Movie Poster Promo

Hey guys! Here's another blog for you to read. In GT were currently working on creating a movie trailer. The team I am currently working with is Kasiah, Maddie, and Arianna. We have to make our own creative movie poster that goes with the movie trailer; the poster needs to have the main character, the plot, the setting, the opening date, etc. You need all this and more to make sure you are ready and have a couple ideas to create and choose the best one. This project is going to be a little struggle and my team is going to need to sing out the camera a lot, but I think we can do this.

Our movie trailer has a lot of characters, but there's is 3 main ones, Detective Thalia, Robber Amethyst, and Rebecca the victim. These three characters are extremely important to the movie trailer because The whole movie is based on them. The robber steals Rebecca's ring which is also has the code to her bank account engraved on it and if the culprit finds it her great fortune is destroyed. To find the culprit the detective and Rebecca need to work together to get her favorite Amethyst ring. The setting in this movie trailer is in Rebecca's mansion AKA Kasiah's house; the crime happens when Kasiah is dancing around painting her nails. Unfortunately Rebecca didn't know that would be the last time she could afford nail polish.

My movie poster isn't completely done I'm still adding the filter which looks really awesome right now. When I'm finished with my poster I bet it'll be AMAZING! I'll need these things to complete my poster and make sure it's better than perfect. Text-Title, Actors, Reviews, and the Production Company. Text Effects: Drop Shadow, Stroke, Bevel & Emboss. Image: Main Characters. Setting, and Plot Hints. Text Effects: Quick Selection, Filters, and the Color Balance need to be included.

A major tool we needed to use is the kerning. Kerning is the process of adjusting the lettering to create spacing between the text and just make the font the way you want it for a pleasing result. The kerning tool is a very important part of this project because we want our movie poster to be perfect and just the way we want it. Kerning is important because to have an amazing poster everything has to be on point; which includes the text. Mr. Sanderl showed us this really cool website where it gives you the chance to actually try and Kern for yourself WEBSITE. This Website really helped me with practicing the kerning tool; now I know how to adjust the text to the way I prefer it to be.

Proactive or Procrastination

Hey guys! so the students of GT have to write 3 paragraphs of if there a procrastinator or a proactive person.You have to be completely honest and explain why you think what you think. I don't listen sometimes,which is like twice a day, but I think that I am more on the side of being Proactive. I will be totally honest with you I think that I'm a proactive person. I always follow the rules, I know what I have to do. I usually only talk to collaborate with my team, teacher, or to help my piers in that class and if they're having trouble with something. Overall I think that I am a very proactive person.

My level of productivity is great. Most of the time I am usually working on something that could be improved because I finished my current project or something like that. I really try to get my work done by the due date that was assigned to that project. It bothers me if I turn something late because I know that once I am late on turning my work in I'm behind on that class. I'm almost never distracted most of the time. When I get an assignment I make sure to get things done and that it's my best work so that I am solid for when grades come up.

To make sure I'm always on task I try to prevent myself from getting distracted. It means a lot that I can finish my work on time and get some free time to do something fun or just take a break from working. Also, I must be sure to try and finish the assignment the day I was given it. I always try to go above and beyond, going above what is expected. I try to make as much time as I can fr my school work, but sometimes I can;t and that really hardens

My Visual Poem

Hey guys! It's me again recently Mr. Sanderl gave all GT students a project, My Visual Poem. My poem is about the rush I feel when I approach the field and play my favorite sport Soccer and how passionate I am about the exciting sport; just letting my spirit flow free while the air guides me to the goal. How I have worked so hard to accomplish my goal of being the best soccer player I can be.The visuals made an impact by really expressing the feelings of the story and showing the viewers what really happens when I go to soccer, when I get ready to practice and the game.

The special effects I added were pretty good. In my opinion I think that my special effects really brought interest because they were all so cool like the Kens burn effect, the dissolves, etc. All of them added this really awesome extra to the video. It captured the excitement I felt when dribbling the ball towards the goal and shoot the ball as hard as I can into the goal. The audience will probably love the effects I brought into the video and the rush when it dissolves and the Kens Burn effect and a whole bunch of other stuff.

