Did you know that Frankenstein wasn’t the monster? Frankenstein was actually the scientist who made the monster. I now know what it feels like to be Dr. Frankenstein.

During class, we were assigned a task. We had to take stuffies and cut them apart, then re sew them into a different animal. We then had to make a video documenting a disaster that affected the stuffy (not changed). Throughout the video, our stuffy has to change into our final stuffy. These were called (and will be referred to as) Frankenstuffies! Mua-hahahahaha!

Our first step was to create a story. We learned about a new style of writing; the Epistolary Story. Imagine a diary with different days being different events. On day 1, this happened, on day 2, this happened, and so on. We wrote 6 different entries into our story, but here’s the twist. Our script had to NOT be in the epistolary format. For me, that wasn’t toomuch of a challenge. I wrote my script in a documentary style, so I was talking to the camera about what was going on. Although I couldn’t get much movement in the video, my stuffy kinda just sat in one spot while I talked.

So you’re probably wondering, “what did I make my Frankenstuffie from?” Well that’s a good question. I had a fat toddler-sized teddy bear that I sewed wings onto. I didn’t get the wings from any other stuffy, so I made them with help from my mom. His name is Birthday Bear.

When I started my design, I ran into a few problems. The first was that Birthday Bear wore a large top hat, that was sewn directly onto his head. Removing it wasn’t a problem, but he didnt have any fabric underneath the hat, so the stuffing was exposed. I went out to Fabricana in Coquitlam and ended up buying too much of this long fuzzy fabric. I cut it into the shape of the hole in the head. I sewed the fabric onto the head of the bear, and it looked slightly odd, but otherwise fine.

Then came the challenging part. Filming the video (I don’t want to spoil the video, so go watch it below). Because of the natural disaster I chose, my video had to be filmed by a river. Now, there are two spots (that I know of) that would be close enough to a river where i could film and still have the river near the scene. The first place I chose was near Maplewood Farm. The Seymour river flows past there, so I filmed there for the first part.

https://youtu.be/LxGElOd2vHE

I moved upstream for two reasons. The first is because I thought it would be easier to get to and I could have shots of the disaster in the background. The second and actually true reason is because Birthday Bear had to move to avoid his home from being flooded.

After he moved, the wings started to grow. They started as small, little stubs on his back. Over the course of the next few days, they grew into beautiful, light blue wings. You have to stretch your imagination to see the “beautiful”, but I think they turned out well for my first time hand sewing.

So overall, what did I learn? Let’s go over the positives first. I learned how to hand sew, a skill that may come in handy later in life. I learned about the matter cycles, how they effect the world around us and each other. I learned good moviemaking techniques such as how to properly time a shot, how to figure out how far I need to go when walking with the camera, and I improved my skills with a green screen.

I only learned two negative things from this project. The first is that I absolutely hate the sound of my own voice. The second is that I am the worst at handing things in on time.

So aside from me handing this in late, I really enjoyed this project. Sure it was tiring and hard work, but I am proud of what I learned and the work I’ve done. I know that, with my new skills, I could make a better video.

 

VIVE LA RÉVOLUTION! Wait I’m not french. But I am learning about revolution. More specifically, I am learning about the theory of revolution and the man who came up with that theory. That man was an American historian named Crane Brinton. He wrote a book called The Anatomy of Revolution in 1938. He looked at 4 revolutions that all shared a similar cycle. He looked at the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Russian revolution, and the English revolution.

His theory states that all revolutions follow similar steps or stages. Most successful revolutions follow 4 stages that he described as similar to a disease. The stages start with the Incubation stage. In this stage the population has some government-related problem. Something like an economic crisis, government injustice, or class division and antagonism. Or a combo of multiple.

 

The next stage is called the moderate stage. In this stage moderate leaders share their opinions on the matter(s). Sometimes protests and minor violence break out, but things are generally under control.

 

The third stage, the crisis stage, is much worse. Violence is common, and the government may employ secret police. Secret police activities are usually hidden from the public. In this stage, radical revolutions break out. These revolutions usually start a civil war, and are dominated by a strongman. Though not the ones from a circus.

The final stage is the recovery stage. As the name suggests, the nation/nations are recovering from the revolution for better or worse. The economy recovers to a balanced state, the violence diminishes, and the government returns with minor alterations. The sad part is that the recovery stage ends with either war or peace. Need an example? World War 1 started as a struggle between European powers that grew to encompass much of the wider world. WW2 is similar.

So why am I telling you this when you can just google search it? Heck, I’ll do that for you. Well after researching this topic I had a wonder about this theory. Have any significant revolutions broken this cycle?

So Idid some research, and found that all my searches just brought me to the Wikipedia page about the theory itself. So I read the page and found something interesting and useful. While three of the four revolutions that Brinton talks about in his book, the American Revolution (stay tuned for more later) “Does not quite follow this pattern”. The bad news is that I have no way of getting a copy of the book, so I can’t go into full depth and read the rest of the book. If Iget more info I will either update this post or release another post with the updated info on it.
So please stay tuned for that post.

I do suppose it my be possible to stop a revolution, however. If a cause is eliminated during the incubation stage or the moderate stage, the recovery stage will start immediately, and should be rather peaceful. A revolution may even be preventable before it even begins. That would then eliminate the stage(s) afterwards and start a shorter recovery stage.