Reflecting for the 3rd time

Our film is coming along great.   Sam is doing some final touches on the editing.  We do not have any narration and some of our shots need to be redone.   Hopefully we will get it done soon.

This week I made the poster for our film.  It was a hard light shot of Ben smirking.  His face faded into the black background.  We took pictures and then I made the poster in photoshop.   Molly was unsure about the title 'The Boy with the Smirk' so she changed it to 'Fight of the Mind'.   I'm not really sure what the title is now, I'm fine with both.  I used 'Fight of the Mind' on the poster only because it was the title that Molly had chosen when the poster was made.  

Next week there really isn't much more to do.   I will help Sam with final edits and getting any last shots we need.  We will probably reshoot some shots to make the story clearer. 

Reflecting on filming part 2

1.Our film is coming along pretty well.  We still need to record our voice overs. Our rough cut looks pretty good so far, Sam has already done some simple color correction on it, but the plot won't make much sense until we get the voice overs in.
2.I have begun to work on the poster and I helped film the intro.
3.This week I will be editing the intro in class and working on a poster.
I wish I had more to say on this, but I do not.  Our film is coming along great.

Reflections on Filming of Things

Our film is progressing really well.  We have almost all of our scenes filmed.  It proved to be difficult to film the bus scene, so hopefully we will figure that out.   One of the challenges is that we are editing outside of school.  Editing outside of school in itself is not a challenge (it makes things easier, because we have more time to work on it) but it is challenging during class time because there is less we need to do. 

I helped with filming.  I was also a background actor in one of the shots, but I'm not sure if that really counts for anything. We also tried to figure out lighting for the poster picture.    I worked on creating different lighting for the various shots.   I also have done a lot of searching for sound effects.  I have found various sound clips (especially for neighborhood noise and doors closing and bus sounds).

Next week we need to continue to edit.  I will work on the poster (we are going to do a variety of designs and then choose) and then we will decide on one.

Our movie is pretty awesome, I think it has a really good story. 

Just stuff.

Not sure if we are supposed to do a blog post today or not, so I'm just gonna talk about a lot of things.

First off, Camp Nanowrimo.  Lets just say I'm wayyyyyyy behind. No word count api for this, so you guys cant see just how far behind I am.  And I don't see myself catching up anytime soon, thanks too a variety of time consuming projects coming due. Which brings me to my next point.

Feature story.  Nothing better than stressful stuff, I can tell you that.  I've got my interviews done, but 8 pages is freaking me out, seeing as we haven't talked about feature stories in like a month.  Freaking out about this is a severe understatement.

Cap Court. Togas.  It's gonna be fun.

Wichita St v. Louisville That game.  I just can't.  I wanted Wichita to win so bad. They were up by 11 and then they just lost.  I can't even tell you how nerve racking that game was for me.  Also can we talk about how their mascot appears to be a bale of wheat?

Space I feel like I should mention something about space, but like my other interests, my life has been hijacked by school.  So space. It exists.  Please enjoy NASA's astronomy picture of the day, Saturn photobombing a picture of the moon.

Books.

I have to admit, for the longest time I wasn't much of a reader.  Of course I liked to read, and I read the books we had to for school, but usually I didn't carve out that much time to read.   Something changed in 9th grade, and I started to read books more.  I also rediscovered the awesomeness that is the Wheaton library book sale and have gotten so many awesome new paperbacks there that I had to rearrange my bookcase to fit them all.   So I've been reading a lot more. 

I've gotten some new favorite authors like H.G. Wells and Diana Wynne  Jones (she wrote Howl's moving castle...which I haven't read yet) I feel like my main problem with trying to find new books is that I never know if I am going to like it or not.  The back of the book descriptions never really do it for me, so I am still kind of hesitant to find/start a few books.  Odd for someone who like to read I suppose.

I will admit that I 100% judge books by their covers.  I hate book jackets because the books without the jackets look older and more unique.  That's also why I like the book sale. The books are old. Well not really old, but a lot of the paperbacks have a couple decades on them. Just recently I bought a hardback copy of 20000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne that was published in 1940. So yeah. Books. Awesome.  I was too lazy to research space so I hope you enjoyed these ramblings instead.

