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Thnks Fr Th Mmrs

How do we remember the past? This question is key when it comes to history. Like, obviously.

The first past we’re looking at is apparently our own. At first, I thought this was kind of redundant. You know…I’m 18. Nothing that interesting has happened to me yet. Although I realized that we didn’t have to write the biography for the most interesting person in the world, we just had to come up with what about our history matters to us.

We had to come up with four events and present them visually. Not going to lie, it took me a LONG time to figure out how I was going to present these. Although the way I ultimately chose may look…like kinda weird. I like it, although I’m not sure everyone will. I went for a scrapbook style, and it looks messy, and kind of unfinished. I did it this way because I think that better represents how a memory feels than a bunch of typed text.

What I did to create these memory card things was kind of complicated but actually not at all. First I would write what I wanted to say, headlines, and drawings on blank paper with sharpies. Then, I would scan what I had written on to my computer. Then I would proceed to send those scans to my iPad, where I would make the writing transparent without any backgrounds or borders. I would then send it back to my computer, where the photos were (some of which I had to scan in as well), and overlay the text on the images until everything fit properly.

This is how that turned out, and a little bit about why I chose each memory.

First: My Birth.

Well, I chose this one because it was mandatory, but I think it actually has a kind of interesting story behind it…or maybe not but it happened either way. I was a pretty cool baby, though. I went to Vegas three weeks later and got turnt. Just kidding.

I still haven’t got a clear answer as to why my mother took a 3 week old baby to Vegas.

Second: The Day I Broke My Leg.

So, I wasn’t thinking about doing this memory until I asked my sister if she would record an interview about the day I was born, and she suggested she do this day instead because she thought it was funny that she got to eat ice cream and pizza while I was in the hospital. I obviously don’t have photos from the day I actually broke my leg, but I have a lot of me with that bright yellow cast. Breaking my leg really did change me, so I do think it’s a good defining memory about myself. I wasn’t allowed to play for an entire summer because of that broken leg, and it has made me a less active person. Before I broke it, I loved running around, but because I spent 8 weeks getting in trouble when I did it, that love faded. If I could go back and change that day…I honestly probably would.

Third: The Day We Got Baden.

This one was a no brainer for me. My dog, Baden, changed everything in my household. The family dynamic was altered by this tyrant, but it was me who was ultimately changed by this dog. He was an untrainable anxious mess but I spent his whole life taking his side even when I shouldn’t have. Having Baden put me through a lot but I also learned a lot. What I really learned from this dog was what it means to love something for more than it’s worth, and that illogical love will sometimes make you fight a battle that you will never win.

Lastly: My First Trip To Disney World.

I know, I know. This one is kind of…really? But I really did go on this trip sobbing like a five year old because I was really scared of the rides. To me, this marks the first time I would fight one of my fears and win. That’s important for me, cause I had a lot of fears coming later that I never would have suspected. Sure, I didn’t go on every roller coaster, but I went on enough that when I went to Disneyland a year later, I was able to go on everything (except Tower of Terror, that one would take a few more years).

My “podcast” is um…a loose interpretation of a podcast. Honestly, I’m not sure if this counts but I decided that I’m going to take the risk of handing this in, mostly because I won’t be able to take academic risks next year…so like, why not?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Z4ygVSbsQk

(it did kind of take awhile).

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I Am Your Host Julie Chen. Welcome To The Big Brother House.

Before I start this post I want to mention that my geography class takes place in the same room as my English class, and today we were sitting in geography when my friend pointed to these projects taped to the wall and said they creeped her out. When I told her that they were made by grade 12, she was seemingly even more creeped out.

That’s all the proof you really need that my class isn’t really full of artistic types.

Anyways, for this assignment, I worked with Stanfield, Spencer, Maria, and Luciano. When tasked with picking a character to do our metaphor man on, we picked quickly.

And then other groups picked our top 3 choices, so we got stuck with Mr. Charrington.

We actually had a benefit in this project, that both I and Luc had already read 1984. That means we should have avoided the second mistake that we made in originally building. We made two large mistakes.

I’m not really sure who to blame the first one on. Basically, we used green paper for a green screen project. Although we didn’t know it was a green screen project yet, so…. more on that later.

Anyways, we when we first started this assignment, we hadn’t finished the book and didn’t know Mr. Charrington was actually a member of the thought police, so when we had the second class period, we had to erase everything and start again.

What we ended up with was splitting Mr. Charrington in half. One side shows his fake “prole” side that we see for most of the novel, and the other side represents his secret identity as a thought police member.

What Each Part Represents

Cane: Mr. Charrington is passing himself off as a frail old man.

