Animation Outakes

Why hello my evil army. Today we will be learning all about animation. I can hear you all saying, "But Maddie, you've already done a post on animation!" My answer is yes, I have, but it's a new year, and a new project. I will link that project down below, so you can enjoy some fetus Maddie. Yay fetus Maddie! Anyway, let's explain this project and my lovely teammates, and I'll see you at the bottom.

 This year, my lovely team consists of Julie Castro, Jayse Matsuyama, and Denae Sacramend. I have worked with Denae before- don't tell Mr. Sanderl- but I have not yet worked with Jayse or Julie, so I got to meet some new people. Which I actually survived, which is surprising seeing as I'm terrified of people. Now, for some interesting facts about my lovely team. Let's start with Miss Julie- she dances hula, and she has two brothers. Now for Mr. Jayse. Jayse is a surfer, which is one of the many perks of living on a small tropical island. He also paddles for Puu'wai, the canoe club that we both belong to, so we're teammates. Finally, let's move on to Denae. Denae loves animals, and she is a very random person. Which is a very, very good thing. 

Now to explain stop-motion animation. Basically, stop-motion is a type of animation that you create by taking pictures, then putting them all into I Movie, or Photoshop. This creates video that can look like your doing the impossible. The next thing I'm going to explain to you is a .GIF. These are small animation files used mainly for the internet. By mainly I mean entirely. You have probably seen a .GIF before if you use social media sites, but I have a couple here anyway, for your viewing pleasure. It stands for Graphic Interchange Format.

We are telling Julie's story, and it is all about writers block. You should all care, because I'm pretty sure most of you reading this are G.T students, and I know that if you are in G.T, creative juices can be a stretched a little thin. In our story, we exaggerate on how it feels like there is a battle going on in your mind. I know when I have writers block, I feel panicked and desperate, as well as frustrated. I hope to convey relatable feelings through this, and also remind everyone, though it may seem like you'll never be able to write again, writers block doesn't last forever, and eventually the ideas will come back to you.

All right loves, that's it for today. I hope I've cleared up some of the mystery about animation, and I hope you'll check out the linksI have posted! bye, and I will see everybody next time... if anyone bothers to read these besides Mr. Sanderl.

Links!
Julie Castro
Jayse Matsuyama
Denae Sacramend
.GIF
Stop-motion
Last Animation

Typography Images

Hello Everybody! Today I'm going to tell you all about Typography portraits. I'm feeling a little distracted today, so I won't go on and on with the humorous beginning paragraph like I usually do. I'll just jump right in and tell you all about them. They happen to be incredibly interesting, so listen up. A typography portrait is basically a portrait of someone that looks like it's made from text. Now, you can make these really personalized by using text that represents the person you are doing, or you can just find some text that makes no sense and copy and paste it in. This all depends on how well you know the person, so if it's a really good friend of yours, write down things they love, or things that represent them, and it will really have a message, an impact.

My biggest challenge so far throughout this project was figuring out how to actually make them. I realize this sounds confusing, just wait, I'll explain. The thing is, these portraits can be really technical. There's a lot of complicated procedures in Photoshop, and so it can get a little overwhelming. That being said, now that I understand the process, I'm excited to do it again, because this is a really beautiful project, and it can be so meaningful if you let it. We've done three, one of a great innovator, one of a teacher at our school, and one of ourselves. For the self portrait, we answered these questions, and so it was a really personal message we shared, and I just loved it.

For the first image I made, I really was just trying to figure out the steps, and get the basics locked down. I got a portrait of Marie Curie online, then went to Wikipedia and got information on her. I copied and pasted the information to a textbox in Photoshop over her portrait. My second portrait was of my math teacher Mr. McHugh, and it turned out pretty cool. We got a lot more in depth this time, which I enjoyed because it was a challenge, and I love pushing the boundaries of what I can do. For my me portrait, I really felt like it was a representation of me, and I really liked it. I am a little bit shadowless unfortunately, so it's a little hard to see my features, but I still enjoyed the experience. Thank you for reading, comment below if you enjoyed, and if you didn't well, keep it to yourselves, no one likes a hater! Bye!

