A new school year has just begun, and everyone is getting back into the normal routine. Classes are starting, people are signing up for activities, and PLP is heading off to Calgary, you know, the typical stuff. The reason for this is because each year, our teachers take us on a field study or two to learn about some of the units we are working on, and they felt that Calgary would fit greatly into our Canadian History unit, especially since we were taking the route which followed the CPR (Canadian Pacific Railway). They also thought now would be a good time to do it to get us back into the rhythm of school. So, on the 9th of September after not even a full week of school, we piled onto the Seycove bus and drove off for an awesome adventure!
Trip Highlights:
The Road There:
As you probably know if you have read my other blog posts, PLP trips are jam packed with every activity imaginable. Because of this, I will shorten this part of this post to the main highlights of Calgary and the adventure across the pacific railway (even though it is still kind of long). On the first day, we got to visit the site of the Last Spike, which is where the last railroad spike was hammered in and the CPR was finished. It was quite cool to see the massive train engine stationed there and our teacher Mrs. Maxwell (who loves Canadian history) was extremely excited to be there. In the afternoon we arrived at Three Valley Lake Chateau and got to explore the ghost town beside it. It was extremely cool because it has been kept in the near exact condition it was in when it was still being lived in.
The next day we rose bright and early, had breakfast, and set off for Calgary. This was an amazing travel day for we were driving through rogers pass, the way through the Rockies. The mountains we passed were so large that their tops were scarce of trees and covered with sheets of snow. We also dipped in and out of massive valleys, and spotted some beautiful wildlife on the way. Around 12:30, we stopped for lunch at a pretty neat place, the Northern Lights Wildlife Wolf Centre. This was a place where wolves from shut down zoos or the film industry could live a more natural life, and are kept safe from environmental hardships. After lunch we stopped at Banff, and then entered Calgary.
Calgary:
Calgary seemed like a nice city for what I had seen online, but when we arrived, it was better then I had ever expected. For one it wasn’t too busy so the streets were awesome to walk along. The city was also lit up amazingly at night and looked incredible. Some of the cool things we did in Calgary included going to an escape room, going to the Glenbow Museum, and eating at Red Lobster (some people had over 100 endless shrimp!). But, one of the biggest highlights of Calgary no doubt is…
The namesake of our trip, BeakerHead, is a massive and role science/art display that is set up all over the Calgary for a period of time, and it was awesome! Everywhere you looked there was a new exhibit to look at and explore, transforming the city into a world of wonder. This included musical seesaws that lit up the night, musical cubes, a wall of dragon eyes screens, a building covered with bubble balloons, a gateway to “mars”, and giant wheels with flip book animation surrounding them.
Some of the bigger highlights include the elevator to the moon, which was and exhibit in the Calgary tower. Using a mix of virtual reality and amazing CGI screens at the top, it feels like we actually travelled out of this world! There was also something pretty neat, that was arguably the symbol of this year’s Beakerhead extravaganza, the Serpent Mother. It is a massive metal snake structure centered in the middle of the beaker head sculpture field, that at night spits fire! It is also an animatronic and can move its head and open its mouth, and when the night is dark enough, its massive egg that it is guarding opens and releases a spray of coloured flames in a spectacular show. This was truly something incredible to see.
What would be a trip to Calgary without a trip to the Dinosaur capital of the world! For one of our days in Calgary, we set off the visit drumheller, which was to me the most fun of all the days. We started off visiting the Royal Tyrell Museum of Paleontology and got to see hundreds of ancient species (I took way too many photos)! After that, we got an outdoor tour of the badlands and got to see some hoodoos, volcanic soil, and even a petrified tree stump. Then we watched an interesting show and learned what is considered a dinosaur and what isn’t, and were able to apply this knowledge to a neat assignment. After we left the museum, we got to venture into the World’s Largest Dinosaur statue and drive through a little more of this unique and awesome landscape.
The Way Home:
After Calgary, we began to head back home, but our trip was not over yet. We drove through Banff and stopped at a natural hot spring cave. It was neat to learn that this was used as a healing place for native tribes of the areas (despite it not smelling too good). Later, we even got to go in a public hot spring pool and it was a neat experience. The next day we traveled to the Columbia Ice Field and got to walk on a glacier, and even drink some melted water from it! We also went on a skywalk area and saw a mountain goat.
Then, when all was wrapping up we visited the Enchanted Forest, had an epic Chinese buffet dinner (with unlimited wafer cookies!), and headed back to Seycove. This is when arguably the highlight of the trip happened, for the PLP Grade 9 class can not merely drive to Seycove. Instead, we turned the bus speakers to the max, turned on the Final Countdown, and drove into Seycove screaming the lyrics and bewildering the parents. Best. Bus rave. Ever!!!
