Exit Through the Gift Shop

I recently saw the documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop directed by Bansky. This film follows the life of amateur film maker Thierry Guetta (aka Mr. Brainwash), as he discovers the world of illegal street art. The documentary begins with an overview of Guetta's life, he's an average french man living in L.A, he owns a high end thrift store and has the interesting quirk of filming every waking moment of his life. While on vacation with his family, Guetta has a chance encounter with his cousin, a street artist named Invader, this causes Guetta to become obsessed with street art, he follows many famous street artists around, including Shepards Feirey and Bansky himself, Guetta captures their works, then he soon tries his hand at his own art and become very successful.
There is definitely some literary aspects to this film, it has many characters that include all the street artists that Guetta encountered, it also has an overarching plot of Guetta's rise to fame. The only conflicts in this movie are some run ins with the police, and the overall resentment of some of the other street artists. The setting is all over, as Guetta travels around the world to film prominent artists in the graffiti world. The point of view is mostly from Guetta himself, but both Bansky and Shepards Fairey chime in as well.
There is less dramatic aspects and cinematic aspects in this film, most of the shots in this film were captured by Guetta himself, as he travels with these artists. Everything is in real time, there is no acting, or sets, or make up in this documentary, except for interviews with both Bansky and Shepards Fairey.
I would recommend this documentary to anyone who shares this interest in art, I do think it is necessary to warn people that Guetta will not be your favorite character, he comes off as crazy, to the point he looks almost mentally ill, and at times it is very hard to connect with his character. Root for Bansky and the rest of the artists.

Exit Through the Gift Shop
1hr 30 mins
Rated R

Journal Tutorial

 Alright so I have a serious addiction to DIY projects and such, so I decided to make my own tutorial on how to construct a journal.

To Begin You Will Need:

Cardboard ( I used a cereal box but if you have anything thicker use it!)

Scissors

Ruler

Pencil

Hot glue gun

Glue

Three small clips

Some paper (lined or not. doesn't really matter)

Construction paper (Not shown above because I forgot but oh well)

Duct Tape (electrical would probably be better but I only had Duct)

1) Alright so the first step is to fold one of your regular papers in half. You are going to use this to measure out how much cardboard you need. You want the cardboard to be about 1 1/2 cm bigger than your folded paper. So cut out two pieces of that size and also cut a slight strip of cardboard to be the spine of your journal. ( I cut out four piece and taped them together so it would be sturdier.)

2) So once you have that you want to take a long enough strip of tape and place the sliver of cardboard more or less in the middle of it. 

3) Now you want to place the other two pieces of cardboard on the tape leaving a tiny space in between each piece of cardboard. With the excess tape on either side simple fold it over the edges.

4) Next place another piece of tape to cover up the other side. Folding the excess over the edge again. Press down in between the spaces so the tape sticks together. It should look like this now.

 5) Now comes the tedious part. However many pages of paper you want, you are gonna have to fold them all in half. Try to make them as neat as possible because it makes it look nicer.

6) Next once you have them all folded. Clip them together on the folded part. One on each side, and one in the middle. 

 7) Then use the hot glue gun and cover the folded paper. Squeeze it together a little so the glue doesn't soak down too much. 

8) Wait for it to dry a little, then move the clips and go over those parts with glue as well. 

9) Let it dry and you should have a wad of paper that stays together. 

10) Now we're going to work on the cover. Take two pieces of construction paper (Mine is pretty!)  and measure out two pieces that are bigger than the folded paper (It honestly doesn't matter how much bigger, about 2 inches would be good, i only did like 2 cm and i didn't really have enough.) This is gonna be your cover paper.

11) Cut them out.

12) Line up the cover paper with the cardboard , you want there to be an even amount of excess on every side. 

13) Next take your hot glue gun and glue the cover paper over the edges of the cardboard. 

14) It should look like this now. Try to smooth the cover paper down as best you can.

