We all know that a music video tells a story in a sequence of shots. But what if I told you, I've watched a music video that told the story in just one shot? Pretty cool, right? Now what if I told you that this particular shot had no actors or actresses in it? So, how would they tell a story, in one shot, to fill up 2 minutes and 27 seconds, with no actor's at all? Well, for this week's reflective response, I'll be talking to you about a one-shot music video for the song, Knock Knock by Brunettes Shoot Blondes. I've stumbled along this video under the staff picks on Vimeo and I have to admit, it's pretty impressive. This music video shows an interplay [the way in which two or more things have effect on each other] of Apple devices playing little snippet's of animated video. So basically, it's video of short separate animated fragments, but these animated fragments on the devices have to be synchronized, or else everything won't work as smoothly. It probably took a bunch of takes to get it perfectly, all the devices playing at the same time in harmony, and all the devices in the right spot. I really like this music video because of it's uniqueness and cleverness. Being that they used Apple devices, it was really cool how they incorporated Apple devices' features, like apps, the lock screen, the notification bar, into the video. I admire this video and it's crew because of the hard work they had to go through with, to make the animated clips, to get it all synchronized, to get everything in the right place, this music video took a lot of work to do, even if it's only in one shot and there's no actors in it. That's all for my reflective response, Thanks for reading. Also make sure to read my constructed response, "My Stress Relievers!" Bye!
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Hey Everyone! Wow, I'm going to be honest with you now, this week is chaotic, and indeed, very stressful. Why is it so crazy? Well, for one, it's final's week, so we have all of our big tests for our other classes, and on top of that, our first quarter projects are due NEXT week, and Herenui and I also have to juggle our Inside Scoop Radios that's due a day after our first quarter projects are due. This week is very busy, and puts a lot of pressure on all of us. But do not worry, with bad, comes good, and with stress, comes stress relievers. I've come up with some tips to share with you on how I deal with stress. To avoid stressing out, I listen to music, relax, and I try to think positive.
One of the things I do to avoid stressing out is I listen to music. Music for some reason just calms me, even when things are hectic. It replaces all negativity with good energy. It drowns the outside world around me and I'm able to focus and concentrate better. The thing about listening to music, is that you can multitask while listening, so you can get things done. You don't have to go somewhere to listen to music; it's portable! If you have a phone or electronic device, you can bring it with you. Listening to music is also inexpensive. Even if I'm on a tight schedule, I can listen to music, let it calm me, focus better and get things done. If you like to sing, sing along! Or if you like to dance, dance to the song! Anything that will get you into a happy rhythm and in a happy attitude. But if you are going to listen to music, don't pick sad or slow songs because that will just get you into a negative, lazy mood. Instead, pick happy, up-beat songs to get your mood up! I listen to music a lot, walking to and from school, when I'm doing homework, and during my free time. I usually listen to music while I'm writing my blog's because without it, I tend to get distracted and procrastinate, but like I said, while listening to music, I'm positive and can concentrate better. Fun fact: I am currently listening to music while writing this blog. So I listen to music to get me in a better mood. Another thing I do to not stress out is to relax. Take a break and just breathe. Breathing exercises will help calm you but Meditation is also a popular technique for relaxation. It may sound silly, but meditation is actually known to refresh your body and your mind. Another way to relax is to talk to a friend. Find a supportive, and a good listener to talk to and tell them what's on your mind. But what actually relaxes me while I'm stressed out, is chewing gum. You are all probably laughing at me right now, but it's true! During STN I've probably gone through like 4 packs of gum. You'd see me chewing gum everywhere! Anyways, do whatever relaxes you to get your stress level down. Whether it's just taking a break, eating, or chewing gum like me! Thinking positive always clears a bad state-of-mind. If you're stressed out and all you do is think negative, nothing will get better and it will just get worse. As Mary Engelbreit once said, "If you don't like something, change it; if you can't change it, change the way you think about it." So even if thing's are crazy, if you think positive about it, chances are, you'll get thing's done and not be as stressed about it. But if you don't get thing's on time, instead of saying "I'm a