Camp Nanowimo

After recently discovering that the vast majority of my non-school related posts were about nanowrimo, I was a bit hesitant to write another one.  I like writing, but I will say that it's not one of my main interests.  I'm way more into soccer/athletics in general, art, and astronomy. So the idea that I have a ton of writing related blog posts is pretty strange.  Ah well.  I also think its strange to write about writing.  It just doesn't seem like it's always the write thing to do.  Puns...

But anyways.  Since my Nanowrimo was a success, I'm partaking in Camp Nanowrimo during April.  And no, it's not, as I suspected when I first heard about it last year, an actual summer camp.  It's essentially the regular NaNoWriMo, but you get to choose what your goal is and what not.  I'm going for the regular 50k.  For Camp Nanowrimo, you can choose your format too, so it doesn't have to be a novel.  It can be anything, like a movie script.  I'm sticking with a novel, 'cause it's easier. 

My novel for this April will be set in the same world as my November novel, which I'm still editing.   I have the basic premise down, but figuring out certain details, like how far in the future the novel is set, characters, even major yet simple details like my main character's name have proved difficult.   November's novel I knew the name right away.  Well not right away, but essentially early on in writing.   Now that I know I can write 50k in a month, I'm really determined to do it again.  I was planning on saving this novel idea for November, but I've just been itching to write it.  Waiting just a few weeks till April is hard enough.

So yeah. Camp NaNoWriMo, awesomeness.

Nebulous Nebulae

All stars begin in what are known as nebulae, beautiful clouds of space dust that are scattered about the universe.  They are classified into four major groups:

H II regions, which encompass diffuse nebulae, bright nebulae, and reflection nebulae.

HII regions are named HII because they contain vast amounts of ionized hydrogen (I'm to lazy to talk about what that is so go google it or ask Connor).   These form from molecular clouds (also known as stellar nurseries, isn't that just so cute?).  Molecular clouds are actually pretty stable and tend to stick around for awhile, until the universe (quite literally) conspires against them, causing gravitational collapse from shock waves from super novae and fragmentation within the cloud.   By gravitational collapse I mean in specific regions.  This causes the gas to swirl around, creating even more gravity before eventually becoming a swirling mass of hot gas known as a protostar, which eventually becomes an actual star.  The stars formed in HII regions drive away the rest of the gas with radiation pressure.   Only 10% of the gas gets used to make stars.   HII regions last about one or two million  years.

Planetary nebulae

Planetary nebulae form from stars like our sun and those not massive enough to supernova.   When these stars die, instead of perishing in dramatic explosions, they expand slowly outward turning into red giants and eventually become faint clouds of gas and dust known as planetary nebula. Eventually, these nebulae expand further and become invisible, leaving behind only a small white dwarf star.  Planetary nebula are actually really important because they contain heavier elements like nitrogen, carbon and oxygen.   It's elements like these that help make life.

Supernova remnant

These nebulae form after the melodramatic deaths of supermassive stars.   It expands with the shock wave of the explosion. 

Dark nebula

 

These nefarious nebulae are dense clouds of dust that are dark because they block out any light that is behind them. They are all unique, some taking the shape of a horse head, others taking amorphous or serpentine forms.

So anyways, yeah nebulae are pretty cool.  If anyone actually is reading this blog, leave a comment below suggesting a space related topic you'd like to me to do a post on.

Documenting things because reasons

Well I was going to do a blog post about nebulae (plural form of nebula) but seeing as that would involve a lot of research and image citing and all that and its late, instead I shall shamelessly promote Connor, Sam, Max's documentary.  Huzzah?



Honestly, this documentary depressed me.  C'mon America, be smarter.   The writing on the white board to clarify ideas was actually really good, but it also made me sad because whoever was writing has way better handwriting than I do.  Am I allowed to blame American schools?   But it was good because it was clear, it didn't go too fast, and it gave real solutions to the problems.  And cinematographically, rack focus is just generally awesome and there was great typography.  So generally, this was a good documentary.   Hopefully it will win the CSPAN thing.
(For obvious reasons however, my groups documentary about Europa will be far superior, because we went to Europa to get footage.  It was only like 433 million miles away )

Ok I lied about there being no nebula stuff.
Nebulas are beauteous clouds of gas and space dust and what not.  It's where stars are born.  And they are cool because no one really knows how exactly stars form, though we have a general idea.   But since I will be writing a much longer blog post next week about it, I will just leave this as a wonderful little taste of their epicness.
But it would be mean to just end this blog post without any sort of nebula picture, so here is a wonderful picture of the Orion Nebula.

