Rakki’s In A Revolution

To wrap up the first half of quarter two, our latest project has come to an end and it was a weird one to say the least. Tying back in with our revolution topic, this time instead of focusing on the American and French, we took a deep dive into the Industrial Revolution and made a short film around it with the main character being the frankenstuffie we created. The driving question of “how do revolutions transform the world” got us building on the prior knowledge we already had and wondering how stuffies are related to Industrial Revolution and how we will connect the two. 

The Final Film

The day before we actually started this project we were told we needed to being a few items for the first day. So walking into class with two stuffies in my hands I knew things were going to get messy. Let me tell you the first day was not light, or at least it wasn’t for me. We got thrown into the deep end and were told to cut up our stuffies and sew them together with parts from other ones. I’d never sewn before in my life so this was a wild experience to put it mildly. To be honest the actual sewing part wasn’t the hardest, as stupid as it sounds it was tying a knot with the two ends of the thread. After a lot of perseverance and dedication I finally got to the point where I had somewhat successfully sewn together four different stuffies and created Rakki. The first day of this project was a long one, at times I wanted to give up because it took about 20 minutes to thread the needle but I kept my growth mindset and kept on pushing which eventually got me over the finish line with a completed frankenstuffie. 

Now that the first crucial section of the project was complete, it was time to learn about the Industrial Revolution. To introduce us into this revolution we read a couple pages of the book “The Industrial Revolution,” this really helped me get a good, brief understanding of what this revolution was like and how it effected the world. As a class we talked about events such as the Agricultural Revolution, the Power Revolution, Mechanization Revolution, the Transportation and Communication Revolution, and trade in China and Japan. We took notes throughout and what really stood out to me was the switch from using water and wind to new power sources in coal and steam, this is what I based my story and film around. In my eyes the use of coal has impacted the world today largely because of the pollution that came along with it. Although coal had great impacts, it also brought large consequences that aren’t so good. Now having all this knowledge I could give a good answer to the driving question; revolutions transform the world by spreading ideas, and fundamentally changing the worlds political, economic, and social structure. 

Before we could create our film we had to write a short story which would basically be the movie in written form. I’ve only ever written a proper short story once and that was last year in our New France unit so I’m no professional, it was safe to say that I still needed a lot of work. Before you write a story you need to be able to comprehend it, we did this by reading four short stories as a class and broke them down to find the plot, conflict, setting, characterization, style, and the theme. The stories that we read were, The Sentry, Barney Story, The Veldt, and Wish You Were Here. It was time to write our own story about the Industrial Revolution and our frankenstuffie while using the 6+1 traits. Throughout my writing I kept on going back to look at these and see how I can fit them into my story. I’d never really thought about adding voice into my writing but I really pushed myself to make my story as authentic as possible and care about the topic. This is were I showed the designing texts competency best. I used the design process to develop my story that uses ideas that are appropriate and used voice to show passion and personality.

Short Story Link

With my story complete I could now solely focus on planning my film. There we a lot of steps before we could shoot and edit our movie with the first one being a screenplay. As soon as I saw what it looks like I knew I was in for a long ride. As much as I hated creating the screenplay it really helped me later on in editing and shooting the film. I best showed the establish historical significance competency here by choosing what I think was worth remembering and included the events in my story to reflect that. The cause and consequence competency also came into play for this milestone. I showed it by clearly stating what caused the certain event and what happened because of it. In my screenplay I show that the cause is that the habitat is being destroyed for fuel and the immediate consequence is the use of coal and the long term being pollution.

Screenplay Link

However the screenplay wasn’t enough, we were also tasked with creating a storyboard which was nowhere near as bad. I have made a lot of storyboards recently and I learnt that the more you put in the more you get out, so I really planned mine out with every single detail. This was were I best showed the comprehend texts competency. For comprehending texts I used a variety of strategies to show an understanding of the Industrial Revolution, historical significance, and the sci-fi genre.

Storyboard Link

It was finally time to bring everything we’ve learned together and create the final film. Since I already had a very solid idea of what I was going to do I just needed to actually do it. Even though I had everything planned out it was a long process, I wanted to get everything as good as possible, from the animation to the voiceovers, to the credits, and unlike my last two projects, everything went to plan. After hours of editing the film had come together and I’m quite proud of it. The last competency I showed was creative communicator where I showed it in the film. I used technology to enhance the message and communicated through a variety of technical skills with engaging sound, sequenced editing, and proper credits. 

This project was a good one to end the year on, I was nice to get the chance to work on my own which allowed me to do everything the way I wanted to. There were a lot of firsts in this project but we all have to start somewhere and this was a good place to do that. At times things got very annoying but in the end everything came together and I created work that I’m proud of. In the future I hope we do some more hands on projects like this as it makes learning fun and engaging.

We watched part of the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony which shows the Industrial Revolution. I thought it was amazing and it goes to show how impactful the revolution was.