Music Video Finale

P3T4 Happy from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.

In G.T. we are making a music video for our last project of the school year. We chose the song Happy by Pharrel William to do our music video on. In our story line Josiah goes to all his other teammates (Tyler, Treysen, and I) and makes them happy. All three of us are faced with things that make us unhappy so Josiah cheers us up. Then we all become happy when Josiah throws magic dust on us and we become happy. This relates to our lyrics because our lyrics are saying that you shouldn't let the troubles of the world effect you. It also says that you should enjoy life while it lasts.

My favorite fast-edit montage sequence is sequence is when it goes from Josiah ripping the paper to Treysen being shocked and Josiah making a smile on Treysen's face. We also have Treysen jump up and join Josiah in a parade. We had a lot of fun filming this montage because all of the actions we filmed made us laugh. I enjoy this montage because I like how it switches shots at a quick pace. It is my favorite because a lot of weird faces are made. This montage is kind of fast paced and has about 3 shots in it.

This music video showcases my best work by showing all the things that we learned in the school year. We have to use our iMovie skills that we learned and gained over the year to make good editing choices, good transitions, and sequences. The only difference is the fast-edit montage. We also need to use our Photoshop skills to make a icon for the beginning. We also need a screen for bloopers that we will include in our video if we have. It also needs creativity. The teams need to think of different ways to portray their songs meaning. The editing that is taking place is much like what we have been doing all year. I enjoyed this project because it allowed us to use all of the knowledge we have gained over this past school year.

Lyrics Used

(Intro Music)

Well, I should probably warn you I'll be just fine, yeah, 

No offense to you, don't waste your time

Here's why, 

Because I’m Happy

Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof

Because I'm happy

Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth

Because I'm happy

Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth

Because I'm happy

Clap along if you know what happiness is to you

Because I'm happy

Clap along if you know what happiness is to you

Because I'm happy

Clap along if you feel like that's what you wanna do

Hey

Go

Uh

Bring me down

Can't nothing

Bring me down

My level's too high

Bring me down

Can't nothing

Bring me down

I said (let me tell you now)

Bring me down

Can't nothing

Bring me down

My level's too high

Bring me down

Can't nothing

Bring me down

I said

Because I'm happy

Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof

Because I'm happy

Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof

Because I'm happy

Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth

Because I'm happy

Clap along if you know what happiness is to you

Because I'm happy

Because I'm happy

Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof

Because I'm happy

Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth

Because I'm happy

Clap along if you know what happiness is to you

Because I'm happy

Clap along if you know what happiness is to you

Because I'm happy Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof

Because I'm happy

Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth

Because I'm happy

Clap along if you know what happiness is to you
Because I'm happy Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof

Because I'm happy

Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth

Bring me down

Can't nothing

Bring me down

My level's too high

Bring me down

Can't nothing

Bring me down

I said (let me tell you now)

Bring me down

Can't nothing

Bring me down

My level's too high

Bring me down

Can't nothing

Bring me down

I said

Because I'm happy

Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth

Because I'm happy

Clap along if you know what happiness is to you

Because I'm happy

Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof
Because I'm happy

Animated Life Lessons

P3T6 James Gains Confidence from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.

As stated in my previous posts, we have been assigned a new animation project in G.T. My team has three people counting me. The students am working with are Denae and Tyler. Denae is a encouraging, supportive person and Tyler sometimes is an discouraging person. We will use this in our animation by having Denae encourage me to enter a school race. I end up deciding to enter it, but Tyler comes along later on and says I won't be able to do it. This continues throughout the story in different forms. Those are the ways we will incorporate and exaggerate my team's personal traits into my animation.


To use humor in our story we will to have humor in our story we will have Tyler say I am as fast as a turtle and then maybe show me as a turtle. The life lesson in our story is that you should have confidence in yourself. It relates to the audience by some people being shy. I'm shy, so I don't really do many outgoing things. I think shy people will be able to relate to the fact that I don't want to do the race. They will also know the feeling you have when you do something and you do good.

