Semester 2

SEMESTER 2

Recap

Ferris Bueller

Our project was to replicate a popular high school movie, regardless of date of release and genre. The filming process of this recreation was approximately a month if I remember correctly, which explains why the finished product appears cleaner than the rather rushed short film we later created. Scheduling proved to be an issue, but only a minor one. All of our actors were incredibly enthusiastic and eager to film, offering any and all free time slots available. Along the way, I learned how difficult it is to film multiple nonlinear scenes involving costume and location changes. The main feedback we were given was to adjust the audio, which was previously a tacky royalty-free track that was thrown in last minute. I'm very pleased with the final result.

Short Film 

The final assignment of the school year was to craft our own script and bring it to life. The students had to depend on their peers' script-writing skills to create an exceptional film. For this project, we had a week for pre-production, a week for filming, and a week to edit. Time was definitely a challenge, as well as the rapidly approaching finals we were about to face. And along the way, I learned how to tolerate terrible actors. Barely. Feedback we received focused on the pacing, and I agree it was staggered; unfortunately, we did not acquire enough footage to even it out.

Time Usage

Time spent in class is unpredictable, depending on the project. Pre-production is the busiest, where all time is spent scrambling to complete everything prior to filming. Filming tends to be the laziest, as most of the time filming is off-site. Similarly, editing is laid back. Usually one person takes on the job of editing and only requires help when they need a second opinion.

Strengths

I found my strengths to be focused in directing, which surprised me as I dislike depending on others. I utilized those commanding skills to produce a wonderful high school trailer replication and an, admittedly, sub-par short film. The short film lacked as I let the stress of other classes' finals eat away at me, and I prioritized them rather than the film.

Areas in Need of Improvement

While my personality can be very dominant, I found myself being too lenient at some points, leading to easily avoidable accidents.

Short Film

I directed the short film based on Alex Pauli's comedic script. Many edits were made to create a simpler script for us to follow, yet some important aspects of the story were lost along the way.

Summary

I adored directing Ferris Bueller, as the cast were a joy to work with. I wish I could have spent more time on the short film, though. I intend on taking my newfound directing skills with me to next year.

Final Thoughts

I really enjoyed this class, even though it stressed me out beyond the point of no return.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Project

     Following the music video assignment, we were instructed to mimic a popular high school movie trailer, ranging from the classics to new arrivals.

Process

    To begin, our main focus was casting, as the main character's personality and appearance are a large majority of what the plot is based on. Casting was, shockingly, completed rather quickly; not to mention, successfully. The fact that most of the actors were crewmembers only benefitted our project, as scheduling was easy. Costuming wasn't ideal to begin with, for the designs were complex and unusual and straight from the 80s, but we made it work.

Editing was completed swiftly, with only minor audio issues hindering a perfect piece.

Professionally

    This was the first time actually being labeled a director ( not including the times everyone just expected me to take control anyway, I suppose? ). I've found I'm much more organized when I'm not guessing who is in charge and that spreadsheets do wonders for scheduling, casting, and collecting props; everything.

Changes / Constants

    Originally, the audio was some pitiful track stolen off of a royalty-free website. It was terrible. But I went back and changed it to a track from the trailer to have some scrap of resemblance. I'm much happier now. I'm even happier with how our actors and the cameras worked together; the film quality was beautiful and our actors did a phenomenal job re-enacting.

Conclusion

   I'm directing again for this next project and I can guarantee I already have a spreadsheet delineated, though I find it much easier to mimic than create my own story.

Why Do You Feel So Down?

Why Do You Feel So Down?

Pre-Production

     For this project, Kenia Diaz and I barreled head-first into creating a story-driven music video. We were dejected to find we were required to mimic, rather than craft our own. Disheartened, we scrapped a multitude of storyboards and did a complete one-eighty, deciding on a preppy, eighties themed music video instead of the previous serious, grim plots we had worked on. Declan Mckenna's Why Do You Feel so Down? includes a variety shots in one location, partnered with bright costumes and choreography reflecting an old eighties work-out tape that appealed to every one of my team members; Ella desired something bright and uplifting, Brogan wanted to avoid anything too mainstream, Kenia preferred a song with meaningful lyrics, and I only wished for an exciting-to-film music video.