Outturned Pocket: He has no money.

Patches on Clothes: He cannot afford nice things/they’re not available to him.

Cutout on Hand: This was supposed to be the blue antique paperweight Winston buys, however, we had to use a blue screen so it cut out.

Cutout of Heart: This has a few representations. The heart is on the wrong side of his body because his heart is “in the wrong place”, and Big Brother is peaking out because his heart shows his true self.

Tears: Mr. Charrington is lonely because his wife died.

Ball and Chain: Like the rest of Oceania, Mr. Charrington is trapped in his boring routine of life.

Red Fist: The red fist of oppression.

Face: On the left side, Mr. Charrington has a kinder face, and on the right, it’s much more stoic and somewhat resembles 1940’s and 50’s dictators.

IMG_1148-recs6g

The video is shaky and kind of awful, but it’s because we had to make a tiny blue screen….I am sorry.

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Reviewing a “Movie” I Wrote Myself: Locked In

What makes horror horrifying? In the case of Locked In, the movie created by our Grade 12 English class, I’m surprised it’s there at all. But, somehow, somewhere, we do find moments in our no-budget student film that make you jump. The production might have been a low-key failure, but the movie ended up having some hidden greatness in it. Some of the camerawork and shots are especially incredible, and I want to give props to the people that made that happen (directors, cinematographers, and storyboarders). Look at how great some of these shots are that I snagged from the movie.

We do also find some horror in the horror movie (thank god) that actually works. But why does it work?

Let’s look at the Elements of Aversion, as written by Elizabeth Barriette. They’re split into two categories: Absence and Presence.

In absence falls all of the questions: what we don’t know and how these questions haunt us. What are those things? Are they human? and Can they be stopped? are all questions you’ll find yourself asking when watching Locked In. Although you may also ask yourself “What in the world is going on, and why do none of these characters do anything that makes sense?” on a few occasions, the core questions come out, and we are scared of these “figures” in the masks because we can’t really be sure what they are. They seem to appear and disappear at an inhuman rate, and do not act or move like a person would. This choice in making them inhuman was integral to making these elements of absence work properly. To fear them, we cannot know too much about them, and I think this is accomplished well, especially in a few key scenes where they seem to appear out of thin air.

We then have the elements of presence, in which what we know and what comfort us is intruded upon. Here we must face helplessness, urgency, and we find our horrific rhythm. I think in certain scenes, this has been done quite well. The helplessness that each character feels when faced with the deaths of their classmates translates relatively well,  and once the rhythm picks up, it is balanced quite well with the releases of death.

I think that this movie shows more than we give it credit for. While it may not be a masterpiece, it does show, in small parts, that we do understand horror. And we learned that it’s a lot harder to translate on to a screen that it seems to be.

Especially within a two-week time limit.

If you’re interested, here’s a low-res version of it for your viewing…uh…pleasure?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwD8aCgTo30&t=1s

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Satire

What’s the difference between satire and parody?

Well, what’s the difference between Family Guy’s first and fifteenth season? Or Shrek and Shrek: The Final Chapter? And no, the answer is not better animation.

If you’re inclined to say “well, first of all, it used to be funny”, you’re kinda right. Kinda. 

Satire has a point. It’s what makes a lot of things funny to people over the age of 15. Even if you can no longer find the humor in fart jokes and puns, you will always find the humor in making fun of people for good reason. It’s why so many people get their news via John Oliver. Everything is an in-joke if you’re on the right side. If you’re making fun of someone for a good reason, it’s no longer a mean parody. It’s satire.

Once you get the hang of it, it’s pretty easy to establish one from the other. Except then you realize that satire and parody are not mutually exclusive and it gets confusing all over again. SNL can bounce back and forth from skit to skit with ease.

I still can’t believe I missed the day we watched Shrek in class.

I love Shrek.

I got back from a week of sickness and hiking up a mountain to find that I was supposed to do a project on satire. I can do that! I love being mean in a way that nobody can get mad at you for because it’s true!

Though I honestly couldn’t think of anything to do a satire on. The assignment said to base it on something I’m passionate about, but I don’t think I can satirize One Direction since they don’t really exist…

After some brainstorming with my dad (thanks, dad), I decided I was going to do it on climate change deniers. My idea was pretty simple: A newscaster is doing a story on why climate change isn’t real but keeps on getting interrupted by breaking news that is proving him otherwise.

I didn’t wanna be in a video, though.

Uh, dad, can you drive me to Granville Island and buy me a puppet?

Thanks again, dad.

I named him Jimothy.

