Music Video Finale

This project is the last project that we are every going to do as 8th graders! There are two people other than me on my Music Video team. There is Julie, and Wailana. The song that we are doing is So Sick by NeYo. We chose this song because we wanted to do a song that no other class in G.T has done. So we are the first students in all of the years in G.T that are doing this song. We also Chose this song because even though this song is pretty old it is making a comeback. We hear it all over the radios. People on the internet are making covers to this song, people are also taking the music from this song and making their own lyrics. So we thought why not! Since nobody else has ever done this song lets be the first.

This song is about how my mom disagrees with my unhealthy eating habits. So she takes my junk food away and gives me healthy food to eat. But while everybody is eating their chips, ice cream, cookies, etc.  am stuck over here forced to have a healthier eating habit, Which is driving me absolutely crazy. I come across all these obstacles where the junk food is just laying out into the open but I tell myself that I am strong enough to resist. This storyline does actually relate to the song and it's lyrics, but in a weird way. So instead of being sad about a break up with and actual person, I break up with junk food. Our first plan was to have a real break up with a person. But that started to get depressing and we wanted to leave middle school with a project that is humorous and that everybody can kind of relate to. So we thought that it would be funny and #relatable to make our sad love story breakup about food! I think that this is a pretty creative idea because no other class in the whole existence of GT has ever done this song. We also thought it was more appropriate than having our storyline about a relationship. because we are just in middle school.


NeYo So Sick

Gotta change my answering machine, now that I'm alone
'Cause right now it says that "We can't come to the phone"
And I know it makes no sense, 'cause you walked out the door
But it's the only way I hear your voice anymore

It's been months and for some reason I just
(Can't get over us)
And I'm stronger than this

No more walking round with my head down
I'm so over being blue, crying over you

And I'm so sick of love songs, so tired of tears
So done with wishing you were still here
Said I'm so sick of love songs, so sad and slow
So why can't I turn off the radio?

Gotta fix that calendar I have that's marked July 15th
Because since there's no more you, there's no more anniversary
I'm so fed up with my thoughts of you and your memory
And now every song reminds me of what used to be

That's the reason I'm

So sick of love songs, so tired of tears
So done with wishing you were still here
Said I'm so sick of love songs, so sad and slow

So why can't I turn off the radio?
Leave me alone

This Music Video shows and meets all the requirements. But in all honesty it could have been better. I think that if we actually put way more effort into our music video that it would be 10 times better than it is now. But besides that it wasn't all that bad. There was a lot of great sequencing in our timeline that I am very proud of. We also had a lot of great fast cuts, from wide, medium, close, back to medium and then to extreme close. Anyways, I could go on and on but I think that you get the point of how the fast cuts looked in our video. Even though we didn't have a lot of different effects on it, I  don't think that it would have done anything to affect it. Also I don't think that a lot of different crazy effects would be appropriate for our music video song.

Movie Trailer Premier

P1T2_Grandpa's Goodbye from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.

For third-quarter we are doing a movie trailer. Our movie trailer is called Grandpas Goodbye. It is about this boy named Tom who lives with his grandma and grandpa. Tom hears has been hearing these weird noises the night that his grandpa goes out and doesn't come back home. But when he asks his grandma about his grandpa and the noises she tries to play it off like Tom is making this a bigger deal than it actually is. So the next night Tom's best friend Brad comes over for the night. But while Brads stay at the house he hears the same thing that Tom has been hearing for the past couple of nights. So Brad suggest that they should go and check it out and Tom agrees. Since Tom assumes that the attic is where the noise is coming from that is where they go and check first. When Tom turns on the flashlight and looks around the attic, Brad and Tom finds an unpleasant surprise. My job in this project was to make the movie poster and help edit. My job was also to take foley and I was the voice actor.

