Music Video Finale

P3T6 American Dream from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.

 This is not my song. All music credit goes to Switchfoot.

It's that time of year again. It's time for the music video project in GT.  I have a team of four this time. I have Isaac Dubey, Emily Harshorn, Aftan Dodd, and me. We are making a music video of American Dream by Switchfoot. The decision process was not democratic. We only had two minutes left and Emily suggested the song. We had nothing else, so we went with it. That is basically how we came up with our ideas.


Our storyline starts with people working, getting money, and being sad. This goes with the lyrics "when success is equated with excess", and "this is not my American dream". Someone walks in, "kidnaps" workers, and tells them to have fun. At the end, everyone is having fun. They are fulfilling their "American Dream". That is how we wanted to go at it.



We are madly working to get this done. We were the last team to get approved and things are getting rough. To be honest, I don't think this will be showcasing our best work. That being said, we are about 50% done and we have TWO work sessions left. Yes, TWO. We are going to be cutting it very close with this one, if at all. I'm legitimately scared. I will have to somehow pull myself out of this situation. Hopefully, I'll be able to pull it off.

Behind the scenes

Behind the scenes

Behind the scenes

             

Movie Trailer Premier

P3T8_Objection Overruled from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.


In my GT class, we are working on making a fictitious movie trailer. That means make a trailer for a movie that will never exist. It will be 90-120 seconds. We will plan and produce it. We will need a dramatic voice actor that screams "MUST SEE!!!". The trailer will captivate the audience.  You see, we are supposed to work in teams of 4, but I had the odd team out with only 3 people. My team consists of me, Gillian Altman, and Isaac Dubey (links to their blogs on sidebar). We already made the planning document. I worked on part of the Voice Acting (VA) script and the 4p's (Plan, Purpose, Plot, People).


In our movie trailer, we had some major road blocks. One of those is collaboration. With all the bloopers that we produced, my teammates started to get quite irritable. That made it much harder to collaborate on our shots. In the end, we got it done. Our successes far outweigh our failures. We managed to get a high-quality poster and trailer. We are quite proud of our work. Then again, that is the work that 3 returning GT students can show. I hope that the class grades us well.




Well, the critique is over, and we did quite well. The class decided that we met all expectations in the audience and requirements categories. We got an ABOVE AND BEYOND in creativity. That is very good. On top of that, we got second place in the overall class best. That is a huge honor. I learned that with proper teamwork, you can accomplish anything.

Storyboard

Metamorphosis animation

My GT class is doing an animation project. The project goal is "Following the Project Rubric, all students will join Metamorphosis Animation Teams & pitch their 2 best focus statements & story ideas, then complete a collaborative Production Plan & Storyboard before producing their 1-2 minute animated movie including 5 scenes, 15 shots, Foley and a custom soundtrack." My animation team consisted of me, Cate, and Gavin (links to their blogs on sidebar). Our animation types were Stykz, Photoshop, and stop-motion. I think that makes a pretty good combo.









My focus statement for my animation is hermit embraces society. It starts off with this hermit crab in a magical mountain lake. A friendly fish comes up to him and tries to make friends but fails miserably. The crab then gets transformed into a human and has to leave the mountain. He then stumbles upon a village. The villagers teach him about friendship and give him cake. The friendly fish from earlier transforms into a human and goes down to the same village. The fish then succeeds
in making friends with the crab and they live happily ever after.



I don't think my team's results were anything to celebrate about. We got a score of 2.8 which rounds

up to 3. That means that the class thinks we deserve a B on our animation. I was really hoping for an A. Oh well. Our animation did have some flaws. First of all, I don't think that our soundtrack really fits with the theme of the animation. The sound track also plays during the entire animation. Now that I think about it, that may not have been the best idea. I could have played it when it was more appropriate. The visuals could have been better, too. The characters looked different depending on who animated it, even if we all used the same animation type. All in all, if we had just communicated better, the quality of our entire animation would have improved drastically.

Geometric Portraits

I believe that not all facial expressions are universal. According to an article by greatergood.berkeley.edu, most facial expressions are universal. However, there are some that don't quite meet this theme. Popsci.com says that some tribes use expressions differently. They gave different tribes pictures of expressions to identify. The results prove that the preceding statement about different cultures having different expressions to be true. Despite that, most expressions are universal no matter what the tribe may be.


In GT, we are doing a low-poly-portrait. It is a very complicated process indeed. First, you put a portrait into photoshop. Second, You outline the subject and draw triangles over the subject's features (smaller triangles = more detail) with photoshop's line tool. Third, you merge all those shapes to create one layer and put it on top of your portrait layer and put a position lock on it. Fourth, you make a WHITE background layer and leave it on the bottom. Then, you use the polygonal lasso to outline each and every triangle (one at a time) and colorize them. After going through all those steps, you should end up with a finished low-poly-portrait.



I made 3 low poly portraits so far. The first one shouldn't even count, for it was so easy. I just uploaded an image to a website ant it triangulated everything. the only downside is that EVERYTHING was RANDOMLY triangulated and barely anything was legible, let alone my face. The second one (the first one made in photoshop) was much better. The final product was much more precise. Unfortunately, the original photo was taken with a low resolution camera (the computer's webcam to be exact). It was also really bland because I just averaged the colors. The most current one was the best one by far. We got to skip the outlining process which saved a lot of time that would later be used in refining the details of the image. The background was also a unique low poly image in it's own way.