The Videos:
Every grade in PLP focuses on a certain aspect of media production, and Grade 9’s is film making. So naturally, a trip to such as this was full of video making, both individual and in groups. Our first video actually began production on the first one the day of the trips beginning. We were tasked with making a fiction video in a group at the ghost town we visited that would be around 3-5 minutes.
Our group was composed of Owen, Adlih, Luca O, and Me, and we decided to make ours about a ghost zombie cowboy who arises from the dead to search for his long lost treasure, but has to adapt to modern society. To start off making the film, we split into main roles (director, camera person, etc.) and then made sure we were all on the same page with the ideas. We then started filming, and used previous shot ideas as well as things that came to us then to get the angles, lighting, and scenes just right. We realized later on that we may not have enough time to shoot everything, but we didn’t let that stop us and took an alternative route with the plot to have it finished on time. In the end, we got all the shots and I was pretty happy with our product and our team work. If I had to do this again, I would make sure that I planned how long things would take better so we would not run out of time.
The next video we were making were individual non fiction documentary style films. Everyone got to choose a different place and make it throughout the trip. I chose to do mine on the Royal Tyrell Museum of Palaeontology due to my love of dinosaurs, and found a really neat story while researching it. It is about a fossil that was found near Fort Mcmurray that is so well preserved that its scales and tissue are well intact.
It is said to be the best preserved armoured dinosaur fossil in the world, and this got me quite interested. In order to shoot my video on this, I first started a day before hand planning out some of the main shots I would need to get, along with writing a script for my video. Then, when we arrived at the museum, I took lots of videos and pictures from different angles of the dinosaur, along with lots of B-roll footage. I also talked to people visiting the museum to hear about their thoughts on the discovery. During editing, it picked out appropriate music, transitions, and recorded audio, and I was ready to hand it in. If I were to do it again, I would take even more videos and photos from different angles, to make the video more diverse.
Another video we worked on at the museum was a one minute documentary on a species of dinosaur we found particularly interesting. I decided to do mine on the Dimetrodon, a prehistoric predator that was the top on land at it’s time. Using my new found knowledge that it technically isn’t a dinosaur, I was able to tell a fascinating story in a very short time. Now this video for me was probably the hardest one for me to complete because my iPad died before It and all I had to film was an old iPhone, but going back to the roots of PLP learning, I didn’t give up and was able to complete it the next day through some picture transferring magic by Mr. Hughes.
The Final video we worked on was another fiction one that was shot in the mythical Enchanted Forest. It was a group project, and was supposed to be a reflection of all of the movie skills we had learned throughout to the trip, but I feel our group wasn’t too happy with the finished product. This was mainly because we misjudged how much time we would need for filming, and had some fights within the group about creative differences. Yet, although our video wasn’t what we hoped it to be, I feel that we actually succeeded because we learned some valuable lessons from it. I personally learned that sometimes you need to change parts of an original plan in order to accommodate for a group or for obstacles such as time restraints.
What I’ve Learned
Before we left for the trip, I was sure I’d learn a lot about film shooting and editing, but after it, I realized that I had also learned a lot about other things as well. One crucial thing that I discovered was that not everything has as much time to complete as you might hope. I usually complete work by giving myself some time to think and plan it while doing some minor arranging, but when assignments came out of the blue and I was given a group to work with, I sometimes wasn’t prepared and didn’t have a plan. This was hard for me, but I’ve realized now that I’m better at coming up with solutions on the fly and that will help me a lot in future work.
I also learned about the importance of b-roll footage, and how much can be done through editing. This was particularly useful in my dinosaur video, because I did not have that much footage of the actual dinosaur, but found a lot of my scenes would do well with some of my extra footage. Now these lessons were great to learn, sure, but I feel the real thing I took away from this is BRING LOTS OF IPAD CHARGERS. I started out the trip with two, but then I lost my charging block in my bag. Later I found it, but then lost my cord, and realized the other one was for old iPhones only. I bought another cord from the store, but it broke, so I then used Owen’s portable charger, but it died. So, after all of this, I decided to do what any logical person would do. I ended up taking a French fry and surprisingly charging my iPad 2%, and learned that my iPad spontaneously charges itself every hour up to 21%.
This trip was definitely an exciting, weird, crazy, but fun one. I feel like I’m a lot closer to some of the people in my class now, and have taken away some great skills. This was truly an adventure that I will remember fondly, and make sure to stay tuned for part two in Ottawa this spring!