ONW 1 in 2000 Interview

The second video of the year! Isn't this exciting? It's only September and I'm already getting a lot done. Well, this is probably more exciting to me than it is to all of you, but I'm still happy about it.

I interviewed Lizzie, and then she interviewed me. That's the concept to it. It's basic, but it was still a lot of fun. She had a concept of how it would go in her mind. She showed me a video similar to this one, made by the YouTube stars Phil and Dan (I don't really know them). The concept is a semi-casual interview, one that will stay on topic, yet not bore the audience.

However, it was our technological-unlucky days. We couldn't get a tripod (huge class), and had to figure out the more advanced cameras. In fact, the first day, we had entirely no audio recorded. Because of that, we had to crunch all of our filming into one day. However, we still had to act happy, because that was what our idea called for.

It was still fun though, especially once we got to editing. But I won't jump the gun. Let me tell you the shooting process. We didn't really storyboard this, so we pretty much went around the school and we filmed us having fun walking around. Then my interviewing time came. The first place I chose had bad lighting, and we couldn't figure out how to white balance the camera, so I had to choose the same place she interviewed me. It's a very beautiful hallway filled with windows, so there was absolutely no lighting problem. By the way, I didn't realize my reflection was in the glass until editing. The only problem with that hall though is that people frequented it, even during class. So it isn't quiet. Bear with us, this is a giant high school.

Then the editing came in. I'm getting used to Adobe Premiere. I figured out how to create a title and control the volume of the audio, while not fading it out completely.

And my teacher just came by and complimented the creativity, after showing it to the class. So I guess it was good then. *proud face*

I'm Back!

I'm back! See that video? I made it with my friend Lizzie. This was the first video of my 10th grade year. We've been in school for a few weeks now, and we learned some basics with Adobe Premiere. We won't be using Final Cut Pro anymore. From here on it's all Adobe.

Let me summarize the video.

First there is an angry girl. She left her planner at home, but still has to leave class. So she steals her neighbor's planner. This is shown as a fast hand shot.

So she gets up and stomps over to the teacher (A medium shot). The teacher looks up at her, and she rudely slams the planner onto the teacher's desk. A giant red "X" says "Don't do this!" We all know that she definitely was not allowed to leave class.



Then we have a polite girl. We used a wide shot to show her getting her planner out, then a hand shot to show her filling it out. She takes her planner to the teacher, and the teacher happily signs it.

This one is allowed to leave class to go to the bathroom, nurse, etc. An extra wide of her heading towards the door shows that. A green check mark says "Do this instead."

So guys, always be polite to teachers and classmates. After we were done filming and editing, we received feedback from our peers. They said this video was cleanly shot, even though my head was cut off in a couple of shots. Our teacher also said that we may have to choose someone else to play the teacher, because it can confuse the audience.

What do you think of the video?

The Very Final Project of the Entire Year

Well, school ends next week, and because all I have left are finals, I guess I'm practically a sophomore now! Well, for the final project, I got to team up with my classmates: Harrison, Luke, and Bryce. What we had to do was create a product and present it to the teachers and all of e9. This concept was inspired by the TV show "Shark Tank". This was our product:

The Future Inc. Teleporter

Don't get too excited now, we didn't have to actually make it work. We made the product presentable and made it with paper. It looks like a wristband with a big red button in the middle. You press that button and you can teleport! And of course, our team was called Future Inc.

Our Progress in this Project

Okay, first we brainstormed our product. The company name would come later. All of us were quite creative, so we came up with other outlandish ideas. My personal favorite was the person creator (I think it was called that), a device to clone real people or make fictional characters literally come to life! We ended up with the teleporter though. We then had to come up with ways it would look and work. We thought about things like a phone app, a ring, and even a chip imported into one's brain. But finally we chose a bracelet, because that seemed like the easiest way to present it. We then chose the company name "Future Inc." and our motto: "And you thought Airplanes were Fast!" Our advertising was done through comedy, as you can see with our awesome commercial:

Of course though, with those reviews, you would probably be scared of this teleporter. Whatever, it's just a school project. We also did an animation in Sketchup, a logo, and a website (I am sorry because I cannot find these). Then we just had to present.

Overall

We worked well together. We were able to compromise, divide work, and get it done! However, we did have a few issues with communication. We didn't really talk about what we wanted to convey with the video and webiste. But overall, we did a good job.

Well, this is the last you'll hear of me for the entire summer.

Goodbye :)

These Final Photoshop Projects

For our Graphic Design Final, we photoshopped some pictures for school spirit. These took multiple days, but they were quite fun to be honest. Some of the tools were new and hard, like the clone stamp, but I still managed to finish *sweat drop*.