Our teammates for this project had to be people we had never worked with before. Considering this, I think our team's productivity level was pretty good. Although we didn't finish before the deadline, all of our class didn't either and my team was about 5 minutes away from  finishing. I think our team's biggest challenge was communication.We didn't always talk about what we were doing and if we needed help. This caused us to not always be progressive in our animating and just sit there trying to fix it.  Our best moment during production was when we finished. We watched our animation and it was pretty good at the end so we enjoyed it.

Character Development

Cutout

I would describe myself as a shy person because I'm not usually out going and I only feel comfortable talking to people I know a lot. I also am not an out going person and I don't like doing some things in front of other people. Something I always do in the morning is I can never get out of my room on the first try. Sometimes I will be right at the door to leave my room but then I just fall right back on my bed as if I need another minute to sleep. After that I am fine and I'm not sleepy anymore and I do this every morning. Also when I am really focused on something I always bite my lower lip. I don't know why but now it's just a habit and I always do it.

In my animation I will exaggerate a trait about myself. I plan to exaggerate the way I move clumsily. I will do this by making my arms and legs move around weird and maybe do a little jump. This will look like my arms and legs are moving in an up and down motion. I will do this by using the puppet warp tool in photo shop. To make this .GIF move smoother I will make a animation part to loop.  To do this I will use the move tool to move myself to make myself move across the screen and then move out.

Original Picture

Finished .GIF

To create a .GIF you would first need a picture. This is the picture you will edit to make your animation. Then open that picture up in photoshop and separate that picture from the back,ground. You could either use the quick selection tool or the magic wand tool. The after that you would click on window and then select animation. The you would click New Frame button on the bottom row. Make sure you have your cutout picture selected, or else you won't be able to move it. Then select the frame you want to animate in and you can move or warp the picture the way you want to. If you want to move it then you would use the move tool but to warp is a whole other story. To warp click on edit in the top right corner then select puppet warp. To move yourself around just click on the area you want, but you may want to put pins on other areas just so they don't move if you don't want them to. After you have all your frames done you should put delays between each frames so it doesn't go by to fast which you do by clicking the seconds bar underneath each frame. I do like it because It loops and it has pretty smooth movement between each frame.

.Mov Film Festival

P3T8 James Rescues Candy from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.

In GT, we are making either a movie trailer, sitcom, or animation for a film festival. My team chose to do a movie trailer. We have keywords in our film and they are Loss, Chase, Friendship, Rescue, and Feelings. These keywords relate to our audience because they say the characters in our movie trailer will be friends, one will lose something or someone, and they will go to rescue someone. They also say our movie trailer will have a action scene where someone is running away from someone else and our movie trailer will make a emotional connection to our audience.

My teams movie trailer's overall message is to hold on to your friends because you never know when you might lose them. This means that you should spend time with your friends because one day they might not be your friends anymore. In our movie trailer, James learns that he like Cara even more than he thought. This is shown by James losing Cara and almost crying over that. James was just a normal kid in the beginning and at the end he has to grow up and take action to rescue Cara.

I believe the biggest challenge my team faced was trying to meet up and get our filming done. Everyone had something to do like practice for a sport or they had to go somewhere. We also had to figure out a place to film where there would be minimal noise. Lastly, one of our shots we took were blurred out so we had to figure out what to do. We didn't know if we should just cut that shot or try and retake it. These were some of the challenges my team faced in the production of our movie trailer you should check it out at the top of my blog and to see other examples go to Vimeo.

Check out all of my teammates blogs:
Josiah 
William
Steven

Tiny Spherical Worlds

In G.T. we are learning about composite images. Composite images are a combination of photos, like photo montages. It would be easier to just take one picture, but we have composite images for a reason. We have composite images because they go beyond the camera's limits. This means that they are so unique and interesting that the level of interest couldn't be met with just one picture.