Double Exposed Portraits

Why hello innocent viewers. I am here to explain the mathematical equation of.... wait, don't go, I swear I'll stop talking about math, I swear! Now, moving past my daily dose of weirdness, (and math issues) I can explain what this post is really about. In class this week, we will be covering a little something I like to call Double Exposed Portraits. Don't know what the heck I'm talking about? (Don't worry, you're not alone, most of the time I have problems understanding myself!) Just keep reading, (That sounds like Nemo "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming) and I will enlighten us both. Also, I apologize for my distracted writing today, and the formality of last weeks post (I know I posted it on last Monday, just pretend! Shh...) I'm really tired, and will likely rewrite all of this later anyway. (Not likely) Anyway, enjoy learning about photography till your heads explode... hopefully not like they do when you look up at the clock and realize you have another 25 minutes of math class left.....

Okay, now that I'm all serious and focused, (Yeah right) we can begin. Basically, portrait photography is pictures of people that display how they are feeling, their emotions, their mood, their personality. Fun fact about me- it is actually one of my favorite types of photography. A Profile shot is when you take a profile of a person, which is basically a fancy term for osilhouetted profile, and those look wicked cool.
ne side of their face. This is different from other forms of portraits, because you can only see one eye, one side of their face, so it's a totally different view. Silhouetting is when all you can see of an image is the basic shape, because all of the details are blacked out, or shaded in, or something like that. So you can make a portrait that is a

Double exposures are basically when their is a profile shot, and it is combined with two other images, so it almost looks like the person has images dancing around in their heads. It is a way to express the person. You want to know how to make them? Read on! You start by taking three images. I'm sure you can take more, but that's the amount we are using this time around. One is a profile shot of yourself, or a person. We had other GT students take ours for us, so we could use our selves in the shot. The other two will be things that inspire you, or things that you love, things like that. Then you take them into Photoshop, and merge them together. You then take the dodge tool and outline your portrait, which should be on the top. Next, you crop your image, and change the blend settings to screen. Now you can make adjustment layers, and customize your color balance, curves, saturation, exposure, and more!

In my first example, I took shots of the sun shining through the leaves of trees. I wanted to kind of stick to a nature theme. Once I had those shots, I had Kasiah* take my portrait. In my second, I took two pictures, one of the banana trees outside of my house, because I often spend weekends working on them with my dad, so their special, and one of the pages of a book. I shouldn't even have to tell you why their is a book. Gosh. Then I had miss Kasiah take another shot of me. (P.S Thanks to Kynan and Tim for letting us steal their camera!) Anyway, that;s all for today! If you liked reading about all this digital media stuff, then come back soon. We love you here at Miss Maddie's G.T portfolio. See y'all next time! Byez! (That is an expression me and my friends cherish... I know, we're strange!)

*For those of you who are familiar with my blog, you all know kasiah. If you're new, or just don't pay attention, scroll to the bottom of the page. I'll wait. She's the girl on the left. With the nerd glasses. This is a joke. You will get it if you look at the bottom of the page. Go. Anyway, when your done with that, go check her blog out. Usually I'd link it, but I want to use this opportunity to give the K.M.S Gt class a shoutout. Check out everyones blog at the sidebar, I'm sure my classmates would appreciate you seeing their work, just like I do!

HDR Photography

Hello Everyone! I'm so excited to share with you today a post about photography! We just began photography this quarter, so this will be our first project! Right now we are mainly focused on HDR photos, which I will do my best to explain in that next paragraph, but if you want to know even more, visit the link below, because that will probably give you a much better idea. It's the same link we used, so it should help you a bunch. Ok my pretties, enough introduction! On to the interesting stuff!

HDR photography is short for High Dynamic Range. Not High Definition, or anything like that, though it's a common mistake. Basically what you do is take several different photos, all from different exposures, then put them together to create a super cool surreal looking image. It takes the best details from all the photos, then puts them together to create beautiful images! I love the ending look, where it's very detailed, and colorful, and just looks stunning! What I dislike, though, is the horrible ghosties you get if the camera moves. I'm really scared about my final project, I'm worried that there was too much movement, due to the fact that we didn't have a tripod. Wish me good luck!

In order to create HDR image manually, you need to take several photos, ranging from the darkest to lightest exposure. Then take them into Photoshop. From there, you need to hit file, automate, then merge to HDR Pro. Once you have them arranged, you can customize them. There are many different settings to choose from, and also other customizations such as exposure compensation, gamma, detail, and vibrance and saturation.