     Since I suggested the song, everyone agreed I should take the role of director. Kenia was the location-scout as well as art-director, Ella was in charge of organization and graphics, and Brogan assisted in casting along with filming. We all partook in editing the final product. Casting was simple, yet working around individual schedules proved to be exhausting, not to mention the weather left much to be desired. We ended up filming less than a week before deadline, acquiring all of our footage in under two hours.

Post-Production

     We entered this project knowing the editing would be a challenge; geometric transitions and constant moving graphics were out of our range of knowledge. I put together a rough cut while Ella pieced together the three star-transitions needed in After Effects and Kenia created the graphic. The day I intended on filtering the final cut I was absent and the video was left unfinished. Had we more time, I would have spent more time on the choreography. The poor actors looked like fish out of water. In addition, I would have focused more on costuming and editing. I'm still rather fond of the finished product, but there is always room for improvement.

Conclusion

     As my first time as director, I was not assertive enough and did not communicate as much as a should have. Taking this knowledge with me into the future, I know to trust my crew yet still maintain a solid line of communication. As the main editor as well, I learned how irritating it is to sync audio to images. Hopefully one day I'l gain the patience to move a clip a centimeter back and forth i the timeline until I achieve a perfect sync.

Advanced Feature Story

Overview

     The first step to completing an advanced feature news story is to brainstorm concept ideas. Topics ranging from broad current events to unique personal stories can be covered in the news. When writing news stories for Olathe Northwest, students do their best to link topics back to the school community. Throughout the brainstorming process, it is important to delineate the accessibility of subjects and locations to film. It is required to have at least two delayed leads and possible sets. Once completed, the film process begins.

Story Concept

     Returning from a prolonged absence, I was pleased to find that my team was ahead of the game. They had confidently decided on covering the story of French foreign-exchange student, Louis Lambert, who had just arrived in America three months prior. With my pre-decided role as cinematographer, I swiftly slipped into work alongside my team. We began scheduling interviews and communicating with our subject on when he was available.

Process

     Director Michael Decker kept in contact with our subject as we scripted our inquiries about Louis. Questions poured from our minds onto the document and before we knew it, we had a gratuitous amount of complex topics, as well as a few trivial. Once the interview was completed, we were excited to edit and present the finished cut to Louis, as he was equally excited to see the final version. With much difficulty, we cut down the interview into segments and decided on a less broad topic to edit with decisiveness. Removing most sport discussion and focusing on cultural boundaries, we began editing. With the interview covered, we only needed b-roll to satisfy the film requirements. Unfortunately, our subject explained that he wasn't carrying any footage nor pictures other than a few glossy, printed photos of him playing soccer which wouldn't fit into the story. That's when panic began to settle into our stomachs like hardening cement. With kinks in the deadline causing it approach faster than the speed of light, we scrambled to craft a voice-over and acquire footage to lay over the interview. As cinematographer, I feel as though I failed. The deadline caught up to me and I was only able to turn in a high-quality interview synced alongside low quality b-roll and voice-overs. As the semester comes to a close, I hope to complete this project for Louis, as I don't want to disappoint him.

Conclusion

     Days subsequent to the deadline, I'm still struggling to decide how I would like to complete this piece, or if it's even worth finishing. With upcoming finals I'm struggling to find motivation, but I'm determined to finish this for Louis before winter-break. Whether or not it's actually presentable is undecided. Only time can tell, I suppose. 

ONW Procedures

ONW Procedures

Concept

     Our original concept was based around how to behave in the hallways and what rules to abide by; this swiftly changed as it was being utilized by a separate team. We then settled on a broad idea: Raven 50. We kept our statement vague to begin with so we would have more options to choose from. Our final topic resulted in being limitations of eating spaces. Specifically, the eating restrictions for carpeted areas.

