Metamorphosis Animation

For our first 4th Quarter project in G.T. we did an Animation Video, with the theme of METAMORPHOSIS. We basically had to create a story and show one thing changing into another. We could use any of the idfferent types of animation including STOP-MOTION, Whiteboard/Chalkboard, Digital Animation, Stykz, Claymation, or Flipbook. My group used Stop Motion, Whiteboard, Digital Animation, and Flipbook.

Our story was about a girl who was getting ready for prom, she's happy, excited, and ready to have the time of her life! Her makeup magically comes on her face, her hair gets done without hands, and her dress and shoes crawl onto her. But once she's done getting ready, she realizes that she gets stood up. She's about to give up and not go to prom at all, but her friend rides by on her bike by surprise and takes her to prom. Our focus statement was Prom Stregnthens Friendship. I feel like our group did and AMAZING job on our project. I espeacially like our soundtracks that we made with Garage Band. Our class also said we did a good job. As you can see below, we got "Above and Beyond" on everything!

Words of Wisdom

During the third quarter, we worked on our second Hiki No video project. In this project we had to do a profile project. My group interviewed Jack Leonard, the head coach from Kauai Gymnastics Academy. We started this project by writing a transcript about the interview. That took us a bout a week. We had to plan the questions we would asked, the B-Rolls, the interview shots, and the voice-overs. Once we had our transcript, it was time to film! We first filmed the interview itself. The interview was about how Coach Jack inspires gymnasts. Once we had the interview done, we shot the B-Rolls a few days after. We shot the B-Rolls on about 3 days. We finally got all of the footage we needed! In class, we edited all of the footage together into one profile story. We then filmed Mia reading the part for the voice-overs. Throughout the final days of the project, w edited, and edited until the final story was good to great! Our words of wisdom are important because it inspires others to keep up with their dreams, and to remind them that if you got 2nd, you didn't loose 1st, you one second.

Five Tips For Preventing Injuries

During the beginning of the year, we did our first Hiki No project. The topic of our project was five tips. We had to think of five tips for a certain subject. My group decided to do 5 Tips For Preventing Injuries. Our topic basically teaches the viewer how to not get hurt. We got the idea because one person in our group, Gabby, recently fell and scrapped her arm. We thought that it would be a good idea to show people how to prevent getting hurt. Our video turned out really good, it was actually shown on Hiki No! Although, I think we could've fixed the focus of most of the shots. Some of the shots were out of focused and made the video look bad in quality. Other than that problem, I think our video turned out great!

Practice Profile Story

Our practice story was about how Gabby loved to dance. The purpose of it was to teach people to never give up and alwasy do what you love doing. The main subject of oiur story was Gabby. We chose to interview Gabby because she has a very close connection with her love of dance; she practically eat, sleeps, breaths dance. Of course, we could've done any other subject, such as how Mia does gymnastics, anything really, but we chose the subject that one person in our group knows the best, Gabby and dance. I feel as if we could have improved our audio. I like our practice story a lot.

Profile Project Progress

Over the past few weeks, my G.T. class has been working on a Profile Project (which is basically an interview) for Hiki No. We got to pick our groups and who we interviewed. My group decided to interview Jack Leonard, the head coach at Kauai Gymnastics Academy. We chose to interview him because our project is called "Elder Words of Wisdom", so since he is older than us and has influenced a ton of people throughout his career, we thought it would be interesting to learn about him and his coaching career. During the interview,  Coach Jack taught us to "train without regret to perform without doubt, and to never let yourself down, if you got second, you didn't lose first you won second". Keeping these Words of Wisdom in mind, Jack Leonard coached an Olympic gymnast and has helped other gymnasts reach for the stars. We interviewed him just before gymnastic class started on February 14 at the Kauai Gymnastics Academy. A few days after the interview, we shot the B-Rolls. We got footage of gymnasts doing flips of all sort, on the bars, floor, and balance beam. We also got some shots of Coach Jack spotting someone, same with the other coaches that were there. We got the B-Roll footage on February 26 at Kauai Gymnastics Academy. Finally, we had to do the voice overs, which was done by Mia Ricciardi (she's in my group).

Our B-Rolls and Voice overs were difficult to do. There were a lot of technical things we had to be aware of. When filming B-Rolls, we had to make sure there was no camera movement, which means that we couldn't pan on someone doing a trick. Also, we wanted to try to get natural sounds of the bars squeaking, someone making a thud on the beam or floor, etc. So, we couldn't really talk around the camera, which was hard because Gabby and I laugh at literally EVERYTHING! Mia was doing gymnastics so she couldn't help us with much of that. Another thing we had to be aware of is the focus of the camera, if the footage we got wasn't focused we couldn't use it. The voice-overs were also very technical, to do the voice-overs we had to use wireless microphones. Using the microphones, we had to make sure they were working properly, which means that they had to pickup only the person in the voice over's voice. we also had to make make sure the camera was working properly too. To have the camera pick up the person's voice, we had to make sure that the other part of the mic pack was "communicating" to the camera. Even though there was a lot of things we had to watch out for, I had a lot of fun doing it.

To work together better than we already are, we could communicate more, and let everyone help and do an equal amount of work. This means, we could've planned ahead for filming time. I had probably a day's notice to tell my mom about filming. Also, I felt that one person wasn't doing anything to help, while another was doing most of the work. We weren't communicating as much as we should've. Other than these few problems, I feel that my group worked together good! 

Other than the problems with my group, our video has some problems. For example, our audio could be improved by slowing down the voice-overs and using more natural sounds. Also, we could've got more sequencing; we had to use some final cut pro secrets to help get the sequence of some shots, but that just made the quality low definition. I think that if we fix these small problems our video will go from good to GREAT!

Composition Techniques

Composition techniques are a way photographers and filmers make their story interesting. They bring personality to the subject, and make it interesting for the viewer. There are about 14 composition techniques. The main four techniques are Rule of Thirds, Framing, Unusual Angles, and Leading Lines. Rule of Thirds is when the image is not centered and more off to the side, to use Rule of Thirds, cameras usually have 3 horizontal and vertical lines to help you position your subject/camera. Framing is using natural surroundings to give more meaning to your subject, this could include bushes, trees, or even a doorway. Unusual Angles allows you to see a picture or video from another point of view, like an ant’s point or a birds eye view, this technique gives a lot of personality to the image. Leading Lines are used to lure the viewers eyes to a deeper part of the image or the important subject of the image using lines from objects around us; these lines include roads, fences, branches, etc.

Three Shot Sequences

In filming, Filmer's use a technique called Three Shot Sequences. This technique gives interest to the viewer when watching the film while visually describing the action. It is what gives different shots of the subject. The different shots are: Wide, Medium, and Close-up/ Extreme Close-up. A wide shot is a view of the entire area the subject is in, showing the background, what is next to the subject, and the subject itself. Medium shots don't show as much as a wide shot, although  it still shows a little bit of what is happening around the subject. A close-up is basically just showing the subject from only the area that the action is occurring in. Extreme close-up's are just another way of showing a close-up, but more zoomed on the actual action; this gives the viewer more detail of the action, it lets the viewer feel what is happening. The Three Shot Sequence technique is used in pretty much every film. Below is an example of what Three Shot Sequencing looks like.