The thought process behind my landscape was to capture the colors of the sun on the mountain, and the interesting cloud formations. The clouds looked surreal even before the editing, and I thought that would come out really well in the end. My superimpose was the combination of my experiment (Kasiah's Face) and my landscape. The word I used to describe it was Inspire. I thought she had a sort of far off gaze, and the view looked inspiring, so I thought that was suitable. Anyway, that's all for now, I hope you come back next time to read about whatever crazy project we have next! Also, make sure you check out the link below, I'm sure they explain HDR way better than I ever could!

HDR Photography

Movie Trailer Critique

Hello my loyal followers... or whoever reads these. Hellooo fellow G.T students, and of course Mr. Sanderl. I'm very sorry for the lack of posts, as many of you guys know, it was winter break! Since Christmas is a time for spending time with family and friends, I tried to connect with humans more than screens. Impressive, I know. Comment below with what you did this break, and if your glad to be coming back! I have mixed feelings... Anyway, today's post is, if you hadn't guessed by the title, a critique of our last project in Mr. Sanderl's class before the break- Movie Trailers! If this is your first time reading a blog post, and if your not in a K.M.S GT class, then you should head over to the post all about the project, I'll link it below.

This project was really fun! We wrote, filmed, and edited our own movie trailers with teams of four. (Team will be linked below... check their blogs out!) Our trailer was at first a murder mystery, but do to the audience we were supposed to be gearing it to- 1st graders- we made it a comedic take on a mystery. It's about a young society dame who's amethyst ring is stolen. She and her friend the detective must find the ring before it's to late. If you want more information, check out the links below to see my other post about it, and of course my wonderful teams take. My teammates were all seventh graders this time around, and they are all good friends of mine. I felt we worked really well together despite the tension and pressure that working under a deadline inevitably brings. We all had really good ideas, and we tried to use as many as we could, but it's impossible to use all of them. Despite that, we pulled it together in time, and finished with an extra point on our finished projects, bringing all of our class averages up.


Our trailer's success I credit to our trailer plan's flexibility. We would be filming a scene, and one of us would, like, jump up and be like, "Oh, I have such a great idea." We did our plan in a way that made it easy to change, and thanks to Google Drive, we were able to check it constantly. I narrated our video, so I wrote most of the voice acting script and snyopsis, with help from Talia, and Arianna and Kasiah mainly worked on writing the script. We all contributed equally with the plan, and I think our movie reflects the plan almost perfectly. We got a little lazy with changing the plan towards the end, but their close enough. I actually had swim practice on the first day we filmed, so I had to miss most of the filming that day. I felt so bad, but they did great, and the next two times we filmed I was there, loud opinions and all. We all contributed to our team's success, and clicked as a team, and that was a major factor in our sucess.

The project requirements consisted of length, and technical things. All together, it needed to be about 1:30- 2:30. Technical requirements consisted of having five scenes, a voice actor, dialogue, foley, text layovers, and our Movie Posters. We ended up using Kasiah's, which you can see by heading over to her blog, or checking out the video at the top of the page. (Please, Please, Please check it out- it's funny, and won't disappoint, even though it is geared to a younger audience. It will also make this post a little clearer.) If you would like to see mine- you do, it's fabulous- check out my Movie Posteine, I lor post, linked at the bottom. We had quite a lot of scenes, so that was a breeze. I was the voice actor, and that was really fun. Our characters were creative, and their dialogue explains them, and gives them life. We had foley, which I will link an explanation of at the bottom, of typewriters, thuds, doors slamming, and screams. Our text layovers, were, well, text layovers. You can check them out below. (Shameless video advertisement) We did complete all the requirements, and even went a little further, which earned us great grades!

Our class critique is always my favorite part of the video process. I love seeing other people's finished work. On the other hand though, I get incredible anxiety about other people seeing my work, so sometimes it's not as fun. Our video was fairly critiqued, and we did very well. I don't know why, but for some reason I thought we would get marked down. However, that was apparently just nerves, because we did great! I do agree with the results, we did a lot better than I thought we would. I like hearing my work critiqued, it helps me improve my skills, and makes me a better film maker.

Movie Poster Promo!
Kasiah, Talia, and Arianna's blogs!
Foley

Movie Poster Promo

Hello everyone! Today I am writing about our new project, Movie Posters! We will also be creating a trailer to go along with it. The main characters you see in our film and poster (My team consists of Arianna White, Kasiah Vercelli, and Talia Washington) are Rebecca, the rich and beautiful society dame, the detective Thalia, otherwise known as the best friend, the detective's assistant, and of course, the Thief! The robber, played by Arianna, breaks into Rebecca's home, then steals her precious ring, which just happens to hold the key to her bank account. Then Rebecca and the detective must find the ring before Rebecca's fortune is stolen. There is a great surprise in the end, a little bit of humor and drama.