failure" say, "I've tried my best". Always be optimistic for yourself, and for others. As Kaycee would say, spread the "Positive Vibes" around. If you're positive, then your positive vibes will spread around and will influence the attitude of others. But if you think negatively, then your negativity will spread and also influence the attitude of others. So you make your choice: do you want to be happier and make other lives happier? Or do you want to be stressed out and make others stressed out? Think Positive. Be Optimistic. Spread the Positive Vibes. [Also check out this website] Sometimes, things can get out-of-hand and can be overwhelming. But even if you can't change the situation, you do have control of your actions and thinking. So take a break, relax, and think positive are the best advice I can give you to relieve your stress. So don't go around being grumpy and stressed because then you're just spreading the negativity to your partner and to your classmates which isn't fair; but if you think positive, everyone wins. I wish you all good luck on your projects! Now back to mine! Thanks of stressed isn't fair, but when you think positive, everyone wins. I wish you all good luck on your projects! Now back to editing mine! Thanks for reading! Bye! ![]() Hey Everyone! We all know that Apple has been releasing a bunch of things lately, such as the new iPhone 6 and of course, iOS 8. I have downloaded iOS 8, and so far, it seems to be slow and has a bunch of bugs. However, that's not what I'm here to talk about. So for this week's reflective response, I'll be talking to you about the new camera features that come with iOS 8, including timers, focus and exposure settings, panoramas, and a time-lapse option! I really like the new features, but of course, we can't take photos in school, but out of school, it may come in handy. So even if you don't have a nice DSLR at home, you can still try to make the most of it with the new features. First of all, Apple has finally put in a timer! How many times have you been with family or friends and have wanted to take a group photo? Many times, right? Well how many times would someone be missing from the photo because they were the ones behind the camera? Now with this new timer feature, those days are long gone! You can set a timer for three or even ten seconds and get everyone in the picture! Pretty amazing, right? Another new feature is that you can now manually change the focus and exposure settings! In iOS 7, focusing and exposure was just a tap-to-focus, and it would focus automatically on whatever you tapped and also change the exposure. In iOS 8, however, that option is still available but, brings in the option to manually adjust the settings. You can be focusing on something and also change the exposure, by dragging the slider to the right of the sun icon, up, to bring it up, or you can drag it down, to bring down. The next new camera feature is for all you iPad owners, panoramas. The Panorama feature is the option to take a wide-angle photo that covers a great distance by rotating your device slowly from left to right. It's really useful when you have to take a photo of something wide or large that doesn't fit in the frame, but with the panorama feature, you can get that shot. The final camera feature of iOS 8 that I'll be talking about, is the time-lapse option. If you've read any of my past blogs, you'd know that I really like time-lapses. I think they're very beautiful because you can see how the world changes as time passes on; moving and changing colors. Anyways, this new feature allows you to take a video that automatically converts and speeds up, into a time lapse. It's really cool because you don't need to record long, it could even be a second or even a few days, and it will speed it up depending on the duration. Another cool thing is that you don't need to do any work! This feature allows you to just tap to start, and tap to finish recording, and the time-lapse will be made. Click here to watch a really cool time-lapse video made with iOS 8 or watch it below. iOS 8 provides us with many fun and helpful features such as the timer, manual adjustments of the focus and exposure settings, panoramas (iPad only) and a time-lapse option! Now we can take photos better, even if we don't have nice cameras like the ones we use in class. That's it for my reflective response! Thanks for reading! Bye! Hi Everyone! As you know, Herenui and I are currently working on our first quarter project and are about a week away from our deadline, October 1st. Our topic is about the new color-coded rating systems in restaraunts, Placards. To read more about our Quarter 1 Project, click here to be directed to my first update. Anyways, It is now September 19, and we have 12 days left until the whole completed and edited project is due, and Herenui and I are unfortunately behind. We are behind because we haven't gotten our script finalized, we don't have enough b-roll and we haven't started to edit yet. However, we have plans to make sure we get caught up to meet the deadline. Read on to find out more on why we're behind and about our plans to change that.
