Hey guys, for the last six weeks we’ve been learning about revolutions across history to see if we could answer the driving question of this project: How do ideas drive change? To help us answer this question we got to create four different videos based on different revolutions. These videos were then assessed on three competencies: Cause and Consequence, Evidence, and Create and Extend Shared Understanding. There was also another competency that related to a book that we read for this project called Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly, the competency was: Text Comprehension and Appreciation Strategies. I hope to use this blog post to answer the driving question while also showing how competent I am in these different competencies.
https://youtu.be/Rc-by99-xAc
The first thing I’m going to talk about is our video that was based on the French Revolution. Since this video was first one Ciara, Holly, Finn, and I made together we we had some difficulty with the competencies. When we started to create a screenplay for our video which we had decided would tell the story of the revolution through acting it out in our video. Although everyone had great ideas on what should happen in the video I found that we had problem getting them down onto paper which lead to many unorganized shots that Finn then had to put into a timeline in the video that made sense. The product of this was a half asked mess that although barely showed the causes and consequences of the revolution was lacking the necessary evidence that would have been needed to have a valid point in the video. However, although the video may have lacked in the Evidence competency, I feel like I was very competent in the Create and Extend Shared Understanding competency. I shared all my ideas of how we could show the causes and consequences of the revolution and built my ideas off of others ideas as well. I also listened to everyone’s else’s ideas and shared my opinions on them which were mostly positive since everyone in my group were very competent in this competency as well.
The next video we made was about the American Revolution and we decided to do a rap for this one. We did a lot better on the screenplay for this video because Holy was in charge of it and made some amazing lyrics for our video that we then based all the shots in the video on. However no video is without mistake, and for this video we came up with the idea that Ciara would represent the Americans while Holly represented the British. Our mistake here was that although we made each shot look like Ciara was fighting Holly, just like how the Americans were fighting the British, we forgot to show that Holly and Ciara represented the two countries. This lead to a very confusing rap video with Ciara repeatedly beating up Holly. I believe that the competency that I was most competent in for this video was evidence. I believe this because I used the rap and footage that we had gotten in our video, in a way that showed evidence from online sources of the causes and consequences that were said in the lyrics.
Our third video surrounded the Russian Revolution which took place in 1917. For this video we decided to switch it up a bit and do a video that was in a John Green format, which meant that there was media mixed in with our hosts talking about the revolution. I was supposed to write the screenplay for this video but I was away that day so Holly had to do it instead. That meant that I was editor again. This video was a complete mess, because since it was John Green style we thought that it had to include as much information as possible about the evidence for the causes and consequences of this revolution. This lead to the video being over four minutes long with nothing but explanations and examples of the causes and consequences of the revolution. To make things worse, the day before the video was due and the day we had only just finished filming was Halloween, so one of my group members were out all night and didn’t send me the video to edit until class that day. I luckily was able to finish our video before Ms.Maxwell said she would look at our videos and giving us our final grade on them. The competency I feel I was most competent at for this video was Create and Extend Shared Understanding. I feel this way because I shared my ideas on revising the script and making it shorter while still keeping the main parts of it that we had to keep.
Before we get to the final video I would like to talk about our creative book reflection. The book that we had read for this project was called Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly, like I said at the start. What we had to do to show our reflection on the book and if we had actually read it was to make a reflection in a way that you wouldn’t usually do it. I decided to write a short story that is set in an universe where Louise Charles doesn’t die of poor treatment from his captors. Instead he is assassinated in his cell by a guard who is part of a plot to kill the prince and put him out of his misery, because he is still being treated badly by his captors. I used this story to show the theme in the book about how many historical details can be lost over time like Amede Malurbeau’s real name. I believe I was able to show my competence in the competency Text Compression and Appreciation Strategies. I believe this because I read Revolution and was able to understand a smaller theme in the book that would have been overlooked by many while they read it.
https://youtu.be/nP9PPqGf7K0
Now for the final video, we decided we would focus on the Troubles, which was a civil war/revolution between Ireland and Britain from the 1969-1998. We also decided that since our last rap video had gone so well we would make this one a rap video as well. For this video I was the screenplay writer but Holly was still writing the lyrics because she was so good at it. One problem I had while writing the screenplay was that I was going off of Holly’s lyrics and was trying to show what was going on. This lead me to creat e an overly complicated screenplay that we had to scrap because it took too much time to shoot it and the video would’ve been late. I feel like I was very competent in the Causes and Consequences competency because I figured out what the causes and consequences of the revolution was and tried to show them on my screenplay even if the screenplay was too hard to shoot.
In conclusion, although we did have some technical errors and weren’t the best at communicating we were still able to pull off some great videos. I was able to become competent in all flour of the competencies for this project, and I have come up with an answer to the driving question. Idea’s drive change by being based in a common unrest that the masses will hook onto and use to power their fury, like in the Russian Revolution when Vladimir Lenin saw the unhappiness in the people and created the idea that maybe they should be getting more than they are right now.