Documentary Reflection

Before starting this documentary, I knew very little about the DC statehood movement, how to schedule and conduct interviews, or how to structure and build a documentary.  Clearly, these are all crucial to making a documentary about DC statehood.  Considering this, it would seem that it would’ve been a long, painful learning process, and that the final product would’ve suffered accordingly.  However, looking back, nothing about it was painful, and it didn’t really even feel like school work.  Instead, I was able to learn all of these things while having fun, collaborating, and being creative.

            DC statehood is a grassroots movement, concentrated in the local political activists in DC.  It has a small base of support because many of the politically active in DC are focused on more national issues.  There is severe Republican opposition to statehood because DC is so liberal.  Also, the idea of 51 states scares some people.  However, those who believe in the cause are very devoted.  We talked to two activists, one of which had been involved in the cause for two years, and the other for about ten.  I felt a connection to this movement because these people believe so strongly in their cause, and despite many critics claiming it is impractical, they still have faith that it is a reality.

            The first step, and probably one of the hardest, in making our documentary was where to start.  We agreed on the issue pretty quickly.  I didn’t know much about it but I figured it would be interesting to learn and it would be fun to shoot because of our proximity to DC.  But after that, we had no idea what to do.  What I learned was in that situation, the best thing to do is to contact everyone you can think of, and hope some of it falls through.  After that, the rest was pretty fun.  We went to DC one morning, and did all of our shooting, conducting two interesting interviews and collecting valuable B-roll.  I think if I could do this part again, I would think a little more about what kinds of B-roll would be very useful, and try to focus on that.  After that came the other very difficult part in the process.  We had over an hour of footage, but we could only use about six minutes of it.  We had to watch everything, marking time codes of important parts.  Next came the most enjoyable part for me, which is building the rough cut and then slowly smoothing it out, polishing it, and giving it its real character.  Our biggest challenge of the whole documentary came during this stage, however.  That was our lack of time.  We did our best to overcome this challenge by putting in extra time, after school, on weekends, and on days we didn’t have exams.  We managed to get a pretty good version of the video in to C-SPAN in time.

            I think, overall, the environment and the resources in the classroom were very conducive to creating a good documentary.  The only thing I think we should’ve done differently is to start earlier, and really build our classes deadline around the C-SPAN deadline, that way it is more likely that more groups will try and submit their projects.  I think the dystopian trailer project could be compressed a little to make a little more room for the documentaries. 

            In conclusion, I think this project is very valuable because it allows students to fuse their political activism and interests with film.  For me, this project really got me interested and involved in editing and film-making.  I feel connected to this project because of all of the time I have put in, and because it is the first project for which I have done the majority of the editing.  Also, it is nice to have a project where all of the shots aren’t planned out, where we have to improvise and work with what we have.  Most importantly, it is good to have a project that gets us into society, learning things outside the classroom. 

Capturing the Fall

Here is my Capture the Fall Challenge Video



I focussed on how I usually spend my fall days, which is playing hockey.  I used the whole game expereience toincorporate shots of fall scenes on the drive, the sun as I was packing my bag, and shots from my porch as I was leaving.  There is one scene from the game.  I am #13 for white.

5x5 video challange

2. a. Driving to hockey practice.
    b. Getting out of the car.
    c. Walking into the rink.
    d. Chilling with teammates.
    e. Getting ready in the locker room.

3. Originally my plan for my 5x5 was to use footage of animals in my yard, but I shot that on my dad's video camera, and I counldn't figure out how to get that footage into the editors.  Eventually I decided I would have to abandon that and use a small soni point and shoot with a video feature.  I filmed my ride to hockey practice and edited it when I got home.  I used the Wevideo editor, which was pretty easy and efective.  I caught a couple snags trying to figure out how to get my footage into the editor, but I discovered some helpful video tutorials that I watched.  The last problem is that I still can't figure out how to embed the video in my blog.

4. I think my 5x5 has turned out alright, although next time I think I should do a test run with the camera before I shoot the real footage.

3rd blog post assignment

I read "World Without Walls: Learning Well With Others" for our "What do you want to learn more about?" assignment.  Here's what I thought:

1. The article first tells a story about an 11 year-old girl who has created a community service minded organization that gets it's ideas from the readers of her blog.  The author, Will Richardson, then discusses the new age that we live in.  He calls it the Collaboration Age.  He thinks that schools and teachers need to embrace social media and other online forums or learning centers.  He thinks that teachers should be the connectors to knowledge for the kids, not the sole supplier of it.  He concedes that there are safety issues, but he says that for the kids of today, having classrooms that utilize social media and the internet is a necesity.

2. "Welcome to the Collaboration Age, where even the youngest among us are on the Web, tapping into what are without question some of the most transformative connecting technologies the world has ever seen." This quote really embodies the message of the article.  Richardson says that the age we live in is helping us to collaborate, not making us socially inept like some people would argue.  He also mentions that even the youngest of us are tapping into the web, which is one of the, "most transformative...technologies the world has ever seen."

3. I found it surprising that Richardson, who says he is a teacher himself, is so critical of the tradition methods of teaching, and wants teachers to simply help kids acccess the information that is out there, not try and relay all that information directly to them. 

4. I think that utilizing blogging and the internet is very important, and connected learning definetley has a place in CAP, but I also think hands on learning is equally important, and that cannot be overlooked.

5. I am interested in TV studio production, using the headsets and switchers.  I think hands on learning is more important when it comes ot TV production. 

Link to annotated article

Moive Review

Finding Drama in Newfangled Movie Making by A. O. Scott

This movie review is about a documentary on newfangled and new high-tec equipment. It is published by The New York Times. The review starts with the writers opinion on the movie, which is very complimentary. He then details the elements of the plot, but doesn't give away to much, partially because it's a documentary. He doesn't talk very much about cinematic aspects, although the movie itself is about movie making. It is a casual and excited tone that makes the reader want to go and watch the movie.

I think that our movie reviews should be more free form. We should have to include a section on each of the three aspects of film, but other than that we should be able to focus on a basic plot summary and what we liked and didn't like. We can also include a section on how we could use some of the movie's cinematic techniques in class.

My annotated review

Hi, I'm Max.  I am a 10th grader in the CA Program at Blair HS.  Outside of school I play hockey a lot. I've been playing since I was 7.  I play on a travel team that plays four times a week and on Blair's team which plays twice a week.  I also tutor have tutored a 2nd grader in reading for the past 3 years.  I am very interested in TV studio film production, and a little interested in video editing.  My experience in video is limited to the class that I took 2nd semester last year.  My two favorite video projects that I have done have both been in the studio.  One was an Interdisciplinary project in which we filmed short movie reports as if they were news programming.  It was my first experience with working on head sets, with the "switcher," and video graphics.  My next favorite project was just a couple weeks later in the news studio.  We created fake news shows and filmed them in one day.  In these two projects I got to be the director, technical director, camera man, audio manager, talent, and floor manager.  I think a couple ways we can use the blogs this year are:

• We can use the blogs to share information for group projects.
• We can post ideas for new film projects on the blog and Mr. Mayo can read them.
• We can use it to turn in homework so that we can save paper and not have to worry about losing our homework.
• We can post questions that we have about homework or projects and classmates or teachers who see it can answer the questions.

Dangler