 

 

This is why Nasa and Hubble are awesome.  So beautiful.

Image Credit

Robot love seems to be a concerning theme in pd. 4

So for this assignment we took a break from well, everything to do a fun super short project with the awesome kids from England.  So we had to make a 60 second movie using a random prop.  We got a big box filled with two clock timer things, tubing, fairy wands, something called a film cleaner, random bits of metal and a broken plastic beaker.   We knew we wanted to do something sort of sci-fi esc.  Eventually we came up with the idea of a mad scientist who creates an android and falls in love with her.  But alas, the robot cannot feel love.  So the scientist discovers a code to make the robot fall in love (and therefore more human).  But then the robot falls for another.   We were able to write the script (it was easy since there were no words) and a story board on the first day, film on the second, and edit on the third.  We stayed after school to finish it. 
The overall making of this was actually pretty smooth, there weren't any major roadblocks.  Time was a bit of a constraint, but since we came in after school two days, we managed to get it done.  Another problem was that we had a piece of music that we wanted to use, but it was download only (you couldn't modify/create derivative works) so we had to find another song.  Searching through Free Music Archives takes a loooonggggg time.  Ruth found a really great song though.
This experience helped us to understand how to tell a story with as few shots as possible.  The CAP Hollywood movies will not be that long (only like 2 minutes as I understand it, though I think it should be more like 5) so it will be important to know how to use a few significant shots rather than a ton of unnecessary ones.   I also learned a bit more about editing.  I had a lot of fun color correcting.   I will definitely use color correction to give my CAP Hollywood film the right mood.
On a slightly related note, the short stories are coming along great.  It took me a long time to think of an idea.   I generally don't enjoy reading realistic fiction, so coming up with an original idea was challenging.  Fortunately, late at night before the first part was due, I was able to find a loophole.  My story is about a girl who is bored and starts daydreaming that she and those around her are in a fantasy world.  Ah loopholes.  I really really want this to made into one of the films.  If it doesn't get picked, I'll just make it myself, because I have a clear image of what it should look like.

Concluded Leisure Unsure Sauce

So today I have no good blog ideas, so I will be writing a short story based off of randomly generated phrases using this:
http://watchout4snakes.com/creativitytools/randomword/randomphrase.aspx
The way this works is I'll take the first pair of words as the prompt, and the second two will be used somewhere in the story. This should be fun. 

"concluded leisure unsure sauce"

Worker 2984 sat in the bleak center of the break room watching television.   2984 was told that enjoyment should be derived from the leisure time; so 2984 allowed himself to feel pleasure from watching the television..  2984 turned his head mechanically towards the clock as he heard the sound of the characteristic click that came before the announcements.
Click. "Leisure time will conclude in five minutes and 39 seconds," a female voice sang out.  Her voice had been perfected to sound emotionless while still being a pleasure to listen to.  Only if one listened closely could they tell that the voice had a slight change in the fluidity of it's pitch, signifying that the voice was indeed a robot.   Computer or not, Worker 2984 was in love.  Everyday the voice would sing out, reminding workers when to wake up, get dressed, eat, work, leisure, eat, work, go home, eat, sleep.  2984's one happiness was to wake up in the morning to the sound of her voice.  He named her 5. It was a pretty name, he thought, so exotic and unique.  That morning he had stayed in bed just to hear her say,
Click.  "Worker 2984, wake up! Wake up! Time for work! Wake up! Do not be late, Worker 2984!"
It was so unlike him, to sleep in late.  But, it was then that he had realized that he loved her, in that moment when she had said his name.

Click. "Leisure time has now concluded.  Please return to your work, workers."

The rest of the workers filed out obediently to return to their jobs making sauce, but 2984 lingered behind, unsure.  One minute passed. Then two.

Click. "Leisure time has now concluded.  Please return to your work, Worker 2984."

Five minutes passed. Then ten.  Then twenty.  Every two minutes, 5's heavenly voice would sing down.

Click. "Leisure time has now concluded.  Please return to your work, Worker 2984."