Process

     Storyboarding was a hectic process, as we were all rather unorganized. A certain chaotic energy fell over us as we scrambled to share our ideas. One idea transformed into another, and then another. Occasionally, the most inane, impossible idea would eat up our time as we actually considered said concept. Storyboarding bled into all of our other tasks; deciding roles, setting up shots, location scouting, and cast list. Once we finalized our storyboard-- a melodramatic explanation including beloved classmate Alex Pauli tumbling onto his butt along with handfuls of greasy popcorn-- we were ready to begin filming. 

     Half of the crew was absent our first day of filming. It was disastrous. The footage was a wreck, the content couldn't fill up the time frame, and there were actors in the film we never concretely cast. The decision was made to re-film everything. Time was decidedly not on our side, as we had to rush to film everything in a mere 25 minutes. Editing went smoothly and presentation day swiftly arrived.

Role

     I worked alongside Layne Renfrow, practically sharing the role as director. I ended up storyboarding, directing, and editing. Throughout the whole process I finally learned how to crop ( albeit was after I presented ), I also got to educate myself on color-correcting. I like to believe I embodied the leadership role rather well, as did Layne, and I'm proud to say my team worked wonderfully together. Though, if I could change anything I'd be more time efficient. The time crunch taught us how to effectively film in a short span, but the final product would have improved had we not wasted time. At the end of it all, I'm excited to utilize what I learned the next time I edit.

Conclusions

     Layne was a wonderful director, Alex was full of creative insight, and Ava was insanely cooperative. I adore my team and I hope to work with them again on larger projects.

Self-Portrait Artist Statement

Self-Portrait Artist Statement

Description

     When deciding what to base my video on, I was faced with the challenge of wanting to keep to myself. I'm not too fond of displaying my art or internet popularity to others ( I'm sure E-communications will swiftly change that, though). Thus I crossed out everything rather important in my life and I was left with few options. I wanted to please the class and I'm aware that animal videos are insanely desirable. Though that genre could be considered an easy A, the classroom's laughter at my foolish pup made me glad I chose this route.  I admire those who toured their room and/or home. It takes a lot of courage to present your personal life to dozens of judgemental teenagers.

Explanation 

     During the process, I realized that filming an adorable puppy video would be more difficult than I had expected. To begin with, I knew I did not want to be present in the video. I wanted a bright, upbeat video of my puppy showing off his incredible agility and intelligence. I got the opposite. Young dogs have such a short attention span, and it seems that the moment you want to record them acting adorable they stop. Finally, the torrential downpour comes to a halt and I'm stuck scolding a mud covered running machine for failing to fetch, while struggling to film and throw a broken tennis ball at the same time.

     In retrospect, it's my fault for lacking a schedule. Originally, I had planned to travel to a popular dog park and rate all the good pups ( all of them would get a ten, if you were wondering ). But I was drowned in school work and I simply ran out of time. I'm at least grateful that the filming wasn't too poor. Though I do wish I filmed a bit ahead of the subject, as I got lost quite a few times.

Reflection

     Like the rest of the class, I failed at properly expressing myself. All this class knows is that I'm mediocre at filming and that I have a dorky puppy. I wish I had thought some more and developed a clip that portrayed my skills. Now that the fact that these are akin to a film resume for the class, I wish I had worked harder. If I had tried harder it would be better. But it's done now so I'm not going to dwell on it too much. 

     

4th Quarter Reflection

4th Quarter Reflection   

   The 4th quarter project was to create a product never seen before and advertise it to a group of "sharks," or judges. This project lasted us the entire fourth quarter. Usually I don't enjoy working in groups, for I get stuck with people who refuse to take direction and do their work, but this time I actually quite enjoyed it. My group knew how to balance fun and hard work. But as time went on the fun aspect overshadowed work and it was difficult to get them back on track. Along the way I learned how to take lead and command a group. After our presentation we were advised to add more personality to our presentation. Originally I was going to spend extra time to add color but Ethan took matters into his own hands. Personally, I know we could have done better but I'm still very proud of our work.

     I spent most of my time wisely during class. I completed the commercial, the animation, and the script during our short time in school. Once finished I went back to see if there was anything else I could add. After completing the commercial I went back to add sound effects, and I'm glad that I did. And outside of class I did my best to keep up with communications between the team.

