James Camerons “Avatar” is a movie that had ground-breaking success during its time, but it also explored many themes that are very important to talk about. During the 2022 Winter Exhibition, we explored those themes through the lens of videography.
The Driving Question
”What does James Cameron’s fantasy world of avatar reveal about our society today?”
The goal of this project was to create a documentary about one of the themes presented in Avatar, then present this documentary at the Winter Exhibition. I chose to make my video about Apartheid, my themes being segregation/ Imperialistic Racism. Both my parents grew up in South Africa during Apartheid, so I picked this topic to gain a better understanding of my parents history. When making the documentary, I interviewed my Mom, which gave insights that I had never considered before.
Making A Movie
My final video was decent from a cinematography standpoint. I tried my best to include lots of different shots and angles, and to make my editing as clean as possible. I think my video turned out the way I expected it too, it was proportional to the work I put in. Over all I’m pretty proud of the final video, but I could definitely do better next time.
You can watch my video with this link:
From an informational standpoint, my video was very deep. It was detailed, and showed multiple perspectives on Apartheid in the past, as well as talk about how it relates to our world today. It sparked many interesting conversations with parents, and I think people were generally interested in what my video talked about.
The Winter Exhibition
In my opinion, the Winter Exhibition went really well, and I feel good about the work I did. I made sure I was engaging with my audience, and was giving a detailed, but still quick presentation. I ended up have many conversations with parents about Apartheid, and I feel like my presentation skills showed quite well. I quickly realized while presenting, that my video was too long for people to watch the whole thing, so I started showing people the important parts instead.
During setup, I did my best to be as helpful as possible, and be a leader for the Grade 8’s. One thing I want to work on going forward, is not to be afraid to use my voice more. I had trouble getting people to behave, and I think this is a skill I should work on.
How does this relate to AVATAR?
Avatar reveals that there are still lots of problems that still exist today, that still have heated opinions about them. The fact that we can easily relate many of the plot points into real world problems, says a lot about our society. We have so many problems going on that we struggle to keep up with them.
Thanks for reading!