On September 9th the grade 9s of PLP departed for Calgary. This is going to be the long and great blog post about it. Im going to talk about a lot because I want to be able to give the link to anyone who asks about Calgary so I don’t have to repeat a breakdown of the trip to everyone who asks. “How was Calgary?” “Great.” (trying to not get into what we did because that would take hours) “What did you do?” Oh no. I’m going to talk about some of my favourite/most important parts of this trip, because if I talked about everything…. Well….. lets just say you would be here for a while.

REVELSTOKE – SEPTEMBER 9th. GHOST TOWN VIDEO.

On the first day of the trip, we arrived in third valley gap. We were assigned to make a less than 10 minute fictional video on anything we wanted. The day before we left we were put in groups, and had to figure out what we were going to do. I was in a group with Jamie, Robin and Melika. We all started throwing ideas around, and well… Ended up with something  interesting.

I cant really breakdown the story too much because in reality it’s just a goofy video that was fun to film and edit (filming done by all of us and editing by me.) But, it definitely included time management because we had 1 hour to film, when told we would have 2, and creativity because well, a pineapple is the murder. I think this video ended up as we expected, funny, interesting and different.

 

MIDDLE OF NO WHERE – SEPTEMBER 10th. NORTHERN WILDLIFE WOLF CENTRE.

We didn’t have to do a project or anything on this, but I just wanted to share pictures of these wolfs because why not.

Some of these wolf were taken from fur factory’s when puppy’s, and there now here at the northern wildlife wolf centre to raise awareness about how important wolves are. I never new they were such important predators for the ecosystems in North America until after the very educated wolf lady told us about it all. I would get into it but that would take a while, here’s a link that can inform you on it more. Link.

 

CALGARY – SEPTEMBER 11th. GLENBOW MUSEUM.

Like the one before, I didn’t have to do project or video on this, but I definitely think its worth mentioning. Eric Lafferty Harvie Was the founder of the Glenbow museum. Oil was discovered on land he owned, causing him much fortune and also causing him to retire from lawyering and pursue his passion collecting. He traveled around the world collecting until his house was stuffed with artifacts. One day he decided to make a museum, and that’s why I’m writing this right now. That’s only crumb of Mr. Harvie’s adventure so press this to learn more.

 

I’m not usually a fan of museums, I always find them boring but this one really made me excited and intrigued because it literally had something about everything

 

DRUMHELLER – SEPTEMBER 12th. DINO PROJECT.

We were given one hour to edit and film a video on any dinosaur, in the Royal Tyrrell Museum. I chose the Prosaurolophus, one of Alberta’s largest hadrosaurs. This was a very stressful process and yes, walking to the bus and editing did happen.

 

 

 

CALGARY – SEPTEMBER 13th. BEAKERHEAD.

“Beakerhead is an annual program that brings together the arts, sciences, and engineering sectors to build, engage, compete, and exhibit interactive works of art, engineered creativity and entertainment.”

Bascially all day on the 13th (10am to 10pm) we walked around downtown Calgary to beakerhead installations. From fire breathing dragons to thousands of balloons taped to a building, it was all very cool. My favourite installation was the Serpent Mother, because it was basically on fire and I was very cold and it kept me warm. Oh and it was just absolutely insanely wonderful too.

 

 

BANFF – SEPTEMBER 14th.

I’m not necessarily going to share any knowledge on Banff, just I want to show some pictures.

 

BANFF – SEPTEMBER 14th. LAKE MINNEWANKA

Lake Minnewanka is a glacial lake located in the eastern area of Banff National Park in Canada. Its also, the most beautiful place I have ever seen. I didn’t know it existed until I was there, and lets just say I couldn’t take my eyes off the area around me. I took so many photos (235 to be exact) but none of them fully capture what I felt there. We went on a boat tour, which I spent on the outside part of the boat freezing my butt off.. (worth the view) I have a urge to take everyone I know there just to share the feeling I had and sight I saw.

 

BANFF – SEPTEMBER 15th. COLUMBIA ICEFIELD TOUR

On this day I stood on 1000 foot deep glacier. We took a fancy bus up to another group of fancy big wheeled bus to the glacier. We only had 15 on the actual glacier but i drank some glacier water, took some pictures and was cold. I just said glacier a lot.

 

 

BANFF – SEPTEMBER 16th. LAKE LOUSIE

Ok so everyone had to make a 3 minute video on somewhere we went on this trip. Mine was Lake Louise. Our task was to tell a non fiction story at our location. I was having trouble with it so I went to Lake Louise with 0 idea I was going to do so I filmed a bunch of random clips and then decided I wanted to interview people on why they were at Lake Louise. I am super shy (yeah I know hard to believe) when it comes to talking to people I dont know, so I ended up only asking 2 people with the help of Ms Maxwell and Adlih (thanks guys.)

Once I got home I started editing it, with no plan and clips of me asking why people went there, pictures of my mom canoeing there at the same age I am now, and a whole lot of over exposed clips of the lake. After a few solid hours I ended up with something I wasn’t happy with. It was all over the place, and even though I made it It didn’t make much sense to me. “What was the story I’m telling?” I asked myself.

The next day I asked for critique from Adlih, Isy, and Daniel. Everyone had commented on different things I should fix, and all the critique together meant basically “Fix the whole thing.” Some people liked certain things and others didn’t. So then, I went to someone I rarely go to, my brother. He watched my video and then really helped me out. He helped me by giving advice which I will use for all the videos I will ever make. And then…. fully restarted my video.  Ill first show you my first draft and then the final draft, which im extremely proud of.

What I learned from this Lake Louise experience:

-Plan before hand what I should film.
-Focus on what story i’m trying to tell
-Don’t be scared to interview strangers, the worst that will happen is if they say no
-Plan out the video before you edit, don’t plan along the way or you will end up with something confusing                                                             -I’m very stubborn when it comes to my work. I could of handed in my 1st or 2nd draft but I didn’t because I knew I could be better

OVERAL THOUGHTS

I definitely think this trip was a success. (Besides the lack of vegetables I ate.) I had a lot of fun, especially with Adlih and Isy now in PLP! (And the addition of Miss Maxwell) This trip was full of education, fun and hard work. Definitely not a vacation because we were so busy, but I really enjoyed it. I will never forget the memories I made and things I learnt.