The character in my poster is Rebecca- well, part of her. You will see her hand, positioned exactly as it was when she fell, after being knocked out, right before the robber takes it off her hand, cold and still against the rich colors of the rug. You see the chicken, draped around her hand, freshly dropped by the thief. The jewel of the poster, (pun intended) is the ring. It sits nobly on her hand, gleaming purple. I really tried for contrast. The gleam of the purple against the neutrals of her skin and the chicken look really cool.

Our title is the Great Chicken Heist because it is about a lady getting hit in the head with a chicken, then robbed. Some other text on my poster include reviews from Mystery Magazine, SpotlightMovies.com, and other fake reviews. There is also the actors and production studios. Getting all that to fit on the page and look good was hard. So to make it look amazing, we use a technique called kerning. Kerning adjusts the space between letters in a word or sentence.Want some first hand experience? Check it out!

The overall impact of my layer effects and filters have is actually rather subtle. I tried to use layer effects to make the eye travel to the ring. I also used a slight color change, I made it a little more red, because I wanted to add drama, and romanticize the scene. I also blurred out part of the rug, using a radial blur. I feel that that helped put all the focus on her hand, the chicken, and the ring. Anyway thats all, I hope you enjoy my movie poster, and when it comes out, (probably after break) my Movie Trailer. Bye!

My final Poster-

My Visual Poem

Hello everyone! I am excited to share with you my newest project, which we just completed last Monday. It was called Visual Poem, and we wrote poems, then read them on camera. We then spent a week collecting B-Roll, then slapped it all together in Final Cut. (I say slapped; I spent three days editing and making it perfect!) We used effects, transitions, music, and transformations to make it excellent. My poem was about writing, and all that it entails. I explained how writing makes me feel, how ideas bounce around in my mind, how tools of the trade, notebooks, pens, feel in my hand, how they work for me, under my hand and spell.

My visuals make an impact because they correspond with my poem. While I read it, the visuals show you exactly what I feel. It's like a personal view into my mind. I really challenged myself to show passion in both my visuals and my poem itself. Writing is a special part of me, and I tried to showcase that in my video.

For special effects I used an film roll filter on the very first shot, and an old paper on a different shot. I think that it helped me create the right mood, a kind of dark, deep, but still warm place. I wanted to show my feelings and really help you get inside my head. I wish I had added some more, but with a deadline looming over my head, getting it in seemed most important. I am happy, however, with how it turned out.

I am satisfied with how my video turned out, though I wish I had added more effects. I could have made it better by maybe spending a little longer on it, but I really believe I able to convey my story, which is all I wanted. Another is to maybe use my technical knowledge a little better by refining it in final cut some more.  Despite that, I am very excited for the critique, and I hope others enjoy watching it as much as enjoyed creating it. I enjoyed watching my final video, and am looking forward to sharing it with others.

Thanks for reading! I'll see you next time! Enjoy my poem at the bottom, and in case you were wondering, the visual is my poem plan, the backbone behind my video. Anyway, farewell, and enjoy!

Finished News Story

What was your story about & who contributed to it?
How did the final turn out? Are you happy with it?
Conclude with your critique results, do you agree?

Hi everyone! I'm back from vacation, with a post about it on the way, and I'm excited to share with you our finished Hiki'no video! For those of you who know my blog, you know that I write first and put videos in last, kind of like the seal on a letter. So to get to the video, you'll need to read my awesome info before you get to it. (Yes I realize you can just skip over it, but don't, otherwise you don't get to read my humorous account of creating the video you see before you.) Anyway, I better get started, I already need to write an extra paragraph because I spent this whole time rambling on to you. Oh well.

Our video was about health and wellness in Hawaii, and it turned out really good considering that I left three brand new sixth graders, Denae, Jhoanna, and Kyla, alone to finish it themselves. (I feel really bad about leaving. I was  supposed to be teaching them!) There were some shots that weren't three shot sequences and other technical difficulties, but they did amazing! Contributors were Missy Hoesel, my mom, Josh Nations, co-owner of the Kauai Athletic Clubs, Heidi Tokuda, Computer Teacher at Kapa'a Elementary School, and of  course Mr. Sanderl.

