Music Videos Rock!

In our project there were many jobs that had to be done, but we managed to split up the jobs pretty evenly. Michael brought a guitar which really helped and he knew how to play it as well, Miles was the idea Generator and the lead singer in the Music Video, Seth was the camera man, he shot great angles and he focused the camera really well too, and I did a lot of the editing but everyone contributed in that part, but the part we all played was just being on camera.

In my opinion, I believe that the audience will enjoy all of us trying to Lip Sync this song because people rarely see any of us trying to sing or Lip Sync and when we, well attempt to Lip Sync it, I think they will have a lot to laugh about. Even when Miles introduced this song to us, I didn't know the name of it but when I heard it, I realized I'd heard this song before.

In this project we do not use things like photoshop or Final Cut pro although we are more used to them, but we do use iMovie which is actually more advanced that final cut but still very similar to it. In iMovie we used effects that we hardly use in any other program. For example, there is a speed-up and slow down feature when editing that you can use for time-lapses which I never used before so that's new. Even filming sort of taught me more about the camera we used, for example the difference between AF ( Auto Focus ) and MF ( Manual Focus ), and even learning how to actually format it because I've had to delete things off the camera one by one because I was clueless of how to format the camera.

Lyrical Livelihood

My favorite song is " Going Down For Real " or " G.D.F.R " by Flo Rida and if you look it up then you will realize why I like it so much. The reason I like this song is because it has a really great sound and it's not too dubstep like or too plain, its just right. Another reason I like this songs so much is because it is an extremely motivational song that just gets me pumped up for anything. I first discovered this song on a commercial for a Wrestling Pay-Per View and I was just amazed by the song so I looked it up and I eventually found the same song on I tunes so I bought it, it only cost $1.29, and I couldn't stop listening to it.

My Music Video team, Miles Frazier, Michael John Anderson, and Seth Kostelecky, chose " Back in Black " by ACDC because we saw everyone pulling out really modern songs so Miles thought of this song and he knew if we performed it right, we will make everyone right with this song. Another reason is because all of our favorite songs were already being used and so we thought, " Why not Back in Black?". When I went home and told my parents this they actually started a duet in the kitchen and I was laughing so hard. When I first discovered this song was way back in Iron Man 1 in 2008.

Our visual story in our music video was going to be a group of friends who have been separated for a long time and reunited to play their favorite song. We decided to change it up a little where we have the four friends fight and go their separate ways for a bit and they begin to perfectly sing the song in sync with each other and towards the end of the song, their bond that they all share not only gets repaired, but it actually gets stronger and they walk out of it as friends.

Our Animation Story

P1T7 Noa Explores Imagination from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.


Our Animation is about our team member, Noa Harrison, in a Dream of being in space and since space is endless, we will have Noa bigger than usual so exploring space is like a walk in the park so our focus statement which is " Noa Explores Imagination " can really relate to that. Pretty much to sum up the title is to say that " Noa " is our main character, " Exploring " is what Noa does in space, and " Imagination " is his mind or dreams. So our title is a shorter version of saying Noa explores his mind.

The lesson we intended to teach is that everyone, in their own way, is special. They may not know it yet or may not even know it at all but everyone has a talent whether it's being an excellent artist, athlete, singer, dancer, or have an excellent mind. Also a lot of times in life, there are things so important that you don't trust people to deal with things or get things done, so sometimes you just have to do things yourself. As we go through our animation movie making process, sometimes some of us wouldn't trust the others to get something done right or finish something right so thats why we chose that purpose or lesson. How are we going to do this ? When we have Noa and Miles meeting in space, Noa doesn't know it yet but he can't trust Miles with the Orb, which is what causes the both of them to fly into space, and Miles takes the orb from Noa and eventually Noa chases down Miles and takes it back, thanks to a comet.

In the "Good News and Bad News" situation, I like my good news first so our best moments as a team were actually filming and planning out because after our 2 scene teaser our team really woke up and said " We Gotta Get This Done ! " which was good and I appreciate how aware we've become since then but our bad moments were probably trying to import in a computer while someone is animating on that computer and a couple times some of us do more things than others, for example Michael does all the photoshop things and I do a lot of the importing and I eat up my own time to do this " Team " project but as a team and when we're all on the same page, we can be pretty effective.