In class, I wrote the script and all that jazz. I knew I was going to have to use a green screen, but for some reason, I didn’t want to film at school, and someone else claimed the green screen for the weekend so I had to become a crafter.

Building your own green screen is really annoying when you don’t have a light green sheet.

Okay, it’s really not that bad. I only had to drape a sheet over a couple CD shelves (yeah, my family still has fully stocked CD shelves), use masking tape to attach green construction paper to the sheet, and get like three lamps so it’s well lit enough.

And here’s the final product:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWWwd4bNCeo

Here’s the thing: I don’t think my video is actually very funny. I didn’t really know how to make it funnier. It’s only ironic, not funny. I don’t know if it can count as satire if it’s not funny. Either way, it’s here, and….and I made it. So, uh, yeah.

RIP.

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Is Innocence Beneficial or Detrimental to Society?

In 1937, Walt Disney released the first fully animated feature film in history. What was seen as a massive risk paid off, with Snow White and The Seven Dwarves being such a success that 80 years later, the film still holds a 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The film was revered by audiences and critics alike, as it was thought to capture a beautiful childlike innocence that was previously considered too silly for a full motion picture. A critic by the name of John C. Flinn Sr. would write “So perfect is the illusion [of the film], so tender the romance and fantasy,” predicting the success of Seven Dwarves and the entire career of Walt Disney. The entire world was in love with Walt Disney’s smart yet wonderful world, until suddenly, not everybody was.

The same people who were calling praising Disney’s work would turn against him in the years to follow. The praise of Seven Dwarves and Fantasia would slowly turn into bitter remarks of how Disney had lost his magic, murdering the classics like Peter Pan with his all too innocent take on them.  While the masses were still flocking to Walt Disney Pictures, critics and “intellectuals” began to criticize Disney’s films. They would begin to believe that “Walt Disney had the innate bad taste of the American public”. This criticism of Disney’s films would continue from the 1940’s all the way until the 1990’s, with some critics still believing that Disney is entirely too innocent.

But what does that mean? Does innocence really harm out society as much as the critics like to think it does? I asked some of my friends what they thought about Disney movies being too innocent,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwrHO6lW51g&t=0s

although I figured that I should probably look beyond the people I sit lunch with.

In, Lord of The Flies, a novel that my class read this term, (and you probably read in high school, too), there is a very signifigant quote near the end of the book on this topic. The quote states that “Ralph wept for the end of innocence”. To me, this quote means that innocence is something that benefits society. Although I could directly say that if Ralph was still innocent, he would not be crying, there is more than that to the quote. This quote proves that humanity relies on innocence to be reminded of the good in the world.

This exact concept is also explored in the Shakespeare play Macbeth. Macbeth, at the beginning of the play, is a medieval lord version of innocent.  Although the man was a war hero, meaning he sliced off the heads of a lot of people, he was doing so out of what he believed was a true belief in the good. At this point, Macbeth was innocent to the corruption and thoughts of power that would overtake him once he was exposed to them. Once evil ideas were put into his head by the 3 Witches and his wife Lady Macbeth, he loses himself and becomes a completely different person, showing once again that without innocence, goodness is lost.

We can mirror this concept a third time in the novel Three Day Road. Before heading off to war,  both Xavier and Elijah are innocent to the horrors of war. Being exposed to these horrors is what turns Elijah into a ruthless and insane killer, while Xavier, who removes himself from the other men as much as possible, stays somewhat innocent and therefore does not go crazy like his friend.

All of these examples point to one thing: Innocence is beneficial. Perhaps not on a global, political, or community scale. However, innocence is important when it comes to personal well-being. Without innocence, we become shells of who we once were, as we are exposed to evils and lose the faith and hope we once had. This is why it is important for there to be innocent movies for our children, so that they may grow up believing there is good in the world. Without that belief, it is likely that nobody would strive towards goodness, and humanity would have been gone a long time ago.

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Is Nuclear Testing Bad For The Tourism Industry?

Hoooooo boy.

This one was a doozy.

I don’t know exactly where to start with this unit. It was a lot for me to take in, and I’m not really sure how to talk about it, so I guess I’ll just be honest with my feelings on the internet. That’s always a good idea.

This unit involved the concept of fear, the history surrounding the cold war, and, well, a whole lot of other stuff. With this, we were to create a video to answer this question: How does fear affect behavior?