First off, Herenui and I haven't gotten our script finalized. We submitted it on September 2nd, when scripts were due, and we were given back revisions. But we had to change our five points a lot and it was really challenging for us because all of he interviewees practically said the same thing, on how it was positive. For our second quarter project, and other future projects, I plan to create our five points prior to getting interviews so that we won't be stuck in this predicament. Herenui and I changed our five points again today and fixed our script and now we have to show Mr. M our revisions and see what he thinks. But if our script and five points aren't good, I don't know what we'll have to do because like I said, they all said the same thing and had the same ideas. Would we have to get more interviews and hope for good sound bytes which would push us even further behind? Or could we establish a different point? We'll just have to see what Mr. M thinks about our revisions on Monday. Secondly, we are behind because we don't have enough matching b-roll. Of course, we've shot lots of b-roll when shooting interviews but we really have to think, are all of them good shots to use, and do they match our sound bytes. We'll just have to look through our b-roll and ask ourselves, is this enough? Are these good quality shots? And will we need to go out again to shoot more b-roll? We also have to take photos of the placards Darren gave us since we haven't seen them implemented here yet. Last, we are behind because we haven't started to edit yet. Editing started on Wednesday and right now, Herenui and I haven't done much since our script isn't finalized yet. I've imported most of the clips, but I still have to import a couple more. I've also watched the Final Cut 10 tutorial videos so I know how to use it and it won't take me long to get the hang of it. I'm hoping that Herenui is also watching them so we can quickly fly into editing when it's time. On the contrary, Herenui and I do have plans to catch up and finish this project on time. We also have radios that are due on October 2nd, but we plan to put our news story first and radios second. We are almost done with all of the radio scripts so I hope that doesn't take up too much of our time. We also plan to show our script to Mr. M first thing Monday and make any changes from there. I hope we will be able to make these changes from our transcripts and not have to go out and interview more people, chancing it. When our script is approved, we will get straight to editing. There, we can see what kind of b-roll we need more and go out to shoot. It's really helpful now that we have our laptops because we can take it home and edit, extending our editing time. But I really want Herenui to do part of the editing so she learns how, but if it's on a laptop does that mean she can only edit in schol? I'm not sure, but those are our plans to hopefully get caught up while balancing radios at the same time. But all of our plans really rely on getting that script approved, so I hope we can get it approved as soon as possible. In conclusion, Herenui and I are behind on our first quarter project because our script isn't finalized, we may not have quality matching b-roll, and because we haven't started to edit yet. But, Herenui and I will hopefully catch-up, hoping that our script is approved and then we can quickly get on track. Thanks for reading! Wish us luck! Bye! Hey Everyone! For this reflective response, I'll be talking about a time-lapse video I watched. As some of you may know, I absolutely LOVE time-lapses! So today on vimeo, I just happened to stumble on a time-lapse video called "Shaped by Time" from Enrique Pacheco. Anyways, I think this time-lapse is just amazing! It shows the effect of erosion on different landscapes in the world. It's very interesting to watch these parts of the world that I haven't seen, away from regular buildings and houses. But it's even more interesting to see how it's been shaped over time, battling weather, harsh winds, heavy rainfall, who knows what it's been through to get like how it is now? What's pretty unique about this time-lapse is that the camera moves slowly while the landscape is being, well, "Shaped by Time". It's almost like they're using a slider. Well, it is actually because they are using a slider! They filmed with a Sony A99 using a motorized slider, and boy, that would have to taken a long time to film. That's the thing about filming time-lapses; it takes time. Not only time, but patience. Anyhow, If you've read my blog, "Beautiful Time-Lapse" instead of using a motorized slider like Enrique did, they used a tracking tripod; a motorized tripod that rotates the camera as the Earth rotates. But of course, with any good time-lapse, is good music to fit it. The music soundtrack is from Peter Nanasi, and the music is ominous, suspenseful, almost scary even, but it also gets a little inspiring. However, the music fits and matches the video; it sets the tone. My favorite thing about time-lapses is the sky, especially at night. You can see the passing of clouds, the stars, shooting stars, and the colorful sky moving, you can really see time going by and how long the photographer had to film. That's it for this week's reflective response! Below are some videos, photos, and links.Thanks for reading!