There were some difficulties in making the film like some shots weren't focused enough or the camera was very stable. The hardest thing was putting all the clips together and having someone else shoot something of me that I wanted to shoot, but I couldn't. Another problem is that I had to get a lot of footage but I didn't get to use all of it because some clips were too long and it didn't make sense if I cut off a little bit of some clips and left some other stuff and it was just very frustrating.

The video overall I thought was Great!! I think that I did a really good job  filming and editing and just thinking of the ideas. My poem was on point it sounded great the way I expressed my feelings and how I made the shot feel the rush I have when dribbling down the field. I really liked the shot if me when tying my shoes and walking on/off the field. I really can't choose which shot I liked best because they're all so great, but they do have some problems with them.

Finished News Story

My team and I filmed a story about a middle school teacher who doesn't only teach, she's an artist as well. We decided to go with this story because we see her inspire so much students and staff; she treats her students equally and with great respects, she makes sure that all students are happy and not afraid to do what they believe. The people that contributed in our story are Gabriela Bryan, Michael Amoyo, and the wonderful Mrs. Sanderl. They all were a very big help they were very good listeners and did exactly what the team and I asked them to do. The interviews went really well we had to interview them a little over one time, but at the end it was successful.
The final Cut turned out Spectacular it was way better than I expected I thought it was gonna turn out pretty good but it turned out really great actually better than great it turned out amazing. After I saw the story that my team and I created I couldn't believe it I could not believe that 2 seventh graders and 2 sixth graders had created such an excellent piece of video.I think that we did this because we all worked together and communicated very well. I am very happy with the finished Cut.
I agree with the results my piers put for the story my team and I created the story wasn't perfect but it was pretty decent. I think that the critiques were very helpful for our story about Mrs. Sanderl. All of the critiques let the team know some improvements we could've made.

Real World Report

The story I decided to choose from Google World News was "At Least 32 die in Stampede During Indian Religous Festival". In Patna, India 32 people are dead and some are severly hurt. The deaths were caused by a wild stampede that was caused by a rumor that proclaimed there was an electrical wire that fell on some people during the festival. The festival was a celebration of marking the pride of good over evil.

I think that this article was really interesting it indicated a lot of details that were appealing to me. This piece brought my attention because I think that people should be more careful and that they don't need to over exaggerate; it informed me with these really nice fine points in the styory abut how 32 people were killed by this huge stampede that was just because of an electrical wire. I think it was really unfortunate for the other people because they didn't have enough running ability to out run the faster people.

We should care about this because 32 people are dead because of one little tragedy. Maybe, we could learn from this mistake and calm down if something bad happens to someone or something. I also think we should care about this because the people in India seem to over exaggerate things and I think we can help them learn how to keep calm and stay relaxed. i believe that if we can teach them how to stay under control thery wil thank us and we'll be proud that we made a change in something. Finally, we should just care about how people around the world are dying and how we should show our peace and care about the people around us and not only ourselves, that is why we should care.

Lessons Learned

In my opinion the most interesting part of the project would have to be all of the editing and seeing how you can improve. When you see your progress and all the improvement that you have made and when you see that it turns out really good and it's perfect because you put all your hard work into the profile or news story, you have this incredible feeling that you know you did your best. I think that when you get ideas from everyone else on your team it helps not only you learn more, but it actually helps the whole team learn more things even if you don't realize it. To make sure you have the best work you keep brainstorming with ideas that just pop up and use them while your teammates help pitch in with their ideas too.

I think the biggest roadblock my team, Lani, Meleana, Ashley, and I dealt with is working together a lot of us had some disagreements, but thankfully we all finally got on the same page and helped each other. I also think that the understatement could've been improved so that the teams that weren't familiar could have been introduced to the project more. Another problem is the time limit we had, I think that it should've been a little more time, but I understand that the crew from Hiki No wanted the videos in by a certain time.

I believe the most valuable part about film making is working together with your team and cooperating to make the best work you can make. I think that working together is the most valuable thing in film making because you learn valuable things from other people not only from yourself. You get these totally new ideas and you get this perfect project that can't possibly get any better but, then you see that it can get better and that it's not perfect you keep adding and adding so that it looks amazing and when you import it into the Mr. Sanderls' folder you get that feeling that you did the best you could do.

Hiki No Behind The Scenes

It's me again, so this week for GT, all of the students will be working  on a really important project that will....wait for it.....BE AIRED ON LIVE TELEVISION. I know it's kind of exciting that some of our work will be showed live on TV from the statewide news cast of Hawaii called Hiki No. It's a great chance for us, the GT students of Kapaa Middle school, to show what we can do and really prove that "KMS is the BEST".