15) Depending on how you want to make the cover you can either repeat steps 3 and 4 or you can wait and I'll explain another way later. 

16) Next you want to take another color of construction paper and cut out two pieces of paper that are about the same size as the folded paper.

17) Glue the construction paper to cover up the edges of the cover paper. Make sure you have enough that construction paper that you can glue it to the spine of your journal.

 18) Next glue the pages of your journal onto the spine

20) Wait for it to dry. And WHOOSH you're done!

For the another way to make the binding of the cover, cut a strip of the construction paper and paste it along the edge of the spine on both sides. (This is the other journal I made)

Six-Year Old Pianist

Okay I found this on youtube and i just had to post it somewhere. This kid is amazing!


(he doesn't start playing till about 3:00)

Tsung Tsung is from Hong Kong and was discovered after making some Youtube videos.In this video he's playing  Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov composition, "Flight Of The Bumblebee". 

CAPture the fall

This is my capture the fall video, I took some shots around my house and neighborhood, and then some shots of these woods I walked through.

Dystopian Trailer

So for the past couple of weeks we've been working on this dystopian trailers. We started this project in our English class when we read 1984 by George Orwell, we then explored what characteristics defined a dystopia. We were then asked to present this characteristics in our own dystopian world through the making of a movie trailer. In our film class, we spent about a week to develop our ideas, I was in a group with Emily, Natalie, and Sophie. We then had to plan a time for all of us to get together for filming. We the spent about a week and half editing the our trailer, and then presented our trailer to the class.

Nanowrimo: the First Week

So National Novel Writing Month started on the 1st of November, I changed my idea for my novel, because I realized that fantasy isn't really my forte, when it comes to creative writing. I much prefer realistic fiction, therefore I'm writing about a girl who runs away to New York, and gets caught up in  her own little adventures. I'm a little behind with my word count i have about 3,500 words so far but i'm definitely gonna try to step up my game with the two days off i have.
Here's a little excerpt I have from my writing.

The next stop we came to was the train station. I gratefully got off the bus, with a last nod to the bus driver.

“You take care, you hear,” he said, closing the door after me.

The bus pulled away and suddenly I felt very alone. The train station was all but deserted with people scattering the great long hall. It was a very regal sort of place, with big white pillars reaching all the way up to the high rounded ceiling; the floors were made of marble that shined brilliantly in the dim lighting of the fancy wall fixtures. A couple shops lined the wall, but they we’re all closed. A lone coffee shop lay opened with a few sad looking costumers staring into the expanses of their cups. It was almost eerie how quiet the place was. I was suddenly aware of every breath I took, and the sound my shoes made every time I took a step.

I made my way down the hall towards the ticket booth, inside was a woman probably around my mom’s age. She had red frizzy hair pulled back in a messy bun, with bright pink lipstick, and bright blue eye shadow. She had vibrant green glasses that a young hipster would where to be ironic, but on her it only made her eyes bulge out making her face look disproportioned. She wore a red blazer as part of her uniform with a gold pin stating that her name was Helen. She was furiously looking through her computer, while sporadically typing in a short sequence.

“Sorry,” she said, not taking her eyes off the computer screen. “The last train just left ten minutes ago.”

I nodded assuming as much at this time a night. “When’s the next train to New York?” I asked, trying to sneak a peek at what she was typing.

“6:15 a.m.” She said, with a pointed glare, noticing my nosiness.

“How much?” I asked, reaching for my wad of cash, praying I would have enough.

“That will be eighty four dollars.” She said printing out the ticket.

I quickly counted out the money and handed it to her. She finally looked up at me, when hanging me my ticket. She gave me a once over, her eyes calculating and critical, I tried to shy away from her gaze shifting awkwardly from one foot to the other, and quickly grabbed the ticket.

“Good luck,” Was all she said as I walked away from her booth. 

I'll probably be posting more excerpts on my blog as Nono continues. Feel free to leave any comments on my writing, but take into account that this is a very very rough draft.

