Movie Trailer Premier

P2T4_EscapeFromHim from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.

The next project my GT class is currently working on a movie trailer. My partners for this project is Mele Tokuda, AJ Galiza, and Malie Osakoda. Our trailer is based on every typical kidnapped movie, except we changed it into our own trailer by adding a different story behind it. Our project is about a popular girl who gets kidnapped after a weird boy with a kidnapper uncle stalks her, when the boys plan goes wrong they end up kidnapping more that one girl. I contributed to the plan by pitching the idea and helped with writing the synopsis. Andrew and I are currently working on the scenes and shots. I will also be contributing by being a part of the trailer as an actor.

Our biggest challenge so far was probably finding time to film because we each have different schedules and one of our teammates won't be here for filming. Another challenge we faced so far was trying to make or scenes fit our VA script that we didn't already use in the beginning. Other challenges we faced were that some of my group members didn't do their assigned work. Another one of our challenges was that when we tried to film it started raining and we couldn't get any film done. Our biggest success was making a soundtrack for our trailer. We also did pretty good on our movie poster and how we edited it. Another one of our successes was placing our foley and audio in FCP.

I think we got these results on our critique because we didn't meet the critique requirements. We didn't really have all of our audio and foley, but I think we would have gotten a better grade if we had better audio. I think if we added more scenes and had more audio we would have gotten a better grade. We didn't really meet for our project and on the last day we had to edit we started editing all of our clips. So basically we didn't meet all the requirements because we didn't commit to meeting and editing. I learned to use FCP better. I also learned how to add layer affects in PhotoShop. This project taught my group and I how to be more responsible and be more committed to our work and projects.

Metamorphosis Animation

The latest project my G.T. class is working on is a Metamorphosis animation. For this project I am working with Violet Alao and Brody Smith. We were making an animation that states a Blobfish turning into a beautiful Beta fish along the animation story. Our goal for this project is creating a presentation that is original, logical, communicated clearly and explained by all students.  And that our entire proposal is clear from beginning to end with interesting descriptions of sequences, scenes and actions. Production plan is detailed, very easy to understand with organized visual storyboard. Group roles have been clearly assigned. Sets, Characters, Props are used cleverly to communicate the animation concept. They are visually stimulating, imaginative and create a sense of realism. Much thought and attention to fine details is evident, ultimately enhancing the overall animation. For this project we will be using a program called Stykz. Our second animation is about a pig named Porky who grows wings after getting abused by his owner. Our focus statement we used is "Richard Appreciates Pig". Our animation rational is basically a pig named Porky who get dirty from a mud puddle then gets hit by his owner Richard who is a mean old farmer. When Porky gets hit he becomes very sad and runs away, when he reaches the edge of the farm he grows wings and flies away. Richard spend all day looking for Porky but doesn't find him. A few days later Porky returns to the farm and hugs Richard and they all end up happy. The types of animation we used is PhotoShop, Stykz, paper animation, and white board animation.


For our focus statement we decided to do our second animation, about Porky. Our focus statement is Richard Appreciates Pig. Our focus statement is a farmer named Richard learns to appreciate his pet pig, Porky after he grows wings and flies away, because Richard abuses Porky. We wanted people to understand and learn how to appreciate the things you have. You only realize how important things are once they're gone. We want people to know that you should love and appreciate things and people you have before they're gone. People don't stay forever and you could look back and realize how much they really meant to you. We also want people to spread Aloha and appreciate and respect others. Our first scene is basically just Porky jumping into a mud puddle and then Richard getting mad because Porky gets mud on his truck and then Richard hits Porky. Our second scene is Porky walking to the edge of the farm sad and growing wings then flying away from the farm.


For our animation critique, I think we got this grade because we had a few shaky shots and bad lighting. But we also got some good scores because most of our shots were good and matched our animation well. I think we got these scores because we didn’t have any talking and there was only sounds so the class didn’t really understand what was happening in our animation. We also had a few short shots, If we had extended our shots of our characters walking and made it so they were actually walking and not just sliding across the screen we would've done better. I think if we had our characters talking and clear shots we would've gotten a better grade. But overall I think we did good for our animation, although it could have been done better.

Geometric Portraits

The latest project my G.T. class is working on is Low Poly Portraits . Facial Expressions of emotion are universal, not learned differently in each culture. Several studies have attempted to classify human emotions, and to see how your face can give away your emotional state. People are generally relatively skilled at telling another person's mood, simply by taking a glance at them.

