Category Archives: Maker

Individual Project, Learning Advance, Maker, Reflections

Five Trend Videos Post

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Hello readers, and welcome back to the blog. Today’s post is about s project we completed during our field school to Disneyworld. This project was called “five trend videos”, and was all about making trend Tik tok’s during our time at disney. The driving question was: “How do I make effective personal design choices?” I can do this by finding trends that coincide with my interests and passions. Also, by researching and planning out what my videos will look like.

The first “investigation” was our Personal productivity system. This was all about setting up the tools on our iPads, and using them effectively. This included organizing “things”, clearing our inbox, and setting up our calendars. This was getting us ready for Disney world, as we would have to carefully plan out our videos.

Here’s what my maker section in things looks like:

The 2nd investigation was all about researching and planning our videos. We used the web, and examples from our teachers to conduct thorough research. The requirements for our videos is that 3 had to be independent and 2 had to be “squad videos”. Here’s a link to my document of video ideas:

I tried to make my video ideas trends that were well known, and that people could relate to. I also wanted to have a mix of comedic, dramatic, and serious videos. 

The 3rd investigation for this project was to make our video prototypes. At first I was confused as to how we would do this, since our scene looked nothing like it would at Disneyworld. However, the whole purpose of this was to visualize and see what we could fix in our videos. Here’s an example of one of my prototypes: IMG_2852

We made do with the PLP classroom as our scene, and performed our great dance!

Then for the last investigation, which was making our final drafts! We arrived in Disney and we began to craft our videos. We had to make sure we were diligent with our time, and didn’t get carried away in the magic of Disney. On the first day, I filmed my first video in front of the magic kingdom castle: Just Wanna Rock dance

Here’s the rest of my completed trend videos:

Biergaten review

Blizzard Beach vlog

Disney Hotel Room Tour

Me vs. What’s playing in my AirPods

To summarize, this project was lots of fun, and I learned about video editing, and video creation. Doing this project made me realize how much effort has to be put in for these “influencers” on Tik Tok. I found that it took lots of planning, organization, and putting our plans to action while we were at Disney. Looking back, I could’ve planned things a bit better, as I sometimes found myself doing things on the fly.

Thanks for reading!

 

Individual Project, Maker, Reflections

First Film post

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Hello readers, and welcome back to the blog. It’s been a while since I’ve posted, and a lot has happened in PLP 9. Today I’ll be talking about the project we just finished in Maker 9. This project is called “my first film”, and was all about documentaries. In the end, we created our own documentary, on a topic of interest. The driving question was: “How can I engage and entertain an audience using my video and storytelling skills?”. You can do this by using interviews, b-roll, multiple angles, and many other skills. 

To start this project off, we conducted our own interviews. We were split into groups, and we chose a topic and specific set of questions. Our topic was: “does pineapple belong on pizza?”. Over that weekend, we had to interview a family member or friend and record it. I interviewed my friend Tyler. After we each conducted an interview, we brought our clips together, and created one big video. This assignment was really helpful, cause it was our first crack at interviewing, and it tested our video making skills.

During the entirety of the project, we watched a “doc a day”. While we watched these docs, we answered questions about them. It really helped us in getting ideas for our documentaries.

Then, it was time to determine our documentary topics. We filled out this interest brief sheet, to get some ideas:

I chose to do my doc on granite falls, since I live really close to it, and it’s something I’m interested in. I focused on the falls’s history, and how its changed over the years.

Here’s a picture of granite falls:

The first step was to create our treatment and Logline. A treatment and Logline are breif descriptions that specifically explain your topic. 

Here’s what my treatment and Logline looked like:

After we completed the treatment and Logline, we created our screenplays. A screenplay breaks down each shot, and what’s in the shot. So it was an outline of what our final documentary would look like. 

Here’s what the first draft of my screenplay looked like:

My first draft was good, put it needed a few fine tunes. I needed to add more detail on how the falls are currently used, and give examples. So I got to work on my second draft:

We then created our storyboards:

In this storyboard, we started to envision our shots and what the doc would look like. We also had to include the different camera angles that we planned on using.

Now for the documentary….

We started by organizing interviews, and beginning to film our shots. It was a tough process to plan an interview, as I had to find a time that worked for me and my interviewees. But, it wasn’t that tough to organize film time, as granite falls is pretty close to my house. 

After we handed in our rough cuts, we did a peer critique activity. At that point, my doc wasn’t fully completed so most of my critique was pretty straight forward. However, I was told that I only had a middle and end, and I was missing an intro. Also, that I had to connect the topic to myself, and what the falls meant to me… 

Then I began to craft the final cut…..

I took the critique and used it to improve upon my documentary:

To summarize, I learned lots about videography and filmmaking in this project. Those skills are really important to me as a learner, since we’ll be building of these skills next year. I also really enjoyed making my documentary. It was cool to teach others about the areas around me. The toughest part in this project was the editing, it was really tough to sync everything together.

Thanks for reading!

Maker, Reflections

Vibrant video post

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Hello readers, and welcome back to my blog.

Today’s post is about the recent post we’ve finished in Maker 9. This project is called “Vibrant Video”, and was all about video creation. During this project we learned about use of angles, sound, and we learned about movie history. We also made some movies as well. 

Firstly, we had to lay the groundwork for this project. In class, we filled out on whiteboards our knowledge of movies. We put down definitions, and examples that demonstrated our understanding of these terms. 

Here’s what my group wrote about film:

Our next task was Skill 1, think like a moviemaker. For this assignment we had to create a video that featured our hobbies. My video was about working out:

 

This of course was my first time really making a quality video so I was proud. I made sure to include multiple angels, and different sceneries. However, I could’ve used more effects that “clips” provided. 

The next milestone was Skill 2, Silent movie. For this skill we had to use one setting, use different angles, and use an “aged film” filter. 

Here’s my film:

 

 

I was really proud of my video in this skill. I thought the scenery in my film was good, my soundtrack was good as well. Also, I used some creative angles, and included lots of “b-roll”. In all, I thought this film was a big improvement from my previous one.

The next assignment, my favorite one for sure, was Skill 3, Tutorial video. This was a group effort, my partners were http://www.blog44.ca/tevab/, and http://www.blog44.ca/cooperk/.

We had freedom as to what our video was about, so it was pretty fun. We based our video around drinking water. However, we had to follow a strict storyboard format, which we then transferred our clips to iMovie. 

Here’s our amazing video:

As you can tell, our video was a bit ridiculous….

There were a couple of things that didn’t go all that great. For example, our edits weren’t that smooth, since that was our first time using that specific template in iMovie. Nevertheless, I thought our video was hilarious and followed the requirements well.

 

Furthermore, we had to do these different challenges during the project. I did the “add a song challenge”and the “play with angles” challenge.

Here’s what I created:

IMG_2368

 

And here’s my “playing with angles” challenge.

IMG_2414

 

Finally, the last skill, Special effects sequence. This was another really fun assignment, as we were allowed to use all sorts of effects. My group used lots of green screen, as we green-screened things like water, a dock, and a shark.

Here’s our vid.

As you can see, this video’s pretty funny as well. Looking back, we should’ve used more settings and more effects in our video. We also could’ve incorporated more characters.  

In summation, I learned lots of things about film during this project. I learned about angles, story boarding, and how to shoot in different settings. Also, I learned how to further use iMovie, as well as clips. I’m most proud of my silent film, as I thought I used angles well, and told a good story with a twist.