Thursday, May 28, 2015

Music Videos Rock!



The people on my team are Ehu and Wailana. Each one of us has equally contributed to this project. Wailana who is our main character has contributed the most because she stepped up and decided she wanted to be the main character. Ehu has helped too, she has done some lip syncs without trouble. I have done all the filming and a lot of the on camera stuff too. Overall we have all contributed pretty equally.

To me I think the audience will enjoy the part about how at first Wailana is sad about a breakup but is instantly relieved by food. Like this one scene Wailana is looking at a text from her boyfriend while lip syncing, but she sees the sight of popcorn and throws her phone to go run after the popcorn *haha* Also I think the audience will like the whole thing because its about food and I mean who doesn't like food! Other reason why people will like this is because it has a lesson in  it. About how it'll be okay if you're going through hard times, things will always get better. If anything EAT FOOD!

During this music video we plan on showing each of the camera techniques we have learned throughout this school year. We also are adding in everything else we have learned. Such as, our editing skills, or interview skills, our filming skills and our writing skills. For the writing part we had to make a storyboard and a general topic on what it will be about, so since we do blogs it kind of helped with that. For the filming skills it would be the composition techniques we were provided. Editing skills come from working in IMovie and Final Cut Pro. The interview part is about rule of thirds. So pretty much everything we've learned has gone into this project.


Monday, May 11, 2015

Lyrical Livelihood

Well I have two favorite songs at the moment, my first favorite song is called Trap Queen by Fetty Wap because it's a good song to dance too and the beat is really interesting. My second favorite song is called Like I'm Gonna Loose You by Meghan Trainor because it's a sad love story song and it kind of relates to my life. The lyrics in these songs are both interesting and sad. They both relate to my life.

My team and I decided to do "You're The One That I Want" by John Travolta and Olivia Newton, this song is also in the movie Grease. We wanted to do that song because we all love the movie Grease, I mean who doesn't. If you don't know what movie Grease is, it is a 1950's love story movie, starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton. We thought that this song would be goo because it was a hit back then and still is now so we think everyone will love it. We really wanted to do this song because it is a very upbeat, classy song that everybody loves.
In our music video, we are basing it on food. Everybody loves food! Our story is about this girl (Wailana) who gets sad about a breakup, but is instantly relieved by the sight of FOOD! Throughout the story she will have flashbacks and withdrawals about her boyfriend. Then food comes along and cheers her up. Also her friends, Ehu and Sydney are they to cheer her up and make her forget about him. We hope that this will help put smiles on the  faces out there who are going through hard times. Just eat food and you'll feel better, I promise.

Monday, April 27, 2015

Our Animation Story

Our focus statement, which is Ana Overcomes Shyness, is all about how she moves to a new school and at first is very shy but when two girls invite her to sit by them at lunch, she overcomes that shyness. Also a lot of people consider themselves shy, and find that it can stop them from doing things that they want to do but it's important to sometimes take risks. It tells our story because a lot of people can relate to how when you first come to a new school your very shy but you get past that when you start making friends. We hope this project will help the kids who are afraid.

Scene 1.
The lesson our audience will learn from this is that everything comes to an end at some time in life. So it's best to just live the life you have and get through those hard times. All you have to know is be yourself and never change who you are. For people to learn this lesson, we plan to show what Ana had to go through in stykz and how her conscious had to help her through. We plan to make everything clear so it's not hard to understand and get confused.

Leila and Ana in one of our scenes.
One of our best moments was probably when we finally got it done because we just knew we finally didn't have to worry about deadlines and making sure everything's perfect. We just felt the weight lift off our shoulders. One of our worst moments was probably when our rough draft was due because we didn't really have anything done and we were missing a teammate so that dint help. We were freaking out because we were afraid we were going to not make the deadline. But we kept on focus and we pushed through
Sophia and Hannah, our star actors.

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Animation Outtakes

My teammates are,Leila Nelson, Brandi Baligad and Ana Ell. Leila is a very helpful teammate and always has ideas to make things better. Brandi is also a very helpful person and she is always there to help out. Ana, who is our main character, is interesting and has an interesting story to her life. All of my teammates are here to help and make sure we succeed in everything we have to do.

Stop-motion animation is is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object or person appear to look like it's moving on its own. Normally, if they use a person, they don't show the persons feet to show like it's hovering. That's what we plan on doing for our video. A .GIF or also known as Graphic Interchange Format, is an image file format commonly used for images on the web and sprites in software programs. Unlike the JPEG image format, GIF uses lossless compression that does not degrade the quality of the image. However, GIFs store image data using indexed color, meaning each image can include a maximum of 256 colors.

For our project we are doing a story about Ana. Her story is about moving from a new school to this school and feeling very shy until a couple girls invite her to come sit by them at lunch. People should care about this because a lot of people consider themselves shy, and find that it can stop them from doing things that they want to do. We also feel that this can symbolize many other challenges in life, and that it’s important to sometimes take risks. We also think this can be relatable, as well as an inspiration to be yourself and step outside of your shell.


Thursday, March 12, 2015

Typography Images

A Typography is a style or way to make art by typing something out. Typography is a kind of design and use of text as a mean of communication. You can use any subject but for our class we took a picture of a teacher at our school. We then used words to fill in their contour. The words are mainly of that persons life, what they like to do, etc. When it is used with images, it makes an impact because when you can see the person as the main subject, mixed with the words about them and their life it makes a big impact on the whole thing. It just shows who they truly are. 

