Exploring the Infinite Possibilities
Explorations is the final project for junior year. It was also the most open of all projects, our teachers showed us a rubric of expectations and said go do something. Which was terryfing but exhilirating. This all fits with the focus of the Explorations Unit as we where once again asked a question which made us actively think outside the box. The question was simple.
“How can you find,Explore and or expamd your passion?”
All Juniors thought of this question as they began the project to find and expand smething they where passionate about. This did not have to be linked to anything at freestyle. A large amount of them where not making it even more fun to do and watch the comleted works. We did have to incroparate some 21st Century Skills into our focus and try to master whichever skills we chose. Along with the link to the Freestyle 21st Century Skills;bellow is a picture of the skills we had to choose from.
My Exploration Project
This project challenged every student to try to improve and master somethign.
The 21st Century Skills which grabed my attention where all areas that needed improvement. Three specific skills became the core focus of the project. In order of most important to least here they are.
1. Self Direction
2.High Productivity
3.Visual Litteracy
To achieve this the exploration project would be limited and planned out and with the goal to meet all deadlines. This limited project would be film related and served as an attempt to better my camera work and editing skills. The scope would be narrow. The final project I ended up with was a Experimental film which would use audio as a plot and attempt to traslate audiotory feelings to sounds. This required experiemental weird music which took time to locate but once it was located the whole project came together. EthanC-Explorations Slides
Putting the Pieces together
With a basic idea completed it was time to put all the pices together to create something new. This was diffcult as trying to plan and direct myself to complete a project is something is struggle with. This was compounded by trying to be Highly Productive but making sure that productivity was dispersed equally over aperiod of time to avoid a massive rush to complete the project at the last minute.
Keeping that in mind I began my research and studied famous pieces of experiemental film such as Twin Peaks and other works by David lynch and various other artists. With inspiration I created a plan for what to shoot and turned my focus to creating an Inforgraphic for my explorations presentation. I based my Infographic about trying to prove as statment made by David Lynch as a fact (even though its more of an artistic statement than anything else)
50% of a movie is sound was the statement he made but I turned that on its head and asked.
is 50% of a Movies production sound?
Meaning is 50% of the time dedicated to creating movies dedicated to soundesing. This while not being the point of his statement is an interesting question and one that does not have a simple awnser.
The research for the infographic was difficult to find and even harder to organize as every movie is diffirent so all the numbers as a whole are averages. This was complicated more by the fact that there is no real data on how much time generally movies spend on sounddesign so the question needed to be anwsered a diffirent way. The solution was to look into the stages of film productin and identify where soundesign is. Soundesing is usually done in Post Production (Dark grey on pie chart) and post production generally makes up 23% of a movies production time but not all of that is sound design. The Infographic was not something im paticuraly proud of but I think it came out well as i used illustrator and the chart tool which I have never used before. I Only wish that I paid closer attention to the input of the numbers as I millabled their percentage.
After all the work came the time to present. The full presentation can be viewed bellow the infographic and it was a fun experience. Public speaking was the easy part its the stress of what your going to stay and do which is the most painfull. That of course makes you feel like your scared to speak. I tried to use Self Direction as a way to comabt this. I ended up overplanning my presentation I wrote note cards with bullet points and practiced exactly what i was going to say which is a rare thing in more presentations I give. Ironically as soon as I stood up I looked at the card for one second and never looked at it again. Everying that followed was organic and was all memory. The presentation was fun and getting over the fear that it was going to be terrible or that I wasnt ready felt so good. It was a great way to end the school year.
The Pieces come together
After all the work was done the final product was all that was left. A experiemental film which used the song “Presudoes” as plot. It was short and was comprised of odd but symbolic alndsacepe shots and shots of they bay. The Explorations final product was a good balanced way to end the year and came of looking good and was well planned and completed effectively. Overall the explorations unit was fun and provided a way to learn something we
wanted and felt like we should learn. I was happy with my Explorations projetc and it helped me imporve on three 21st Century skills I can use for next year.