Dystopian Trailer Screening Next Week!

The CAP 10 students and teachers will all gather in the auditorium next Thursday to screen our dystopian trailers. The trailers are looking great and many students have been putting in overtime during lunch and after school working on their films. I also plan to send out an invitation on the CAP listserve to parents to come to our screening. Students have one more class to polish off their films before we export them out of Final Cut. I'm staying after school the next few days for anyone who wants to come in and work.

Cinematography Technique: Lens Whacking

The video above was created by Peter. He posted this video on his blog, The Berger Weekly, this weekend and described how he made it. Check out his video and post from last week when he shared a short video he filmed of the winning hit at the National's playoff game. We're into week two of our new independent blog experiment. I'd like to highlight some of the excellent writing that our CAP 10 students have been doing lately on their blogs.

Ceci says we should start school later. Zoe disagrees. Maddie contemplates ideas for a novel she plans to write in November. She wants to write a 50, 000 word novel in a month! Nico discusses the novel by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Le Petit Prince, that he is currently reading in French class. Emily shares a "little chunk" of a sci-fi novel she is currently working on. Ro$$ writes a post titled "[President]-isms" about presidential gaffes. Max explains how watching an episode of SNL this past Saturday made him realize just how awful our current state of politics is here in the U.S.

Amy and Grace are back for the second installment of their Vegan Cooking Show Vlog:

BARCODE

Everyone should be done with all filming for their dystopian trailers at this point. I took the shot above last week of a few of the characters from the upcoming trailer, Barcode. Pretty creepy masks.

I'm staying after school everyday this week for anyone who wants to come and edit. The trailers have to be done by October 29th. That only gives us three classes to edit! Any extra time you can edit outside of class will be very helpful.

Capture the Fall (Video Challenge)

Sundance Stroll from Katie Morgan on Vimeo.

Now that everyone is wrapping up filming for their dystopian trailers it's a good time to introduce our next video challenge, Capture the Fall. Create a 60-second film capturing what the fall (or autumn) looks like to you. The video I posted above is an example I found on Vimeo.

Include the following elements in your Capture the Fall film:

1. 10 or more different video clips
2. Use a standard transition between every video clip (like a dissolve or cross dissolve)
3. Embed a piece of CC licensed music to help create a distinctive mood for your film
4. Include a Title Slide at the beginning with an original title
5. Add a Credit Slide at the end citing the source of your music

Optional: Experiment with video effects or video apps. Try giving your film an interesting look by adding a video effect in post-production. 

The example I shared above was shot with an iphone using the very cool 8mm iPhone app. The YouTube video editor allows you to add different video effects. iMovie also has different effects you can add over your footage. I'm not sure if wevideo allows you to add video effects or not.

Have fun. Be creative. DUE DATE: Monday, November the 5th.

Here's another example:

Fall Ride from Route Troupe on Vimeo.

Half the Sky

Kirin wrote a blog post today about the documentary, Half the Sky. It's based on a book by the same title written by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. Here's a quote from her post describing the documentary:

Half The Sky is about issues that effect women everywhere. The documentary depicts the terrible oppression women are under world wide. It focuses on issues such as: gender discrimination,  prostitution, sex trafficking, women's education, violence and genital mutilation.

As I read her post I was reminded of the terrible news out of Pakistan this week about a 14-year-old girl who was shot by the Taliban. Her name is Malala Yousafzai. Malala started her own blog in 2009, Diary of a Pakistani Schoolgirl, to write about her experiences living in the Swat Valley of Pakistan during a time when girls were not allowed to attend school. She was targeted for her beliefs and writings this week and shot in the head. Fortunately, she was not killed.

It's been interesting reading the CAP 10 posts this week now that we have changed the format of the blogs. By the way, you can also change the title of your blog if you'd like. It's not necessary to have your name in your title like we originally thought. Here's the specific assignment again for those who need it:

Write a weekly blog post about a personal reaction to one of the following:

• Personal passion or interest
• Reaction to current events
• Cultural criticism of the world around us
• Share a piece of creative writing (start a story series or share a poem)

If possible, try to embed images, video and audio clips, or other multi-media into your post. These post are due by this Friday, October the 12th.

CineYouth Film Festival

My friend Mona Yeh from The Ghandi Brigade sent me a link to the CineYouth Film Festival in Chicago. Even though the film festival is in Chicago, youth form across the country are invited to submit entries. Here's a link to a page with a few videos featuring last year's winners. If anyone would like to submit a film please let me know.

