Do you remember in school, when you just watched a video on 200,000 people dying, and your teacher asks you to think some good video techniques the producer used, and how we could use them in future?

You don’t?

Well, boy oh boy do I have the reflective portfolio post for you!

The Run Down: The project we just finished is called Fallout^2, if you don’t remember from my previous post, “advocation and the space-race” my big goal was to advocate for myself. Luckily enough, I somewhat got a chance to do that!

Companions No Longer: So for this project, (or most of it at least), we were to make a companion piece to our animated explainer videos from “manhattan project^2,” untilll, dun dun duunnn, Ms. Willemse decided that it would be too difficult, and the whole companion piece was scrapped, alongside the night we were supposed to show them off (oh yea, she was going big)

So instead of that, we simply had to complete a pitch template on what our companion piece would be.

Now I don’t know if you clicked that link to my learning intentions post for this project, but nows your chance to go back and check it out so this paragraph makes sense.

Memory Games: So you remember how I said I wanted to talk about the F-15E and MiG-25 because you went back and read that post, and I was quite sad, because I didn’t think I’d be able to talk about it, but, low and behold, I managed to make a connection between the two in the pitch template, and advocated for it when we conferenced teachers with our pitches

You don’t care?

You want to know what the hook was about?

You feel like you’ve been clickbaited?

Jeez I was getting there

But I guess since that’s the only thing you care about, I’ll skip straight to it.

The Hook Part Two, Electric Boogaloo: So, in the final moments of this project (like the 3rd to last day) we watched a video, called “Bananas, Sardines, and Sharks” and it was on the cost of cheap convenience (and before you ask, no, it doesn’t actually talk about sardines and sharks, just the U.S.A. removing a democratically elected president by force), specifically through Bananas.

Which interestingly enough was actually brought up during one of our socratic seminars (Adam if you’re reading this you’re so cool), and was what got Ms. Willemse asking if we had watched this (we had not)

It was a really good watch, and I understand why Ms. Willemse has made it a PLP classic. Now, we did discuss moral implications to fill out a story spine (which is basically how Walt wrote all of his stories). it goes “once upon a time …, every day …, until one day …, because of that …, because of that …, because of that …, until finally …,  and ever since then …

Once we filled out this story spine, we moved on to how the story was presented, storytelling techniques, and things we could take away from the video essay to use when we tell stories. 

I get why Ms. Willemse did that, she wants us to learn (big shock I know) but I feel like the switch was quite jarring, and almost like she didn’t really care about the aforementioned 200,000 people (and counting) 

But I mean hey, it worked, I learnt a bit more about juxtaposition, and how you can set it up by reusing things you’ve already used in a story

Return To “Normalcy”: Well now it’s back to your regularly scheduled reflective portfolio post, but still sticking with the emotional piece, we were to read Fallout (which I did, I don’t know why that makes it sound like I didn’t)

It’s a fiction piece on a kid and his family (along with a few others) stuck inside their family bunker. It was a really good read, and quite layered.

What I mean by that is you could hand it to someone in grade 7 and they could tell you about what happens and maybe some themes, but you could also give it to a grade 11 or 12 student and they could tell you how it’s an allegorical reference for the Cold War inside a literal showing of an alternate reality of the Cold War.

This idea (I may or may not be the grade 11 or 12 student in question) was another thing that came to someone during a socratic seminar, which shows again how good we are at expanding eachother’s ideas!

Colder, Colder: Sticking with expanding ideas, the study of the Cold War is super interesting to me, especially because it’s not like any war previously, and therefore plays by different rules.

In my opinion, the Cold War didn’t end in the 60s or 70s, in fact, I believe it to still be ongoing, seeing as mutually assured destruction is still at play. (If you need an explanation on what mutually assured destruction is, you’re probably the reason shampoo has instructions (Also, skill testing question to the teachers reading this, when do you think the Cold War ended?(there better be a hot\cold take pun))).

Ignoring that triple nested sidenote, playing with ideas around and the history of the Cold War is super neat, because there’s things like proxy wars, that do have definite beginnings and ends, like in Korea and Vietnam, which have shaped and continue to shape those countries, and those around them, to this day!

Then, there’s the not so proxy wars, like the big battle happening on the streets of london. The forests of BC (yes, that BC) and many other places (everywhere except the antarctic, who must feel very left out) because two polar opposite ideals ended up being pitted against each other, one for its idealism, the other for its “practicality.”

Thanks for reading this post, it’s a bit longer than normal, so good job, and I’m proud of you