Hockney Style Joiners

My most recent project in class is making photomontages. Photomontages, also called joiners, are are a style of photography in which you take a bunch of photos of one thing, and put them together to make it complete.  For example, you could take a bunch of pictures of a tree, moving left to right and up and down, then print them or use a computer program to place them next to each other in rows, almost always overlapping a bit. The reason for  this is  you can use it to see a much wider view of something than if you were the one actually there, looking at it in the physical world. This is called a panorama.You can also add your own touches to the final result, like having certain parts be tilted, or repeating certain photos.  My class is using Photoshop to put them together. A man named David Hockney is very famous for his art, especially his photomontages. David Hockney's are a bit different to mine though. For example, sometimes Hockney would use no overlap, but I use overlap. Mine also had strict requirements. In Photoshop, we we had to make the opacity of the final product 60 to 80 percent. We also had to give it a certain colored background with evenly cropped edges so there isn't to much or too little space around the photomontage. The last requirement was to use a customizable effect called curves. Hockney did not have any of the requirements, and I'm guessing that is part of what made it enjoyable for him.

Images can send positive or negative messages. When I take pictures, most of the time I try to send positive massages. Sometimes I create images that create a sad mood, but they don't normally present a specific negative message. Most of my pictures go on Instagram. I sometimes like to give pictures abstract colors, and those normally convey sad moods. I also like to give pictures a grunge look, which can send positive or negative messages. Darker colors normally convey less positive moods, and lighter colors with brighter light normally create more positive moods.

I was assigned to create two photomontages in class, and it was certainly a challenge. One of them was of another student, and another one was supposed to be of something that is meaningful to us, and I chose skating as the subject, because it is very meaningful to me, and a big part of my life. My photomontage is supposed to send a positive message. It is, as you can see, of a miniramp (a small halfpipe) with a skateboard and a pair of skate shoes. I used only a single board and nobody in the picture to show how skating is individualistic, and you don't need a team for it. You don't need to rely on anybody else for anything, and you can have your own style, skating however you like. There's no coach to tell when to stop or when you're doing something wrong. I also used the crowded farmers market it the background to contrast the one board.

New Year Aspirations

For this post, I shall describe my goals for 2016. One of them, probably the main one, is to keep my grades at straight A's. The rest are mostly skating tricks, with one snowboard trick. One of them is a " rock to fakie" on the big halfpipe. Allow me to elaborate. A halfpipe is a ramp used mainly for skating or BMXing. In my case, skating. It consists of, hence the name, half of a pipe, with round metal at the top edges. The metal is called coping. There is a spot not to far away from either of my houses that has two of them. One is called a miniramp, just a small halfpipe. There is a much bigger one, however. That is the one I would like to learn a rock to fakie on. I can do it on the smaller one, but I have never tried it on the bigger one, because I only started skating them recently. before that, I had just stuck to the skatepark. A rock to fakie is a trick in which you go up one side of the ramp, get the center of your board on the coping, then come back down the ramp fakie. Fakie is a stance on the board in which you are standing switch and nollie. Switch means you are standing facing the opposite way that you normally do, with the opposite foot forward, making tricks much harder. Nollie is where you pop off the front of the board in stead of the back, so you would be going up the other side of the ramp fakie. I hope you understood all that. The next trick is a rock and roll on the big ramp. A rock and roll is similar to a rock to fakie, where you go up one side, get the center of your board on the coping, but instead going back down fakie, your turn your board and your body at 180 degrees to before you drop back into the ramp, allowing you to drop back in assuming your regular stance. The next one is a bit harder, so I'm going to learn it on the miniramp first. I can do the other two easily on the miniramp, and on occasion this, but I don't try it often. This trick is called an axle stall. To do an axle stall, you go up one side of the ramp, and get your trucks onto the coping. In skating, your trucks are the metal parts that are attached to the board and hold the wheels in place, and are used in many tricks. There is one at the front of the board, and one at the back. Anyway,you go up the ramp, turn 90 degrees at the last second before going into the air, and get both of your trucks stably on the top of the coping. Then you turn another 90 degrees and drop back into the ramp. The last trick is a snowboard trick. I live in the tropics, but I am taking a trip soon to go snowboarding with some friends. I have been snowboarding in the past, and it is very similar to skating. By the end of the time I'm there, I would like to be able to 360 off of a jump. I'm sure you know what a 360 is.