NaNoWriMo

As most of you are probably unaware November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. Basically you write a 50,000 word novel in the span of one month. Obviously this requires quite a lot of planning so I thought since I will be writing weekly Blog Posts I can use them to my advantage and get some of my creative juices flowing.

So far i have two possible plot lines to choose from:

Story #1

Setting- post apocalyptic U.S, nuclear waste land, certain landmarks remain. Basically the whole world turns bad, demons walk the earth, devil dogs, body snatchers, hell raisers.

 Plot- Follows three separate groups of survivors. Examines their back stories, and their emotional state as they deal with this new reality.

Types of Demons-

Demons- humanoids, red tint in their skin, tails like the devil.  Can control the hounds of hell.

Hounds of Hell-rabid dogs as tall as human, giant German shepherds with teeth like tigers. Once bitten fever will begin, roughly 24 hours until the person over heats and gets like super rabies, and eventually dies.

Body snatchers-take the form of their victims, no tell except for small mark on the ankle.

Hell raisers- control fire, basically pyros, burn whatever they touch. A burn from a hell raiser will turn you into one.

Characters-

Group 1 (Family)

Daniel: Father, very religious 

Jamey: older brother, childish and disregards the rules

Jack: curious, wanders off alot

Amy: Mother, needs more character development. (in progess)

Group 2 (Nomads)

Carter: awkward, discordinated. 

Sam: older, remembers the times before

Group 3 (Kids)

Jess: Leader of the group, looks after all the other kids. 

Emma: The mom figure, good natured, naive 

Shaun: rebellious, peevish 

Cassie: the baby. quiet and fearful

So far this is all i have for my first idea, i might post some excerpts of this story to see if i like where all the characters are headed. I'll post my second idea after I've had some time to further develop it. 

Short Story-

It’s funny how a seemingly insignificant event can have such a big impact on your views about life. I experienced one of these events on the first of June, 2011. I had originally thought it would be a regular day that would soon blur together with all the other days as I awaited the end of the school year. But this day I soon realized would become a day upon which I looked back on with great amusement at my own foolishness and an even greater insight on the lesson I learned that day.

It was Tuesday, which meant it was pizza night at my house. The pizzeria around the corner had a two-for-one deal that my mother could never pass up. So there we were in the foyer of the pizza place waiting for our order to be ready. The sweet aroma of delicious tomato sauce upon freshly baked bread all decked with savory melted cheese became too much for me. I asked my mother if I could walk next door to CVS and get something. Surprisingly my mother pulled out her wallet and gave me five buck. She told me to buy whatever I wanted.

‘Five dollars…, what to do with five whole dollars?’ I pondered, a little sarcastically, what I would buy as I stepped through the doors of CVS; a blast of cold air-conditioned air hit me. Being the fourteen year old girl that I am, I made a bee line for the magazine aisle. I glanced over the magazines when I came across what my friend like the call “The Bible”; it was the newest edition of Seventeen Magazine. So of course I decided to buy it, I was on my way to the checkout when something caught my eye.

What’s this? I thought. A Special-Edition Seventeen Summer Catalog! I looked down at my other magazine, which somehow now looked less appealing. I grabbed both magazines and held them up for comparison. While the Special-Edition magazine was a great deal smaller than the normal magazine, they both had an incredibly pretty girl with too much makeup on, on the front page, and they both promised new fashion ideas for the summer. ‘What to do, what to do?’ I thought ‘Five dollars. Could it be possible to buy both for only five dollars?’ I felt it was worth a try. And with the two magazines in my hands I headed straight for the checkout line, only to find that there was only one cashier with seven more people waiting in line. By this time my mom should have gotten the pizzas, and she was probably already waiting outside for me which meant I had to hurry. I noticed the self-checkout was empty so I headed over there.