Project 1

Here is the first! It was the easiest for me. All it involved was cropping a picture of our school and adding a picture and text as an overlay.

Project 2

Like I said, the clone stamp tool (which I used for the fluttering effect) was a bit of a challenge. Although I liked this other tool that I used to color the butterfly: the magic wand tool. It only took me one day to complete it, and the colorful butterfly is very beautiful.

Project 3

Okay, I will admit that this one was harder that I thought. I don't like the type mask tool, because it is just too diffucult. Just when I think I had it, my teacher pointed out that I spelled: "Norththwest". Then I had to start all over, ugh. My favorite part about this though, was the gradient tool. It's so easy to use, and very pretty.

Project 4

Here is the one I just finished, and I'll admit it was my least favorite. I don't know if you can tell, but I'm not fully sure it was supposed to look like this. The only part I enjoyed was cropping the image, because that was the only part I was sure I was doing right.

That's it. See you after spring break! :)

Quarter Three Final: Another Website

Wow, there's only a quarter left of school until I'm a sophomore! Time is flying, and we were given a web design project for our final. Unlike last time, when we wrote about ourselves, this time we wrote about Invasive Species. Most of the project was easy, because we watched instructional videos on how this is done. The only struggle I had was when I was trying to rename all 6 pages. It somehow completely messed up the html and I had to start from an entire video previously. Lesson: ALWAYS SAVE BEFORE YOU DO SOMETHING YOU'RE NOT SURE IS GOING TO WORK! You always have to pay attention to the html too. If you type in a semi-colon instead of a colon, it's going to get confused and not do what you wanted it to do. Well, I bet you guys are all excited to see what this website looks like. So here are 3 screenshots I took.

The Home Page

So as you can see, this just introduces the website. We had a word doc to copy and paste from, so everyone's home page says the same things. We also embedded a video from YouTube for each page. To do that, you get the embed code by right clicking the video and selecting "Copy Embed Code". Then you paste it into your html code where you want it. The links at the bottom our the sources for what is said.

Asian Carp

This is one of the invasive species. You may have seen videos of these fish flying out of the water and hitting something of someone (Ouch!). The logo remains at the top, but instead of the larger logo, we put an uncopyrighted image of the species. The headings are "About", "Impacts", and "What Can Be Done". These are self-explanatory on what they describe.

Emerald Ash Borer

This is another one. They are known for digging into the trunk of ash trees and killing them.

The other three invasive species are Zebra Mussels, Purple Loosestrife, and Africanized Bees (also known as Killer Bees). These are all in the state of Kansas, brought from other countries across the world. Because of their lack of adapting, they do these crazy things.

Anatomy of Type

Anatomy of Type

Well, here is my name, except of course it's not the way your used to seeing it. Perhaps this reminds you of the handwriting guides in kindergarten. Each of these lines represent a different part of the letters. My name does not have much variety with this, as it does not have a descender and it was hard to find a font to make an ascender. Well, at least this font somewhat fits me...
And that's what I'll tell you about today: fonts. Why isn't there just one universal font that is used in everything from books to billboards? 1: That would be very boring. 2: Like color, fonts have hidden personalities. If people use the wrong fonts all the time, life would be a nightmare. Think about this: You go get a job application for something very professional, like a lawyer. But the entire application is printed in Comic Sans *gasp*. Everyone in the room is now wearing clown noses, party hats, and too much makeup. You are embarrassed as they laugh hysterically at you for no particular reason.
Yes, that is an over-exaggeration. Still, you would think the paper is stupid, because Comic Sans isn't a professional font. So don't fill out an application written in it, because your employers are proving themselves to be...well, stupid.
So this moral: Pay attention to what fonts are saying and choose the right ones for the right things.

Color!

In my last post, I talked a little bit about about colors and their meanings. But this post will be fully about what I know. This week we learned all about it. What I didn't know is that all colors have a good and a bad interpretation, including white and black.

What I mean:

Red: Good is confidence and power, bad is war and violence.
You can look up the rest of the color meanings if you want, but that's about it. These are used in advertising all the time to convey a message from the company to the person. All of us can admit that we imagine color to have "personalities".

What is this?

It is a color wheel. Everyone who is an art student is familiar with this. Red, yellow, and blue are the primary colors. If you mix two of those together, you get one of the secondary colors: Green, Orange, and Violet.  If you mix a primary color with a secondary color, you get a color like blue-green or red-orange.

So yeah, I hope you find this at least a tiny bit interesting, or at least learned something.