Everyone Has A Story

New Year, same old winter blog post. As you know, in PLP we do these things called exhibitions, one at the end of the year, and one during the winter just before break. Due to the fact that it’s January 2018, it’s safe to say that I’ll be reflecting on the 2017 Winter Exhibition. I’ll start by linking the last two posts I did about this exhibition because this year’s took a drastic turn away from this basic style of a project and presentation.

It’s either Episode VII or VIII, I’ve lost count

A Magical Night of Exhibtions

What makes this year so different? Well, if you read those posts (don’t blame you if you didn’t) you’d see that exhibitions follow a certain format. Inquiry question, brainstorm, build, revise, present on the night of. If you’ve been keeping up lately with all of my posts you’ll notice that everything, or at least it feels like everything, we’ve done has been a podcast. Well, leading up to this year’s exhibition it was no different. EXCEPT for the fact we know had to do three within the course of two and a half weeks, yippee! That might sound sarcastic but I actually really enjoy making podcasts, who woulda thought?

We’d been listening and discussing about podcasts the entire first term, we talked about the different kinds of podcasts, and how to develop the best kinds of questions for an interview. That should give you a hint as to where this project is going.

As I said, three podcasts, three weeks, this wasn’t gonna be easy. It’d be way easier if I had a partner. This wish sort of came true, just not someone my age, not someone who was gonna help me do the work at all, just someone to roast and toast my podcasts so they’ll turn out a higher quality. I would love to thank, Grade 12 Alanah Dulong for graciously sprinting to the board and picking me to be her partner first. Not only was she going to be my producer, she was going to be my first interviewee.

For her story we really wanted to focus on high school, her thoughts going into it, the pressures, and the expectations she had. I think this turned out very well, it was a bit over the time limit so that’s something that I’ll have to watch moving forward. Speaking of moving forward, time for podcast number two. The idea of interviews are not done, don’t you worry, just this time we’d be interviewing a family memeber.

Depending on who you are and how well you know my family, you may or may not know that we had a tragic incident In the year of February 2015. I don’t necessarily want to write about here but this would be my next interview topic. I’ve already done a podcast on this topic during Camp Capilano, and the feedback I received said it was very powerful, the it was also just me, mimi, and isobel talking.

Now I couldn’t do the same thing twice, but I could get someone else’s side of the story. Originally, the obvious choice was my mom, but I decided to take a different route and get my dad’s side of the story.

Yes, it’s a interview style podcast, but the thing here is that it was almost too hard for my dad to tell this story again with me in the room. So I worked around this and gave him my list of questions and let him do what he coud. Personally, this is my favourite one of the three. It’s a moment I’ll never forget and to have something like this podcast be told, it’s just so close to my heart.

Anyways, moving onto numéro three, and to the night of the exhibition. Alanah would fainally get the hanche to do some work besides critique me. The grade 12’s job as our producer’s was to walk around through all of the parents that were there, tryin got find people for us to interview. Making awkward small talk to see who seemed out going, was a good story teller, and seemed as if they had a story to tell. Thanks StoryCorps for the project idea! We’re basing this project off of something that storycorps is doing right now. They’re going around and  interviewing every day people to see who has something interesting to talk about. It just all relates back to the fact how not everyone is how the appear, everyone has a story, it’s just a matter of finding it.

That was my first draft, when I handed it in to Alanah she didn’t say to change much. There are some weird jump cuts, some even weirder transitons that do a double take, and the background noice got way too loud at certain points. Making these changes was harder than it seems. I really had to work on some of my editing skills in order to get my final product. Overall I really enjoyed this year’s winter exhibition assignment. I got the chance to work on my interviewing skills, along with my people, and communication skills. I also got to take the chance to work with expanding my editing and iPad skills, which is always a plus.

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