Animation Outtakes

For this project, we are doing Animations of course I can't do this alone so my amazing team mates are Noa Harrison, Miles Fraiser, and Michael John Anderson. First to begin with our protagonist, Noa Harrison, who enjoys drumming and is a really fun and cool person to know. Now with our antagonist, Miles Fraiser who is a really competitive surfer and is a really funny person who every one knows. Last but not least, we have Michael John Anderson who likes to play guitar and who went to the same elementary for the same amount of time as I did.

Stop motion, also known as stop frame, is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object or persona appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence. A Gif or a Graphic Interchange Format is a is a bitmap image format that was introduced by CompuServe in 1987, and has since come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability.

In our animation,  we are modifying a dream that our protagonist Noa had. The dream was Noa on a beach and he finds an orb and when he held it he levitated and floated off into space and some one took the orb and that was Noa's ticket back to earth and he couldn't go back with out it so he had to chase the person who took the orb and he eventually got it but shot down back to the beach and he wakes up from his dream. So to modify the dream, we are making Miles the mystery person but we actually know who Miles is this time. 

Typography Portraits

Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language readable and beautiful. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point size, line length, line-spacing, letter-spacing, and adjusting the space within letters pairs which is called kerning. With images such as portraits, we can make them bring out the best of the picture and the person. For example to make a portrait appear with Photoshop in Text, would cause it to really isolate its layers and really make it stand out.

I think my biggest challenge in making my pictures were selecting the shadows and correctly posterizing it, although I knew the steps already, it got a bit confusing toward the end, but the innovator was the easiest and most simple out of them all. When it got confusing, I did what your'e supposed to do, I just look back at the tutorial and worked with what I learned from Mr. Sanderls' tutorials.

My first image, the innovator of Ben Franklin was just a simple introduction to Typography and honestly, anyone can get this done in one class. Next, we have my image of Ms. Bandsma which is probably my least favorite because I Really rushed and had no clue on what to do so I barely got instructions and I made a ton of mistakes but I somehow managed to pull it off. Now we've got my favorite out of my three typography images which is the one of myself. Although it's a longer proccess, it's all worth it, and if you do it well enough and correctly, it's an easy A. This was actually faster than my second image and I was surprised with how much I got done, but it's still a work in progress and a lot more has to be done and I'm far from finished.

Innovator

Teacher

Me

Double Exposed Portraits

Portrait photography, or portraiture, is photography of a person or a group of people displays the expression, personality and the mood of the subject. Portraits relate to profile pictures because profiles are side shots of your face and a little bit of your body as the Double Exposed Portraits below show.

Double exposure images are made by simply getting two images of nature or anything that represents you and a profile picture of yourself, then you go to Adobe Photoshop and simply click on File > Scripts > Load Files Into Stack. Then you click on the Dodge Tool and go around your profile image and on 50% opacity, you trace along the edge of yourself on your profile picture and keep going until your profile of JUST YOU is the only thing showing on that image. Then you Rotate, Resize, and Crop by clicking on Shift > 8.5 in x 11" inches Resolution 300 px/in . To access Blend Mode, Double Click Layer > Blend Mode > Screen, and to adjust the Color Tone, click Layer > New Adjustment Layer > and Explore !

My two pictures represent that I stand out and when something happens, it affects everything . What shows that I stand out, is my Red Hibiscus Flower. I chose this picture because these flowers really called my name and were screaming for a picture so I just looked for a pretty good angle to have some shadows into it. The image that shows that my actions affect my self and others is the Water Rippling. I took this picture at Loop Road and I just tried my best then I saw the ripples and I took the shot. I think I could've gone further into customizing these Adjustment Layers.

Double Exposure ( Draft )

Multi Exposure ( Final )

HDR Photography

HDR Photography is not only taking a high quality picture, but it is also making it even better. There are many different ways to use HDR, for a phone you can just push the " HDR " button and yous can adjust it on a DSLR Camera manually. My favorite things about HDR photography is that it makes really high-quality pictures and it can capture a moving subject and making it look detailed. The downfall of it is that you cant have a subject move and catch multiple photos of them moving and you can catch a subject like a river or a waterfall to not move.