I already stated my main goal for 2016. That would be keeping my grades where they are, which is straight A's.  One reason for this is because I am hoping for an academic college scholarship. I also know that it will help in my future. One example of how it will help my future is AP courses in high school. AP courses are college courses, taken in high school. AP stands for advanced placement, meaning the classes will be designed to be more challenging, for students who are further ahead and more skilled in certain subjects. I am in a version of those in my middle school, called honors. Often known to some of my friends as "nerd class". Honors is only provided for math and english. I am only currently in honors english, however I am waiting for news on my transfer to honors math, as regular math has been boring, and rarely presented a challenge for me. The honors english has, unfortunately, been a letdown. I was told I would be treated as a real world writer, and an actual intelligent human. I feel I have been treated as neither of these, and I have sadly learned literally nothing new whatsoever, and that is not an exaggeration. Back to AP courses, though. Taking AP courses can allow oneself to earn college credit before going into college, helping to graduate earlier. You can also do less courses in college, because you have already done them in AP. AP courses are the main reason I keep my grades where they are, instead of A's, B's, and possibly C's, which I'm told is the "average" report card. If keep my grades and overall school performance where they are, I'm told I will surely be eligible for AP courses. Being in AP courses and getting straight A's will also contribute positively to my resume, when applying for a job.

In order to get straight A's, I will continue to work as hard as necessary. Unfortunately, that means homework taking up most of my free time, and a lot of stress. But I set high expectations for myself, and I make myself meet them. I try to be an active participant in class, by trying to work well with partners, and volunteering answers. I don't quit my work, and I try to produce the best quality work I can. What's your main resolution?

My class is doing a photo a day challenge. The pictures here are my three best so far.

Scratch Game Design

My class has recently been working in a program called Scratch. Scratch lets you create and design games. It is very similar to Code.org, except it's more difficult, and not as straightforward. When I was much younger, I often played games similar to the one I made,and remembering that helped me a little to create it. From playing them, I was able to think about how most of the code would be made, and make it. Over the summer before 6th grade, I took a coding course at a nearby college, and that helped a little bit, even though we did not use Scratch in that course. I also knew that I prefer using W, A, S, and D to move instead of the arrow keys, even though I don't play many video games anymore. Some of my code is on the left.



My game is a very simple, easy one. It does have a few bugs that I attempted to fix, but was (sadly) not able to. In the game, you are a ghost and you must chase a bowl of cheesy puffs. As long as you are touching the cheesy puffs, you are getting points. Therefore, you must get a lot (235) points to win. All of which you must do on the moon, adding to the weirdness of the game. I rarely make anything this strange, but I felt like it this time.

I enjoyed making both of the featured games, but I struggled with both of them. I struggled the most with the first game, because I was new to Scratch. My introduction to Scratch basically felt like this: " Here's this coding program called Scratch, so make an account, it's similar to Code.org, now make a game". I was given help by adults, however. ( Almost all of my help came from my parents and the internet). The most difficult bug for me to fix was one in which when my square in my second game landed, it would wait a fraction of a second, then sink a little bit into the ground. I forget how I fixed it or what I changed, but it took me a long time to figure it out. The one thing in my game that I am proud of, though, is a gravity engine. A gravity engine, as the name suggests, simulates real gravity, because a box jumping from platform to platform is very realistic. I'm actually not sure if it works, but I copied my teachers, gravity engine, so it should work.

Invention Commercial

Our last GT project was making commercial for a product we made up. I worked with the same people I worked with on the composition technique project, Kacie and Adelina. Our main goal was just to make an informative (but fake) commercial for our product. The finished commercial is up above. Our product is a battery powered butter dish called the Butterquick. Personally, I am not happy with how the commercial came out, but I was absent for a day, so I could not influence it at all that day. Below is the plan for the commercial which we  didn't exactly follow. Below THAT, is the results from a poll the class took.

