Conceptual

Introduction

“How can I use unconventional forms to express myself?”

Throughout this first semester at Freestyle, I’ve explored new forms of expressing creativity through projects such as through poetry, music, art, experimental films, and web production. These projects, differing from the average high school norm, challenged us to express our opinion in a distinct way. One of the biggest things I’ve learned at Freestyle is the term “Show don’t tell”I’ve learned new technical communication skills and began using many modern professional utilities such as DSLR Cameras, Tascam Audio Recorders, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere Pro, WordPress, and more.

I really enjoy Freestyle because of all the opportunities it has given me. The sort of things that are provided at Freestyle really appeal to me and I’m really glad I joined. In English at a regular high school class, I’ve always struggled because reading really long articles and writing essays don’t really appeal to me. Learning to write haikus and poems were a new beginning to forms of writing I had never practiced before. I excited to see what else I learn in this coming and following year.

Haiku

We started our year off with learning and writing Haikus, where you have three lines consisting of five, seven, and five syllables. It was difficult finding what words to use with such sharp restrictions, I wrote many different varieties of haikus before I was content with the one I was set on. We were given a concept statement that we had to confine our haiku to. Mine was I’m exploring the feeling of sympathy through destruction.

Behind the Scenes

I really enjoyed working on the haiku. The message of my haiku applied my concept statement and really resonated with me. Creating this video taught me a lot and helped me further develop my understanding of Premiere Pro. Turning my words into a video production with a photo, voice over, and music made it feel like my haiku was coming to life.

Poetry

Writing a free verse poem was really difficult for me. I have a hard time understanding them and thinking of how to create them, luckily in English class we spent a lot of time reading many different types of poetry so we could get the hang of it. My final free verse poem sort of has two parts, I tried to make it unique, making its structure different from some poems I’ve read.

“Natural Synchronization, Synchronization in Nature is a free verse poem about two such cycles, the moon in its monthly cycle around the earth, and the monthly menstrual cycle that occurs in women’s bodies, which somehow seem to be synchronized for some women. I first wrote this poem in two stanzas. I then tried to be original by merging the two stanzas into one, so that every other line or section switches between referring to the moon and referring to women’s bodies. To continue this pattern, I thought it would be interesting to also make the title two corresponding lines. I think this adds to the excitement of reading the poem, because the first time a reader looks at it, I expect that they’ll be confused and not sure what they’re reading. They will have to read it more than once, and each time they read it they’ll get a more excited understanding of the message in the poem. I used enjambed instead of end-stops to show the sentences flowing from one to another, making it a graceful poem to read. The tone is calm, it should bring you peace. Throughout the poem, the emotion remains calm/insightful. I think the message is both interesting and unusual, and surprising and unexpected. There are cycles that occur in nature that at first seem unrelated, but are actually synchronized with each other. I used a few literary devices in my poem. The title sets the stage for the entire poem, with its two lines, as corresponding lines in each section say the same thing using the same or slightly different words, but the word order is reversed. Lineation sets the tone. The fact that I merged the two stanzas into one is recognizable by the cadence of the poem. Each pair of lines has the same cadence. enabling the reader to feel a growing awareness of similarity between the moon and women’s bodies. The structure of the poem clearly identifies the corresponding sections of the poem, so that readers are able to move constantly back and forth between the two topics. Lineation is the only source of information about structure, because enjambment as well as lack of capitalization and punctuation provide no other source of information about structure. In comparing the moon to a woman’s body, personification is used, such as the moon gracefully moving like a woman’s body. I used imagery to help readers become more emotionally engaged. To engage readers auditorily, I wrote of silence and sounds. To engage their feelings, I wrote of emptiness and fullness, and darkness and light. At the end, I tried to give the poem a deeper meaning by alluding to the idea that the moon taught ancient people about time, because the month is the largest unit of time that these people could follow on their own, without a clock or a calendar, and as well that the menstrual cycle of women taught early people about how life flows from one generation to the next.”

Visual Production

Film Production

This film class has really helped me improve, it’s one of my favorite classes. I really like how this class is different from my other classes at Mountain View. In AM Film class, there are only 5 students, all girls. We’ve all connected and the fact that we share this part of us, a love for film, we’ve connected and helped each other build our films. Every time we create a film idea, we bring it to class and read it aloud to everyone. We take a long time to debrief everyones story, and always change it up and enhance it. IMPROVE.

Shooting film and editing on premiere pro were really new to me at the beginning of the school year. My experimental film was the opening of a new (thing) for me, but with this film, I feel like I didn’t really connect with it because it didn’t show any people, it was just a mix of ingredients, and I still didn’t really understand Premiere Pro. I resonate with films more when they show emotion, but with the experimental film it challenged us to do something different from the regular type of film.

Some other films I’ve made in my first semester at Freestyle:

We were told to film a suspense scene inspired by Hitchcock. Give the viewers a piece of information that the characters don’t know about, and it will leave them off the edge of their seat.

We were told to film a chase scene, following all the important rules. One of the big ones is the 180 degree rule, unless broken by a z-axis shot or a frontal view, the motion has to go steady. With my actors, throughout the film it sort of got funnier for them so it turned more into a comedy chase scene.

one of the first things we started off with in the beginning of the year to get us introduced to all the different camera angles. Our film class went through a list and got clips from all the angles we were asked of. This helped us get familiar with the variety of angles you can take videos from.