Wikipedia page.

So I took a picture of the rug and then add a quick title (still working in PowerPoint  ;)) and took a screenshot.

You can see a comparison here. 

I would give myself one of the two stars I attributed to "The Wire Everywhere" assignment I created for this semester's ds106 visual assignments. For it to be awesome, I would need to use Photoshop or GIMP to make the colors of the rug match those of the series icon. I'll revisit this, but for now consider it yet another star, and a new assignment to boot :)




Jim Groom

The Wire 106 GIF

Andrew Forgrave also made a GIF in his recent post. Love it.

Jim Groom

Wire Troll Quote

This isn't based on an epigraph, but I like it as a Troll Quote for The Wire.

Jim Groom

New blog post: "Triple Troll Wire Epigraphs" http://bavatuesdays.com/triple-troll-wire-epigraphs/

Jim Groom

Triple Troll Wire Epigraph

New assignment for inspired by the Troll Quotes. Take an epigraph from one of the episodes and attribute it to another, related figure. Finally, adorn the quote and author with an image of a third, different character from the series. This way, nothing about your image is correct, and you’re trolling fans of The Wire with all three characters at once.

Jim Groom

New blog post: "Wire 106: S01E02 'The Detail'" http://bavatuesdays.com/wire-106-s01e02-the-detail/

Jim Groom

New blog post: "Wire 106: Welcome to Hamsterdam" http://bavatuesdays.com/wire-106-welcome-to-hamsterdam/