Skeptical both of the original research methods used to prove the "universality" theory, which involved prompting subjects with emotion words and asking them to label expressions with them. A traditional northeast Namibian culture notable for its isolation from almost all Western cultural influence, the tram investigated whether recognition of facial expressions might instead be contextual, and whether subjects' ability to correctly label expressions might hinge entirely on cues from the experimenters.

I created the first project by first taking a symmetrical self portrait and putting it into Photoshop. Then putting a grid on my picture I used a red Line Tool to draw a in the middle of my face and to outline my hair, eyes, mouth, nose, and eyebrows, I then merge all the outlines in one layer and call it "Hair". Then adding large triangles into my hair, eyes, mouth, nose, and eyebrows. Now I'm going to start making bigger triangle on my skin, Then I merge all the outlines into one layer and call it "Outlines". After I finish my outlines on only one half of my skin I use the Polygonal Lasso Tool to outline each of the triangles one by one and hitting, Filter-Blur-Average to blur the triangles out. After I finish blurring every triangle I copy one side of my face and horizontally flip it to make another side of my face. Then I make the red outlines white by changing the color overlay to white.

Verbal Landscapes

YounA_Retime from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.

The current project my G.T. class is working on is about nature. Nature impacts my life because without nature such as trees we wouldn't have oxygen to breathe. Nature also changes the way we look at things. We could see the world as a bad place but nature fills it with comfort and warmth. Nature also impacts our life because environments can change someones mood and relieve stress. Things like Aloe Vera are impacting because they heal sunburns and other things. Being exposed to nature helps reduces blood pressure, heart rate, and muscle tension. Personally, nature impacts my life because it changes my mood. When I'm in a bad or sad mood, nature helps me become more calm.

Time-lapses are created by taking videos of things moving such as clouds and speeds up the clip, so we can see 20 minutes of video in 1 minute. Time-lapse photography is a technique that records a scene or objects that has a slow state-of-change and turns it into a video that plays back. Time-lapses are fast paced videos of usually things that move slow so when it's played back the slow moving objects go faster. Slow-mos are created by taking a close-up action shots and slowing the speed of the video down so the viewer can see whats happening more better. Slow-mos are slow paced videos that have subjects that move fast so when it's played back it easier to see what's happening in slow motion.

The hardest part about this project to me is editing. This year since we are working in Final Cut Pro it's harder to use because last year we used iMovie to edit our videos, so Final Cut Pro is a new thing for me. Final Cut Pro seems easier and better to work with but I don't know the features FCPX has to offer. Also it's hard editing because I have to place my videos in a certain spot to match my poem and still keeping my video length to 45-50 seconds. Another hard part is taking the time-lapses and slow-mos, it's hard because we needed to take the videos at a certain time to get great lighting and if we take sunsets or sunrises. It was also hard taking the time-lapses, especially at the beach because I had to make sure people and animals didn't get in my shot.

The grade my classmates gave me the most was a 2. I think they gave me that grade because I didn't have all my clips and hat I had to use my clips from school. Also because most of my horizon lines weren't straight and I had shaky clips. A few of my classmates also gave me a 3 and 1. 

Poetic Personal Statement

Well I'm back!! Sadly summers over but I'm happy to be back in G.T. I think poetry can be personal because the writer can make a poem about how they're feeling or they can write about an experience. I think poetry gives the writer a chance to express themselves. Writers can also make it personal by writing thing that they see and their perspective of their everyday life. Poems can be used as a personal statement by putting "My" in front of every sentence. It can also relate to the readers personal experience.  Writers can make poems personal by also creating a poems that people want to do or have done. 

Poetic Statement:

Fulfilling my dreams by any means 
Playing on the field after every injury
Just hoping that it's healed, out of my misery 
Playing with my heart and not my head 
Being more heart spread 
Day by day I'll get better 
No matter what they say 
Just hoping I get the letter
I got into a college with soccer scholarship
Maybe my family will flip

I used rhyme and rhythm by using words that had the same ending that matched my topic. I used rhythm by going in order of what I want to happened  in my future. I used rhythm and rhyme to make my poem flow nicer. I used short and long sentences in my poem so it's easier to read and so that it makes my poem more entertaining. I used rhythm and rhyme because I wanted my poem to be fun and easy so that my viewers can enjoy reading my poem. My poem is about roping so it was hard to find rhyming words that matched my theme, I then found words that went smoothly with my picture.

Music Video Finale

P2T5 Sorry from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.

