Archival Footage for Dystopian Trailer

Footage (Sorry don't know how to embed it from the Internet Archives)

This clip shows citizens rioting, and the police coming in to intervene. The clip will be very useful for our group because we need scenes of riots and the police stopping them. Our trailer starts with an explanation to why the country is in its current state. We need to show that citizens revolted against the government, what better way than with this clip.

We will also need other clips too. Another clip that could be useful would be one with citizens bowing do to some sort of dictator. Also we could use some clips of people walking around like mindless zombies, and a couple more clips that show police brutality.

Dystopian Trailer Critique

Serenity . Josh Whedon . PG-13 . 2005
In the future, a captain (Nathan Fillion) and his crew harbor wanted citizens on their ship. They must keep the citizens safe, and also fight off the ruthless alliance.
Serenity Trailer

The trailer shows what kind of dystopian society the characters live in,  the true colors of the protagonist, and the premise of the movie. The movie is set in the future. In a time of spaceships and a world in which a bureaucracy has control, a group of rebels sets out to defy the alliance. This alliance is ruthless and gutless, an example the trailer uses to show this is byy having the assassain hired by the alliance say, "if you don't give me the girl, then more will die" . The protagionist is the narrator in the trailer. He has a deep hatred for the alliance. He says, "I aim to misbehave." The movie is based off a T.V. show so the protagionist's hatred for the alliance doesn't need to be explained, but by watching the trailer the audience can understand that something is wrong with the alliance. The premise of the movie is set forth in the trailer. The characters live under a harsh government that is welling to do anything to get what it wants. The director develops the premise through shots that contain dialogue from both alliance members and the rebels. The main goal for the rebels in the movie is to protect a girl who has strange abilities, while the alliance wants to capture her. The trailer shows this premise, as well as, the dystopian society the characters live in, and their resistance to it.

This trailer provides new ideas that can be used in our trailers. To give brief insight into the characters and their problems, text appears and then is followed by a short scene that shows the characters or problems. Another thing that the trailer provides is a lot of short action scenes with music. I don't know if I would want to use as many as the trailer used in my own trailer, but I could have a couple action scenes with dramatic music. The final thing was could be used in my trailer is clips that contain lots of dialogue. The dialogue gives the audience an idea of what the characters think. Also the dialogue can show humore or drama. In the trailer the last scene is incredibly funny and makes its viewers want to watch the movie to see if there are any other funny parts.

Five by Five Video Challenge

1. Clip of the scoreboard before the game
2. West Virginia University's offense coming onto the field
3. West Virginia University's band playing
4. West Virginia University scoring the first touchdown of the game
5. Players shake hands on on the field after the game

I used my I-phone 3gs to shoot the video. At first I used we-video to edit my clips, but my dad exited it out and I couldn't log back in for some reason. I then used youtube's video editor, and found that I liked it more than we-video anyway. The youtube editor was just easier for me.

I like the five by five concept. I am pleased with mine too. The five by five allows viewers to really understand what the atmosphere of the place being filmed was like. During our next assignment I think we should allow the video to have effects and extra audio, that way we could see the difference in the basic five by five and the more advanced one.

What Do You Want to Learn About More

The article "World Without Walls: Learning Well With Others" focused on the idea of collaboration. Collaboration is when people and share ideas about events online, and as a result learn more about the events. The article stressed the idea that students should be collaborating with others. The author argued that this would be a way for the students to expand their knowledge, while enjoying it. Also the author stated that many schools are afraid to collaborate with other people because it breaks the traditional school structure, but the author believes that collaboration would benefit students. Thus, according to the writer, collaboration should be done in all schools.

The writer wrote, "I believe their best, most memorable, and most effective teachers will be the ones they discover, not the ones they are given." This point to me is incredibly controversial. I have be a fan of about 75% of my teachers. They have taught me well, and also allowed me to have a good time in their class. I have discovered a teacher outside of school, but I believe if I did that I would still prefer my teachers in school to that person. I find the quote interesting, because although I have never discovered a teacher, I feel like I have be given awesome ones.

A thing I found suprising was that many schools don't share their work publicly. At every school I have attended there has almost always been a chance for students to share their work with the community and even beyond that. In 7th grade I was able to go to a state-wide competition called National History Day and present a web-site that I had created. I guess that I have been lucky because the schools that I have gone to have allowed me to present my work publicly. I think that all schools should do that.

I find the process of collaboration to be interesting, but I am not a fan of it. I think that it is hard to be able to constantly keep up with the people that I will be collaborating with, while trying to do homeowork and play sports. It makes there be a lot of work for something that could turn out to be a bust. I think that there is a good chance that it would be hard to find someone who has good ideas about a topic that want to learn and share information about. I have never tried collaborating, and I will try it once we start doing it, but I am not excited about it right now.

I would like to learn more about where to find good music that I could use in my videos without breaking copyright laws. Today in class my group tried to find some dramatic music on the web-site given to us, but it was impossible to find anything that sounded like what we wanted. I want to see if there are other places out there, where I could get better music.

World Without Walls

Memento Movie Review

     The author of the movie review was A.O. Scott, and the movie being reviewed was the movie Momento. The organization that published it was the New York Times. The writer starts out by giving a brief opinion on the movie. Then he describes the plot of the movie, and periodically sprinkles in his opinion. He also briefly touches on the acting. He does dicuss literary aspects, at great length, as well as dramatic aspects, but he barely touches on cinematic aspects. The review is written in a serious tone. The reviewer wants to let people know about the movie, and that's it. The reviewer doesn't give away the ending, and finishes it without being clear on whether he recommends it or not, although he praises the movie a lot, making one believe that he recommends it.
     I think that us CAP students should get a lot of freedom when writing the movie reviews. This would allow us to be creative, while also being informative. There should be a required checklist of things that we need to touch on, but when and how we touch on them should be left to ourselves.

Annotated Review

Hi I'm John. I am a 10th grader at Montgomery Blair High School, and I am in the Communication Arts Program. I have been doing media production since 6th grade at Eastern Middle School. The part of the process I enjoy the most is editing. In the past I have had many experiences with editing. At Eastern I completed my two favorite film projects. The first was a documentary about the president of Animal Planet. My group and I interviewed her in New York, and then created a documentary about her. It was the first documentary I ever made, and although it wasn't great, it was a good experience. The final project of 8th grade was to create another documentary. This one was about the labor industry.  I had to write the script, get interviews, find B-roll, and edit everything together. It was a huge amount of work, but it was rewarding to complete. This blog could be very helpful for us CAP kids this year. We could create different blogs for our change projects. That would be an easy way to communicate with the members of my group that I have little or no classes with. Another use of the blogs could be to turn in homework on them. That way we wouldn't have to waste paper, and people couldn't use the my printer broke excuse. Finally, the blogs allow students to ask other students what the homework was in a class in which they were absent.  These blogs could be very helpful.