Silver Spring. Video Challenge.

Here is my video for the video challenge. I shot around downtown silver spring using a point and shoot camera. I used a song from jamendo.com. In the video, I interviewed my British neighbor named Greta. She is usually really loud, but she got shy when I turned on the camera, so her dad asked the questions.

Inauguration

Last Monday I went to Barack Obama's inauguration. It was one of the coolest experience. We had seating tickets, so we were able to be really close to the stage which made the experience even better.
At the inauguration, I saw celebrities like Rob Lowe, Mary J Blige,  John Mayer, Aretha Franklin and Newman from Seinfeld!

The whole thing was amazing, but my favorite part was Obama's speech. It had some lines that people will remember for forever. He focused a lot on "All men are created equal" and he metioned everyone. He mentioned the gays, straights, poor, rich, men,female which  admire him for.

The best part of the whole speech is when he said, ""We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth."  

This line used such imagery, it was unbelievable. It had emotion. When he said, "through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall," it really made me say "wow.'


I was so lucky to be at the nation capitol to witness the historic day.  I wish you luck on your second term Barack Obama!



Below is a picture my dad took of the inauguration. We were really close to Obama!

Starting 2013 on the Ground

It was 20 seconds until midnight, everything was ready. The four champagne glasses were on the table and the TV was turned to the station showing the NYC ball.With 15 seconds left, we realized that the champagne was still upstairs,so I ran up to get it. I ran back downstairs as the TV was counting down 10...9...8...7...6..5.... and suddenly... I was on the ground. Everything happened at once. Glass was shattered around me, Esther was bleeding, Samantha was screaming,my parents were yelling "Are you okay?" and suddenly we hear HAPPY NEW YEAR from the TV. it was defiantly an exciting way to start the new year. But I guess if you start the year on the ground, the only way you can go is up.

Documentary Review: Man on Wire

A few nights ago,I watched the documentary "Man on Wire" directed by James Marsh. It was a fascinating movie about high walker, Philippe Petit's journey which led him to walk across the twin towers. The movie captures the long years of preparation for only about 45 minutes of routine on the wire.
It really showed how determined Phillipe Petit was to complete his dream, he knew it was illegal and extremely dangerous, but he wouldn't give up.  From the time he saw an article in a magazine about two huge towers in NYC being built, he was determined to walk between them. He encountered many obstacles. For example, he and a few other people had to rig the wire in complete darkness with high winds and in only a few hours. His friends told him to give up, it's impossible to rig this in such a short time,but Phillip didn't give up. And finally it was a majestic moment when he walked across the wire between the towers.

I really liked that is it had a lot of different footage and it kept cutting back and forth between all of them. It had archival footage of the building of the World trade Center,present day Interview of Petit and all the other people involved, reenactments by a different actor who played young Petit which portrayed the preparation and ideo and still images of the performance between the Twin Towers. All these different shots made the documentary seem so much more real.

I enjoyed how they would cut back and forth between shots of the preparation of the performance ( practicing, discussing how they'll do it) and sneaking up to the top of twin towers.

The filming was great because it made it seem like an older film. In particular the reanactment scenes, were either in black and white or had a color tone that is used in many old movies.

I barely noticed the music in the movie. I found it odd because it used calming, soft music even in the more exciting parts like the walking between the towers.However,it somehow worked.

I really enjoyed the movie, it was was well told, creating a lot of suspense. I defiantly recommend this movie.


Here is the trailer for "Man on Wire":

BARCODE

A few weeks ago, we finished our dystopian trailers. Ours was called Barcode and portrayed a society with citizens who lacked a identity. Everyone dressed the same, they had earpieces to stop them from hearing, to communicate they had only a few cards with words on them and to identify themselves they had a necklace with a barcode necklace. Our main character fell and broke her earpiece and was then able to hear. She then realizes how much the government is hiding from them and wants to end this dystopian society.

What really set our trailers different from the others was the fact that the first half of our trailer did not have music, only a low drowning noise in the background. When the main character falls and her earpiece breaks, intense music starts playing to signify the upcoming battle she will go through. Another thing that made our trailer unique was our costumes. All citizens wore the same thing: A white shirt, jeans, the bar code necklace and a paper bag over their heads. On one side of the bags were two eye holes and a drawn happy face and on the other side was the two eye holes and a drawn sad face because the citizens only had 2 emotions. 

