Music Videos Rock!

I think that each member of my team contributed an even amount. I contributed mainly in the beginning with my solo act and also small amounts throughout the whole video. When I wasn't dancing or singing, I filmed and edited too. The girls all contributed about the same amount being that they are all the main characters in our video. They were the main dancers and lip-syncers, as well as filmers and editors. Each girl had a solo act and some acts together. Overall, I think that my groups contribution amounts are all about even and we'll make this music video epic!

In my opinion, I think the audience will enjoy the whole video. I say this because I think our video is very funny and has a good story line too it as well. Also, because it is a very old song and cause it's called "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" and of course, i'm not a girl. Other than that, I personally really like my beginning solo act as should the audience. I think my classmates may enjoy this part because it is a popular song and has a funny dance to it that I perform. I'm sure many students will recognize the song and dance and may find it humorous.

I feel that our Music Video will show that we are experienced editors and filmers. The editing may show because we will be using some special affects and sounds to make our video better. To show our filming skills, all of our shots are well focused and have minimal camera movement showing that we are experienced with cameras. I feel that these are the two main, and most important parts about creating videos in iMovie. I personally have learned a ton this year in GT and I'm very glad that I can perfect my camera and editing skills and show them off the other students. I am also very glad I had a good and supportive team to work with me and make it fun. I am sure the final product will be great!

Lyrical Livelihood

When I listen to music, I personally like to listen to the beats and bass more than I enjoy song lyrics. However, when the beats are not very catchy or interesting I do listen to lyrics and try to memorize them myself so I can sing along. Depending on the lyrics, I usually feel somewhat pumped up if it's song that I really like. I enjoy when song lyrics are faster and rhyme more like hip-hop or rap music.

My team mates are Lilio Masi, Leleaka Anakalea, Brooke Kauo, and I, Noa Harrison. I am the only boy in my group, and surprisingly, the song we chose is called, "Girls just wanna have fun", by Cyndi Lauper. Obviously this is a girly song so we figured that I wouldn't really enjoy being a star in the video, so me made a small addition to change that. For the first 10 seconds of our music video, I will be dancing and lip-syncing to a popular song called "Watch me whip". There is special dance that goes with this song that I will be performing. During my dance, the girls are going to come into the frame, and push me out of the screen. There will then be a noise that sounds like a tape rewinding, and all of the sudden the background and song will change into the song "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun". The girls will start dancing and singing, while I am confused and aggravated throughout the whole music video. We picked this song because we thought it would be fun and funny to do since I am a boy. Also, because it is somewhat a classic old song that my teacher and classmates will hopefully enjoy.

Our visual story that our video should inform to my class is that girls just want to have fun hence the name "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun". Besides the fact that that is the name of the song, I think it means that girls just want to have fun no matter what the outcome is or trouble is that they can get into. Also, the song was made back in the time of when women were treated wrongly and unequally compared to men, so it is also kind of a confidence song towards women. I think that back in that day, this song could have been a song that made girls think about who they are and not care about other people so they would just have fun together.

Our Animation Story

Our focus statement is "Noa Explores Dreams". This tells "our story" because it is the basic idea of our whole video. In the story, I am in a dream exploring space and seeing what I can do in while I am there. This is why I am "exploring my dreams".

The lessons in our story are to be careful who you trust, because important things may end up in the wrong hands. Also, everyone is different and special in their own unique way even if you just have an amazingly bold and creative mind. Last, sometimes you must conquer problems independently and do what ever it takes to get the job done. In our film, my friend Miles takes an orb from me in space that is the key to get back to Earth. Noa has to get the orb back by himself using the objects he has in space. Miles gets away too quick, so in order for Noa to catch up to him and get the orb back, he uses a comet to boost himself towards Miles. Snatching the orb from Miles, Noa touched it once again finding himself back on Earth in his class room.

I think the best moments were taking the shots and voiceovers, and listening to them on the computer to see how funny we sounded and looked. I will be honest here, I had quite a lough after watching our clip. I also really enjoyed the Stykz animation app. I enjoy being able to create whatever we wanted using the stick people on Stykz. I love animation all together and had a great team to work on this project with. I think the worst moment all together was that we were behind most of the class. We barely had clips, no voiceover or audio and had to come in every recess to do as much as we could. So, for us, the struggle to get it done, make it good, and urn it in on time was the most challenging part all together in my opinion.