In Gt we are also learning how to make spherical and polar panos. Polar and spherical panoramas are like multiple pictures taken on the same horizon line combined into one straight photo. Later these pictures are shaped into circles. Polar ad spherical sound like kind of the same thing and they are except for a few things. Polar panoramas have the sky on the outside and the land on the inside which makes it look like a tiny world. Spherical panoramas however look have the land on the outside and the sky on the inside which makes it look sort of like a snow globe.

As you can see on my blog there are pictures of tiny worlds. These are my spherical and polar panoramas. My spherical panorama is on the right and it is convincing because all the grass kind of look like its the same type of grass and the bushes also match. My polar panorama is convincing because I kind of matched the colors of the sky. My spherical panoramas is convincing because it is kind of the same on both sides. Also, in my portraits I think I did a good job in the placement of myself to make it feel like I was actually standing there. However,  I think maybe I could have done a better job on the tiny world I am in and the sky is on the inside and the ground is on the outside. The shadow seems to be in the sky which I hadn't realized until after I had turned it in.

Hockney Style Joiners

In my Gt class we are learning about Photo-montages and their creator David Hockney. Photo-montages are a collaboration of photos with overlap to create a abstract photo. David Hockney's photo montages are different than mine because his are more professional and since he does this for a living. His Photo-Montages are also probably more advanced colors and definitions in his pictures since he uses a different camera than the ones we use in school. David Hockney is also better at arranging the photos to give them that certain abstract feel.

Images are very complex because they can send positive and negative messages.They can send messages by the subjects in the picture. The subjects could be things that represent positive things like happiness. Happiness could be a bowl of ice cream. Sadness could be a rainy day from a window. The effects in a photo also could send a message. If you have black and white effects it could be sad or if you have vibrant effects it could be happy.

In GT we are making a photo montage of something that is special to us. I took pictures of a flower in my backyard. I used different tilts and angles while taking my pictures so when I put them together it's more abstract. The message I want to send in my photo montage is that without flowers life would be colorless and boring. This means without flowers life wouldn't be fun. No one would be inspired by the beauty and no one would be creative.

Check out these joiners by the man who created them in the link below.
Original Hockney Style Joiners

2016 Aspirations

In 2016 I have many goals I want to accomplish. One of them is getting A's in all of my classes. Another is to do a good job on my school's morning announcements as a tricaster and make very little mistakes. In 2016 I also want to participate more in classes without being asked because I am a really shy kid. I also want to try and get better at cooking and learn more stuff about flavors. My last goal for 2016 is to help out my friends when they are stuck on something.

The most important goal to me is actually two because they counteract with each other. They are to get A's in all of my classes and participate more. I chose these two because part of our grade is based off of participation. Also to have a successful life and a good job to support you you need to be good in class and get good grades. Also if I participated more in class I would gain more confidence in what I do.

The steps I will take to ensure success is to pay attention in classes. I will also need to make sure I understand what we are doing class. Another step will be to study for the tests that we take in class. Also, I need to make sure that during very important tests like sbac tests to stay focused. The last step I will need to take is to raise my hand if class to answer questions and if it's wrong at least I know.

Scratch Game Design

Scratch Chase Game Instructions: Arrow keys to move  Scoring:15 points to win

                 Scratch Platformer Instructions:Arrow keys to move  Object: Get the balloons

                                                                                   

In GT we created a game of chase in Scratch. User experience influenced my game by affecting the character I would have chase the other which is a dog chasing a cat. I thought the people using it could make a connection with what is happening. User experience affected my platformer also by the sprites I chose. I figured someone trying to grab the balloons they lost is something everyone would understand.

My chase game has multiple features. It has a point system where you score a point every 3 seconds. You can also lose points by getting touched by the dog. I also have a timer to show you how much time left till you gain a point. The sprites are a dog chasing a cat. I chose this because I thought it was a classic scenario. The background is a beach because I thought it would match the sprites and the action in a game.

My best code in my platformer was when I made the code that if the balloon's Y position equaled something that it showed another balloon. I had never used this piece of code before and when i found out how to use it properly I was really happy. My most difficult bug was when I couldn't get any of my jumps to work and my balloons were really glitchy. Then my friend Nick said " Are they in forevers". It turned out I didn't have certain stuff in forevers so it didn't go correctly. When I played it again It worked fine.