     A year or E-Communications has taught me plenty, but I feel that I most excelled in cinematography. During this project I learned an abundance of tricks to help me in the future when working with programs similar to the ones provided. I do feel as though I could improve on web design. In this project I avoided it as much as possible because I'm aware it isn't my strongest skill.

     The thing I loved most about this quarter was surprisingly the frustration that came with working alongside a group of other people. And if we had more time I wish we could have worked on the website more and made sure we included everything. Next year I hope to continue on my journey and expand my knowledge on video and animation.

CARP and CSS Design

Main Idea

The main idea of this project was to use CARP to redesign a poem. Simple enough, right? Definitely not as easy as it sounds. I sold my soul for this project and got nothing in return. I despise the outcome. It's so unbelievably terrible and I'm so unbelievably awful at web design. Dream weaver was being insanely difficult and nothing I did was working and I'm at that point where I don't know what else to do. I genuinely have no idea what happened.

Contrast

There is very minimal contrast on this. The light tan bar at the top of the page really sticks out, it's great. The title pops off the page, along with the dog, but that's about it. The poem isn't even visible and I could have changed it but I've already attempted multiple things to make it look better in any way possible and every single one of them failed. Miserably.

Alignment

The alignment isn't too terrible. It's definitely not the worst part of the finished product. Considering you cant see half of the text that I spent time on aligning, I'm going to go ahead and say the alignment is the best part of the final outcome. 

Repetition

The repetition is there. Barely. The colors from the dog would have looked better together if I knew how to actually work with Dream weaver. It looks like a big disgusting blob.

Proximity

One word. Awful. There are just so many things wrong with how this turned out. The proximity is a mess, but at least it's even.

Conclusion

This sucks. Everything went wrong and I learned absolutely nothing. I love web design.

Who Am I?

Myer-Briggs Personality Test

     My personality type is an ENFP. An ENFP could be describes as an advocate. They're introspective and expressive, as they attract others with their phenomenal people skills. I share a personality type with Dr. Suess and Walt Disney.

     I believe I fit in the ENFP category fairly well. I took the same test a while ago, and since then I've changed from and introvert to an extravert. The amount of extravert I was told was shockingly more than I expected. A whopping 34%.

     Now that I know that I'm an ENFP things are becoming more clear. I flock to crowds and I befriend many people. I'm very talkative and personable, always wanting to be the center of attention.

     When partaking in group projects I tend to take the lead. I like being in control and knowing what's going to happen next.

According to the LOBGR test, I'm a golden retriever. I'm sensitive, loyal, and and a people-pleaser. Beaver was a close second. Organized, creative, consistent. I related the least to the otter, as otters are very social and popular, and I am not.

My Home

roof texture

You can find my house layouts here.

 The goal for this project was to find a house layout we admire and replicate it in the 3D program sketchup. I first began mapping out the shapes and making sure the structure was similar to the image. I found out that sketchup is a rather simple program to maneuver and work around with. If I had more time I would have started over and made it more accurate to the image, as it is obvious I took quite a few artistic liberties, though i would still use the same textures I found for they look quite nice. In the end I'm extraordinarily proud of the result and what I've learned.

wall texture

Bouncing Ball

     The first project of the animation class was to animate a bouncing ball. While doing these projects we were taught the way to control Photoshop and how to create frame animations. I found the process very therapeutic.

     The first project out of three was a simple animation of a ball bouncing up and down. We learned about textures and different brush settings, depths, etc. I'm rather pleased with the result. I'm glad I chose a softer color palette and chose a darker tint of red to shade the ball. Animating the ball was fairly simple. Just copying the ball and moving it slightly worked wonderfully and turned out perfectly.

     Once we completed the simple bouncing ball animation we moved on to studying motion and how a ball would bounce following an arc. This one I felt I could do better but I'm not mad about how it turned out. For animating for the first time I have to give myself a pat on the back for these two



     Now this one is truly a piece of art. I wanted to play around with the motion of flowing objects and cloth but it didn't turn out how I'd liked. This is honestly the worst thing i've ever created but a part of me still loves it. So many things are inconsistent and the timing is off but it has a special place in my heart.