Animation Outtakes

My team is a group of four boys. We have Russell Fu, Miles Frazier, Michael Anderson, and me. I am 13 years old, Miles is 14, Russell is 13 and Michael is 13. Miles is a really good surfer and skater. He is also a great editor in iMovie and has much talent in many things. Miles and I are great friends and have done some fun things together. Russell, I only met this year but is a really nice person and always has an awesome attitude. He is great at doing his work and using all the tricks taught by Mr. Sanderl. Michael, I also met this year but is very intelligent and funny. I love working with him and hope to work with him on further projects.

Stop motion animation is when you take multiple photos of an object. After every photo, the object moves a small amount. When you take all of your photos, you will create a small repetitive clip, or GIF. The GIF is the pictures of the object that creates a since of movement within the object. GIF stands for "Graphics Interchange Format". The two small repetitive clips below are my examples of a GIF that I created in Photoshop.

The story that we are telling is actually a story of my own. The story that we based our movie off of was a dream that I had a couple months ago. In the dream, I was curiously walking on a beach when I noticed a strange glow in a random bush. I walked over to the bush and found like an orb type of thing. I grabbed it out of the bush and was all of the sudden in space. In space I was really big and was just playing around and having a great time. I was flicking and kicking planets and moons until I found a friend who will be miles in our animation film. Miles and I started playing together until he took the orb out of my hands because it was the key back to Earth. As he was getting away with it, I used a comet to my advantage, as a boost so I could catch up to Miles and take the orb back. I knocked it out of his hands and it started to float in front of me. I finally got a finger on it, and in an instant, I disappeared and went back to Earth. I think that this will be quite an entertaining film and humorous for the audience.

Typography Images

Typography is the design and use of typefaces as a way of communication. Typefaces are used in typography, and are sets of one or more fonts. Typography is based off of handwritten letterforms. Typography surrounds everything from calligraphy through digital type and type on Web pages. It also includes type designers who create new letterforms as well as designers and calligraphers who use the letters as part of their designs. Typography uses typefaces and the whitespace around and through them to create a whole design. Basically, it is portraiture covered entirely with relatable words over a black background. To make a lasting impact using typography, of course, it has to be beautiful. Besides visual beauty, the words must have a powerful and deep meaning that people are able to read and enjoy. Maybe a poem could be in the portrait or a famous quote. This could create an impact if the passage is deep and touching, or relates to the reader.

For me personally, the hardest part was remembering the steps and following a long with the demos. I would usually get stuck on one step, and miss the next steps because I am trying to figure out the step that I missed. To overcome these challenges/mistakes I would either ask a friend for help, or I would wait for Mr. Sanderl to finish his demo to either help me or do another demonstration. Because I do this often, I have learned to just listen to the instructions completely, until I start working on them. This usually helps me finish quicker and more efficiently, because I do not make mistakes forcing me to restart or make everything more difficult than it would have to be.

For my first example, I took an image of Nikola Tesla off of google images. For this particular image, the words covering his portrait was several paragraphs about him and his life. I got the information off of wikipedia. I personally like this one because it is just black and white making the text more visible. Also, you can see more of the words easier because the text was not a brush, it was pasted on in paragraphs that don't overlap. For my second example, I took the photo of my Science teacher Mrs. Bandsma. Like the first example, I covered her portrait with text however this one was a bit different. For the text in this image, I created a brush of text that I could place anywhere on her face. Because of this, I was able to make the words different sizes. Because of the bright colors, I think that the image pops out more however I feel the words are more challenging to read. My last portrait is the "me" portrait. This image is a portrait of my own face, hence the name "me portrait". I personally like this one best because of the vibrance and colors. I was able to adjust the vibrance of my word sections making the lighter parts lighter and the shadows darker creating a more realistic image. Like the 2nd example, the text was created as a brush, yet the words are much more obvious and easy to read, mainly because of the size and vibrance. Overall I think I made quality work and was successful and satisfied with my final outcome.

Double Exposed Portraits

Portrait photography is also known as portraiture. Portraiture is photography of a person or group of people that create the expression, or mood of the photograph. Usually when using portraiture, the focus of the photograph is more often the person's face, although the entire body and the background may be included as well. Profile photography is the shape of a head or face that is seen or drawn from the side. This relates to portrait photography because both photos are of faces and are close up photographs most of the time. Silhouetting is a photograph usually of a dark shape or object up to a lighter background creating the object a dark outline or like a shadow. Silhouetting can be like portraiture, because you can take a Silhouette portrait, which is exactly what it sounds like. It is a silhouette of a portrait, so it is a facial image, but it is very dark, so it is basically just the outline of the face and the rest is black, like a shadow.