Of course like every other project we ran into some difficulties and challenges. One of our major challenges was filming. Since our story is based around night time we had a hard time getting the right lighting and the right angles without messing with the exposure. We especially had a hard time filming with everyone there. We all made it to our filming sessions but one or two of us had to leave early because we are all middle schoolers with crazy busy lives. Another challenge we had was finding the correct appropriate music for our movie trailer. We also had a difficult time correctly placing and balancing our foley. Although we had our challenges, all of us have experience with making movie trailers. We have been in GT for about three years now. So we knew how to do most things. Such as our foley and filming. Our foley matched our movie trailer story. We also had everything eventually filmed correctly. When I say "eventually" I mean that at first we had some difficulties with lighting and adjusting the camera. But towards the end we got it right and we filmed some pretty awesome scenes.

For our critique we did pretty good. Not the greatest, but pretty good. I think that we got what we deserved for our critique. Except for the "Audience" portion. I didn't really understand how we got some room for improvements on that one, and I am really proud that our creativity and our requirements portions didn't get any room for improvements. But hey at least we made it to the top 5. Thats pretty awesome. That means the class liked ours enough to be nominated! There were so much things I have learned in this project. One thing I have learned is to manage my time wisely. Managing your time wisely is going to help what ever project you have be less stressful and your project or what ever you have to turn in by a certain time will end up having quality work written all over it because if you don't manage your time correctly, by the time the deadline rolls around your probably going to end up rushing to get it done which brings down the quality. Unless you are a super human that does everything perfectly. Another thing I learned is that communication is key. There has been too many times during this project where we plan something out, then at the very last minute something changes. We know now to plan things ahead of time and communicate effectively with each other if we want to get anything done right.

Metamorphosis Animation

P1T4 Metamorphosis from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.

This quarters project is an animation project. Specifically a Metamorphosis Animation. It is when your character starts off as whatever you want it to and somehow ends up as a human. I am on a team with my classmates Julie and Makaio our goal as a team is to be able to all communicate effectively with each other and take care of our responsibilities that we each get on this project. Our goal is also to create a animation that follows to guide lines to get us a perfect grade. For our Metamorphosis Animation project we will use many animation types. Some animation types that we will be using is stop motion, photoshop, and Stykz. We chose these animation types because we feel that it will fit in with the story of our animation.

Our Metamorphosis Animation projects focus statement is Stone Sparks Imagination. It's message is to love who you are and never doubt who you are and what you can do. We choose this message because we know what it feels like to be doubted and sometimes we even doubt ourselves. We just feel that it is a very important message to give everyone of all ages.

Our metamorphosis animation met requirements. Although it was a little confusing. i think that we could have made our characters consistent because in every scene our characters looked different. It looked like it was a different story.
A lot of the critiques were on the audio and the character switch ups. I think that we could have leveled out the audio because some of our voice overs were really soft and you couldn't really make out what we were trying to say. But other than that we tried are hardest and worked until the final deadline to make it meet requirements.

Geometric Portraits

Facial expressions are universal. Just like love, math, and many other things. I believe that facial expressions are universal because even though we all may speak a different language we can communicate with our faces. We are born with facial expressions. When we are born we cry, and crying is a facial expression. I just think that your face expression is the most important kind of expression of all time! Imagine life if you could only express what you are feeling only with your body and voice. Things would probably get kind of creepy to be honest. Talking with your face can have infinite meaning to everyone around you.

To create your own Poly portrait you first have to get organized. Take those extra steps to make sure everything has a place to be. Then you have to either take a self portrait, of your self of course! Or you can take a portrait of anyone you want to. When you have the portraits choose your favorite one But make sure the portrait that you choose is one that your subject is looking away from the camera. Then when that is all sorted out, you will be opening the portrait with PhotoShop. Make sure to set your settings so that your height is 11inches, your width 8.5 inches, and your resolution 300 pixels. Then when that is done you need to get organized! Make a background layer and lock it. Command J your portrait layer and lock your original portrait. When you have gotten organized you are now going to click on the polygonal lasso tool and start creating you triangles. But make sure that after you create each triangle you do click on the "I" on your keyboard which will bring up the eyedropper tool. When the eyedropper tool comes up it will let you select the different color shades on wherever you drew a triangle. When you have the right and appropriate color you can press alt delete and the color that you have selected will show up! You need to do that on every part of your body.When you are done with that you can cut around your subject with the polygonal lasso tool and make your background customized. Make it look crazy! But make sure that it kinda goes with your "theme". When you are done you can command save and re-format it into a JPG. Of course you can do a little customizing to it. But after that you are done!

