Music Video Finale

Hey, I'm back once again! So, this project is my favorite to-do project of the whole year. This project is all about music videos, where you can work with your friends and fun while doing it. Last year if you look back far enough, my last music video was Dangerous Woman by Ariana Grande. We worked in a team of 4, and my teammates were Isaac Dubey, Raja Counts, and Coral Haeger. We all had a blast doing it, and I'm excited for this upcoming music video. This year my teammates are Malia Alo, Jb Araula, and Raja Counts. Here are links to their blogs in case you want to take a peek (; Malia: http://maliakai.blogspot.com/ Jb: http://jbproductions808.blogspot.com/ Raja: http://rajacheers.blogspot.com/. Back to the point, this year our song is Drop in The Ocean by Ron Pope. We chose this song because, the pace is perfect for lip synch and we all like the song so, we all agreed.

The storyline we created for this specific song hits you right in the feels. In the beginning, I have 
all of my friends and we're all hanging out together, happy as can be. Then, the next part of the storyline is where Akasha and I start to yell at each other. These shots are done in a Point of View (POV) so, you can see the other person yelling at you. The next sequence is of Akasha disappearing out of our whole group, and so one with everyone else. When everyone has left, I'm am now all alone. Then, Raja comes out of no where and accompanies me. After that scene, all mu friends start to return by my side once more, and everyone is happy once again.

As you can see above, we are doing the last project of the entire year, the Music Video project. I have learned a lot throughout this year and last year as well. Considering that 7th grade is almost over, and I'll be returning as an 8th grader, I'm actually excited to be working in this class. We're on top of everyone at middle school, the big kids. Anyways, GT this year has taught me a lot more about PhotoShop, iMovie, Final Cut Pro, and many more. In this last project, it will most likely be showcasing what I have learned about editing not only imagery, but video clips as well. We were asked to create a Music Video band poster that relates to whatever song we are doing. That show our PhotoShop skills and what we can put them to use for. Cutting out people, editing words, adding layer effects. All of that is shown in just one image. As for the rest of our project itself, it presents all our skills we have learned throughout GT. The effects we put on the clips, text layovers, etc. It really has been fun working with so many different people and I can't wait to see them all next year. 

A Drop In The Ocean 
By: Ron Pope

A drop in the ocean
A change in the weather
I was praying that you and me might end up together
It's like wishing for rain as I stand in the desert
But I'm holding you closer than most 'cause you are my heaven

I don't wanna waste the weekend
If you don't love me pretend
A few more hours then it's time to go

And as my train rolls down the east coast
I wonder how you keep warm
It's too late to cry
Too broken to move on

And still I can't let you be
Most nights I hardly sleep
Don't take what you don't need from me

It's just a drop in the ocean
A change in the weather
I was praying that you and me might end up together
Its like wishing for rain as I stand in the desert
But I'm holding you closer than most 'cause you are my heaven

Misplaced trust and old friends
Never counting regrets
By the grace of God I do not rest at all

And New England as the leaves change
The last excuse that I'll claim
I was a boy who loved a women like a little girl

And still I cant let you be
Most nights I hardly sleep
Don't take what you don't need from me

Movie Trailer Premier

P3T2_Still Here from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.

Our current project were working on right now is the Movie Trailer project. This project is all about making a Movie Trailer with basically no actual movie going along with it. This is my second time doing this project and it's honestly one of my favorites. Last year, my movie trailer was about a girl who is scared to surf again after wiping out. I'm excited for this year's project because, it's horror mystery and those are my favorite type of movies. Ours is about two best friends that get into a disagreement about one of them being followed. In disbelief, the other girl storms off. A couple days later Malia, the paranoid girl, mysteriously disappears. What really excites me about this is filming it. You just feel so professional and you feel mature being able to successfully film a movie trailer. I contributed by acting and filming. As much as I liked both parts I liked editing the shots too. 

