RIOT

In a world...where the rich cant see the poor...and the poor cant see the rich...one man...will rise up... and end the blindness.  Perhaps one of the most difficult scenes for us to film will be of people rioting or of riot police. I looked on the internet archives to find shots of people rioting, and I must say, I was a bit disappointed.  I had expected to find a mix of well shot professional footage (from films, documentaries, news etc) and homemade videos or clips.  Unfortuately I only found a lot of grainy, shakey footage.  I did find this clip of riot police attacking protestors at the G20 summit.  If we do use it, we will use the part of the clip starting around 2:00.  That is when the riot police actually come.  It is possible that we could use the shakey, pixelated footage to our advantage, a series of shots like this can add to the general hysteria of a riot.  I have to admit, I am starting to get a bit excited for this project.  Filming will be fun, but editing it together and seeing the final project is what I am looking forward to the most.

Start at 2:00 enjoy.
 

May the Odds Be Ever In Your Favor

The Hunger Games. Gary Ross. PG-13. 2012


In the remains of North America, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) must compete in a fight with other teenagers to the death in a yearly competition known as the Hunger Games.

This trailer is exemplary because it conveys many aspects of the dystopia while creating suspense and curiosity.  The director establishes the premise of the movie by showing a scene of the reaping, intercut with scenes of Katniss consoling her sister, promising her that she won't be picked. When she is picked, the conflict is instantly created, and Katniss volunteers in her place.  The trailer focuses on the protagonist, not the society itself, but it is clear that the people of district twelve live in vastly different conditions then the people of the capital.  Cooler, greyer hues are used in the filming of the District Twelve scenes, to convey the poverty and unhappiness there, where as bright warm colors are used in the Capital. The music crescendos, becoming more and more intense towards the end, until it climaxes with a countdown.  There are also a lot of quick shots, giving the feeling of a fast pace.  This trailer is successful in establishing the premise of the Hunger Games, and what it is, mainly through the use of a voice over, but also creates intrigue about why they are happening.
I think we will use the same technique of focusing on the protagonist, in order to give the trailer a more emotional and personal undertone.  This trailer created tension, especially through the use of music.  We will try to replicate this by using music that best captures the spirit of our dystopia.

Making sure not to spill paint on the camera...

1. Tubes of watercolor paint
2. Panning shot of watercolor palette
3. Paint pigment diffusing in water dropplet
4. Drawing a tree
5. Painting red on wet paper

To create my 5x5 I used my sister's Nikon DSLR camera. It took great high-def video.  I was planning to edit it in the YouTube video editor, but it proved to be easier to just edit it in Windows Movie Maker and then upload it to YouTube.  Filming took longer than anticipated, mostly because it took awhile to set up shots.  I don't have my watercolors just lying about like that, so I spent awhile putting them into the right position.
I like the way my 5x5 turned out, although I kind of wish I could have added some music to the background.
Perhaps for our next independent video project, we should do some kind of short silent film.  When we did the 20second project, several groups (including my own) turned their films into silent films (mainly because of horrible audio).  It would be really cool to do black and white silent films. Maybe we could get into small groups spend some time filming in class or something and we could then all go and edit it ourselves.  We could make the story be however we wanted, and it would be a really cool way to see how different a story could be with the same footage but different editing.

Also another thing,  not only has this blog been visited by Germany (3 times in fact...I wonder if it is the same person....) but also the Netherlands. Interesting, no?

People Learning to Personalize Learning So People Can Learn From Other People

This article focuses on creating an individualized approach to learning. It promotes a form of teaching where students essentially create their own projects and areas of study based on a general curriculum.  The article says that this style of learning has been discussed for many years, but has never been fully utilized because many teachers view new technology as "disruptive innovation."  The most important part to learning this way is to help guide students properly, while still allowing them to generally choose their own course.  This article also promotes the use of blogs, wikis and other Internet tools for learning.  This article does however make the distinction between true self directed learning and simple personalized learning.   Self directed learning is (according to the article) learning "which we do for ourselves, and personalized learning...is done for us"  Personalized learning simply alters the general curriculum to fit each student a little better. 

"We need to shift our thinking from a goal that focuses on the delivery of something—a primary education—to a goal that is about empowering our young people to leverage their innate and natural curiosity to learn whatever and whenever they need to. The goal is about eliminating obstacles to the exercise of this right—whether the obstacle is the structure and scheduling of the school day, the narrow divisions of subject, the arbitrary separation of learners by age, or others—rather than supplying or rearranging resources." 
I thought this was interesting because it discussed not just changing the way school is taught, but changing it to create an environment where students essentially teach themselves.  The "goal" is to make students want to learn.

I did, however, find it surprising how much this article supported individual learning.  I personally prefer learning where we have some choices (like how to approach a certain project) but not when we have to essentially choose our own topics to learn.  I am incredibly lazy, and I do not believe this would be the best way for me to learn. I've done projects before where the students have to teach themselves and then create a project from that, with the guidance of a teacher.  I felt like it was much harder to sift through all the information out there just to get to what was important.  I feel like students could get trapped in their own little niche of learning and be unable to expand into other realms of thought.  (For example, an art loving student might do something only related to art, a sports loving student might tie everything back into sports)  At some point, students just need to be told what to do.  I wish the article clarified what age this would work best at.  Elementary School? Middle school? High School?

I suppose for this class "connected learning" means that we are learning through individual research, then sharing the research on our blogs.  It is possible it could work, and it would definitely be a good way to share information with the entire class, but I am not convinced yet that we will learn any better by it.
I would like to learn more about scriptwriting, but mostly the visual and plot line elements.  I personally am a very visual person, so I also want to learn more about creating good shots.  There are a billion ways to shoot the same scene, but I know certain angles can completely change the mood. I just want to know what they are, and how to use them creatively to my advantage.

Diigo Article

Blog is a very strange word...So is Diigo

""The Expendables 2" is spent"
 By Emma Yeager
Silver Chips Online

The movie reveiw quickly sums up the writer's opinion of the movie in one quick sentance.  It then continues to describe the actors and general plot of the movie. They wrote with an overall critical tone.  They rated the movie 2.5/5.

I'm not quite sure how we should structure our movie reviews. We should definately have some sort of structure, requiring a general plot synopisis, and things like acting, cinematography and sound.  I feel like we should have some creative freedom, but it is a lot easier if there is a bulleted list of things we need to talk about.  Also, Leah had a great idea about being able to do something other than just a written movie review.  A trailer perhaps, either promoting or critizing the movie.  Or if we dont film one, we could just do it in a written script form of the trailer.  There definately needs to be some sort of fun or creative aspect to the project to make us all actually want to do it.

Guess what? Someone from Germany visited here. Hullo Germany!

Diigo Link

Hello! (A Totally Un-cliche Title)

My name is Katie.   I enjoy playing soccer and painting watercolors.   I'm on the JV soccer team this year and I might try out for the school play this year.  I feel like I've said those things a thousand times (all because of beginning of school "describe yourself" in every single class).  I really enjoy film making, especially the creative aspect.  I like writing the scripts, and the actual shooting.  I am pretty good at editing, but it just depends on the project how much I like it or not.  Last year, one of my favorite projects was the InfoFlow show opens.  We made one about students waiting for InfoFlow.  It was a lot of fun filming.   We both scripted, filmed, and edited it. 

• The blogs would be a great way to make announcements about projects
• Such as homework
• Change project updates
• Get to know your classmates better

Watercolor paints, I really do love to paint: Image Credit