Five Tips For

Our first main film project this school year was the "Five Tips For".  We got teams of three and I was with Sophia Rodriguez and Kirklyn Nishida and our video was about five tips for living healthy.  We chose this topic because it's better for everyone if they live healthy because things like obesity can ruin someone's life.  While healthy people have fun and active lives.  If you compare this video to the one we produce now,  I think we could of done a lot better on this.  First there is a lot of camera movement in some of the shots;  we should of kept all the titles in the same area or lower thirds.  Also I think there could be more of a variety of shots in the film and better voice overs because there were sometimes fast and hard to understand.

Words Of Wisdom

One of our main projects for the third quarter we did a "Words of Wisdom" profile story.  We were hired to complete this project by the DOE and was granted the money for new equipment.  The title for project was "Words of Wisdom" profile story, so it has to be about someone who has great words of wisdom that should be shared and the story of how they learned it.  First for this project we got into groups of three and I was with Kirklyn Nishida and Jonnika Alumpe.  We interview my father, Kenneth Kimura,  of his words of wisdom of how he thinks if you try your hardest, then thats all you can do.  We recorded the interview at my grandma's house and took most of the B-roll at Kauai Lagoons Pro Shop were he works.  Then we edited the interview and B-roll together in FCPX.  Once we got the story pretty good, we then did the voice overs in the studio at school and put them into the profile story.  We finally watched it over and over again to make sure it's the best we could do, then we turned in the final profile story into the server folder.  Later that week once everyone got theres turned in, we had a film festival and watched everyones profile story.

Practice Profile Story

Before doing our final "Words of Wisdom" interview story, we first did a practice profile story.  I was in a group of four with Jonnika Alumpe, Kirklyn Nishida and Mia Lopez.  The purpose of doing a practice story is to help us get ready for our final.  Some reasons that we did this was to practice planning our profile interview and get use to our new Canon cameras that the DOE granted our school.  We had to start planning all our interview shots and a three shot sequence for each cut that we do in our interview. If we don't do this then the interview will lack B-roll and will show every cut that we made in to the interview.

We choose Kirklyn for this interview because she had the best story that we could film at school.  For example we were going to interview Nika about why she like to play piano and how she got stated.  But we could not film her playing the piano at school without interrupting other classes such as the music room. So we did "Kirklyn Draws Anime".  We were able to quickly film this at school during class and had enough background information to write a good introduction.

Profile Project Progress

For our next project we are doing an interview of "Elder's Words of Wisdom".  We got into groups of three, my partners are Kirklyn Nishida and Jonnika Alumpe.  We are interviewing my father, Kenneth Kimura, for words of wisdom.  The interview took place at my grandma's house after school.  I was the interviewer and asked all the questions and Kirklyn was the camera man.  I asked questions like "What is your current profession?" and "How long did you work there?".  He believes that if you try your hardest at anything, you can succeed and feel good because that was the best you could do.

While interviewing Kenneth, we went through some difficult parts.  One thing was that we couldn't figure out if the small clip-on mic was working or not; so that took a good portion of out time trying to fix.  The cameras that we used were Canons which were High Def. and became really clear.  Zoomed in and used the mechanical focus to focus on his eyelashes,  when that is clear when you zoom out the background will be blurred out so its easier to focus on the main subject.

Next time I think our team can work better together by communicating more about when we are going to be filming.  If we do this than we all can go film together than just one or two people filming B-roll or interview. We will be able to work faster with more hands and accomplish more things.  I also think if we all work together on the storyboard we would have planed better then everyone would know how the interview is going to be.  This would make everyone able to edit the interview incited of one or two people because the other person does not know where to put anything.

I think that our team can improve our interview by add more B-roll first. In our rough cut there wasn't much B-roll added and there was noticeable cut in the interview. Also I think that if take some time editing and making the focus statement more understandable.  It was hard to understand because there was interview shots that talked about how he finished collage then it talked about how he loves soccer and fixing cars.  If its becomes more easier to understand then it can be more relatable to the audience.  Last I think if we redo the voice over narrations and make them more slower then the audience will be able to understand them better instead of wondering what they are.

These four pictures are from our class cirque of our Rough Cut.  

Composition Techniques

In photography and filming there are composition techniques that help make your video or image more interesting.  There are four main techniques that are the most important.  They are rule of thirds, framing, unusual angles, and leading lines.  Rule of thirds is one of the most popular ones in photography and filming.  When using rule of thirds you first break the image into nine different parts always want to have the main subject in one of the cross hairs of the image. Remember to have the main subject to be facing into the open space. The next one is framing; this is used to bring more interest to the image.  To do framing you must have your subject inside a natural frame that is found in nature.  Unusual angles also bring more interest to your image or film. To use unusual angles you just capture your shot from a different angle then you would normally do.  So instead of shooting strait on, you would go from another angle like from a low or high angle.  The last main composition technique is leading lines.  Leading lines lead your eyes to the main subject and normally is only focused on it.

Three Shot Sequence

In photography three shot sequences are one of the most important elements.  The three shot sequences are made up of a wide, medium, close-up, and extreme close-up.  When filming you will need three of the four and they have to be in order going from wide to extreme close-up.   Three shot sequences are important because they can add interest to the video.  If you just have a wider or close-up view, the entire video it will get boring. So you would change it up by using three shot sequences.  They are also important because they cut down the time in the video.  Instead of having a video with one shot and very long, you can use three different shots and cut down the time of the whole video. So three shot sequences are important in filming because it adds interest and cuts down the time of the video.  Without them videos are just plain, boring, and long.

All About Me

Hey people, this is a post that is all about me.  I was born in Willcox Hospital on April 15, 2000.  I have lived on Kauai my whole life and have only traveled out of state three times; to Alaska, California, and Washington.  I am currently in 8th grade and attending to Kapaa Middle School.   You may be wondering what this blog is about and what is G.T.? G.T., or gifted and talented, helps students which may want to pursue in professional photography or filmography.  Everyone in my class created a personal blog to showcase our work that we do in class, which is under the label G.T. portfolio.  We also will have personal updates to express ourselves. If you would like to see some of my other classmate’s blogs, there are links to them to the right in blue.

Beside school, there is lots of other stuff I like doing during my free time.  I like playing video games, listening to music, playing sports, watching movies, watching and reading anime, and making things with paper like origami and 3D paper objects.  A few of my favorite song artist are Linkin Parks, Macklemore, Imagine Dragons, Breaking Benjamin, Skrillex, and 30 Seconds to Mars.  The main reason that I like music is that they are a way to express myself and it relives me of stress from school. Most of these artistes are rather inspiring or just fun to listen too. When I'm not listening to music, I'm probably watching anime. Some of my favorite animes are Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, Attack on Titan, Naruto and Naruto Shippuden. I really like watching anime because they can just take you away from this world and put you in better one.

When I grow up, I would like to be an engineer because my grandpa was a one of the best on Kauai, and my sister is in collage studying to become one.  My family has always been good in math, so this will help me since in engineering you will need to be good at math and have a good degree in collage.   To get a head start, I will probably take all honors math classes in high school to get me ready for all the math in collage.  If I am not able to do this, I would want to become a graphic designer for video games.  This interests me because video games will always be popular with the younger generation.  All gaming companies could use more people and everyone has different ideas, so anyone could create the new hit game.