To be honest, there was quite a lot of challenges filming this trailer. We had to plan transportation, some people couldn't make it, and some of the locations needed permission for filming. There was some challenges we faced and succeeded with, and others weren't successful. The biggest one we had so far was importing scenes 4 and 5. The reason is a mistake I should've noticed before importing. The file that I imported the scenes in was a BDMV file. Some of you may or may not know what it is, but I'm telling you right now that was a day's work flushed  down the drain. Since it was is a BDMV file, I was able to successfully upload both scenes into Final Cut Pro. So yes, we are back down to one scene, but I'm hoping we could film both scenes soon. On a positive note, we were able to finish editing scene 1 with no mistakes what so ever. We lined up all the audio, added some transitions and text to it, and we were done. Now, we need to plan sometime this week to make up those scenes.

The critique this past Thursday (April 6), went well for our group. The rest of my piers had outstanding Movie Trailers. My favorite was "El Demonio Begins" by my friend, Lucas' group. As for ours, we had great shots, and it went just as we planned. The only feature we left out was the music.I also learned quite a lot during this whole project timeline. I learned a lot about team work and editing in Final Cut Pro. The biggest thing I learned was honestly, team work is key.

Metamorphosis Animation

P3T6 Metamorphosis from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.

The new project we are currently working on in class is called the, "Metamorphosis Animation" project. We are using a freeware called Stykz that allows us to animate objects. The goal for this project is to create an animation basically about metamorphosis. The idea of it is to make an animal, or an object turn into another animal or to another object. If you didn't know metamorphosis is when an animal changes into another version of the animal. The difference with our project is that the animal we are using has to turn into a different species or a object such as a car or motorcycle. So, the overall goal is to metamorphosize something to something completely different. There also has to be a story behind the change of the animal or object. My teammates for this animation project are Anthony & Raja. As of this moment, Raja is currently in Florida for her cheer competition. Other than that, Anthony and I have come up with 2 ideas for this and out of the two, we picked, Bunny Attains Wings. 

Our focus statement for, Bunny Attains Wings, is to accept other's dreams and follow your own as well. The first scene is, Bunny and Cat taking a nice walk in the field. They have been friends for a pretty long time and they are basically inseparable. Bunny takes a look at the sky, and sees some birds flying overhead, happy as can be. He then tells Cat about the birds, and she responds saying, "Flying is dumb, you're better off here with me. You can't even fly in the first place." After that, the rest of the walk was silent.

Returning to the field, Bunny and Cat are doing the usual. Hanging out under the birch tree. After a while, Cat says, "Let's go it's getting dark." Bunny notices a Hawk flying near the forest entrance to the Great Tree. He decides to follow the Hawk into the forest, curious about his actions. Hawk, notices Bunny and gives a smirk. Hawk then lands and starts to talk to Bunny about flying which sparks Bunny's dreams. Bunny then runs back to the den to tell Cat all about Hawk's stories. By then, Cat finally allows Bunny to go and follow his dreams.

The critique went better than I thought it would to be honest with you. We ended up landing in 2nd place for overall best animation. This is my 2nd year in GT and I'm telling you now my 1st year wasn't the greatest. Yes I would get my work done on time, but the hardest part was quality. Every group I was in always had some problem with the project. I'm currently working better this year and I love that. I originally thought this project was going to be a big fail, but I had the best teammates I could ever ask for. We all worked great together, and we were always on task. I think being able to communicate with each other is the reason behind all of

this. Last year, since it 

was only my first year, communication wasn't my favorite thing in the whole world. I'm just super happy we were on task, and was able to land second place. The animation itself turned out pretty good as I should say so myself. The two types of animation we used were Stop-motion and just plain Photoshop. I'm really proud of me and my teammates, hopefully my next project will be just as good as this one has been.

Geometric Portraits

Facial expressions are most likely universal because, siting the evidence from "Are There Universal Facial Expressions", explain how facial expressions are universal with a quiz. A New Guinea man is shown making 4 different reactions (facial expressions) to whatever scene he is told. The first facial expression he was asked to make was, "If his kids had died", by taking to quiz you can tell that he was sad because, sad facial expressions usually have a frown and droopy eyes. Next, he was asked, "If he stepped on a smelly dead pig", and of course his face could tell you he was disgusted by that. This quiz goes to show, facial expressions are universal and doesn't just apply to one person.