Here are two more youth film festivals:
Pendragwn Youth Film Festival (This is a local festival in DC)
NFFTY

Some Ideas...

 I'd like to share some of the student blog posts from the last few days.

Abir wrote a fantastic review of the The Stoning of Soraya M,. a film about the true story of an Iranian woman wrongfully accused of adultery and sentenced to death by stoning. Abir states in his post that watching the film was, "Perhaps the most difficult 114 minutes of film I had ever seen." Jack wrote about the Orioles and Braves baseball game. I wonder if Landon and Alex are looking for more contributors for their sports blogs, The Sideline Scoop? The picture below was taken by Brianna.



Brianna posted a few of her own pictures and wrote about her interest in learning more about photography. Brianna has another recent post where she shares her thoughts and ideas about using formal vs informal language when debating someone. I think many politicians should take her following advice:

When you have a professional, academic debate or discussion, you make sure you don't engage in name-calling or hostile language.

Ruth wrote a post about her concern for the amount of debt accumulated by today's college students. Ruth wants to be a neurologist, so she would obviously have to go to med school. The problem, as she states in her post, is that in 2009, "The average debt of a med student was $157,990, and 25.1% of med school graduates have debt in excess of $200,000."

The idea of our new blog assignment is to give everyone the chance to write about a topic of interest. Many students have responded positively to this assignment. However, others are not sure what to write about. To start off, I would recommend writing about something you are familiar with and can easily write about. Beyond that, it's up to you. Once again, here's the assignment:

Weekly blog post about a personal reaction to one of the following:

• Personal passion or interest
• Reaction to current events
• Cultural criticism of the world around us
• Share a piece of creative writing (start a story series or share a poem)

If possible, try to embed images, video and audio clips, or other multi-media into your post. These post are due by this Friday, October the 12th.

Peanuts for Zebras

Header Image from The Sideline Scoop

Today in the library Ms. Cullen shared an amazing editorial written by Landon, one of our CAP 10 students, about the NFL referee labor dispute. We've since discovered that Landon also posted his editorial on his own personal sports blog, The Sideline Scoop. Landon started this sports blog with Alex, another CAP 10 student. In his editorial, Landon lays out his argument explaining why the NFL's decision to lock out their refs is such a debacle. Here's a quote from Landon's editorial summing up the possible consequences of the NFL referee labor dispute:

If the NFL continues its refusal to compensate the referee’s, overwhelmed and under qualified replacement officials will soon transform a sport of managed aggression into an arena for out of control violence.

I highly recommend reading Landon's editorial and subscribing to the RSS feed of his blog so you don't miss any of his future posts.

What impresses me most about Landon's editorial is the quality of his writing. He's not doing this for a grade. He took the time to set up his own blog, with his own domain, to write about sports, a subject he's obviously passionate about.

We asked Landon for some advice today in the library about how we could improve the writing and enthusiasm on our CAP 10 student blogs. He had some excellent advice. He said that we should encourage students to write about topics they feel strongly about.

We're only a few weeks into our CAP 10 blogging experiment this year. I propose that we shake things up a bit by taking Landon's advice. Chose a topic of personal interest and write about it on your blog incorporating the writing skills learned in your classes. Here's the exact assignment:

Weekly blog post about a personal reaction to one of the following:

• Personal passion or interest
• Reaction to current events
• Cultural criticism of the world around us
• Share a piece of creative writing (start a story series or share a poem)

If possible, try to embed multi-media, such images, video and audio clips, into your post. These post are due by next Friday, October the 12th.

One last note: Feel free to change the name of your blogs as well. It's not necessary that you have your name in the title of your blog. So come up with a new blog title if you'd like to.

Production Folders

We're wrapping up pre-production for our dystopian film trailers today and tomorrow. Each group must create a production folder with the following contents:

1. Master storyboard of each scene in your trailer
2. Printed copy of your script (most recent version)
3. Storyboards for each scene (please take your time creating these!)
4. Shot List for each scene
5. Production Schedule that everyone commits to 

Periods 2 and 4 worked on this today but I did not get a chance to check them before the end of class. So each group will be expected to have these done by the start of class on Wednesday. You can't start filming until you have completed this final step in the pre-production process.

Period 1 will be working on this in class on Tuesday.