All of the poly portraits that I have created are different in some type of way. Some were easier than others, and some are nicer than others. That is because as I made more poly portraits the steps became more difficult and the expectations got much higher. I think that my poly portrait #2 was my best work out of all of them because I think that I executed the expectations perfectly. Even though my poly portrait #2 took a little longer to create it still ended up being really nice! Poly portrait #1 is the one poly portrait that I created that I am not that proud of to be completely honest. It is because of the extra steps that I personally don't think is necessary. Like the outlining before actually using the polygonal lasso tool was really time consuming. The outlining was really frustrating and confusing when it came to using the polygonal lasso tool and tracing the triangles that we made. The reason is because it was really hard to tell if you were overlapping your triangles, so when I turned off the outline there was a lot of gaps where my skin was visible.

Verbal Landscapes

MataJ_Retime from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.
Nature is all around us. There is really no way of escaping natures presents. I live in an area where nature surrounds us. So nature impacts my life a whole lot. One way nature impacts my life is through emotions. When i'm around nature it just fills me with different kinds of emotions. I feel happy, relaxed, overwhelmed, and much more. Nature is something that you just can't live without! There is really no way of living without some kind of nature around you. It doesn't matter what kind of nature it is. Did you know that we are apart of nature. We are mother natures creations. We were brought into the world along with the other types of nature around us.

Have you ever wanted to create your very own timelapse? Well with these simple steps you surely can! The first step in making your very own timelapse is to grab your camera and find a good looking landscape. A landscape where you can see 2/3 of the sky and 1/3 of the ground. You want to make sure to get a greater ratio of sky than ground. You can take a timelapse of the ground if you want to, but that would be really boring. Next you want to make sure that your camera is steady and sturdy so that your timelapse doesn't make anyone dizzy. You can use an environmental or a man-made tripod. Whatever works for you. Then when you find your tripod and you are all set up all you got to do is start your camera and wait for 5mins or more whatever you decide. But the minimum is 5mins.

There were a lot of challenges with this project. My main issue was finding a unique spot to shoot my timplapses at. It was also hard to find things to make slow-mo's of that were interesting. So basically finding something that no one else would do was the hardest part. I tried to film my timelapses at places that I thought no one else would think of. But of course I was wrong. A couple of my classmates had the same shot as I did; which was fine because we live on a small island. There is not that much places that are easy to reach and not much places to go to either. But the shots that I got were good enough to the point where some of the shots are somewhat unique and meets the goals and requirements. But the slow-mo's were I have to say the hardest shots to film! I didn't really know what to take slow-mo's of. There was nothing I could think of or have the patience to film; and because mostly everyone in my class took slow-mo's of waves crashing at the beach. I wanted to be different so I decided to film a bee going from flower to flower and put that in slow-mo. It actually turned out really good I have to say so myself. I also got a shot of some old leaves falling on the ground from the ground point of view.

I don't really agree with my critique because two people grading my work with a two which I don't think was fair because there were others who really deserved a two but didn't get it. But other than those two bad grades, I do agree with the rest of my scores. I think it's fair that I got graded a three 's and four's because one of my shots were shaky but not to the point where you would get dizzy. I also didn't really put as much text effects as I wanted too, because I kind of doubted how good it would turn out. But now that I got feedback I realized I could have put way more text effects on my project,, I also could have balanced my audio out more. My audio wasn't bad. It was actually pretty good. I just think that I could have played around with the audio a little more so that it would sound more professional.