If you want to create your own games click on the link below:
Scratch

Invention Commercial

Title: Invention Commercial Label: GT Portfolio
I: Describe your team’s main goals for this assignment
B: Explain the best “team moment” during production
C: During post-production editing, who did what & why
Embedded Vimeo, SS Commercial Plan & Results

My team's main goal for this assignment was simple. We decided to create a faster way of transportation. We decided it would be built in the water so there is more space to build. It is also made to be a way hospitals can bring patients to them quicker which could result with their life being saved. We called it Hydro Travel because hydro is another name for it's location the water and you use it for traveling at high speeds.

The best team moment we had during our production was figuring out what to do for the entertainment. We were editing the film we already had when we went to go re-film a part that was cut off. While we were walking to get our plan Andrew did his Arnold Schwarzenegger voice. Then an idea struck me. I said that we should have him say "Get to the chopper" but it wouldn't be there so he would need to use our invention, Hydro Travel.

While we were editing everyone did everything. Some times I was editing, sometimes Will was editing and so on. While someone else was editing the people on the sidelines also had a job to do. They had to make sure the video would turn out good. The way our video turned out except for the fact we didn't explain how it works and at the end there wasn't a need for them to go into the capsule. Also I didn't like the fact that the lego men were floating and gliding on the ground.

Composition Scavenger Hunt

In my GT class we are doing a project on composition techniques. The composition technique that is most important to me is leading lines. This is the most important to me because without leading lines the audience may not be focused on the character or main object. They may be focused on extras or the background. If this happens the audience watching might miss an important event. You can see what leading lines is in the video at the top of the screen at the 20 second mark.

The most difficult composition  to me technique is rule of thirds scenery. Here are some reasons why. You would need to have a certain position where you have scenery in one third of the film. You would also need a spot to have something happen. I can use it more by not using it to film the sky but by using it for film at eye level.

My teammates were Andrew and William.William had glasses but now uses contacts and was behind the camera most of the time except for group shot. Outside of school William mows lawns and plays tennis and soccer. Andrew was the one with gel in his hair and is in the screenshot below. Outside of school he plays soccer and acts. While we were editing we assigned things. I was the person who edited the shots with Will doing it sometimes. Andrew was assigned to the transitions and text layers. Will picked the music and helped with transitions.

Cracking the Code

Hey this is James, hope your fall break was great. Were back in school and in GT we are learning coding. I think that everyone should learn at least the basics of coding. Then if someone is interested they will look further into it learning more advanced things. I believe this because if people get interested in coding they may look further into working with technology.  This may lead to the invention of more advanced technology.

My first experience with programming was a game we played in GT class. The game had three different themes to it. One was Angry Birds where you were the red bird going to the pig, another was Plants vs. Zombies where you were a zombie going to the sunflower, and the last one was the squirrel from Ice Age going to the nut. In the game you had to put a combination of blocks to move the character to the target. There was block where if something was to the side of you or ahead it would do a certain action. After you finish all 20 levels you got a certificate which congratulates you for completing a hour of code which is on my blog.

If I could design any program or game I would design a game that is kind of like Mario that has a Pokemon theme. You can throw Poke balls to catch Pokemon that can help you along the way. You can collect coins to upgrade the level of poke balls. The controls would be basic (Arrow keys and spacebar). The boss levels would be legendary Pokemon.

My Humorous Monologue

As you know from my previous posts, my GT class is making a joke with B-roll shots. During this project I have learned how to edit B-Roll and monologue and put B-Roll over my monologue. I learned how to import film from a camera directly into an event box. I learned how to adjust the timing of film and how to take out certain parts. The last thing I learned was how to add my film into a server.

During editing we learned what pad is. Pad is the extra time at the beginning and end of the video. It is added so no words are cut off. Padding your clips is crucial because if something is cut off while you are filming and you didn't notice you wouldn't have that part fully. If part of a video wasn't there the video wouldn't be good.
 