The manual HDR is much different from the auto HDR on your normal I phone. The manual HDR requires you using different levels of exposure from darkest to lightest. To adjust that, there will be a button on your camera or any camera that has a plus and minus. The phone HDR is simple, just press the white " HDR " button and it is activated when it turns gold.

To improve, I think that I could've done more work to make my dad more surreal and have placed him a bit higher to really push him more into the picture.

Real World Report

Nigerian School Freed, Police Say

A Nigerian schoolgirl has been freed after she got abducted in April. Her disappearance caused a global outcry and a political crisis for Nigeria's Government. The kidnappers were members of Boko Haram, the military of Islam, and police still suspect that Boko Haram still holds 200 girls hostage. Boko Haram has quite the rivalry with Nigeria, as they currently battle for control of northern Nigeria.

I think that capturing 200 innocent girls just to get control over their homeland is a pretty selfish and horrible thing to do. Not as an actual idea but rather than kidnapping 200 innocent schoolgirls, I'd think that stealing some ammunition or blow up a part of the community or something else is better.

My opinion is my opinion only but usually a lot of other people have the same thoughts as me but this is an opinion that many people can agree with. Also try putting yourself in the schoolgirls positions, you'll either have a gun pointed at your head, you might see a friend die or you might be held in a prison, either way, everyones opinions matter.

Thanks voanews.com for sharing this picture of protesters.

                                                                                   
                                                                                     

Movie Trailer Critique

P1T5 Forgiveness from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.

This project was about a boy named Wyatt, our main character, who was suffering brutal beat downs from our second main character, Preston and those beat downs brought Wyatt horrible nightmares that haunt his everyday life as he can not tell what is real and what is not. So we filmed scenes and edited it, well, Michael and Rafael edited is while I made the movie poster, thanks for using mine by the way.

The Basic goals that everyone that did this project were trying to reach are that the movie has to be well edited, well acted,  it had to last from 1.5 to 2.5 minutes and it had to be Rated G. Now, we had some excellent scenes and wise perspectives but I think our project was probably around the Rated PG-13 because the idea of it and the planning of it seemed smart at first but that was our flaw because, in my opinion, our Trailer was to Complex, and too violent to understand.

I agree with our results because I believe we had a lot to improve on because Rated - G is only a limited amount of understanding and that was a big deal in this project and we just ignored it not trying to impress the kindergarteners but ourselves and our classmates, so I'd rank our project a 2/4.

Visual Literacy

In art class, we were recently finishing up a project called the Book folding project. The book folding project was about waving a formatted print out of a word and folding the pages to make that word. The way to do that is that your paper with the word will have black and gray lines, then you'd need to fold your page to a certain point a certain way. A well known Book Artist, Isaac G. Salazar, really enhanced this skill and really became one of the best to do it. He also really loves trees which explains his passion for Book Folding. Isaac Salazar is always with the idea of recycling and saving trees and he enjoys  book folding because he gets a part in recycling and reusing magazines, books, etc. Visual Literacy, the key to this entire project, is the ability to interpret, negotiate, and define the meaning of the use of this image or word that was chosen.

My Book Folding project is a word, one of my favorite words, Wave. The reason why I chose this word is because I really enjoy going to the beach if it's just doing stuff like Fishing, Diving, Swimming, or even Body Boarding. My word, font, and my book relate because first of all, my word, "Wave", is just like the font," Lobster ", because at the beginning of almost all my four letters, there is a curve in the letter that looks like a wave forming, also my book has an ocean cover and my guess is that it's about the ocean mostly.My inspiration to get into book folding was because of my 7th Pd. teacher, Mrs.Sanderl . She is a very good art teacher and when she showed us some of her examples and taught us how to fold the pages, I was blown away! Although I folded about 200 pages, I forgot to count so my rough guess is about 200 to 250 pages.

When I finished my word, I thought it turned out pretty well because I wouldn't want doubt in my mind because I finished it the day before it was due and I was kind of in a rush but it paid of pretty well. If I had more time, I would've counted my pages and made the folds more neat and used time more wisely. If I would do this project again, I'd choose to make the word " Hunt " with a book about the forest or a Cabelas catalog because I really like to hunt and I think that since I shared one of my two favorite things, that I should choose a topic about the other one.