This Didn’t Go To Plan…

Wow. Ok. After an extra three weeks of stress, frustration and utter confusion, I’m finally finished. So here it is; my Frankenstuffy Video…

Hopefully you actually watched the video and didn’t just skip down to here, because if that’s the case then there’s a good chance you will be confused with what I am about to talk about. Anyways, even if you did watch it, you are probably confused because you haven’t been given any context (unless you are one of my teachers who – let’s be real – are the only ones reading this anyways). So here was the project brief; plan and create a video that stars an animal stuffy who has to learn and adapt to a scientific change in their ecosystem by morphing in to a hybrid of two or more animals. These animals had to be from a specific region in Canada, and each group had a different region. Even though we had groups, this was very much an individual project. The other side of this project was to take stuffy versions of your animals, and sew the different parts of them together, to mimic the mutation. Hence the name “Frankenstuffy”.

Along the way we also had to complete multiple sub-assignments that helped us with the planning of our video. We were learning how to tell a story most of all, and we needed to know how to put together a proper storyboard in order to achieve the end goal we desired. I found these assignments manageable and they really helped in the long run. It made filming/editing so much quicker because I already knew where/what the shots were.

Below is the final script of my video

There was basically only a couple ways you could go about doing this project. The first way, adopted by most of the class, was to use a green screen and a stuffy. This would work by choosing the background for your shot in advance and then displaying it on the green screen in class. You would then attach string to your stuffy and move the stuffy around while filming. This way had its pros and cons. But I decided against it because I didn’t want to individually select and film each scene with less freedom. So, I chose the other option, which was to not use a green screen, but instead take a picture of the stuffy, mask the photo so just the stuffy shows, play the photo/video on an app on the iPad, and then digitally drag the photo around. Sounds complicated but if you were in PLP I guarantee it would be second nature. Had I known the problems I would face later on, I would’ve chosen the first option…

I don’t want to bore you with all the specifics on how things went complete awry, and I also don’t even understand some things, so I’m just going to cut straight to it; this project took a horrible turn! At this point I can’t even remember what started the series of unfortunate events, however I do remember, vividly, nearly drop-kicking my iPad in rage when Apples new ‘amazing’ screen recording tool didn’t do its job. To put it bluntly, when I took the clips I screen recorded and started editing, I discovered that the audio was extremely finicky. That’s what I thought at first atleast. I then learned when I looked back at the individual clips in my camera roll, the audio was perfect. I went back again to editing, and to my astonishment, the clip that was being finicky last time was perfectly fine, however a new bloody clip wouldn’t play audio! It was almost like my iPad was just like Whack A Mole and every time I tried to fix something it would go away and another problem would appear. This went back and fourth between clips and I didn’t even understand what to do. So after multiple fresh documents and wasted gigabytes, I gave in.

It’s been nearly a couple weeks since that whole ordeal now, and after updating IOS, it seems as though the problem isn’t solved, but it has gotten better. Who knows, it might not be Apple’s fault, but for me, that was the only conclusion I could come to. So Apple if you are reading this (Haha good one Daniel) I’m not firing shots at you.

Anyways, besides knowing I won’t depend on screen recording for entire project again, I learned about Canada, ecosystems, multiple different scientific cycles, where to buy stuffies, and more in this unit. It opened my eyes to more than I thought it would at the beginning. Big thank you to Ms. Maxwell for putting up with my whining for a month while I underwent this stressful time. Next project is gonna be great I promise!