It’s been two weeks since school’s started and we’ve already had our first overnight trip, this time to Camp Capilano. Grade 8 we focused on the power of still images, mainly in advertising and in grade 9 we created stories with videos. This year we’ve been told we’ll be focusing on the opposite of last year, podcasts. Camp Capilano was pretty much an introduction to this subject as well a way for us to bond as a class and practice our teamwork skills.
To kick things off, before we left for camp we watched some reality tv show intros. There’s a reason I promise, we had to pick them apart and try and find how they intrigue viewers solely with the way the people are displayed and characterized, all without using any dialogue. We then took this knowledge and had to make our own tv intro which would include ten different people as our first project of the trip at Capilano Dam. We only had an hour to do this so my group of Spencer, Hannah, Sydney and Izzy (Hannah, Syd and Izzy don’t have blogs yet since this is their first year of PLP) decided to not plan too much, all we did was list the kinds of people we were going to portray in our video. We decided our tv show would be a competition between teams of two, the players, the nature lovers, the fed up and the clumsy artist, the jocks and the nerds.
Without dialogue it was sort of hard to represent the characters at first but we figured it would be easiest if we brought it back down basics. Kept it simple so it would be easier for the viewer to understand what kind of people we were showing. For an example, the jocks, we had them doing simple workouts, the running up the hill, the push ups, things that everyone knows and can easily pick up on.
After we got to the camp, had some lunch and put our bags in our dorms we were given another assignment. To create an audio only “video” (in other words a podcast) that introduced ten characters that the audience would be able to identify and understand what kind of person they are. It didn’t have to include the same people as the reality tv show intro but we decided to keep the same poeple so we wouldn’t have as much planning to do since once again we were put under pressure and only given an hour to complete it.
Our third and final project in our 24 hour excursion was something totally different than anything else we’ve done in PLP before. We were told to create a a podcast on the topic of identity. That’s it, just identity. We could take it in any direction we wanted, that was probably the hardest part, figuring out what stories we wanted to tell on the topic of identity. For this project my group changed to Mimi and Isobel and we had all night to complete this task. To get started we shared stories about how our identity has kind of taken shape into who we are today. What we ended up deciding on was for us to tell the story of specific events that changed our point of view on the world around us. Mainly focusing on our families.
Now to the critiquing, our project got ripped apart. Everyone loved the stories and how we took a risk going with the personal stories but the audio just ruuuuuuined it. The echoing from our place of recording, the bathroom, the fan in the background, the constant change in volume of the audio, how the music didn’t fit the mood a majority of the time, the list goes on.
Overall this trip was really enjoyable and a great way for our class to get back into the school mindset. We got our first taste of podcasts and was a great way for us to improve further on our teamwork skills.
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