Our critiques were pretty good, I wasn't here for them, as I was still on vacation, but from the chart below I'd say people thought we did fairly good. Comment with what you think. I agree with the majority, that we were in the 3 range. I do think a 1 is a little harsh, and a 4 is pushing it, but 3 seems fair. It could have been better, and I wish I could help the girls with some of the more technical things, but really, their naturals. I mean, this was their first project!

Anyway, thanks for reading through my writing, I really appreciate it, and I promise that soon I will have a post about this summer (so overdue) and I'm thinking another book review. Also, I wanted to ask if anyone would read my writing, and maybe a friend of mine's writing if I started posting it up here. Let me know. Then maybe, if your interested in posting your writing,  I could set up an address for you to send it to me. We'll see. Comment with your thoughts, and enjoy the video! Bye till next time!

-Maddie

T6: Health & Obesity Rate in Hawaii by Maddie, Kyla, Jhoanna, Denae

1	1	4%
2	7	26%
3	12	44%
4	7	26%

Real World Report

Hey everyone, today I'm writing about an article I read about at Google News. Liberia, among other countries, is suffering from a Ebola epidemic. Because of limited beds, many people are being left untreated. Ebola is a disease caused by an Ebolavirus. The US is attempting to build more treatment centers, but no one wants to help. “People are afraid to come — that’s it,” says World Health Association's leader Jean- Pierre.

I believe that people need to volunteer to help these people. But I also believe that the people need to understand that their government is doing their best to help them. Instead of panicking and hiding things from the medical people because they are embarrassed is really stupid, and jeopardizes their country. Ours as well. I just found out their has been a case of Ebola in Dallas, Texas. Scary, right!

We should care about this issue because as it spreads into a epidemic, there is less and less we can do to help these people. As I write this, to many people are dying because of this awful disease. Also, the more this spreads, the less chance we Americans have of protecting ourselves from this disease. There are medicines for Ebola, but they are not cleared yet. The longer we wait, the more people suffer. 

Thank you for reading, I hope you learned something, and even if you didn't, that's ok, come back again soon ands I'll see if I can do better! Bye!

The Experiment

Hello everybody! I'm here to tell you about the very first thing we did when we turned on the computers. It was a Photoshop experiment where Mr. Sanderl let us have free reign and do what ever we wanted. Because my computer was acting up, I didn't do as great as I would have liked, but that's okay. We did this because Mr. Sanderl wanted us to learn about the program the way he did when he first got it, and for us in our second year, review it. It was fun, and would have been great if I could have had longer to finish up. Even so, it was fun to complete.

I made a blue and white gradient background with the gradient tool to represent the sky. Then I drew a sun with the   and wrote smile. I used the layer effects to make a shadow, and to add texture. That's about it. I did another one though, and even though it's not finished, it looks great so far. It's a contour of me, a photo I took in photo booth, another great program. When it's done I will post it here with smiley. (That's what I named my sun artwork)

This project was great because I got to be free Photoshop, one of my favorite activities. Photoshop is actually one of my favorite programs. I love taking things and turning them into artwork. Contours are my preferred choice, by I also enjoy freehand drawing. This project would have been better if I could have started with my contour instead of wasting time on my smile art. But over all, a good way to start off the year.

Link List

• That first link takes you to a Photoshop experiment that I found fascinating. Even if you are like me, and don't really like leaving the webpage, I highly suggest everyone, especially the girls and women, go and read this page.
•  The second link takes you to Mr. Sanderl's blog. It's pretty cool, and has links to all the student blogs, not just the student's in my class.
• The third link takes you to a Gradient tool user manual.

Metamorphosis Animation

Hi everyone, I'm so excited to be posting again. Sorry it's been so long, we have been very busy with our newest project, our animations!!! That's right, we did animations!! It was most definitely the best project so far, as we got to work in garage band and a whole lot of new programs!! Garage band was so fun, I love music!! So anyway, our animation (And by our, I mean my group, Lani, Talia, Kasiah and me) was about Artemis, Greek goddess of the hunt, being turned into a puppy by the horrible titans. We used Stykz, claymation, and stop motion to really make our story come to life. Our project was to make our characters morph into something else, and to grow and change. According to our scores in our class critique, we did pretty well. The video is underneath, if you want to see it.