I enjoyed the project a lot, but it was very time consuming. To film we had to work on weekends and for editing, my group and I went in many days after school and during lunch. However during the project, I became more familiar with the editing software that we used, Final cut. 



I am really proud how our trailer and I hope to use some of the tools I learned about while making the trailer, in the upcoming documentary project.

Capture the Fall

For my Capture the Fall challenge, I filmed a park in Virginia last weekend. It was a great place to film because it was close to water and surrounded by trees. It really portrayed the beauties of fall For example, the leaves were all different colors. It was a beautiful view. In addition to the amazing view, it was a great day to film. The weather was an amazing fall afternoon, not too cold and not too hot.

I filmed this using my friend's DSLR camera, which was a great in comparison to the Iphone that I used to film my  last 5x5. The DSLR's shots were wayy better quality than the Iphone's. It really helped show nature's beauty.
For this project, I used 10 different shots:

1.  The first shot was the trees that I shot on a trail.This was a great show in my opinion because you can see all the different colors of fall. For example the leaves were brown,yellow and green.
2.  The second shot was of my friends running to a tire swing that we found on the trail.I included this one because it showed the joys of fall and I found the house behind it adorable.
3. The third shot is of them playing of the tire swing.
4. The fourth show is another shot of trees. The camera starts at the roots of the trees and moves up until it is pointed at the sky.
5. The fifth shot is more trees and the front of the adorable house that I spoke before quickly moving by. I shot this in the front passenger seat of my car, I held it right out of the window as my mom drove out of the park.
6. The sixth shot was zoomed in on the leaves. In the middle of the shot, you can see my friend come in the shot to play with the leaves
7. The seventh shot is a shot of the water surronded by trees. The view is absolutly amazing! Than the camera zooms in on the leaves on the tree.I included the second part because I loved the way the sun is seen through the leaves
8. The eighth shot is another shot of the nature trail. You can see people enjoying the fall weather.
9. The ninth shot is really short, but I wanted to include it because I loved the lighting and the water in the background that is barely seen, but creates a nice view.
10.  The final shot is of my friends walking away on the trail

The hardest part of this project was finding good music to put in the backround. It really wanted it to signify the joys of fall weather. I used a creative commons website, www. jamendo.com, and I settled on the song "Built to Last" by Fall Walk Run. It's upbeat, but not too crazy.
I used Wevideo to edit my video.It wasn't too hard this time because I used it to edit my 5x5. However, it took me a while to figure out how to upload the song, but finally I figured it out.

I hope this video captured the fall!

Later Start times for schools.

I have recently read an article about starting schools later in the morning. I completely agree with the article.
Most high schools start about 7:30 in the morning which is completely ridiculous. I personally wake up about 5:30 am every morning to catch my bus and go to sleep at about 11 pm- 12 am every night, depending on the amount of homework I have. According to the article, teenagers my age are theatrically suppose to have about 9 hours of sleep every night ,but I get only about 5 and half or 6 hours every night.
According to the article sleep  deprivation can lead to alcohol/ drug abuse, social problems and depressions. Personally, my lack of sleep reflects on my grades and attitude at school. Last week, I did not get much sleep because of homework and other activities which lead my whole week to become miserable. For example,i had a couple of tests last week and even though I studied for all of them really hard, I knew I did not do as well I could of done. In addition, the whole week I felt pretty sick which was probably due to my lack of sleep.
If school systems would simply push the start times back only an hour, I feel results would be extremely beneficial. The article talked about two studies done by Center for Applied Reaseach and Educational Improvement  in two different schools districts in Minnesota. In "Minneapolis-area school district—Edina, a suburban district who changed their high school start time from 7:20 to 8:30, and the Minneapolis Public Schools, who changed their start time from 7:15 to 8:40." After CAREI recorded data  on grades and school habits of the students and the data  "showed that there was a significant reduction in school dropout rates, less depression, and students reported earning higher grades."
 I think school systems around the country should follow the example of the these two districts. 
Click here to see the article