Poetic Personal Statement

This quarters assignment was Poetic designs. What we basically did was take pictures of things that mean something to us and we added some poetry to it. Poetry is a type of literature. I think that poetry is a more emotional and sometimes touching way of expressing your feelings. Usually poetry relate to people and the way they may feel. Poetry is used to express feelings. In my opinion it is a more creative way of expressing your feelings. Sometimes poetry can be personal, meaning that the piece of poetry you may be reading doesn't really relate to you but it is about the poet and the way they are feeling. To be honest I am not a poet type of person. But since I do write a lot and enjoy writing, I sometimes catch my self being a poet without even knowing it! But even though I do not write poetry I enjoy reading it. I'm pretty sure that every one has listened to poetry before. If you listen to music than you surely listen to poetry. Music is poetry with rhythm. So basically we hear poetry on the daily!

I like to be myself, don't need to hate
I move to the beat of my heart rate
My motto is to be yourself

because there is really no one else
Reach for your goals like no there
Along the way you may discover something new
Or maybe not, you never know
But right now I'm gonna outgo

In my poem I used rhyme. I used rhyme my forming my poem in a way that each two sentences or lines ended in the same sound. For example know and outgo don't end in the same letters, but they end in the same sound. I used rhyme because I feel that it went well with what I was writing about. I also used rhyme because it is a personal preference of mine. It is kind of difficult making a rhythm to my poem. This is just an opinion, but I think that rhyme is prettier when you read it. But of course everyone is different. I also didn't use rhythm because I think that rhythm makes the poem sound more like a rap. Which isn't the style I was going for. I was going for a more calm poem. The kind of poem that when you read it you automatically feel relaxed.

Music Video Finale

P2T6 Focus from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.

Our very last G.T project for this year is Music Videos. I'm super excited for this project. I think that this project is the most less stressful project out of this whole year. From experience producing your own music video is really easy. All you need to do is be creative, and a song of course. My teams song is Focus by Ariana Grande. When making a music video you don't just get a song and start filming. Well you can but it won't look as good as if you made a story line. A story line is this whole lay out planning what is going to happen in your music video. It is kind of like telling a story. But you are taking each lyric, or sentence and type/write what you are going to do. Our storyline relates to our lyrics because it is all about sass. We went for a diva  kind of feel. You know what I mean? The song is called Focus, the most repeated lyrics in the song is "Focus on me!" over and over again. Doesn't that seem a little sassy to you?

My favorite fast-edit montage sequence is Rocky vs Ivan training montage. I love this montage because First of all I love all the Rocky movies! Another reason why it is one of my favorites because when ever I watch it over and over again, I always get that feeling that I am apart of the movie. I love how well it is edited. Every time the background music hits each beat the either the shot type, composition, or even a scene changes.  I also love that even though each shot is fast and quick you can see and hear and feel the story of what is happening you can feel his exhaustion, pain, agony. But you can also feel his happiness, his pride, and his dignity because he worked so hard to get where he is at. It's pretty obvious that this is one of the best montages ever if i can get all those feelings and you can probably get that too, from a 20-30 second montage of him just training. Imagine the other montages in the movie. But I like the training montage the best. 

This music video showcases my best work as a director and editor. Since I was the team leader I really had to stay organized and focus, especially because I was the only second year student in my group. I think I showed myself that I can be a really good leader/director if I just stay calm and do what I have to do to get things done. Not just get things done, but get them done right. Honestly I am really proud of how our music video came out. I didn't realize that I actually love editing and just being hands on with the project. This was my first time editing without an 8th grader walking me step-by-step through everything like last year. This year I kind of felt like the 8th grader. Even though I am a 7th grader. I only felt like a "8th" grader because I was more experienced than my team mates because I am a second year student, and I am just so proud of what we accomplished in the time we had and the circumstances that was brought up with filming schedules, and coming in at recess to do some extra editing here and there. So all I have to say is Amazing Job Wailana and Ella!