For a couple of weeks we have been choosing our partners and getting together as a group and deciding if we want to do a profile story or a news story. If we choose to do a profile we will have to get together as a group and choose who we are doing it on and schedule an appointment with that person, so that we know when they are available and when they are not. If we decide to go the other way and do a news story we'll have to see what we are going to report it about. My team and I have already discussed that we are going to do a profile story and it's going to be about our art teacher, Mrs. Sanderl.

After deciding who the team was for this project we got to work; the team is Ashley, Meleana, Lani, and me. We figured that a artist tat is also a teacher at a middle school would be a great story, but we also found out that a lot of people look up to her and that she inspires many people in school and out of school even us the GT students of Kapaa Middle School.

The Experiment

Hey guys! On the 3rd and 4th week of school the GT class has  been working in photoshop creating and making whatever they want. We're labeling this project "The Experiment", because we are experimenting on different things in photoshop seeing what we can do in the program and we are challenging ourselves to try and do the impossible.

Some things I absolutely loved about the photoshop project "The Experiment" was that we got to do what ever we want and just mess around with our artistic side to see what we can and can't do. I liked that we can work with some music on, have fun while doing it, and make artistic creations in photoshop. Some oh so wrong problems were that we didn't have enough time to work on the project, but we still have a couple more days left to create something fun, magical, and creative.

Back to School

Hey guys it's Talia, so I just got back to school on the 4th and I am so excited to be meeting new people and learning new things. I'm also kind of nervous because it's a whole new year and I don't really know a lot of things about my new grade. Even though I am kind of nervous and shaky I think that I can get pass this school year exactly how I did last year but better. I'm currently in 7th grade this year, just turned 12, and am very excited I am still in the GT program this year an I'm hoping to do a lot of fun projects this year.

Well, I think that my most exciting class so far is Art, I am in love with art, so far4 we have done a spinning wheel project and soon will add on to that.Also, we have had the chance to write our name on the front page of our sketchbook which is called the, Name page. I am so very excited for the new and fun ideas that my teacher, Mrs. Sandel, will come up with this year.

Metamorphosis Animation

Our recent project from G.T. is called Metamorphosis. For this project my team and I, Maddie, Kasiah, and Lani had to work together to accomplish taking different animation types and creating a really interesting, creative, and artistic story. We had to make the story understandable and it had to have a purpose this project required to engage the viewers and create a visual of what our purpose was. The team and I basically used two animation types, stop- motion and claymation.

Our focus statement was "Titans Transform Goddess" we chose this focus statement because our story was about how the very well known goddess, Artemis, gets attacked by the ferocious titans and turns into a little harmless puppy and she goes on this amazing and adventurous journey to the Oracle of Delphi so that Delphi can turn her back into the brave and determined goddess she once was. This proclaims to the viewers that even though tough times come in and out you have to believe in yourself and find a way to do what you think is right.

I think that the whole project overall was pretty good it was an interesting experience for all of the students in G.T. I am really proud of my team because we had some rough times but we worked together and got through with them. this project was really fun it taught us the different animation types we could use through different activities in school or at ghome or wherever as long as you have access to a computer.

Words of Wisdom

Mr. Sanderl, my teacher, gave all GT students an assignment which is called, "Words of Wisdom" which meant that we had to think of a relative that was related to us that could tell us some inspiring words.

To succeed in this project my team and I had to work together and focus on accomplishing the assignment; we had to make an excellent piece that would blow Mr. Sanderl's mind. We brain stormed on who we should be the person that would tell us words of wisdom. We all had a difficult time on who we should do the project on.

Our "Words of Wisdom" is important because it explains on why we should follow our dreams and try to achieve the things we do in life. It tells us to not give up on something you want to do. I think that our words of wisdom is excellent, inspiring, and very helpful to people around the world that have a dream they want to exceed in.

5 Tips For

A little earlier in the year my teacher, Mr. Sanderl, gave all GT students a project where we had to think of 5 tips for a topic, the topic had to be useful. To me the video project was really exciting and I learned a lot of things about Final Cut Pro. The project was a very helpful experience where I can use what I learned in this project in some other project that Mr. Sanderl assigns his GT classes.

