Throughout all of term two and even term one PLP9 has been working on a project that we do every year up until grade ten. If you have been keeping up with my blog then you probably already know that it is Destination imagination or D.I. for short. D.I. is a project where you compete with other teams all over B.C. for a specific challenge you and your group chose.
If we go way back to December in term one this is when we got our teams. We all put down a challenge we wanted (the challenges were scientific, technical, engineering, fine arts or improv) and someone we would work well with. After a few days I found out that I got the scientific challenge and my group members were Daniel, Melika, Luca O.G., Adlih and Kailey. I was really happy with this because I was with my friends and in a challenge that I was excited about. For the rest of term one we got some basic aspects of our story down and our team name which was the Blatherskites. A blatherskite is someone who talks about nothing for a long time. We thought the name would be funny and creative.
After winter break we were into term two and that’s when we really started to get the ball rolling. Over the next month and a half, we made a script, props, costumes and a giant functional fidget spinner. The fidget spinner was one of the main parts of our challenge as we were tasked with creating a ride and a story around it. It was probably the hardest thing to create because we needed to use different group members for different things so only me, Luca OG and Daniel got to work on it. It was a very technical creation because it had to look good and it had to function. We created some decent props and made some progress on our fidget spinner, we knew it wasn’t enough but it was time for our dress rehearsal. After the rehearsal was when we knew we really had to commit to D.I. and put in our best efforts. We had another rehearsal in a week and D.I. in two weeks. In that weeks time we got a lot done. We finished the spinner, improved the quality of all our props, we memorized lines and really started working as more of a team. We missed the next rehearsal because everyone thought it was better to have working time than to rehearse.
It was finally the day we had been preparing for. Over the last few months we had been working hard. It was finally time to present our fabulous creations to the rest of the world. Because D.I. was hosted at Seycove this year for the regional tournament, we had a big advantage as we didn’t have to move our big props by vehicle. At the tournament itself there are two parts to your presentation, the presentation and the instant challenge. The instant challenge is a secretive unknown challenge that is presented to you when your instant challenge time comes. It be could reenacting a talk show or it could be building a tower out of spaghetti sticks, you just never know. The instant challenge is worth 25 percent of your score and the main 75 percent.
First we had our main challenge all things considered it went really smooth. The only thing that didn’t work out as planned was our music. We had created a song in GarageBand to play as background noise for our presentation it was supposed to be played via a Bluetooth speaker but for some reason in our performance it was cutting in and out. Everything else went good in our main challenge though, we remembered lines, used the props properly and took our movement ques well. The instant challenge also went well but I can’t tell you anything about it because I signed that I wouldn’t tell anyone until the global finals happen in May. After it was all over we came third in our challenge. That’s not bad considering we were the youngest in our category and it was our first time doing this challenge.
In reflection D.I. was a real learning experience and it is everytime we do it. If I could redo the whole process again there would be two main things that I would change. First of all I would finish the props earlier so we have more time to tweak our performance and finish all of our forms. If we would’ve been able to tweak it a bit more I think we could’ve solved some minor issues and get more points. The other thing I would’ve changed is to get to know my group members better. If you know someone better you can work together like puzzle pieces a little bit more and I feel that would have really helped.
Two things I think my group did great were firstly, the performance itself which went really smoothly under all that pressure. And secondly, the construction of our main prop. Almost half of the points are based of the main prop (the fidget spinner) and it looked really good once it was finished. I think this contributed to the good score we got and our overall performance success. Now that we are done regionals we are going to provincials. This is in about a month so we have time to improve on everything we need to.