The latest project my G.T class is working on is a music video!! Sadly it's the last project of the year, so you won't be seeing me for a while. This project means it's going be be FUN. The song my team and I chose was Sorry by Justin Bieber. We had to make sure our video was school appropriate so instead of a love song we chose a body boarding song. We chose a body boarding song because in the music video one of my teammates breaks a body board and one of the song lyrics is "I'm missing more the just your body" and as you can see that's not so school appropriate. So it's about Cody missing his BODY board. The twist is that he actually broke Malia's body board so he's apologizing to Malia, while missing the body board. It relates to our song because Cody is apologizing to Malia for breaking her board, Malia doesn't want to forgive him but ends up forgiving him in the end. Before she forgives him Cody stops at nothing to come up with an apology. 

To attract our viewers we used fast-edit montages. My favorite fast edit montage in the music video was when Malia was on the body boarding. First we had lip sync and the background was Malia on the board when the lip sync stopped it was Malia on the board coming towards the camera. After it goes to cody on the sand. It's my favorite fast-edit montage because it looks great and it's only took us about 2 minutes to edit it. I think it really ties together our video of Malia having a good time and Cody having a bad time. We also tried matching the beat of the song to the visual representation of Malia. The beat dropped so it was a pumped up beat and Malia was on her board catching waves so I think it matched the scene pretty well.

This music video showcases are best work because of the iMovie and photoshop techniques that we've learned over the school year. It showcases are photoshop techniques because we are making a photoshop cover photo that shows what we've learned wile using photoshop. The first project we did this school year was a personal manifesto. We plan on cutting out a picture of cody with a broken board and putting the song title "Sorry" in the back and use kerning. Kerning represents that personal manifesto because we had to kern our words and letter so that it could perfectly place the manifesto. 

                                   Sorry By Justin Bieber 

Ooh, ooh

Ooh, ooh

You gotta go and get angry at all of my honesty

You know I try but I don't do too well with apologies

I hope I don't run out of time, could someone call a referee?

'Cause I just need one more shot at forgiveness

I know you know that I made those mistakes maybe once or twice

By once or twice I mean maybe a couple a hundred times

So let me, oh let me redeem, oh redeem, oh myself tonight'

Cause I just need one more shot at second chances

Yeah, is it too late now to say sorry?

'Cause I'm missing more than just your body

Oh, is it too late now to say sorry?

Yeah I know that I let you down

Is it too late to say I'm sorry now?

I'll take every single piece of the blame if you want me to

But you know that there is no innocent one in this game for two

I'll go, I'll go and then you go, you go out and spill the truth

Can we both say the words and forget this?

Yeah, is it too late now to say sorry?

'Cause I'm missing more than your body

Animated Life Lessons

P2T7 Blossom Learns Soccer from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.

The latest project my G.T. class is working on is an animation. My teammates are Blossom Novoa and Jaesha Mata. Blossom's personal traits are thinking outside of the box, also very
adventurous and very creative. When I first met Blossom I was really shy but she was really open and wasn't afraid to be herself. After a couple of days I opened up to Blossom and I'm more out-going in front of her. Blossom is really nice and funny, she can also be really courageous and silly but can be shy and awkward. We plan on exaggerating her traits by making her character play a really awkward and shy girl that could use some friends. My other teammate is Jaesha. Jaesha is kind and silly. Jaesha is the type of person that doesn't care about what other people think of her, she is also really fun to be around. Jaesha is friendly and very optimistic. We plan on making exaggerating her traits by making her character be a very friendly person who gets kicked in the face by Blossom with  a soccer ball but is still friendly and kind to Blossom.

Jaesha and I

Blossom and I

Our animation is humorous because Jaesha gets kicked in the face and Blossom has a funny way of playing soccer. I think it will make our audience laugh because people like laughing at fail videos so that's kind of how we wanted to play out. Our life lesson or message relates my audience because it's an animation about not giving up and a lot of people give up at some points so I think our story relates to our audience because we want people to know that giving up is okay but we don't always have to give up. It's also about how not to give up and to believe in yourself and that you can do anything as long as you put your mind on it. Our animation is a life lesson because you can't always do things and accomplish them but you can try as long as you have faith in yourself. We chose to make our animation about not giving up because we can all relate. We all have had a moment in our life when we've wanted to give up.

Story Board

The level of productivity was a challenge in making this animation. Most of us didn't know how to animate and we were behind schedule. My teammates were frustrated that we couldn't get this done on time so they started getting mad at the person who did the less work. Communicating was also a big challenge, we've never talked altogether before so that was a big challenge because we were shy. The biggest challenge we faced was animating. Like I said most of us didn't know how to animate, puppet warp was hard because we didn't know what we were planning on doing for the scene. The best moment we had during this production was the laughs. We had a lot of laughs, recording was a really funny moment. We had to do screaming noises, loud cheers and

Story Board

Story Board

Critique Results

Story Board