September 12, 2014 Dear Uncle Toyo and the Murayama Ohana,
Thank you all so much for your generous donation of laptops to our class. We are so blessed and lucky. Not every student has a laptop at home, and not everyone could edit outside of school. When I was in media last year, we didn't have this many laptops, so we had to do a lottery and draw names from a hat to see who could get a laptop from the eight we had. If your name wasn't drawn from the hat, then you were stuck using the desktops. There is a lot of perks to using a laptop in this media class, so your donation is making a huge difference and will benefit us and our work. Thank you! For instance, with the laptops, we can take it home and edit our radios on Audacity and also edit our video projects on Final Cut Pro 10! Speaking of Final Cut Pro 10, last year we had to use Final Cut Pro 7 on the desktops, and there was only 1 laptop with Final Cut Pro 10. Only three people from the class know how to use 10, but now with a laptop for everyone, we all get the opportunity to work and edit with it! Another thing we will use the laptops for is to write our blogs and work on our websites! Now with a laptop for each student, everyone can take it home and get work finished. In media, you do a lot of work outside of the class. Often times, I'm working on projects after school at home, and on my spare time. So being able to take home laptops and do work, is extremely helpful because we can get things done and be more productive with our time. My partner and I have to work on our radios soon, so we can both edit radios on our separate laptops and take them home to finish. Last year, there was one designated laptop specifically for radios and advisory games and we called it the Radio Laptop. Sometimes, more than one pair of partners had to use the radio laptop so one group would have to wait until the other group was done editing. Being that there was only one laptop to edit radios on, only one of the two partners could edit, and could edit only one radio at a time. But with these laptops, now we can have both partners editing at the same time, editing different radios and helping each other! Therefore, we should be able to get our radios done on time and submit better work because we have more time to edit (since we can edit at home). In addition to editing our radios with these new laptops, we can also edit our video projects! Our video news story projects are due in the near future and so we have to start editing very soon! Last year, using the desktops, all editing would have to be done in school, meaning during class, at lunch, or after school. But now we can take the laptops home and edit there! I can't stress enough that bringing a laptop home will benefit me, my partner, and the class so much. Having our own laptop to borrow and use will extend our editing time by a lot so chances are, our video will be better and have little editing mistakes since we have all this time to edit. And the best part about editing our news story projects on the laptops is that the laptop has Final Cut Pro 10 on it! I was looking over Final Cut 10 and it is much better and improved from Final Cut 7. There are A LOT more features on Final Cut 10 that will help make our video the best it can be. Only 3 people from the media class knew how to use it, but Mr. M has provided us with tutorial videos on how to use it, so everyone will get the chance to use this awesome editing program and it's new features! Another use for the laptops is to write our weekly blogs. Every week we are required to write two blogs a week; one on a topic from Mr. M, and one free-write on something that relates to media. With the laptops in our class, we can work on our websites, designing it and making it look nicer. We can also use them to write our blogs and finish them up at home. Bringing them home means more time to work on our websites and blogs, thus, more effort will be put into them. Uncle Toyo and the Murayama Ohana, from myself and the class, thank you so much for your extremely generous donation to our class. Your donation will benefit our class and make a huge difference. Because of you, we will be more productive and make more use of our time. It allows us to take home and borrow the laptops, edit our radios and videos, use final cut 10 and design our website and write our blogs! Thank you so much! Sincerly, Alaysia Navor Hey Everyone! For this week's reflective response I'd like to do something different then what I have been doing for the past month. I'm going to be talking about a Movie Trailer because there has been a lot of new movies releasing, which of course, means a lot of new movie trailers! One of the more recent and popular movie trailers is called If I Stay. I'm sure you may have heard about this movie, When music-talented Mia and her family get into a serious accident, Mia, in a coma but has out-of-body experience, faces a difficult decision: to stay, or to leave, a choice with consequences that come along with. Anyways, this movie is a book adaptation, and yes, before you ask, I have read the book, however, I haven't seen the movie yet. The trailer starts off subtle; calming with soft mellow music while showing shots of Mia and her boyfriend, Adam, and Mia playing the Cello. Everything is going well and fine, and is leading up to the climax of the trailer. I especially like the voiceover transitioning between, "Isn't it amazing how life is one thing, and in an instance it's something else? Like here I am, Mia who thinks about the cello, and Adam, and Juliard...then just like that...". When she say's "...then just like that...", her cellow bow drops, the truck tires shift, then you can hear silence for a dramatic effect. When at the accident site, you can see a lot of cinematic movement. They make the shot kind of revolve around Mia, this gave the effect of like spinning, as Mia was turning and looking everywhere. It had nat sounds of the police sirens and policemen talking, and the voice over echoed a bit. All of these things really made me feel like I was apart of the scene, like I was really there. When I first watched the trailer, I was confused. I asked myself, "Was she a twin?" The answer is no. She is has an out-of-body experience while in a coma so she is able to see what is going on. Another thing that helped the trailer was the music in the background. While sad moments were going on, "Say Something" was playing in the background and I thought helped incredibly. It intensified the drama and the sadness. I also liked how the trailer ended with Adam saying, "Stay". Overall, I think this movie trailer really reached out and touched the audience's heart and that it will be a good one. Thanks for reading! Bye!
Hey Everyone! So, as I talked about in my other blog post, "The First Week of Another Year!" because of the new bell schedule, Advisory has been placed in the middle of the day. This new change has caused us to no longer have what we used to call, the morning announcements. Instead, we have the new, the improved, the CKTV News! In this constructed response, I'll be talking about my experience so far working the CKTV News and what it's been like training some of the new students. I think working the CKTV News has been good because I already know how to work each job being that this is my 2nd year in CKTV, I wasn't so nervous, and lastly because I started off with a pretty easy job. So far, working the CKTV News has been good for several reasons. The first reason is because I started off with a pretty easy job, I already know how to work each job, and because I wasn't very nervous.