My team, Keegan and Lilio, including me chose the topic "5 Tips for Playing Volleyball." We chose this topic because we all thought that this could help some people if they wanted to improve or learn how to play volleyball better than how they played before. All of thought that this would be a pretty decent video if we all worked together and focused on finishing our project.

We faced a lot of difficulties during the project. One difficulty we had was that our video was below the time limit, so my team and I had to slow things down and doing that made our video look really funky. Another difficulty was that we didn't have Lilio because she had a doctors appointment so only Keegan and me worked on the project. Keegan and I panicked a little because we were missing a team member but we just followed through and worked our hardest.

Composition Techniques

There are many different shots of composition techniques. Some composition techniques make the shot a little more intriguing and creative.

The "Main Four" Composition Techniques

Rule of Thirds- The object is slightly moved to the side of the center. If the object is a person make sure the eyes appear at the inner corner.

Framing- When you use different objects to make a frame around something else.

Unusual Angles- Angles that are different and more creative than a simple regular shot of a really boring angle that has no interesting shots.

Leading Lines- Are lines within an image that leads the eye to another point in the image, or out of the image.

These four composition techniques are important because they give the viewer a better explanation of the video. These techniques make the visual story more interesting by turning the video from good to great. If you have experienced seeing an awesome commercial or t.v show. They use composition techniques to make their advertisements have a little more interest in them. These are once again the MAIN composition techniques, Rule of Thirds, Framing, Unusual Angles, and Leading Lines.

Practice Profile Story

My team and I chose Kasiah Vercelli to be in our practice story project.. We had a purpose for our story and here it is, my team and I wanted to give the audience a really interesting inside look of gymnastics. We wanted the viewers to feel the connection Kasiah had with her hobby.

We chose Kasiah Vercelli because we all knew how passionate and interested in gymnastics so we thought that why not do our project on somebody who really dedicates her time to do the thing that she loves we all decided that we should do hers because it was so interesting.

Profile Project Progress

My team and I decided to choose Kasiah's mom to be our " Elder Words of Wisdom" for this project in GT. She helped the people in a third world country while they were going through some difficult times. She taught them different things like how to grow their own crops. We chose her because we think that she is so inspiring and we wanted other people to see the real Katie Vercelli. We interviewed Mrs. Vercelli at her house which had very good lighting so it made our shots very focused.

When my team recorded the b-roll we had to make sure that there was no camera movement and that the things we shot b-roll on were related to the subject of our interviewee. The camera lens had to be very neat and clean so that we could see the objects well. We also recorded voice overs which was a little difficult because it had to be very fluent and we had to shoot it before lunch so we were kind of starving.

My team and I had some disagreements and difficulties during the process of filming our interview. When we were shooting, two of my teammates were arguing about who was going to say action. I got kind of irritated by them because they were arguing about something retarded. I was so glad Mrs Vercelli stepped in and helped them solve their problem. We can work on communicating with each other and work together better our teamwork needs to improve.

I'm pretty sure that my team and I will improve our story by working together to make some minor and major adjustments. We need to cut out the music from under the transition; our story is a little too long so we have to make the story shorter by like 1 1/2 minutes so that we are not disqualified. We are going to do this by being very focused and concentrating on finishing our work.

Three Shot Sequences

Sequencing is a series of three shots that are short. Sequencing is usually used in videos and make it a little more interesting. If taking great sequencing shots than you are using different angles to get a different perspective. When using sequencing try to get a little more creative than just one simple angle or one part of something. For example, when using sequencing on two people arguing try to get a wide shot of the the setting. Then, get a nice medium shot of the person's head talking to the other person. Finally get a good solid shot of the lips moving. Sequencing is a very important thing to learn in visual story telling or anything that occurs sequncing because it will help you get a really nice and interesting video.

Polar Panoramas

 Here are two of my finished polar panoramas. I first looked up the site about the process of creating a polar panorama before I decide where I would like my polar panorama to be. Then captured 10-15 interesting photos that also have to have a 10-15% of overlapping to the very next photo. After making the photos more bright and beautiful in Adobe Bridge I opened them in Photoshop. Using the PhotoMerge tool in Photoshop it automatically developed my Panorama.

