Intro

Good morning fellow people! Recently in PLP, we have finished a rather exiting project about the end of WW2. It resulted in some rather amazing book trailers made by my peers and myself. My team consisted of Caleb, Alex, Jordyn, and of course me. I’m excited to share our journey, but first make sure to watch our book trailer!

Salt to the Sea – Book Trailer

Cast:

Florian: played by Caleb

Emilia: played by Me

Joana: played by Jordyn

Alfred: played by Alex

Dead Woman: played by Me

Salt to the Sea – Book Review

The Wallstreet Journal 

“A superlative novel in four voices. Masterly crafted.“

Salt to the Sea was a brilliantly told story of four people fleeing their homes in desperate hope of safety. Taking place at the end of WW2, our 4 main characters meet on the last jagged road to safety as Germany is invaded by the Soviet Union. Each chapter switching perspectives, each chapter new thrilling aspects to their stories.

I would like to thank Ruta Sepetys for bringing more attention to an often overlooked event in our history, and one of the greatest maritime disasters in all history.

Intro to Project/Competancies

In this project we learned and improved upon these core skills:

#1. Understanding of Cause and Consequence

Cause and consequence is a concept that we have been working with since grade 2, but it is also a concept that we will always work with throughout our lives. Some actions will have obvious consequences, like smiling makes someone happier than scowling. Some actions have unseen and complex consequences, like how the invention of a radio jammer possibly changed the outcome of the war.

#2. Reading and Personal Text Response

Throughout the project we have been reading our selected book, with our groups. My group, reading Salt to the Sea, had a bit of a challenge each week. We chose one of the hardest/longest books, with 4 main characters and a LOT of chapters. Each week, after barely reading the designated 1/3rd of the book we completed an assignment which showed and deepened our understanding of the text, and context. This helped us reflect, connect, ask questions, observe, and get more late marks!

#3. Understanding of Historical Perspective

An important part of our learning this year/learning in general, is something that I find very interesting. Historical Perspective is the group outlook that those in a certain context would have, this varies upon time, place, and social standing. To learn more about this, we looked into Abraham Lincoln and our outlooks on what he did vs the outlooks at the time. We wrote paragraphs/a page about the dividing topic, and the two most prevalent sides. This helps us look at the past without our modern biases, to better judge what ACTUALLY happened.

#4. The Writing Process

Throughout the project, we wrote a lot. Learning new rules (such as how to write a screenplay), working on our writing skills, and the storytelling process. Studying what draws people into a trailer is the same as a hook in a story, and as we attempted this we got better at both. Everything about this project helped grow our understanding an skill with the writing process.

#5. Text Comprehension and Appreciation

As stated above, our learning, reading, writing, and EVERYTHING affected our understanding of both what text means, and what goes into creating it. With understanding historical perspective, we can momentarily change our paradigms, and better appreciate text. By learning to appreciate these texts, we grow our literary repertoire, which helps us to not only understand and appreciate all other kinds of text, but to appreciate everything around us at a higher degree.

Process

The creation of this project was really fun, and interesting. While learning more about WW2, our books, and trailers, we got ideas and inspiration for our own trailers. Something that really inspired me were the trailers we watched everyday. Here are a few to give you some ideas:

We then compiled our ideas and endlessly discussed various options for routs we could take the trailer down, and we finally came to an agreement. This happened through a screenplay, a storyboard, multiple drafts, and three weeks.

Filming

I was super exited to film this! The costumes were really fun, but a hassle to remember. I’m really great full that our teacher, Ms.Maxwell could bring some coats from her house, it saved us on a few occasions!

We filmed some of the shots during class time, but the majority was taken on our filming day on the weekend. I don’t remember exactly how long it took, but we got most of our shots there, including the dead woman scene (which I loved to both play and do makeup for), the forest traveling scenes, and the harbour scenes. Unfortunately Alex couldn’t come that day, which did throw us a bit off whack, but it was easy enough to just film his parts at school the next Monday. Filming on Monday gave us some great opportunities for some rainy, reflective shots which I feel was perfect for the mood!

Process of Music

the music was my main contribution to the project, and like all important things it went through quite a few drafts. As we went on with our project, I started to get a better idea of what my group was envisioning the music to be like.

Draft #1

At first I thought that we were focusing on a loud bass thump throughout the song, but with using the available live loops it turned out way different than my group was expecting. Way too blockbuster, epic, and cheesy (not in a good way).

Draft #2

Based off of the feedback from the first draft, I made something which I thought was way more simplistic and calm. However it not turn out as simplistic as we needed. I found out later that this was because I had the wrong trailer in mind when it came to inspiration.

Draft #3

This draft was just a concept, it was a live loop that I slowed down which made it beautiful in my opinion. Beautiful, but not right for our story.

Draft #4

Simple, Simple, Minimalistic. Those are the words from my group that I glued to my retinas as I made the following song. If I ever asked myself a question about the song, I would repeat those words in my mind, and usually decide to cut the part. Before I made this version, we heard another group’s idea to integrate the sound of a clock into the beat of the song. We thought this was genius, and it gave Jordan an idea to integrate a fade of whispers to the sound of waves at the end of our song.

Conclusion:

This song is one of the end products that I am most proud of producing in the 2.5 years that I’ve been in PLP. I am extremely glad that I could make something from scratch (no live loops) that compliments the story, and that my team is happy with.

Learning

The one thing that I learned from this project (that I should have put into this post), is paring down. My dream is to live in a minimalistic mini-home. It is now apparent to me that before that can be a reality, I’m not to have to pair down my belongings AND the way that I live and work. I need to learn to see things simply, act simply, and live simply. When I ask myself to add or subtract, the answer is usually to always keep things as simple as they can be.