It. Is. Time. It’s the time for the one and only… crazy, chaotic,  never ending working winter exhibition. Hey guys it’s me Jordyn, coming to you all the way from my relaxing winter break! But just because it’s winter break, doesn’t mean I can’t do work right? It’s better than sitting at home all day and staring at a wall because I’m so bored, so here I am being productive. Yaaaayyyyyy. 

ESCAPE ROOM FIELD TRIP

The focus of this years’ winter exhibition, for the Grade 9’s, was to create an immersive experience! Now you are probably wondering, what kind of immersive experience, what is an immersive experience? It’s something almost like an escape room. And if you don’t know what an escape room is, it’s basically a room that you are put inside and there are a bunch of hidden clues in which you have to discover to find your way out. We did one in down town Vancouver called SmartyPantz and it was so much fun! There are several different rooms in the building and my group, Gabby, Nik, Jackson, Caleb, and Aedan did one of the scariest ones!! It was as if we were trapped inside a crazy murderers basement and had to escape. Now I won’t give any spoilers but I will just say, it was very difficult to get out because of the combination of a time crunch, suspense, and mind boggling puzzles.

Even though we did have fun, the main idea we were supposed to take from the escape room was the setting and the mood which work hand in hand. How did they make it really feel like we were in a psycho killers basement? More on that later.

CHEM VIDEO

So you may recall a post called “Kind-Of Confusing Chemistry”, which was all about what we were learning in science. We did a video about ionic and covalent bonding but  the elements, strontium and oxygen were personified, they had human characteristics which made it easier to tell more of a story. 

 

Yaaayyyyyy!! We were done! This is what we are showing on the night of the exhibition, easy peasy lemon squeezy! NO NO NO! We were all wrong. We actually had a whole other step to add, combining our group with other groups. So Gabby and I Turned into Gabby and I, Jason and Kyle, and Luciano and Fraser. A group of 6! Here are their original videos:

WRITING A CHEM STORY

The point in combining groups was to combine our stories into one, keeping elements from each. Working with three completely different ones was a bit hard so we ended up only combing my groups and Jason’s group since they would be the easiest to overlap and write a 3.5 PAGE (AT LEAST) STORY about. Which took a very long time… and maybe a few mental break down, maybe. But before that, we had to do some planning. Story boarding.

 

And here is the final copy of our story, Atom City. Click the link to see it!:

Atom City Gabby Eaton And Jordyn Eyton

CREATING AN ALKALI COMPOUND

From there, it was time to bring this story to life! That is where our knowledge of immersive experiences come in. We learned that everything, every prop, in the room has to matter have a purpose. It would definitely not make sense if there were balloons everywhere in an African safari themed room. Another very important thing is creating an atmosphere with music, lighting and other audio to make it really feel like your guests are in your story. The last very important point I am going to talk about is characters. The characters in your room or outside, need to look like they belong, act like they belong with things like costumes, body language, and accents. Here are our character sketches:

 Now we needed to incorporate all of those things into our room which was themed as a gang compound. Specifically the Alkali compound.

This is where our final room plan comes in, our layout to help us set up:

And then basically, I left for Jamaica! Surprise! I actually was not at the exhibition at all but I helped a ton with the prep, I tried to help as much as a I could to make the room go from this:

To this:

UNTIL NEXT TIME…

As you can see this exhibition was a lot of work! And I wasn’t even there! I am so happy with how our room turned out and a huge shout out to my group members who were actually there and all of the work they put into it! I am really disappointed that I couldn’t be there but even the experience of the team work, planning, storytelling and writing, and video making made it all worth while. I can’t wait for the spring exhibition and see you guys next time!

~ Your Blogging friend, Jordyn