The project we are making this quarter is called a low-poly portrait. A low-poly portrait is an image created by 3-5 sided geometric shapes. For our project, you activate the grid on PhotoShop and create a red line (or any color you choose) down the middle. The goal of this project is to make a symmetrical low-poly portrait of our faces. The next step is to create all the triangles on your face. Since this project is called a "low-poly portrait" your going to simplify the image by using bigger triangles. After making your triangles, you're going to go to filter, blur, then average to fill the triangle with color. To do so, click on the polygonal lasso tool and outline your triangle. After filling in your triangles, take your low-poly and copy it. After doing so, flip the copy to make the other side of your face and, you're done!

After finishing poly-1 and poly-2, there were obviously many different tactics to them. In poly-1, I had to split my face down the middle and make triangles to fill my face. As for poly-2, all I really had to do was make straight up triangles and filling them in right there. For poly-1, I had to average the color of the triangle with my skin. It was pretty easy to do but was very time consuming. For my poly-2, I could just make the triangles and fill them in with color straight away. That was easy to do but, it was difficult not to get the same color as the other triangles. Poly-1 was also kind of difficult to do because, you couldn't really tell if you overlapped other triangles or not. If you did, you had to redo the triangles. Poly-2 you had to make sure you didn't do your triangles too small. As you can see, there are some good and bad things about doing these ways, but I personally prefer poly-2 because it made me feel more challenged and I always like a challenge.

                  

Verbal Landscapes

Nature can impact every one's lives in many different ways. It can make you feel a variety of emotion and feeling in general. For me personally, nature makes me feel at peace. Nature makes me feel free and relieves my stress. I love to go outside everyday and sit in my big mango tree in my backyard and just think. Sometimes I even have friends come over and sit in the tree with me. Most days though, I love to just sit in my tree and do my homework. I feel relaxed and at peace, there's no other place I would rather do my homework. When I'm done I usually ask one of my friends if they wanted to join me. When they would come over we would sometimes take pictures, eat food, do some homework, just anything really. This big mango tree really impacts my life because, It's been growing ever since my family moved to Anahola. I have always climbed the tree and just sit in it. This tree is one of my happiest places ever and I love it. 

Although time lapses and slow-mos are beautiful, they are sometimes pretty difficult to take. Time lapses are more on the easier side though. For a time lapse, there is going to be 2 parts sky and 1 part ground. The camera has to also be stable enough during the time lapse so, when you edit the video it won't be too shaky. For a slow-mo you want to be really close to what you are filming. You also have to make sure that you don't move too much in your slow-mo or the outcome won't really be that high quality shot you're looking for. Overall, for a time lapse make sure your shots aren't too shaky and your horizon line straight. If it isn't very straight, then I suggest you fix the horizon line before you start to film your time lapse. For a slow-mo get up close and try and also make an environmental tripod.

There were many bumps along the way of creating my time lapses and slow-mos. There was also a problem that I had along the way with my poem. At first, I had absolutely no idea what to write about. There were so much ideas running through my mind but somehow I didn't have one for my poem. So, when I went home I read some nature poems and bounced off some ideas. I ended up writing a free verse poem with the 5 senses. Next, was to get my time lapses and my slow-mos. You see, these were difficult because, you had to think of a place and what you're going to do. I thought this part was the hardest because, I had to film the sunset at Hanalei for my final time lapse. The difficult part about this is, a lot of people go to Hanalei to jump off the pier so, it's basically a huge tourist attraction and everyone goes there. Instead of going all the way to the pier I stayed on shore and filmed my time lapse there. Then, cars were passing people were passing, it wasn't what I wanted in my time lapse. So, to solve that problem I angled the camera up and filmed the sky. I may have not gotten the whole beach but, I got a beautiful Hanalei sunset. Even though there was bumps along the way, my favorite part was filming my slo-mos and timlapses.