2984 waited for one of the bosses, probably Boss 34, to come in and drag him back to the sauce factory floor, but no one came. 2984 didn't know why he stayed.  Something kept him glued to the spot as he gazed up at the intercom.  Perhaps it was in the way she said his name, but 2984 was unsure.  He knew one thing, however.  He knew that no force in the world could drag him away from here in that moment. 

Click. "Leisure time has now concluded.  Please return to your work, Worker 2984."

Suddenly an idea struck him.  It was an innocent idea, a harmless one.  But no one had ever done it.  He stood up suddenly.  But in that moment his confidence abandoned him and he was left feeling unsure.

"5?"  He whispered hesitantly, saying her name aloud for the first time.  He liked the way her name tasted on his lips, how smooth and easy it was to say.  She did not respond.

"5?" He tried again, a little louder, his voice suddenly hoarse.  There was the usual click before the voice, but there was a long pause of silence.

"Worker 2984." 5 suddenly said, her sweet voice somehow different than before, but still the same.  2984 was suddenly struck with panic. What should he say now?

Suddenly he could hear the sound of footsteps down the hall, heavy, heavy, footsteps.

"5!" He cried out. The boss entered the room, "5!" He cried out again as he was dragged out of the break room.  He knew the punishment would be severe.

"5!" He was sobbing now, he had never sobbed.   He struggled against the ginormous man that was Boss 34, trying to get back to the intercom. He had never struggled.  He just wanted to hear her voice.
The door began to close.  Faintly, as if in a dream, a sweet mechanical voice floated through the crack of the closing door.

"Goodbye Worker 2984."

 Image Credit

Living in Silver Spring

Essentially this is a video of my sister and I going and playing around at a park near our house.  Most of the shots we are in the little children's garden.  I wasn't really sure how to capture what it was like to live in Silver Spring.  I mean, I don't live near Tacoma Park or Downtown Silver Spring or Rockville, so it's not like I can just go there and film the people and what not.  And a day in the life that doesn't include school involves me lazing about all day.  I was going to include some shot's of me playing indoor soccer, but it would have been difficult to film there.  (and we lost badly to the team we played, so I'm not sure if I want to show that on film....) So sorry British kids, a day in the live in Silver Spring means going to a park to film a video about what it's like to live in Silver Spring.  I think the British kids should make videos of what it's like to live in England so we can watch.

I filmed this with my mother's DSLR, with a regular lens.  It was really hard to try to figure out what I wanted to do, for the aforementioned reasons.  It was also hard to find good music for this.   Somehow I ended up with French gypsy jazz.  I also had a ton more footage that I wanted to include, but the time limit would not let me.   I also kind of panicked because free music archives started glitching, so it wouldn't load for a while, and I was faced with the possibility that I would have to find my CC music elsewhere.  To be honest, this was probably my least favorite of the individual video challenges, mostly because I wasn't really inspired by it.  I did get a fun day with my sister out of it though :)

Mr Mayo for our next challenge, can we do a short film/trailer like thing? Or maybe a silent movie?

Fun facts:
We did not make that snowman, we found it.  It was really cute.
My sister's head is okay.
At the end of the video, I slip and fall.
I tried filming the day that it snowed, and I broke a tripod. Like literally, it snapped in two.

Lessons Learned From Failing

Let me tell you all a little story, harking back to the long past days of 6th grade.  It was the first essay of middle school, about a lovely little book known as Watership Down.   I worked really hard on it, I had read the book, taken notes, tried to remember the discussions in class.  After proudly turning it in, it was returned to me with a big fat D written in the margins of all my hard work.  That was the worst grade I had ever gotten at the time and I cried when I told my parents about it. 
Fortunately, I was not the only one to do horribly, and she gave us the option to re-write it.  Going over my essay I came across a few key mistakes.  My thesis was horrible (in fact I don't think there even was one) and there were several problems with my introduction sentences and what not. That was lesson one. Then I edited it, and would have gotten 100%, had it not been turned in late. Lesson two. 
With every bad grade I've gotten, I've learned far more than I have from my best essays.  Bad grades sting, but at least you get comments back that help you improve.   Good essay's get comments inserting commas and then "Good job" at the end with a smiley face. Bad grades help you get to the good grades and you learn far more from them.  Believe me, it makes me happy to get smiley faces, but I don't learn how to be a better writer because I am already there for that essay.    Now this would not be a problem  at all until it comes time to analyze these writings for a little thing known as coversheets.

