Case for a Nation

As we wrap up the quarter in PLP, we have just finished a project called “Case for a Nation”, the last one until 4th quarter! This project was all about nationalism, with the driving question as “How can an Understand of Nationalism Help us Make Sense of Today.” I like to call it a mega project because it lasted a whole 4 weeks, had 6 videos to make, with 10 milestones incorporated. The curricular competencies in this week of work were: Designing texts, using resources, empowered learner, and analyzing cause and consequence. 

Our first milestone was to ultimately get us started. We interviewed our parents to see what they knew about nationalism before we got started on it. The goal was to show a culmination video of the learning we did once we finished our entire project and get their reaction. But more on that later. 

Our 3rd milestone was the second video, but the 1st formal video that we had to make. We were assigned to make an animatic where we basically animated images and drawing to represent a type of nationalism of choice. I chose Italy because I felt that Nationalism that led to a unified country would have to be strong and would show me what went through their minds. I would give you the story but you can just watch it yourself right here! https://youtube.com/watch?v=BRhvrFlaFv8&feature=share. I never thought that an animatic would be possible for me because i had failed at making even a mini one on the previous project. I was in luck when our teacher gave us a boot camp on what we could do to make it shine. This was definitely a giant factor in the success in my animatic and why I was able to make it strongly. I felt that my best curricular competency in this project was using resources because I was able to find 3 reliable sources that really helped me understand Italian nationalism to a full extent.

The next week, we had to make a Tutorial video that explained what events occurred leading up to our confederation and give steps on how to make one. Some of us did it very literally and some did it metaphorically. I did mine as a metaphor using ingredients to a cookie as the things needed for the confederation. I found this video quite challenging due to the fact that I couldn’t redo any shots while making the cookie, once the ingredient was in, there was no turning back so you had to make every shot count. Overall, it wasn’t my best work but the key was to make a better one in the next project. Despite lacking some information, I felt that the continuity and change that I put in was my best of the quarter so far because it was built into my video rather than thrown in at the end. Here was my final product of this week. https://youtu.be/l8a4siH6nWE

This was the 3rd out of the 4 formal videos we were doing and this one was an explainer video. This was a shorter week with Monday off which meant we were assigned with doing the screenplay for it at home. I figured I would be okay since I had experience writing a couple screenplays… but no, I wasn’t. I was missing a lot of information and it wasn’t even in proper format. This set me back but luckily, many of my classmates had the same problem as me so we had some extra time to revise in class. Later on that week, we had just finished the rough cut for our video when our teacher decided to cut it. Zap, zip, zam, boom, no more project. We could still increase our mark but we couldn’t go down either. I was actually pretty please with this because I realized we still had one crazy week ahead of us. 

The final week not only of the project, but of the quarter had finally come but this time, we had to make 2 videos instead of one, 2 VIDEOS in 4 days! The first one was a culmination of every video we had made and the 2nd was a reaction video of our parent to it. Since the timeline was so dense, we started over the weekend doing both the storyboard and the shooting of the project. I was pleased when I decided to work with Raymond or else we would of had a heck ton of work ahead of us. Despite the mass of work ahead of us, we managed to get it done and edit it to best of effort. Empowered learner really came to life in this video because we had many more technological skills than usual because we were able to combine ideas between us.  We got it done by Monday and I was able to relax that night without homework. Here was our final culmination of that video. https://youtu.be/KJvnGuOkyOM

We have arrived to the final video somehow. As I mentioned at the beginning, this was the reaction video we made after showing our previous culmination to them. We were assigned with getting what they thought about it along with a couple questions. There was more editing in this one because it would get boring if I didn’t cut out the bits where nothing was happening. Here was my final product of the video.  https://youtu.be/5PJUA9mNlSk

In conclusion, I believe that this project was a learning experience for me because I managed to get significantly better with iMovie and wrote screenplays much faster with experience. I also believe that an understanding of the kinds of nationalism in the past can really help us understand why we have elections to who people cheer for in hockey and we can see what’s changed but also the many things that haven’t and are still prominent to this day.

Well that’s going to wrap it up fo this blog post and I guess I will see you all in may for my next one. Thanks!