(scroll down for all images)

The easy low poly portrait that was made with the website

The first low poly portrait made with photoshop (the one taken with the webcam) 

The second low poly image made in photoshop (the person in the photo is not me, it is a classmate named Gavin Leins)

This is the ULTIMATE low-poly that was not talked about in the post. This one has a broken glass effect.

Verbal Landscapes

Nature is a key fundamental element in my life. Nature got me interested into becoming a survivalist, or "living off of the land", as one might say. Nature also keeps all of us alive by providing air, food, water, and shelter. Nature is the base of all life on planet earth. Nature is the starting point on planet earth.

GT class is making me do a nature poem, backed up with slow-mos and time lapses. Creating them isn't as hard as it seems. The filming is the hardest part. You have to put the camera on a natural flat surface And hold still for 10 seconds for slow-mos and 5+ minutes for time lapses. Then, you take the raw footage into a video editor such as Final Cut Pro X (not sponsored). And finally, you go to the re- time editor option and either speed up or slow down the clip.

Every project that we do in this class is bound to have difficult parts. The most difficult part of this project (in my opinion) is the filming of the time lapses. You don't know how hard it is to hold still for 5+ minutes to film a time lapse. It's unbearable. The part that I enjoyed the most was the editing portion. It is quite enjoyable to be immersed in your own work. If you did this, you would know just how fun this actually is.

As you can see, my class really liked my video. Yesterday, my GT class watched every one's videos and voted on scores for the videos. 22.2% of the class (6 students) gave me a 4/4. I met all the requirements but I think it was my monologue that set it off. 3 people (11.1%) in the class voted my video the best in the class. I'm flattered and don't want to object to their decision. 

Poetic Personal Statment

2. BLOG POST: POETIC PERSONAL STATEMENT
Required Images: LastF_Poetic.jpg

It's been a long summer but I'm finally back here to tell you all about poetry. I feel that poetry can be very personal. I find it personal because most poems relate to the poet's life. For example, a black poet during segregation would make a poem about how hard life was (I'm not trying to be racist, I promise). A rich person would make a poem about his or her riches and/or how good his/her life was/is (again, I'm not trying to insult anyone so PLEASE don't take any offense).


As the mind grows more intelligent,
The soul grows more elegant.
Through blood, sweat, and tears, my true wonderful form appears.
Some find it appalling, some find it drawing, some find it inspiring.
My friends help me on my way, to attempt to keep the dark moments at bay.
That doesn't always work though, but the bad times help me grow.
Despite that, I avoid the darkness of feelings, because it's hard to acquire emotional healing.
That is just how my life goes, for that is the path I chose.
Should i change it I think not, don't even give me the thought.


What you just read was my poetic personal statement. Notice how I used rhythm and rhyme to create a poem that actually makes sense. I used rhymezone.com  to come up with all the rhymes that I used in my poetic statement. I also used all of my personal experiences to fuel the words that I used in the statement. This statement is also being used in the first photoshop project of the year. The finished project is displayed below.

My finished and kerned text layer.

My completed sketch layer





The entire finished photoshop project has yet to be added so just sit tight.

Music Video Finale

P3T9 Stayin Alive from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.

Driving to the film spot

My group and I have to make a music video for my GT class. As a matter of fact, this is the final project of the year. My group consists of me, Nicolas Koo, and Gillian Altman. We have to do lip-sync segments and storyline. My storyline is about scared little girl who conquers her fears and climbs a tree. As we all might know, my song is "stayin' alive" by the bee gees. So basically, the music video is about living in the moment. The lyrics really match the video. If you don't believe me, just watch the video (above) for yourself.

I don't know what this is

One key part of a music video is a fast edit montage. Other video productions have fast edit montages as well. I would tell you my favorite one, but I never saw any that meant anything. Basically, I would just say that mine is my favorite. Before anyone sends hate mail about me cheating at picking my favorite, just know that I have never seen any montages that were any good at all.

This video is supposed to showcase my best work. We used all the skills we learned throughout the year. We made an intro graphic in our video (does anybody remember my first post, personal manifesto or my second post, motivational poster?). Then, we had to use many composition techniques, just like many other projects. We had to use all those skills to make one, over the top project.

Don't even ask...

The two mins of song (credits below):

Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk I'm a woman's man: no time to talk Music loud and women warm, I've been kicked around Since I was born And now it's all right, it's OK And you may look the other way We can try to understand The New York Times' effect on man (34 sec.)

Whether you're a brother or whether you're a mother You're stayin' alive, stayin' alive Feel the city breakin' and everybody shakin' And we're stayin' alive, stayin' alive Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive, stayin' alive Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive (58 sec)

Well now, I get low and I get high And if I can't get either, I really try Got the wings of heaven on my shoes I'm a dancin' man and I just can't lose You know it's all right, it's ok I'll live to see another day We can try to understand The New York Times' effect on man (80 sec)

Whether you're a brother or whether you're a mother You're stayin' alive, stayin' alive Feel the city breakin' and everybody shakin' And we're stayin' alive, stayin' alive Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive, stayin' alive Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive (94 sec)

Life goin' nowhere, somebody help me Somebody help me, yeah (120 sec)

Votes for our grades

4.2% of the class really likes our video

I do not own this song. All music 

and lyrics were created by the 

BeeGees. All musical credit 

goes to them. The only thing

we created was the video to go on

top of the music.