For the last month and a bit in our humanities class we have been working on Frankenstuffies. If you don’t know what that is I’m sure it sound completely absurd but it’s not if you look deeper into it. Frankenstuffies is a project where we practice our video making and writing skills by chopping up some stuffies and putting them back together. We have to tell a story about our own Frankenstuffie that includes some science too, then turn it into a movie.
At the beginning of this project I had to write a story that was divided into six parts or episodes kind of like Star Wars. In this part of the project I really had to focus on what makes a story a story. This was a beginning, middle, and end. Along with different parts of the story being the introduction, rising action, climax and so on. In my story a polar bear named ursus was being threatened by climate change. If you want to see some of the story it’s right here.
After a peer critique and a teacher critique I had to turn my finished story into a script for my video, although this may sound easy it is not. This took about a whole. week because in the script we were encouraged to lots of detail and any changes we may want also to add shots and camera angles too. The reason I tried to add shots and camera angles is because my teachers kept telling me “the less post production the better”.
Once I was finished and critiqued with my script, my next task was to create a story board so I had an exact idea and a reference for when I made my movie. In my story board there were thirty six panels explaining different shots and events in my story. The storyboard doesn’t make much sense unless I explain it one on one. It basically shows what section of the story I’m in a very rough sketch of the shot I’m using there and the audio that will be used there.
Finally, my movie. After all the preparation I was ready to begin shooting my movie. This was done in two parts, pre-transformation and post-transformation. This was because my stuffie transformed in the middle of my movie to show how he will adapt to his quickly changing environment. For the pre-transformation section I mostly used green screen and the app explain everything to create my movie. I also used the app superimpose to create some still shots. These apps made things much easier because I could manipulate the shots any way I liked totally create a more real environment. For the second half my stuffed polar bear combined with a seal I did this by sewing a seal stuffie and my polar bear stuffie together. I also used a lot os superimpose and explain everything for this section of the movie. To edit my movie I used iMovie. My final draft of my Frankenstuffie movie is below.
On the other side of the project there was science. The scientific part of this story was including a matter cycle into my story. The matter cycle I chose was the carbon cycle. I chose it because I thought it was a good cycle to show global warming and how much of an impact the cycles really have. I also though it was the cycle that would be the most interesting in my video.
Reflecting on this project, I think it was really good at making you learn lots more video skills. I learned lots of new i movie skills and filming tips and tricks. Along with more skills at certain apps and the green screen. Another thing I learned in this project is how getting ahead is sooooo important because In the future when you have too much to do you can take a bit of a break so you don’t become overloaded. This project also helped me learn the natural cycles of water, carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus along with how they are important to the earth. I think it was a really fun project too and I only think it could improve in two ways. The first way is that it needed a bit more planning because we had lots and lots of time to make the storyboard but not that much time at all to make the actual video. The second thing is that it could have done a little bit of a better job at integrating science and humanities. I think it was a good idea but it need a little more refining. Overall I think it was a great project because it was challenging and fun.