 When creating a double exposure image in photoshop, first you need to take your photos. One photo of you or your friend. Next, you'll need 2 photos of nature, like trees or other plants. Now, I'll explain the process through the following steps. Step 1: Take your images. Step 2: Download them to your computer. Step 3: Open photoshop and click "file". Next, click on "scripts", and then click "load files into stack".  Step 4: Use the "dodge tool" to make the background of the portrait image all one color, usually white. Step 5: Once you have used the dodge tool to create the white background, you double click on one layer to get the "blending options". When you are there, you will go to "blend mode" and change it to "screen". After doing that, all of your photos will combine into one. From there you can move them around, add layer effects and make it as cool, colorful and beautiful as you can. I would want to make a double or multi exposure image because they are very beautiful and express many feelings in different ways. I love making these and looking at them because of all of the colors and designs within the portrait.

The images within my portrait symbolize what I like to do or my hobbies. For my final, or multi exposure image, I took photos of me skateboarding and my drumset. I love to do both of these things so I put them in to represent me. For the practice I had my portrait and two pictures of plants and trees. The left one is my practice and the right one is my final. If I did this project again, I think that I would take different photos. I say this because, although they are good photos, when they blend into my portrait, I think it looks kind of boring. I would like to have more detailed of pictures to cover up the open space of my face. I could have also added and experimented with more effects to make the colors really pop. I used a lot of curve effects, vibrance and saturation to get my outcome. I am satisfied with my work however it could have been a little better.

HDR Photography

HDR photography is a method, where dynamic range is the ratio of light to dark in a photograph. Instead of just taking one photo, HDR photography uses several photos, taken at different exposures. After you have these photos, you combine all of the photos into one photo and it usually makes a photo with a great amount of exposure. It is used to make a photo with exposure that is not too high or too low. I really like using HDR photography because it doesn't put you in the position of having to pic which one of the photos has a better amount exposure because it chooses for you and is usually the perfect amount. I also like being able to edit the photos after combining them to make the photo even better.

To create HDR image, you can take from 3-6 photos from very low exposure to very high exposure. Once you get these photos, you have to upload them to your computer. Next, you open adobe photoshop. When that opens, you click on "file", then "automate", and go to "merge to HDR pro". After that you hit "browse", find the photos in a folder, click "ok" and photoshop will merge the photos into one. Automatic HDR functions are HDR buttons, on certain cameras, and all you have to do is enable it or just turn it on. When you turn it on, the photo you take will automatically have a good amount of exposure and thats all there is too it. If there is an HDR button, it makes it a lot easier and you don't have to work at all to get a perfectly exposed photo.

My thought process when making an HDR photo is to make the coolest, most colorful and bold photo that makes people say "WOW that's a good photo".  I try and make the photo realistic but still edited to make the colors pop out more. I am so focused and deeply eying the photo making sure I do not enhance it too much or make it look too fake or overly edited. I am usually pretty calm because I enjoy doing it and I'm good so I can take my time. For this particular project I actually tried to make these photos very surreal.

Movie Trailer Critique

P1T2 Plane Ride Home from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.

 This project was to create an entertaining movie trailer that was appropriate for first graders to watch. We created our project on an app called Final Cut Pro. We used all kinds of cool effects to make it as cool, creative, and as good as we could. My teammates were Sophia Rodriguez, Justice Chatfield, Maceo Cantu and I. Our plan document shows our synopsis, teammates, voice acting script, characters, setting, plot and purpose. This will basically show you everything about our story and how we contributed to the story. I personally contributed as one character in a scene, and I helped with some of the editing and foley.

The project required a 1min and a half to 2 min show, five scenes, voice acting, foley, dialogue, text-lay overs, effects, and a movie poster. This definitely sounds like a lot of work but we got it done good and to our surprise it was exactly one minute and thirty seconds. We did complete all of them however some could have been better if we had more time to work on it. I think the overall trailer came out pretty good. It was humorous and had a plot which our audience loved. In fact, our class voted our video number one to show the first graders.

The majority of the classes critique comments were saying how funny it was. They liked our transitions and most of all our settings. Using our editing skills on Final Cut Pro, we added our own backgrounds in the trailer to match our voice over and plot. I agrees with the critique results because it was a very humorous video and I think we did a great job on the editing part. I learned a lot more editing skills during this project and got more comfortable with Final Cut Pro. I think I could make a pretty good video on my own using the things I learned, if I had a subject.