5x5 project

1. medium shot of tying shoes

2. medium shot of legs walking a dog

3. high angle of running legs

4. medium shot of running on a treadmill

5. medium shot of resting and dropping shoes

I am very pleased with the way that this 5x5 turned out. I went to walk the dog and said to my self, hey I'll do a 5x5 about walking. But I couldn't have done any of it with out the help of my mom who agreed to get on the ground and film a lot of shots of my legs and feet with my flip video camera. I then imported my clips to wevideo, an online video editor. If someone out there wants to get into video, but doesn't have an editing software, then tell them about wevideo. The best part about it is that it directly exports your project to YouTube.

For the next independent video i think it might be kind of cool for students to have a v-log of their interdisciplinary project. It would be cool for other students to see what their class mate got out of the experience and for teachers to see how they influenced us along the way.

The Hunger Games Trailer

The Hunger Games. Gary Ross PG-13 2012

Happy Hunger Games everyone! This book and movie are models of dystopia in its purest form. The entire premise of the story is set up perfectly in a masterful trailer less than three minutes long.
The trailer captures viewers' attention in the various 6-10 second scenes that raise many unanswered questions, such as, "Wait, why do 24 teenagers need to kill each other?" And, "Why does Katniss live in poverty while the capitol city is the epitome of greed and wealth?" We are drawn in by the tension and drama of an older sister sacrificing her very life to save her innocent younger sibling in a society gone horribly wrong; a society where children between the ages of twelve and eighteen are forced to live in fear of being chosen for the fateful games.
The trailer's vivid portrayal of the action draws the audience in and makes them hunger for more Hunger Games. The music keeps building up to a crescendo until suddenly a cold, steely voice starts the countdown to the beginning of the games. Then, abruptly all goes silent. When the number reaches zero, the games begin, enthralling the audience with a shot of the 24 contestants bursting violently in all directions from the center of the frame. In this brief and amazingly effective trailer,  the viewer is keenly aware that the die-hard Katniss Everdeen of district 12 is the protagonist of this story. And there is no question that the president of Paneam is a menacing, despicable character.
This trailer sets a very high standard. I only hope that my dystopia trailer project will be half as good. At the very least, I'm incredibly inspired by this flawless example.

Article Reaction

I was intrigued by the title, "Teaching Children to Learn Without Us", but honestly I found the article to be a little over my head. It's pretty obvious that it's directed at teachers and maybe parents. The author states that teachers need to get over the fear of having students plan and decide what and how to study. I have some fear about it myself. I'm always researching stuff I'm interested in on my own. I've found tons of interesting information on many topics, but I'm not sure I'd be comfortable trying to teach myself high level math based on basketball like the boy in the article. I rely on my teachers to give me structure and guidance to help me learn. I don't see how teachers could realistically help everyone do totally custom learning when there are so many kids in each class.
Actually a friend of mine goes to a private school centered around this exact kind of idealogy, and unfortunately what really seems to happen is that the students get off task, play video games, and don't accomplish much of anything. I know it doesn't mean that it couldn't work somewhere else but there's potential for a system like this to fail.
Also, I feel like sometimes it would be great to learn about something through one of my passions or interests, but I worry that if that's what we did all the time I'd miss out on learning about new things that I 've never heard about or tried before.
Don't get me wrong. I love technology and I think it's an awesome tool for learning, but I really like hearing new and interesting things directly from my teachers like when Mr. Freeman brings something like how the world was changed by 9/11 to life in one of his lectures. He also lets us participate and share our own ideas through discussions.
I do think it would be cool to learn the material we need to cover and then be able to choose whatever type of project we want (video, poster, song, blog, etc.) to show what we learned.
Actually a friend of mine goes to a private school centered around this exact kind of idealogy, and unfortunately what really seems to happen is that the students get off task, play video games, and don't accomplish anything. I know it doesn't mean that it couldn't work somewhere else but there's potential for a system like this to fail.

The Hunger Games Movie Review

I read a movie review for the Hunger Games in the Washington Post earlier this weekend. I annotated this copy of the review at this link. The basic structure of the article was that the author first set the scene for the article and the movie after giving a brief blurb about the movie setting and the main actress who played Katniss Everdeen. He then gives deep praise to the director of the film for portraying the violence in the story without glorifying violence or making the movie too bloody. Believe me, with The Hunger Games, that task was not easy. The writer then talks about the cast and gives the basic plotline with minimal spoilers. Most readers appreciate that!

The Writer sprinkles his opinion throughout the article and I have to say I mostly agreed with him. He said that even though the director and the talent did a phenomenal job, it would be hard to like the movie if you were not a fan of the book. This is all too true. I saw the movie with a friend who had not read any of the books in the series but I read the first two. I really liked the movie but my friend hated everything about it. I'm going to try to convince him to read the book and give the Games a second chance.

I liked the structure of this review, the way it mixed opinion and commentary about the plot, acting, directing and cinematography. Honestly, I'd like to follow its basic structure, or skeleton, or scaffolding, or whatever you want to call it. However I don't want to be the voice of the people, so I think that everyone should pick their own structure and see where they go with it. But  since I like the structure of this review and I'm just gonna fly with it. But if the way it's set up is unappealing or too difficult to follow for some people, I'm cool with that and I won't really care or scrutinize the way their review is set up.

The First Post

My name is Brian and I'm a sophomore in CAP. This is my first blog post, not to say I haven't posted anything on the Internet. I have a YouTube channel in progress where I post Let's Play Series for Skyrim and Minecraft. These are my absolute favorite games in the entire world.  When I'm offline, however, I mostly spend time with my family and play with my dog Maxxi. I also love to kayak and hike although Maxxi detests the wretched boats, because she can't swim and has to wear a hot, itchy, uncomfortable life jacket. You'd think that swimming is an instinct for dogs... well you're wrong, Maxxi sinks like a rock.

 I have done many film projects over the last 4 years and if I had to pick a favorite, I'd have to say the WWII movie review. This is because I am a WWII history FANATIC and am passionate about movies about the era. I helped research the cartoon propaganda made by Disney to convince civilians to conserve what they could and to contribute to the war effort.

I honestly believe that these CAP blogs will be an asset to our Change Project because:
-They will allow students that are working on the same project but are not in any of the same classes to communicate.
-The blogs will open up opportunities to share ideas with others.
-The blogs would allow a student who missed a day of work on the Change Project to catch up and contribute.

Images used:
Minecraft world