First, I warped the panorama and made fit comfortably in the shape of a square and then cropped it. I rotated the square exactly 180 degrees and added the filter, Polar Coordinates. I finally had my own little world that I had just created; all I needed to do was edit the Polar Panorama. To make this perfect I erased most of the seam by applying the stamp and blur tool. I finally added my portrait photo to the Polar Panorama.

Practice Story Reflection

My team and I are currently working on a project in  GT. This project is a video project, it contains us to make an interview on someone in our group and share about a specific topic related to them. This project results us having to take footage of our interviewee which is our teammate Kasiah doing her topic. We had to tape the interview, record b-roll footage of her doing the topic, sequencing, and putting it all in Final Cut Pro to make it look very professional.

On the way to success we ran into a couple of problems. One problem was that the kids that were in the back were just constantly talking and would not be quiet so that was a real downer. Another challenge we had was the lighting, because we were out in the field and the sun was to bright so it was in kasiah's face and she couldn't see where she was going. Our final problem was the b-roll we didn't get enough b-roll for the interview so it looked like a real boring interview.

I think that my team could have worked a little harder on certain areas on the interview project and we could have communicated better with each other better. The team did a pretty good job and I think we can accomplish more things if we just stick our heads to the job.

Spherical Panos

These are two of my spectacular finished Spherical Panos that I created. I tried to challenge myself by taking pictures with my partner, Lani Alo. We took the pictures and uploaded them to my camera and I cut the picture of me in Photoshop. 

After that I edited all the pictures except the picture of me in Adobe Bridge. I first loaded the images in Photoshop and made a panorama; for extra credit I screen shotted the panorama. I clicked on the image size tool which is underneath image on the tool bar.

Then I went to the tool called polar coordinates and the sky turned inwards and in my opinion looked like a portal that leads to another dimension. I placed the cut out picture of me on top of the finished edited spherical panos. 

Final Photomontages

These are two of my finished photomontages from 3rd Period G.T class at KMS. All the students in GT were inspired by David Hockney.To develop this interesting image students had to work with digital cameras and take pictures from bottom to top ( 15 pictures ). Then we had to edit the photos and rename them in Adobe Bridge to make them more intriguing. 

After, we connected the photos because they were separated and made them match together by increasing the sizes and just playing around to make the most interesting image.  I then published them to the period 3 server. I celebrated my finishing work by doing my happy dance when no one was looking. 

All About Me

Hi my name is Talia Washington. I am 11 years old and I am currently in 6th grade. I believe that I am BOLD, BEAUTIFUL, and an AWESOME person. I am living my life right now because I have an amazing family that I love and care about.

I am incredibly talented at soccer and practice a lot in Anahola. I practice almost everyday except Wednesdays because that's my day off , but I also have hula on that day so I have a pretty busy schedule. I am so prepared for life that I have my plan set out already. I first want to graduate from USC (University of Southern California). Next, I will raise a family with my loving husband who is going to be a professional football player. Then, I will have 3 children and be very happy with them.

I really like school because it gives me the chance to be educated and I can learn a variety of new things and they will be stuck in my brain. I think it prepares me for life because all the l=things we are currently learning just helps us get really use to all the grown up talk and the skills in life. My favorite subject so far is Math. I like math because there is basically math in every job in the world.

I am living on the BEST place on earth, Kauai, the beautiful island is amazing.I am very grateful that I get to live on this beautiful island because of all the different species of animals. We have very beautiful, amazing, majestic animals like the Hawaii's state bird, the nene goose.

I have 2 dogs one is named Koa and the other is named Hope. Koa is 6 years old and Hope is currently 7 months old. Koa is the kind of dog that just sits around the yard just laying on his chubby belly sleeping. While on the other hand hope is running as fast as she can and jumping everywhere just being her little energetic self.

Magazine Cover

This is my finished magazine cover that I created during the break of fall in 6th grade at the school of KMS (Kapaa Middle School). I used a digital camera to take this awesome picture I also used photoshop to add all these cool layer effects.

First, I took a picture with my partner in crime Lani Alo we took a lot of great pictures with the digital camera Mr. Sanderl assigned to us. I chose this awesome picture because I think it really shows who I am. It a couple of minutes to decide which photo of me I was going to use for this project, I think I chose the right one.

Then, I took the image I was going to use in Photoshop and I had to make all these different layers. One was called the contour, the contour was the outline of me and that got me the finished outline of my magazine cover.