To start off, my experience working the CKTV News so far has been good because I had an easy job. I started the year off by working the technical director. The technical director is the person who sits in the middle of the titler and the audio person. They have control of a panel of lit up-colored buttons. They are the ones who controls the transitions of camera A, camera B, DDR, Net 1 (for the hanamakai slides; I'll talk about that later), and also "cross fades". If you are unfarmiliar of what "cross fading" is, don't worry, you will, as the year goes by. You can't go in any of the two rooms while a team is practicing and not hear the word, "Cross-Fade!". Cross Fading is when you are merging two screens, normally Camera A and Camera B in this case. This allows whoever is working the camera's to adjust the camera's and match the announcers eyes. Anyways, one reason is why my experience working the CKTV News was good, is because I had an easy job, but that's just my opinion. I bet a lot of people would disagree, however I think it's an easy job because all you have to do is press button to switch when one announcer is done speaking, when to switch to the credits, and when to end the opening. Speaking of the opening, that kind of complicated the titler and the technical director's job, but after a couple of times, we got used to it. Instead of last year where we faded the hanamakai winners as a title, this year we have a slideshow powerpoint of all the Hanamakai recipients. We play this powerpoint while the opening is playing, so we now have a permanent elmo job! The opening has to be playing in the background while the hanamakai slide's are going, so to do this, the titler and the technical director have to cooperate even more. When DDR is playing, the titler makes sure that Auto-Play is off, then the technical director switches to Net 1. The elmo person then goes through the slides, then the technical director switches back to DDR and finally, the titler turn's Auto-Play back on and the technical director switches to camera A. It was kind of confusing at first, but after practicing, we finally got it down. The second reason why working the CKTV News has been good is because I already know how to work each job! Because I am a second-year student, I have an advantage over the new students, and that is knowing how to work each job. I already know how to work the camera's, floor manager, audio, director, technical director, titler, and the elmo! Last school year, I was taught how to work each job so I have experience working each of them. We worked each job at least once and so working the CKTV News has been kind of like a review, minus learning how to keep the opening playing while the slide's are running. When I was a sixth grader, learning all these new jobs was complicated and very confusing, so now that I'm a seventh grader, It's easier because I don't have to re-learn everything. If anyone is having trouble or is confused about what any of the jobs do or how to work them, you can come see me or your partner, Mr. M, or anyone in the class! We are all about helping our CKTV Ohana! But from what I saw so far, everyone seems to be doing good, especially for their first time working! Teaching the new students have been pretty good also, everyone seems to be knowing what to do and have been doing a good job, again. What's ironic is that last year I had the hardest time working the technical director, and in my second paragraph, I just talked about how I found it easy, Ha! And even more ironic, I think camera would be the most challenging job for me. Also check out a blog I wrote about the "morning announcements" or now called CKTV News, last school year! Lastly, working the CKTV News has been good because I wasn't so nervous. Last year, you could ask any returnee-I was so nervous before the live broadcast, I was practically jumping. My palms got extremly sweating and I was so afraid that I was going to mess up and make a mistake, but this time it was different for some reason. I'm not as that nervous now; I still am, but just a bit. I guess I've grown some kind of confidence tied into my knowledge of how to work each job, that make's me not that nervous. If you are extremely nervous as I was, the best advice I can give you is to Practice. You can never get enough practice you know! Practice, Practice, Practice. If the team you're on isn't practicing when you have time to, tell them so! If I learned anything last year, Always practice when you can! If you make a mistake during the broadcast, don't feel miserable about it the whole day, instead strive to perfect the error, and don't let it happen again the next day! In conclusion, I think my experience working the CKTV News was good because I had an easy job (in my opinion), I knew how to work every position, and because I was calm and not that nervous. The CKTV News is similar to the morning announcements, except we're in new teams and I get the oppurtunity to work with new people and know each other better. Believe it or not, you actually bond while working the CKTV News. I'm excited for my team's turn...which reminds me, I have to make some credits! Thanks for reading, |
AuthorHi! I'm Alaysia Navor, a third year student in the CKTV Media Productions class. I'll be publishing 2 blogs each week, posted to the left. You can also check out the tabs, "Inside Scoop" and "Projects" for some of my other work. "A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor" Categories
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