This section of my blog will be about our best "team moment". To be honest, I don't know exactly what "team moment" means. I guess I'll just talk about our most productive moment, since in school projects that is how I would determine if one time working with my team is better than another. I think that the most productive time in our project was when I went to Kacie's house to film. Although Adelina wasn't there, we got a lot of video. In Adelina's place, we used Kacie's brother, Austin. (Not the best actor).

In our teams post-production (editing) time, we had a few difficulties, but overcame them. One problem was the audio. In a few shots, whoever was filming was fairly far away, and we couldn't hear anything. That was a very easy fix, though. All we had to do was adjust the audio to a whatever level we wanted it at. We did the same thing if the audio was too quiet. I was absent for a day, though, so I don't know what happened on that day, other than the project was finished. It probably would have been easier if we had assigned each one of a specific task, but being the geniuses that we are, we obviously didn't, so most of it was mayhem.

Composition Scavenger Hunt

In GT class, we recently did something called a "composition scavenger hunt". The first thing we all did  was form groups of three, each with there own number. Then each group got a laminated paper with examples and descriptions of a bunch of different composition techniques. If a group had the numbers 1 through 10, they had film using certain techniques. If they were 11 through 20, they had to film other techniques. The most important technique, in my opinion, is "high angle". If you couldn't figure out what that is from the name, it an angle in which the camera is higher than the subject and gives the viewer a sense of superiority. I think that it is the most important because it is the main shot used for sports and other large events,to give the audience a good view of what is happening. It can also be used for close-up things like interviews by putting the camera close the speaker but just a little bit above them to give it the high angle perspective.

Now  I will tell you about which technique I think is the most difficult to use, and how I can use more of it. I think that POV, or "point of view", is the most difficult. POV is where you see through the eyes of the subject, or to put it simpler, you see what the subject is seeing. I think that it is the most difficult because of multiple different reasons. First of all, it is an awkward and difficult position to hold a camera in. It is also difficult to make a POV shot look good. POV is also a limited technique, as far as what you can film. For example, if you were to film skateboarding from POV, because the camera can not be placed directly in the skater's eye, (yet), the camera would be a bit in front of the skater's eye, you would not be able to see the board in most instances. The same goes for most sports, excluding, maybe, tennis. I do have an idea about how I can use it more, though. I would like to use it in more basic things, like comedy skits. That way you would be able to see everything you needed to see, and would have an uncommon sense of what the character is feeling, that you normally don't get in videos.

As I mentioned earlier, we all worked in teams of three. I was with two girls named Kacie and Adelina. We didn't really assign one specific job to each person, instead we rotated and switched jobs for each clip. For example, I would film Kacie  or Adelina doing something for one of the techniques, then one of them would film me doing something for another technique. We wanted to make sure our audio was clear, so

what we did is one of us would film very close to someone's mouth while they were describing one of the composition techniques. Then we used iMovie to put the audio over a video showing the technique matching the one in the audio. We used iMovie for all of the editing, and we did so on Kacie's computer.

Cracking The Code

In GT class, we have recently done something new, and quite exiting. We did...(drumroll please)... CODING! We didn't do the hardcore, from scratch, write the script coding, but we worked with a program for beginners. Coding is actually much more common than a lot of people realize. It's in our banking, indirectly in most industries, and many other important things. The thing is, though, that not very many people actually know how to code! Personally, I think that coding is something everybody should know how to do. Maybe not as advanced as people who's job it is to code, but should at least know how to do things like create a very basic website. I feel like that because it's in so many different and very important things. If something suddenly goes wrong with one of those things, we should all know how to fix it! And I'm sure some people would try to abuse knowing how to code, but if everyone knew how, we could all stop them.

