Driving Question

“How do I make effective personal design choices?“

What makes a trend? 

Recently, as social media giants like TikTok and Instagram have become more prominent in our lives, the very idea of a “trend” is reinvented. With the creation of the “influencer”, trends don’t just affect our clothing or music. Now, they can sell lifestyles. 

Whether it’s a dumb fail or a thousand “It’s Corn” videos, everyone has stumbled upon a “trend video” at least once. Our first Maker project this year involved analyzing these trends and creating some of our own… at Disney World on our “Power of Imagination” Field Study. For a teenager who has never downloaded TikTok, it was finally time to jump into the deep end.  

We started this semester with a slow launch. Before we could begin, we needed to tackle a different problem. As tenth graders, we are once again faced against an age old foe… independence… (and no, I’m not talking about the declaration.)

To prepare for the trip, we needed to prove ourselves able of being independent over our work. We needed a “personal productivity system.” 

BUT AVA! What is a “personal productivity system?” 

Well, at the beginning of this semester, I was just as *confuzzled as you.

*this is not a spelling error, I do indeed mean confuzzled, because it perfectly captures my puzzling confusion. I’m a teenager, let me use weird combinations and acronyms of perfectly fine words while I can. LOL, OMG, NGL. I’m getting it out of my system. DIY, TTYL, IMO, IDNFTDSAYDIHBPFJASTMNE (“I do not fear the dark side as you do. I have brought peace, freedom, justice, and security to my new empire.”)

Turns out “personal productivity system” is… a personal productivity system. Literally means what it is.  That makes sense. Basically, it’s a system you can personally tailor to optimise your productivity. We created ours to help us manage our projects, whether it’s school or our personal lives… (or some random personal project you’ve been thinking about for years, but never have started.)

There are 5 steps to this system: Capture, Clarify, Organize, Reflect and Engage.   

Personally, I’m going to be honest. I’m not a very organized person. My home life? In complete disarray. We don’t talk about my room and the many skeletons in my closet (don’t tell the FBI, we’re in Canada.) 

However, it hasn’t really affected my school life before. As a very anxious procrastinator, things get done in short but effective bursts. Therefore, I never learn my lesson, but that’s a problem for future me… because get it? Procrastinator? Haha. I like to think I’m funny. 

The idea of a “personal productivity system” was foreign to me. It started by opening “Things” again. Before this project, I only used Things for the important stuff. However, through capturing and organizing all my problems into the app, I’ve realized that it can be far more useful. 

Turns out, I realized I did have a “personal productivity system”! …BUT it was all collected, swirling endlessly in “open loops” around my brain. This is good news. My brain isn’t empty… it’s just… preoccupied with lists of stuff I should be doing! 

(Notice the emojis… proof I have become a true PLP learner)

After we had our lives in order, it was time to finally start working. Of course, before we actually arrived in Florida, we needed some serious prep for our “Disney” trend videos. Well… at least I needed it. 

You see, I’m not exactly the most teenagery teenager (GASP), because I had no idea what a trend video was. Sure, I’d seen like a couple, I never correlated the “trend” aspect, and they confused me, deeply. People kept referencing videos in class and I was like… “C o r n? What corn? Why corn? How corn? WhEN CoRN?!??!?!”

I quickly realized I needed to dive into the rabbit hole of TikTok. That’s where I learned I was in for a whole new world of human culture (I’m not an alien, why would you think that? There is absolutely no way I’m an alien. Beep boop.) 

I opened the browser version of TikTok, because I’m afraid of downloading spyware… even though Google definitely knows where I live and what fan fictions I read when I was 10 years old- Anyways, my eyes were blinded by absurd amount of weird dances… until I found the Olympic synchronized swimmers and my toxic trait of “I could totally do that better” came out again.

(I mean, look at that. I could totally do that with zero training and no arm muscle… totally.) 

-BUT I soon reminded myself of my superior mission to find the COOLEST, HIPPEST TRENDS (and the deadline), so I was back on track again. 

In the end, I complied my research into a fancy craft document and had completely planned my beautiful trend videos to be. 

With an outline done, the next step was to actually visualize my trend videos. What angles? What scenes? Editing? Luckily for me, I just revisited an old friend of mine… storyboards. 

  • Let’s Skip to the Good Part

And then, just to be extra prepared, we made prototype videos. This step was crucial for me, because through this process, I completely redesigned the popcorn bucket challenge. Turns out, I had no idea what I was thinking, and I don’t even like popcorn that much. I also learned how to actually make them TikTok size (one of the sins I committed during this project was filming portrait.)

In the end, I actually think my prototype videos were pretty entertaining by themselves. This was mostly due to me trying to find ways to create them without actually being in Disney World. 

With everything prepared, we were finally ready for Florida!

(Me, Sabrina, and Faith at the airport!) 

Where to start… where to start. 

Ah yes, my fear of planes in combination with motion sickness. Not fun… I won’t go deeper into this. Somehow I could ride any thrill ride at Disney World, but not a plane. There’s just something about being 30 000 feet in the air in a flying metal bird that decides to rattle every now and then. 