Critique Reflections: I agree with the results 100%. The only one I honestly don't understand is the 2 but, maybe it's because 2 of my shots were shaky. I think some people might have given me a 4 because of my scenery, or maybe it was just a good poem, or it's just good overall. I think I could've stabled some of my shots a little more and maybe have read slower. Also, I think I should've made the music a bit louder but still quieter than my natural sound. Overall, I think I did a very good job with my ReTime Nature video and I will do the highest quality possible on my next video project.

Poetic Personal Statement

Poetry has a lot of meanings to different people. It can be calm, soothing, frustrating etc. It's all about your mood and the way your brain is flowing. To me, I think poetry is art in the form of words. It can represent your emotions and all the thoughts going through your head. Poetry can also teach you life lessons in a rhythmic way. Words that relate to your life in a way can affect the way you feel about the world around you. Poetry can also show you how words can be turn in creative expression.

Best friends are there for you FOREVER and ALWAYS,


They're Kind, Caring, Compassionate and, they have your back


Sometimes they can be crazy like they lived in a zoo but,


If YOU were their Best Friend, you would have their back too,


be crazy with them! They're your BESTFRIEND boo (;


Rhyming can be easy at times but, the rest of those times, rhyming and getting that rhythm down can be very hard. If you're a creative and open minded person, doing something like a poem shouldn't be that hard for you. If you're a intelligent thinker, it could be kind of hard for you because, it has to make sense to you. I'm a thinker but, I'm creative as well. We had to do a poem as you can see above, it was very hard for me to think of a theme that I can rhyme easily with. It was difficult for me because, I am also an intelligent thinker and everything in the poem had to make sense to me. It became easier once I figured out what to write about and found some words to rhyme with. After that, I finished off the poem and got to move on to the next step in this project.

Music Video Finale

P2T1 Dangerous Woman from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.

Okay, this is the last blog post of my 6th grade school year. One of my favorite things to do is listen to music. In GT we have a chance to make a music video with a song of our choice. In my team is Isaac, Raja, Coral and, me. The song we chose to do is Dangerous Woman by Arianna Grande. It's one of my favorite songs to listen to so I was obviously excited about this project. So, the lyrics in the first part is "Oh, yeah don't need permission made my decision to test my limits cause it's my business, God as my witness" Our storyline for this part is a business scene. It's suppose to match up with the part "Cause it's my business, God as my witness." Obviously because it says business in it :). Since the title is Dangerous Woman, we decided to pretend that Raja and Coral both go crazy but in a good way. It was suppose to show that they are independent and do what they want to do. The only thing I do not advise doing is throwing papers around at your job.

My favorite fast-edit montage is probably the part when Isaac is lip-syncing. It started out as Isaac just lip-syncing to the song but we wanted to put some humor in it. So, instead of making Isaac 'disagree' with the girls, we just put him in a wig! The first wig was pink and black for his first lip-sync. For the second time he lip-syncs we put him in a bright pink wig wit a cute little hat on top. I think we did a pretty good job with putting him in a wig, it was also for humor but, also because it made our music video more interesting. For an example it added more surprise to it. You'd never expect to see Isaac in a wig for our project. To be honest though, Isaac didn't want to wear the wig but we said it was for GT purposes. After a long time of convincing, he complied and agreed to put the wig on. So, that's how we got him to wear a wig and it's my favorite fast-edit montage because, it has some great humor in it. We also made him do a hair flip. :)

This music video showcases my best work because, of all the edits I had to do. I finally learned how to pad correctly and, make sure all of the shots make sense. It shows what I'm capable of doing in iMovie. To be honest, it was kinda hard in the beginning of the year to work with iMovie because, I haven't worked with it before. Doing this music video, it was my chance to show that can do better than last year. That I know what I'm doing and, how I'm doing it. The best part of making this music video was being able to work with an amazing group. We have had our disagreements and arguments but, we have worked through it and was able to make an awesome vid for GT. Our music video also shows how well we worked together. Dubey ( Isaac ) was hesitant about putting on a wig but, for the team's sake he put it on. I had a blast in GT this whole year and I also had some tough times but, I know I always had my friends there with me.