Part of me feels like I lived the answer. Since I was a small child, I have dealt with a pretty big fear of natural disasters, global warming, war, bombs, black holes, asteroids, and pretty much anything that had the power to end the world. I’ve always been deathly afraid of the end of the world. Of course, our unit focusing on fear during the cold war all revolved around that topic. My anxiety got really bad, the worst it’s ever been. There was an entire weekend where I walked up and down the street all day, counting my steps because I couldn’t stand the thought of thinking about the reasons I was so afraid. Trump had just gotten into office, and the whole world seemed mad at each other (they still are, but I’m better at ignoring it now). While studying the cold war and looking at current events, I couldn’t help but see the parallels.

I learned a lot about how fear affects behavior in those few months.

Fear can stop you from going to class.

Fear can stop you from getting out of bed.

Fear can make you delete Facebook because you can’t stand to see a news article.

Fear can completely control your life.

Although you can’t let that happen. If you let fear completely take over your brain, you’re barely a person anymore. You become a shaking ball of anxiety that doesn’t have a life quality over that of a mollusk. That’s not okay. Which is why I forced myself to get better and calm down. Of course, it wasn’t as easy as that sentence made it sound, but I’m okay now. That’s really all that matters.

After I got over that minor (major) hiccup, I had to focus on putting that to words, and to video. I wrote an essay, then re-wrote it, and I’m still not really sure if I re-wrote it better or worse because I don’t thin I got feedback the second time, but that’s okay. I’m pretty sure it got better. I’ll attach my final essay below.

Finally, I had to put it to video. I did my video twice, just like my essay, because my first video was kind of lame and also I decided to switch to using Final Cut Pro on my laptop instead of continuing with iMovie because iMovie and I have a long and complicated history and I no longer trust it. I’m not really sure what to say about making this video.

It’s not like it was super challenging. It was pretty time-consuming. I worked on it for many hours, over many days.

I’m tired. Here’s the end result.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLxapP1D8FU

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Here’s My Canada: My Story

I had a completely different plan for this video. Although, there is a problem with my brain. If I have a vision in my head, and I cannot make that vision come to life…well, then I can’t use that idea at all without thinking it’s absolutely terrible. So after an hour of filming and realizing that idea is never going to work, I had to think of something else. Fast.

The first thing I did was try to get inspiration from my footage roll. I figured I must have some video of Canda somewhere, so I dug out my hard-drive.

As it turns out, I have footage of every place I’ve ever been that’s not in Canada. I have Disneyland, Disneyworld, Seattle, NYC, Honduras, Oregon, The South. I even have Alaska! But I literally never film anything in Canada, because I don’t feel the need to remember anything here, because why would I?

Then I remembered that I actually do film my life, and so does nearly every single person I know. All the best bits of my day-to-day life are saved right in my Snapchat memories folder. So I went looking through my Snapchat memories to find the best things I could that would represent my life. It was simultaneously easier and harder than I thought. I put all the stuff I thought was good into iMovie, except I then learned I had picked over 5 minutes of footage for a 30 second video. To fix this, I first axed everything that was only funny because of the audio, or said anything even slightly bad in it (there wasn’t a lot of that, because my life isn’t very exciting). Then I just had to cut down and rearrange the video until it made sense.

But then I really wanted it to feel like you were watching my Snapchat story, so I wanted to do a screencap of my phone. I didn’t know how to do this and I panicked for a second when I look it up and it said that I would have to jailbreak my phone. But then, I realized all that I had to do was plug my phone into my computer and use Quicktime. So that was a LOT easier than I thought it was going to be. The other thing I had to do was put my name and “2m ago” in the corner of the video, which was easy cause all I did was download some video making app called Vont and use that.

Originally, I wanted to put voice over over top of my video, but I decided that wouldn’t make as much sense with this kind of video, as I felt it kind of spoke for itself. So instead, I decided to find some creative commons music and put that over top. I think I found some that more or less expressed the mood I was going for.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTcZnTEt1qo

I don’t really think this video will win, because whoever is judging this might not like it very much.

Then again, even our Prime Minister uses Snapchat.

Although I honestly really don’t care if it wins, because I like it a lot and think it really expresses what My Canada is.

UPDATE: Here’s my video on the site!! Go vote for me!

http://www.heresmycanada.ca/videos/heres-my-canada-my-story-2/

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BREAKING NEWS: Halifax got ANNIHILATED in 1917

I didn’t think anything interesting ever happened in Nova Scotia. Like, it’s one of those provinces (50% of the provinces) that I mostly forget exists because nothing has ever happened there that seemed interesting. Also, the world revolves around me and where’s I live which is Vancouver so Vancouver is obviously the most important Canadian city.

Well, I must have been wrong because holy crudshack did Halifax get crazy in 1917. Things really BLEW UP there. Heh.

