Hello and welcome to another post. Not long ago we finished our first project of the year which connected to our Power of Imagination field study we went on. We went all the way to the east coast of the USA to visit DisneyWorld and the Kennedy Space Centre which had lots and lots to see and experience. The driving question for this project was “How do I make effective personal design choices?”. The way this project was laid out to us, there were two parts to it; our “Personal Productivity Systems” and then the 5 Trend videos we designed and filmed.
As I said before, we started this project with our “Personal Productivity System”. As we began to work towards this goal, we learned that this specific system is an easy way to prioritize what must be complete first by organizing it into a simple chart. Following these steps helps you understand what to get done first and what can wait a little longer so that you be as productive as possible. The system is made up of 5 steps; Capture, Clarify Organize, Reflect, and Engage. I like this system because of how simple and effective it is. Iv’e found that it has helped thin my everlasting list of To-dos into different chunks that I can tackle easier.
I was able to work towards adopting this technique into my daily life after learning about it. I accomplished this, among other things, by including daily and weekly reminders in the Things app. To make sure I have completed a short list of tasks and workout I have these reminders set to repeat so that the daily review goes off every day after school and the weekly review goes off on Sunday. I found that it is a little difficult for me to take the time everyday to check my things and stay up to date with my daily and weekly goals.
The second phase of this project then got under way. Generating Trend Videos was the topic of this inquiry. We start off by watching examples of the finished product. We quickly finished the research for the five trend films we planned to produce and made planning documents for each of them. The only restriction was that you could only collaborate on two videos with pals that you both get credit for, but we had plenty of alternatives. Being organized and having all the material I needed in one spot made making my research page enjoyable for me.
Once the “first” part of the project was attended to, we moved onto the following investigation “Effective PBL pathway for Personal Design”. In this investigation there were 4 overall steps; Plan, Storyboard, Draft, and Reflect.
I put my prior knowledge to work in this first stage to help me organize my plans into concrete actions. I started by developing a new project, explaining it, and highlighting the total due dates. Then I could add every video as well as particular subjects like Prototype videos, Storyboards, Shot lists, First draughts, and Final draughts. When it came time to film, this kept everything in order.
I was able to plan out every shot in a storyboard for each film after finishing the Research Page, which contained all the pertinent data regarding all of the videos I would be producing. With each shot, I made sure to maintain the proper angles, music, and sound effects. If I had to do it over, I would have incorporated the finished storyboards as soon as they were finished into my research paper. Instead of having to look for them in a cluttered pages app, this would have made it simpler to find them.
Despite my belief that I was prepared for filming, we still needed to make prototype videos for each of the trends we planned to recreate. This helped me practise taking each exact photo from the location and angle i had chosen beforehand, which helped in the long run. This allowed me to go back and think about what needed to be changed, which led me to the last stage of this investigation.
Finally we had made it to time to execute our plans. I thought it was odd that there wasn’t a step for actually filming our videos but I guess thats it’s implied. It was a mostly smooth ride when it came to filming because there were just small clips each of us had to do at each park. I did however end up with an issue. I enjoyed making these videos because they were fun to work on such a broad topic with friends. Maybe it’s just me but I don’t exactly see the academic side to this part of the project. I don’t know.
This step was really quick. We displayed our 5 videos to a small group to see if there was anything missing or that could be changed to increase its quality.
⬇️ Below are the 5 Trend videos I made at DisneyWorld ⬇️
The Different Phases Max Louie at DisneyWorld
Gas or Ass – (with Colton Wallin)
Biergarten Food and Experience Review – (with Max Rasmussen)