Our first scene was of Artemis sitting on her throne, when the titans come bursting in.  They turn her into a dog, and then Zeus kicks her off Olympus. In the second scene she must fight a horrible sea monster, but then they become friends and the monster gives her a ride. Then she is trekking through a huge forest when she is attacked by an evil hydra! After facing a spider demon in our forth scene, she finally comes across the cave of the oracle of Delphi, where she begs to be turned into a goddess again. After Delphi complies, Artemis and Zeus defeat the titans, and succeed.

Our first scene was done in Stykz, by our brilliant digital animator Kasiah. (For those of you who don't know, Stykz is an animation program) The second through forth scenes are done in claymation, which is animation done with clay. All our monsters were made by Kasiah and I, and Talia made the dog with some assistance from Lani. As you probably have realized, our fifth and final scenes were done in Stykz, and our last few in stop motion, and claymation again. Talia is an excellent stop motion animator, and between Lani and I we managed to get every stop motion scene done, to say the least. Thanks to my whole brilliant team, you are all wonderful, and we really worked together well. I mean, we got second place for overall video right? but seriously, I'm so happy we got to work together, it was a great experience. And now for the video.

P.s this was supposed to go out like two months ago, so count this as last years work.


P3T6 Metamorphosis from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.

Words of Wisdom

Hi everyone it's me again, and I just wanted to tell you a bit more about the last project we did in class for Hiki No, and it's called Words of Wisdom. What we did was we interviewed Kasiah's mom, Katie Vercelli about her time in the Peace Corps, and got shots of her pictures of her time there. We had to ask her questions, and turn her answers into a story. It was hard with the four very opinionated people in our group, but we did it! It took a lot of team work, but eventually, and just in time, we got it finished, and it was a great experience even though we didn't win.

The words of wisdom we got from Auntie Katie were great. She told us to always follow our dreams, and to work hard and find a way to work your dream out. Her words of wisdom are so important because no matter what, your dream should come first. She tells us all about how she wanted her whole life to be a part of the Peace Corp, and when she met Uncle Jason, Kasiah's father, they went, and signed up, and say it's the best experience. Her advice is truly inspiring, don't you think?

Here is our video, and it is utterly fabulous, so you better watch it!!!

Five Tips For…

Hi everyone, today I want to tell you about a project we did a while ago, our first group project actually! What we did was a five tips video for Hiki No. My group, strange as ever, did a minute long video about how to friends with your cat. The reason we chose that topic is because it was really the best one out of group, and because it was pretty funny. We also chose this project because we thought we could get some pretty good B-Roll of it, seeing as I have two cats.

So what I think we definitely done better was choose our tips better. Maybe something a bit easier to get B-Roll for, instead of how not shaking your cat from it's tail is a very good idea. (Don't worry, we used a fake cat for most of the daring stunts.) We also could have had better filming, but who can blame us, it was one of first videos, so it's not as good as some of the newer ones! Overall, it was pretty good for our second official film project!

Well, for those of you who are incredibly interested in our fabulous kitty video, HERE IT IS!!!!!!!!!
 
P3T6 Five Tips from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.

Practice Profile Story

Hi there everyone! It's me again, and I want to tell you all about this piece, an interview! It was done as practice for the next project we did, the biggest one so far. The one we were practicing for is a competition to get on Hiki No, a television show produced by kids on PBS Hawaii. This one, however was much smaller, and only with our class. My group interviewed my best friend Kasiah, and it was about gymnastics, her favorite sport.

We chose her because we had a really good B-Roll opportunity. (Look at my last post for more info about  B-Roll.) Her doing gymnastics in the field really was a great visual.  The sequencing we could get for our B-Roll was great, and it was nice knowing that we had B-Roll that applied without having to waste a ton of time thinking about what to do. Interviewing her was a great opportunity because we had a really clear story, and great questions. It really helped shape our overall story.

Thanks for reading my blog, I hope you enjoy learning all about my G.T media class, and I hope you try some of it out too!

Composition Techniques

There are four main types of composition techniques, and they are; Rule of thirds, Framing, Unusual Angles, and Leading Lines. Rule of thirds is when you get a shot with the subject's eyes on one of the grid lines. It really helps to make your stories a lot more interesting. Framing is when you frame your subject with trees or something. Using Unusual Angles is when you take a shot from an unusual angle. (DUH). They help create interest, just like Rule of thirds. You use Leading Lines by pointing the lines to the subject.