No, but like 2000 people died it was pretty bad. And 2000 people dying is like, a HUGE deal back then. If I heard an explosion caused 2000 deaths today I would probably just be like “another awful day in 2016”. Unless it was in Canada because as I said before, I live in Canada and the world revolves around me.

I don’t really want to just regurgitate information to you, so if you’re interested in all the exact details of what happened with the Halifax explosion. Here are a few links:

Also here’s a song someone wrote about it:

For our assignment, we had to work in groups to create a news report about what happened in Halifax that day. Since my group was just me and Matthew, we did a breaking news report. We didn’t have a whole bunch of people so we weren’t able to a newsroom-esque video.

https://youtu.be/HkhzVwNS_zM

 

 

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My Near Death Experience With Video Editing

In September, our class learned about nuclear war.

It was terrifying, but of course I just kind of had to ignore that part and stop being dramatic. Cause I had work to do.

Ensues an adventure/nightmare/learning experience that almost made me drop out of school to become a burger flipper.

Okay, I’m being dramatic again.

The actual trip we went on was great and informative and really fun. Instead of telling you everything we did, I’m just going to insert a really fun looking video that hopefully tells some kind of narrative and lets you know what kind of things we did on the trip.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZ494qDxiTU

CLICK HERE FOR PHOTOS

Once we got back is when the real trouble began. We had to make a video, and this video caused me a lot of pain and suffering. My group and I (Spencer, Stanfield, Luciano, & Matt) handed in our final draft a week after everyone else because of our busy schedules and technical difficulties. First of all, it was a lot of editing. I had to fully edit the movie 5 or 6 times, and of I’m being honest, I’m like, barely happy with the results.

The first video we made was a scratch video, so we knew we were going to have to reflim everything we were doing, and we were 100% okay with it, because it wasn’t very good. We were just trying to get formatting down. It ended up not looking great, tbh. You can click here to view it.

The second draft was when things got serious, so I brought in my DSLR camera to film everything nicely. That took about two days. Then, I had to actually start seriously editing. I did my best, but I wasn’t able to complete it how I wanted it in the time I had. I didn’t have the interviews in place, and the editing was only finished for like, the first third of the video. Click here to see what ended up being handed in.

The third draft was when all hell broke loose. I spent hours working on this thing, and THEN IT CRASHED and I had a breakdown and everything was awful.

img_0841

It actually fixed itself the next day, but it was still traumatizing. I was completely drained of everything I had in me. I finished the video, and then I did my best to forget the whole thing ever happened. In fact, here is a poem from the book Teen Angst Poetry that really represents how I felt in that period of time. Anyways, here is the video we ended up with.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEq_feT_2rw

What I’ve learned from this experience seems to be what I’m learning time and time again: effort doesn’t always mean anything. I put literal blood sweat and tears into this project, and it still didn’t come out like I would have hoped. Meanwhile, I can put pretty much no effort into something and it will turn out great.

I’m not sure exactly why I can never feel satisfied with projects like this. Sometimes it’s almost like the more I work on something, the worse it gets. Maybe that’s because I have a higher expectation for things I spend a long time on. I can always confirm that they are objectively worse. I even think that 2 minute video at the beginning ended up better than this video that I spent at least a dozen hours on. Working hard doesn’t mean anything when your end result looks like it wasn’t worked hard on.

This doesn’t mean I’m going to stop working hard on stuff, it just means the world is unfair.

Agh.

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What if Canada Opened Our Doors to Everyone?

In the Laurier ages of Canada, we were practically begging people to come on in and take our land. We needed the people to fill up the land that we didn’t want to be taken by America (of course we took no regard to the people who had been living on those lands for hundreds of years).

We used an open-door immigration policy to fill up all that space. It worked, for the most part. We were able to bring in enough people to claim the land as Canadian.

I’ve noticed that immigration is a touchy subject now in Canada, with all the refugees we’ve brought in. It seems like it might have been just as a touchy subject a hundred years ago when the government invited a whole bunch of people in.

But what would happen if we did what they did back then, and just kinda opened up our doors? I tried to figure it out. I wrote a script

screenshot-2016-11-14-10-58-38

and I have made an accompained video to futher explain my understanding.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmPjj33y3z0

 

This video was actually very simply made. I used the Explain Everything app to make the video, and was able to make clear visuals that help enhance what I had written in my script.  My one issue that I often have with this app is I’m not sure if you can do the animations sepretely from when you’re recording your voice. If you can, I’ve never been able to figure it out.

Either way, my EE skills have improved a lot from when I first used the app. As I continue to use this app throughout the year, I hope that I can begin to understand more the features avaliable to me so I can make videos with better animations.

 

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