This year there is a new rule requiring all portfolio entries to be A's.  I think this is a bit ridiculous for a couple of reasons.

Reason One: Not everyone get's A's. Plain and simple.  If everyone got an A on every assignment, this would not be a competitive program.   So students who did well on the valuable assignments that belong in portfolio's can complete them fairly easily, while the equally smart student who got a B has to search through their less portfolio worthy assignments that they got an A on to find something to use.

Reason Two: B's are still good grades.   Ms. Cullen told us at the beginning of the year not to expect A's, that they are something to work for.  Mr. Grossman liked to remind us that B's are not the end of the world, and for most students it is a fairly good grade.   And what about the student who gets an 89% on an assignment? Clearly they did the assignment well and understood it, and it was only a few points away from being A worthy.   Good grade,  but somehow not good enough for a portfolio?

Reason Three (and by far the most important reason of all): Students learn from mistakes.  Now, it might not be wise to submit a failed essay as a portfolio coversheet, but what if they really did learn from the assignment.   Their coversheet would be all about what they could have done differently, how they are going to improve and also focusing on what they did well (however few things that may be)  You learn more from why you failed then trying to examine why you did well.

Basically what I am saying is this. The portfolio coversheets are meant to be used as a tool to help us analyze our growth as students and writers.   If the point is to document our progress, yet we only include A assignments, then the portfolios are not a very accurate portrayal of our actual growth as students.  In order to succeed as writers, we have to understand how and why we failed in the first place. B, C, D and even E grades have a place in our portfolio.

Windows 8 Is Kinda Great (sometimes maybe, I'm not sure)

For Christmas I got a lovely new Dell laptop, complete with the brand new Windows 8.  When I first got it, I hated it, but now I am starting to get used to it.   Such is life I suppose.

-bad +good
-No start button, replaced with start screen
This is perhaps the worst part of Windows 8.   The usual start button that we all have come to know and love and been replaced with a start screen, something akin to the home screens for android phones and the new Surface.  Might work well for a touch screen, but I'd rather be able to pop up a relatively unobtrusive menu than go to a whole other page to open something.
-Lots of ad like promotions.
When you first get Windows 8, they quite handily provide you with quick apps for Amazon, EBay, Bing, and Kindle. These apps can be hidden, but seriously, do they really need to be that blatant in their advertising?
-Very flat and 2D.
Some of you might remember the days of Windows Vista.   Previous feelings about Vista aside (I have to admit I kind of liked it) it had a sort of 3D effect to it.  The scroll bar sort of popped out, there were shadows behind windows, and check boxes also had a bit of this effect to it.  All of that is gone in Windows 8.  Most everything is a flat color box.  No shadows, nothing.  It makes it feel a little bland I have to admit.
+Sleek
What was a negative above, also kind of turns into a positive. The consistent flatness gives it a very unique and sleek look.  It matches somewhat the new Google themes.  I like consistency.
+Colorful
Colorful can barely begin to describe it.  Mostly in the insanely brightly colored menu screen, with an array of colors for each app.  The colors actually put you in a good mood, so while you are complaining about Windows 8, you can look at all the wondrous (great adj. people should use it more often) colors and feel somewhat better.
+Dynamic
One of the funnest parts about Windows 8, is how dynamic it is. To close an app (not something like a browser or word) you simply drag the top part of the window to the bottom of the screen.  To know the time quickly, adjust settings or to quickly find an app, you simply need to hover in the corner of the screen and it will show you quickly.

Most of these changes were to make Windows 8 on a computer as similar as possible to the Windows 8 on a touch screen tablet such as an Android phone or the new Surface.  All Microsoft needs to do to make me happy is to bring back the start button, or at least create a setting where one could choose between a start screen and a start button.  A start screen would obviously work better on a touch screen, but not so well on a computer.

Just a little side story: While me and my father were shopping for a new laptop, we came across the one I have now, and seeing the Windows 8 start screen, attempted to swipe the screen with our fingers, assuming that it was a touch screen.
"Why isn't the touch screen working?"
We realized it was not a touch screen, and the worst part is I knew it was not a touch screen from previous research, but clearly that part of my brain decided not to work at that moment.
In our defense, there were a lot of touch screen computers and convertible tablets about.