Anyways, besides the plane ride, this trip was amazing. Though it may seem strange at first, Disney World is a lot more than just amusements and rides. I’ll keep the Disney World discussion for later, because we’re still working on a whole project focused on it (SO YOU SHOULD TOTALLY SUBSCRIBE FOR NOTIFICATIONS, BECAUSE ANOTHER BLOG POST IS COMING STRAIGHT FOR YOU.)

However, I’ll let you know that it was the best school trip ever!

(Keep in mind, we’re looking at an “off brand” dinosaur. Truly terrifying.)

Onto the trend videos! 

So… the major problem I faced in terms of our trend videos is that I completely forgot about them. Well, that might be an exaggeration… but I felt like I didn’t really prioritize them. I was so distracted by ✨DISNEY WORLD✨that I didn’t really put much effort into executing my game plan.

Sure, they could have been better, but I had a fantastic time. I learned so much that I couldn’t have learned in a school setting. I got to actually talk to classmates outside of my regular bubble. It was pretty cool learning more about the people I’ve been in a class in for literally like 3 YEARS and never really talked to outside of forced socialization (group projects.) I even talked to teachers, and had some interesting conversations (like why is there a gigantic golf ball in the middle of Epcot, w h y.) 

Wow. Ava being social. What is this? There must be something in the swampy Florida sink water I’ve been drinking. Or maybe its just ACTUAL EXPOSURE TO THE SUN. 

(I mean, LOOK THAT ALL THAT SUN. So much exposure.)

Anyways, when I returned home and actually looked through the footage I took, it turned out that my trend videos weren’t complete disasters. I managed to not stress over taking “the perfect shot” and make awesome videos. I see this as a win/win. 

Here’s the completed trend videos! (Sabrina, Faith, and I even made an extra video about PORG with the song we came up with in the Disney lineups.)

(We don’t talk about that thumbnail. I don’t know how to change it. It literally says it has a different thumbnail in Youtube, but when I send the link, the image of me mid-tooth brushing pops up. Help me please.) 

(Sabrina put this one together)

(Faith edited this one!)

Now I will spend time exploring some conclusions I have made from this “trend video” making experiment. As you can see, my personal trend videos are public. I have never published a short before. Therefore, other people have gotten my face in their YouTube recommendation list for the first time. 

My “How Does This… Turn Into This” video reached 1.5k views (and I don’t have that many family members.) My confusion consumed me… Is this what I’ll be remembered for? The most internet fame I have received in my life is a 8 second video of my face flashing on the screen. 

Actually, that’s a lie. My most viewed thing is an instagram reel filled with mushroom doodles… which makes sense, because mushrooms are adorable. 

(Funky mushrooms are so cool)

I have come to my hypothesis. The flashiness and length of a short will highly contribute to its success. Sure, there are other factors that play into this, such as THE ALMIGHTY ALGORITHM. However, even if it’s unentertaining or out of context (in my case), if it flashes, it will do better. People need to rewatch it just to understand it, therefore adding to the view count.

…And “Disney” being in the title definitely adds to that. 

I find it interesting how quick Youtube shorts get views compared to regular videos. They blow up in the first hour, but after the 24 hour period, the views rapidly decline. This algorithm that allows for quick exposure must contribute to the popularization of trends, and changes everything. 

I mean, look at how it’s changing the music industry…

I kinda fell down a rabbit hole here. Going to move on now…

Anyways, WordPress is dying here with the amount of exterior content I’m putting into this blog post. Also, my word count is getting lengthy, so I’m going to start wrapping this up.

How do I make effective personal design choices? For me, learning how to make these choices is a lifelong process that I’m still improving. I feel like I’ve learned the most from example. In terms of movie/video making, the process of watching and analyzing the history of filmmaking has definitely impacted me.

Being able to recognize what I’m referencing and understand how things evolve overtime has influenced my work immensely. There’s a lot of comfort in knowing what “works” or what has been successful in the past. Overall I like being able to experiment with these techniques.

Having the opportunity to learn and evolve allows me to uncover what is an effective design choice for me

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PSST-

Hey. 

I see you’re here for the after show. 

You see, this semester also introduced us to the idea of ‘“Flexing our Learning.” There was an opportunity to do that for this project, and I did it. 

Basically, we were shown some new tech that we could try… including AI. If you’ve been living under a rock the past century (and haven’t watched Terminator), then you wouldn’t know how controversial artificial intelligence is. Basically, it is. It is controversial, because it’s scary as heck… but also very intriguing. 

Anyways, for this I tested out Freeform and Chat GPT.

Here’s the doodles I drew in Freeform (I’m particularly intrigued in the idea of collaborating doodles, because that sounds like too much power.)

Look at them, fabulous if I say so myself. 

And here’s a poem I prompted ChatGPT to make for me…

AI wrote that. Scary… but intriguing…

As per usual, during my spring break, I fell down another rabbit hole of AI. Turns out, it can make animation now… AM I OBSOLETE?

(Not me praying I won’t break WordPress with another Youtube link)

Turns out, it’s just a glorified, more efficient version of rotoscoping (an animation technique that requires tracing over footage), so AI isn’t coming after my job yet. However, it’s interesting how this tool will be used in the future, and how it will improve? 

With that out of the way, I’m not going to test WordPress any longer. Byeeeeee!