My biggest challenge so far during this project would have to be with my text. When I copy and paste the text it turns out very spaced out and far away from the other words. I noticed that there is a tool in Photoshop called the Kerning tool that helps fix the problem. A way that you can customize your text and the spacing however you want it to look. So to overcome this problem, I went in to Photoshop, found the Kerning tool and fixed my text so that there wouldn't be spaces in between. To overcome any issue all you have to do is stay focus and keep getting help from the people sitting besides you and all around you. 

First of all my Innovator practice picture(the top one)is of Thomas Edison who was one of the most significant innovators and inventors in American history. This is different from the other ones because the background is black and the text is white. The text used in this one is about his life and his history. My next example is the teacher one(the middle one). My teacher was Mr. Relacion, who is an English teacher for 7th grade here at Kapa'a Middle School. This one is different from the other one because the background is white and the text was black but is now colorful. The text that I used in this one is about Mr. Relacion's life and what he likes to do. My last example(the bottom one)is of me. This one is different because the the way we made this one is a totally different way than how we made the other ones. Also the text that I used in this one is describing me and what I like to do. My favorite one out of the three would probably be my teacher picture because I think I did my best on that one. Also because I tried my hardest on that one because I didn't want to mess up on that one because he is a teacher. 

Thursday, February 19, 2015

Double Exposed Portraits

Portrait photography is a photo of one specific person or a whole group of people that shows the expression, mood and personality of the person or group. It is usually of the persons face but may include the rest of the body in the background. Since a profile view is of a persons face only showing one side, it can relate to portrait photography because it is still a picture of someones face. Silhouetting is usually a person, object, animal etc. that is black or darkened so it becomes black and plain so the background stands out and causes that shadow look on the silhouette.
Double Exposures are created in Photoshop by you first start by loading the photos into a stack. Then you rotate, resize and crop the image. After that you do blend mode and you change it to screen. Then you change the color tone, and avoid "happy mistakes" or just work on the quality of it. Then you are done! You would want to make a Double Exposure because it makes your picture turn out amazing and also it's very creative. You would want to make this kind of artwork because, it just shows the true beauty of who you really are especially if your pictures in the background are of your life.
The symbolism in my two examples are of my life and my school. My practice one(the first one)
is pictures of the plants and trees at our school during a class session. Then the second photo example(my final one)has two photos. The first picture is of Hanakapiai falls which is located here on Kauai. It is my favorite place to hike and my favorite to swim under a waterfall. Then the second picture is of my backyard. I have a river and it leads all the way down to Kealia Beach on the East Side of Kauai. The quality of my worked could've improved in the layer effects part. I feel like I could have added more to it to make it look way more cool. Overall I think it turned out pretty good though.

Monday, February 9, 2015

HDR Photography

HDR photography, is a method that aims to add more dynamic range to photographs, where dynamic range is the ratio of light to dark in a photograph. Instead of just taking one photo, HDR uses three photos, taken at different exposures. What I like about HDR photography is that it can take up to seven photos with different exposures and take all of them and create a beautiful shot that really brings out the details of that place. There isn't really anything that I dislike about HDR, but one thing might be that when taking a picture of a crowded place or with movement, it tends to make the picture turn out bad.
When creating a HDR picture you start by finding a location where there are no people(so there is no movement). Then you start at the exposure of -3 and work your way up to +3 or if you want you can go from +3 to -3. Then you take the seven photos and merge them to HDR pro in Photoshop. Then you can edit the picture it creates! Whats different between HDR Photography and the automatic HDR functions is that the first one takes up to 7 photos ranging from light to dark, but when using just the automatic HDR it only takes one photo.
When I created the two HDR images, there was definitely a thought process to it. First I had to make sure that wherever I took this photo, it would be creative and also that there wouldn't be any people in my shot because of movement. Then I noticed that right after you take the first shot at -3 and you go to change it to -2, if you move the camera or the tripod just a little bit, it may mess up your HDR photo. Then when I was finished taking my seven photos, I went back to the classroom. I merged the photos to HDR Pro and started editing them, in Photoshop.


Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Movie Trailer Critique



For this project we made a movie trailer. First what we had to do was create a story to use for the trailer. Then we made a trailer production plan and we went to work on planning everything out so we could start filming. In this project I had 3 other teammates, Leleaka Anakalea, Brooke Kauo, and Wailana Makepa. In our Trailer Plan document we had to make a Movie Trailer Synopsis also a Voice Acting Script. These were used to help the watchers know what was happening. We also had to chose who the main characters were and the location we were planning on filming. Also the plot and the meaning of the story. Then we could start planning out our scenes. We had a total of 10 scenes that we filmed. For this project to work we had to all contribute to get it done. We all had to help out. 
The requirements for this project were that the time had to be 1 and a half minutes to 2 and a half minutes, we also had to have text layovers, effects, dialogue, our movie poster and 5 scenes. We also had to have the Voice Acting script. I think that my team and I did complete all of the requirements and the final product came out really good. I think our team didn't win because people usually choose comedy over romance. Overall the reason we had all the requirements was because we all worked together to get it completed. 

In the end we watched all of our videos and completed a critique. On the critique we had to check if the that team had Room for improvement, satisfaction, and above and beyond, for audience, creativity and requirements. Sadly we lost to Maceo's team only by two points. For the results I do agree with what people put for us. We only had satisfaction and above and beyond so we didn't have any room for improvement votes. In the end I learned that everything is much easier to do with a team, and if you don't cooperate then the job won't get done.