We create

d a video about this in the beginning of the year, and our videos showed how to use certain composition techniques, and how not to. Our video included both Framing and Leading Lines. We showed examples on how to use them, and gave descriptions about them. For Framing we used two trees, and put Kasiah in the middle of them, and for Leading Lines we used Preston, and had him sit on these lines on the sidewalk.

Three Shot Sequences

Three shot sequences are very important parts of visual story telling. When you are making a great video, sequencing is key. A sequence is three great clips with changing perspectives from wide to medium then to a close-up. It is important to have great sequencing skills because it makes your movies better and more interesting. Sequencing helps to show detail in the closest shot, gives you an establishing wide shot, and helps give you an idea about the details that will pour forth with your close up by giving you a great middle!

At the beginning of the school year, we did a project about sequencing, just a nice short video to prepare for the bigger one we did later. It was a sequence with a wide, establishing shot of a boy picking up a piece of paper and a pen, a medium shot of him writing on the paper, and a close up of what he was writing. It was one of the first one's we did, so it's not exactly the best video we have ever done. But it's a good example of a sequence!

Here it is....

Polar Panoramas

     These are my two finished  Polar Panorama's. The very first step to making these was to learn all about them, so we could choose a perfect location to create another composite image. Just like with our Spherical Panorama, we took 10-15 perfect images with a 10-15% overlap. The next step was to use PhotoMerge to combine all of our pictures, and to rotate our new image 180 degrees. That step is the only thing that differs from my earlier post about Spherical Panoramas. Then we used the same Polar Coordinates filter to turn it into these masterpieces.
   
      Once we were done with our Polar Panos, we went out and took beautiful photos of ourselves , and used the Quick Selection Tool  to select just our portraits, and not the backgrounds. Then we pasted ourselves onto our favorite Polar Panos, and created a shadow by copying the picture of ourselves on. After that, we brought the hue down to black, and brought the opacity down to 40%. Next we feathered it, pasted it to a background and saved to our files. The final step was to turn it in, although you probably won't have to do that!

Spherical Panoramas

Spherical

This is my final spherical panorama!!! We made three overall, however we only turned two in. The very first step was to take 15 images to create a Composite 360 degree scene with an even amount of sky and ground. Then, after some editing in Camera Raw, we took our pic's into Adobe Photoshop and turned them into a perfect panorama. Next, we stretched them into perfect rectangles, and cropped them to fit. We changed the size of the images so they became perfect squares. Then we used Photoshop's Polar Coordinate filter to change them.

After that, we used the quick selection tool to select our spheres. We compressed the selection, and then we feathered it. Using the blur tool, the stamp tool, and a few others, we touched it up, and made it fabulous. Once we had touched it up a bit, the seam from connecting the panorama was
gone! With a background from the paint bucket tool behind it, it was ready to be turned in!!!

Photomontages

These are my two finished GT photomontages, inspired by artist David Hockney, who invented these images. They added abstract to plain old photography, which creates interest. We started this process by taking pictures from different perspectives and naming and editing them in Adobe Bridge and Camera Raw. Them, we took the "cooked" (Edited) photos in to photoshop and glued them back together. What we finished with were these great images. (We being Mr. Sanderl's GT class)

After finishing these up with a background, we covered them in a four point stroke, and then did another one. Well at least I did. I didn't like the first one I did, because I feel like it didn't really express me. So when Mr. Sanderl showed us a documentary about David Hockney, I was hooked. That's probably the best I have ever done on a project so far.

I took my camera and took a lot of pictures of my sister coming down the stairs, and just knew that that was perfect. Hockney always says to tell a story with the photomontages. Well I sure think I accomplished it! When I heard the critique on my "Joiner" as Hockney used to call them, I was so proud of what I had done. I had become an artist.

Magazine Cover

This is my fabulous magazine cover that I created in the 2013 fall semester at Kapa'a Middle School!!! We started out with a blank template in Photoshop. (Of course) Then, we wrote our titles, our article teasers, and our headlines. Then we went out and took pictures of ourselves. The pictures would relate to our covers. Then we cooked them up in Camera Raw, and they were on their way.

Next, we worked in Photoshop, putting our pictures in. Then it gets interesting. Our next step would be to do a contour of ourselves, which is really just a fancy way to say trace over the outline. After that we had to use the paint brush tool to add color, and to make it look more real. After warping our backgrounds, we changed the hue to match our color scheme, and we were done!