Now, I shall tell you about my first experience with coding. It was actually NOT in GT class! The first time I ever did any real coding was in a summer course, between 5th and 6th grade. It was on a college campus, but I was learning beginner things. I was in a class with about twenty other kids, and we all had a lot of fun. Not all of the kids actually paid attention and learned, though. One kid just sat with his feet up on a chair and listened to music off of Youtube for most of the two week class. We made multiple games, all of which were fairly basic. I made a top-down shooter with different types of enemies and mazes as well as power ups, a top-down car chase games, another top-down  game in which you must fend off attacking airplanes by shooting at them, and a games in which you must guide a parachuting cow through mazes it falls through while collecting coins, and, in the end, reaching the ground. I made them by doing things like setting variables on the characters action and on what button was pressed. That means if one thing happened, it would cause something else to happen. For example, in my top down-shooter, if you were touched by a zombie or a guard, you lost a certain amount of health, which you could gain back by walking into an image of a heart you find every once and a while in a maze. Unfortunately, I do not remember the name of the program I used, but I had a lot of fun.

It seems my committed readers have reached the last paragraph. EVER. Just kidding! It's just the last paragraph in this post. The subject for this  paragraph is "If I could design any program or game"... I would design a social media app and website. But it wouldn't be like any social media website. It would be strictly for people who all share a surprisingly  common hobby of mine. I'm not going to tell you what the hobby is, but I will say it is legal, common, and many people make jobs and livings off of it. I would be the moderator, which means I would go through all the content and make sure it is all related to the hobby, and not offensive in any sexual or racial way. After a certain number of unrelated posts, say... 4 or five, depending on how unrelated they are, whoever posted them all would be kicked out for a certain amount of time, and if they got temporarily kicked out twice, then they would be banned permanently. Unlike Vine, your videos could be as long as you wanted, and the app would would have a built in video and photo editor, as well as multiple chat rooms.

My Humorous Monologue

MeredithC_Comedy from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.

From my comedy project, I have learned many things. First of all, I learned how to use a certain kind
of camera. I used it to help film my classmate doing his comedic monologue. Mainly, I learned about writing and presenting comedy. It was honestly a bit harder than I thought, but it was quite fun. The hardest part was finding a good subject to write about. What I learned from the writing, though, is to go over my monologue multiple times, joke by joke, and try to make each one  as funny as possible. I also learned about timing while I was filming my comedic monologue. I learned not to fly through each joke really fast, and to have a rhythm to your delivery. I am also currently learning more and more about using iMovie, which I think is pretty fun. One of the most important things I learned about in filming comedy is called pad. I'll tell you about that next. OR WILL I? ( Cue dramatic sound effects). YES. I WILL.

Pad is a very important part of filming anything. It is used as a precaution for clips that are either too short in the end, or cut off, (basically meaning to short), in the begging. Adding pad to your clips is actually very easy and simple. To add pad to your clips, you start a few seconds before the thing you want to film happens, and wait a few seconds after it's happened. In my GT class, we have been adding pad by starting filming, saying "rolling", then saying "three, two, one, action." At the the end, we just wait a few seconds before we stop filming. After we import the clips, we can trim out the pad, or leave some in if it the clips are too long or short. Basically, by doing absolutely nothing for a few seconds before and after you start filming, you are adding pad.

Here is my joke plan for the making of my video.

Now don't you go off thinking "oh, I'm going to make myself a video just like that kid Callum, and it'll just take me one day!" No. That's not how it works. It had many challenges, and I'll describe some of those now, along with some other things. I think the biggest challenge was editing it in Imovie. That's because I didn't have much time to do it because of a misunderstanding, but once I was able to edit, I had to hurry, and it was difficult. I had never used Imovie before, so it  was difficult, but I learned a lot. The easiest part, though, was writing the actual script. That part was very fun, and it was something I had hoped we got to do in school for years. The only hard part of that was picking a subject to write about, then I just went to work and had fun. I do think that there could be improvements, however. I think that I could have had more stable videos, (although some shots were deliberately shaky), and clearer audio. The audio is a bit unclear because I filmed outside, but I think it is okay. In class, we watched each others finished videos, and graded them based on a curriculum that we had. Below are my grade results from the other kids. The chart is a little uneven, though, so you need to look at the numbers and grades to your left of the green bars. As you can see, I did pretty well, and I'm very glad I got the results I did. CHIAO!