While we were making our comedic film I encountered some weaknesses and strengths. One of my weaknesses was that I didn't really more advanced stuff because I wasn't here while we learned it.One of my strengths that I encountered was that I was very good at was. Things I could improve on is checking the timing on my film. I think I got a 2 because I was outside of the timezone on my video, that is why I gave myself a 2. It wasn't till after class that my friend told me that since I was absent I could have given myself a 3.

The template I followed while filming my monologue and B-Roll

The statistics after the voting from the vote form. SO close to a 3.

Comedy Writing

Title: Comedy Writing Label: GT Portfolio
I: Why is sense of humor an important character trait?
B: Describe 5 tips for writing a humorous narrative.
C: Explain your comedic monologue & why it’s funny.
Visuals: One 5 Shot Laughing Photo Booth .GIF

At my GT program we have a project where we are writing a comedic paragraph. A sense of humor an important character trait because it would make the comedic writing project easier.It is also important because it can make someone happy when they are sad. It is important because it can make you a fun person to hang out with. The last reason that a sense of humor is an important character trait because it can make life better.

In this paragraph I am going to tell you five tips on writing a humorous narrative. The first tip I have for you is that when you are trying to come up with your joke you can take something from your daily life and make it funny. The second step I have for you is you can make it funny with voice inflictions or funny faces. The third tip is when writing your humorous narrative is to make it directly for the audience. The fourth tip for you when writing your humorous narrative is what you are doing when you're saying you're joke plays a role in if people will laugh or not. The fifth tip is that you can be sarcastic about things to make them funny.

My comedic monologue is funny because it is being sarcastic on how great school is. It is also funny because at the end it is saying that if I never had a break from school I wouldn't make it trough the week. My joke also has a part where I say the work follows you home from school (homework) and the work is on a skateboard. This was not my first idea but my teacher told us how being sarcastic can be funny. If you could see my visuals I think it would be little funnier.

Motivational Poster

In the Gifted and Talented [GT] at my school we are making Motivational posters and here are some of the requirements. We need to have two text layers, one with our Personal Quotes and on with our Manifesto.We also need to put 3 symbolic images and 1 portrait. That's just the layer requirements, we also have design requirements  Our design requirements are kerning,a triadic color scheme, we need visual balance, a blending option for our text layers, and adjustment layers for our images.

This paragraph is going to have the steps of me making my Motivational poster. The first step in  making my Motivational poster was writing the text that would be in my poster. The next step was copy and pasting my personal quotes and manifesto in a Photoshop document.Next I put my personal symbols into a folder in finder. Lastly I dragged the photos into Photoshop and arranged them to achieve visual balance.

The biggest challenge in making my Motivational poster was kerning.It was very frustrating,hard,and time consuming. I can improve on kerning by planning on what to do.I could also think if I have time to do it. I also learned at the very end that you could just make things very big and put it in pillar like structures. I am pretty sure that we will be doing a lot of kerning and now I know a easy way to do it.Below are pictures of my text layers,photo arrangement, and both put together.

Manifesto

Hi my name is James Kessler and if you want to learn interesting things about me continue reading.One interesting thing about me is that I can touch my nose with my tongue. I have been in the newspaper twice. I also have hair on the back of my head that I can never make stay down. My favorite color is black and I have one brother, one sister, and a half sister.   

This paragraph is going to be a creative 2015-2016 manifesto. Get the job done.Never give up.Do your best work.Live life to the fullest.Try new things.Spend time with your friends.Have fun.Be the best you.Don't give up.Never stop trying.Family is the most important thing in life.Be kind to others.Never stop living.Live in the moment.Be positive.Never be negative.Perfect isn't real.Be creative.Use your imagination.

The manifesto in my blog is for a gifted and talented program at my school. The ways my manifesto relates to my readers because it explains how to live a good life. It also explains that to live a good life you should be nice to others and to be your best self.