The mechanical voice welcomed me to the self-checkout, and told me to begin scanning my items. I scanned the normal Seventeen magazine first, $2.49. Alright here comes the moment of truth, this special edition magazine had to be about $2 for my plan to work. I scanned it. $4.99. Shoot! Cancel, cancel, cancel! I looked around desperately for the cancel button, when I found it I pushed it multiple times in fast succession. But wait, I read what the button actually says ‘Press for help and cancel’ Help? I don’t want help I just want to cancel the stupid order. The mechanical voice spoke again completely unaware of my internal melt down. “Please continue scanning items or select you method of payment”

‘I can’t believe I pushed that button’ I thought ‘I don’t want someone to come help me. That would mean I would actually have to talk to them. I am way to socially awkward for that kind of contact. I needed to get out of there and fast.’ The mechanical voice was still yelling at me and I feared that soon someone would notice me. I looked at the cashier; he didn’t seem to have noticed anything yet, I glanced at the people waiting in line and they too were completely oblivious to me. So being as inconspicuous as possible I slip the two magazines from the counter and walk away. I head back to the magazine aisle and place the magazines exactly where I found them, then I all but ran out the doors.

I saw my mother’s car parked right out front, I jumped in the car and slammed the door closed behind me. I breathed a sigh of relief. My mother just looked at me strangely.

“So what did you get?” She asked me.

“Oh, nothing”

Dystopian Poster

This is my design for our Dystopian Poster, I thought that the purple on black was a very dramatic choice and very eye catching. This represents our Dystopia because medicine is how the government keeps control over its citizens. "Four times a day, every day, for the rest of your life." is a slogan made up by the government to remind the public of the impeding doom of an epidemic. We were thinking of using this poster in our trailer much like it was used in the book 1984, we would put them up everywhere so people would never forget to take their pills.

5 by 5 A Trip to New York

1. Getting up at 4 A.M and driving out of Maryland.
2.Crossing the bridge into Delaware. Hello Mister Motorcycle Dude.
3.New Jersey and Sweet Home Alabama
4.Slight Detour (We got lost) In the Suburbs.
5.Yay! We made it to New York!

For this project I just used my I-Phone camera to take my videos and then I used WeVideo to edit them, IO had a really good video of us actually crossing the bridge into New York City but my brother kept talking about his personal life, so I didn't include that in my project. WeVideo took a little time to figure out how to use but then it was fairly easy. I wish I could have included a little more variety in my clips, since they're all of us just driving, I tried to get some differences in the landscapes but I'm not sure if it worked. I think we should have an independent video challenge, where we create a tutorial on whatever we want.

Dystopian Trailer Critique

For this assignment I watched the trailer for Minority Report,  directed by Steven Spielberg. It is rated PG-13 and was released in June, 2002. John Anderton is the Captain of the Pre-Crimes Unit, a police force designated to stopping murders before they happen, but John soon finds himself running for his life when he is predicted of a future murder.



This trailer is conveys three major characteristics of a dystopian society, citizens are perceived to be under constant surveillance, citizens live in a dehumanized state, and the society is an illusion of a perfect Utopian society. Spielberg is able to convey the perceived notion of constant surveillance with scenes of John Anderton looking at a computer screen with many different people on it; with the technology depicted in this trailer it appears that information on citizens  can be very easily attained by the police. The dehumanization of citizens is shown through the scenes when the Pre-Crime Unit crashes into a man's home and arrests him, no trial is held, there is no need for one because as John Anderton says in the Trailer, "the system is perfect." This is also how Spielberg creates the illusion of a perfect Utopian Society, he uses clips from the movie that highlight the working components of the system such as when Anderton says there hasn't been a murder is six years, or that the system is flawless.
When my groups creates our own dystopian trailer, I believe we should use some of the methods that Spielberg used, such as key scenes that describe the state of the dystopian society, while also furthering our plot. We will also highlight the characteristics of our dystopia by using a series of editing techniques for example the use of voice overs and quick montages to explain the history of the society.

World Without Walls

I read the article A World Without Walls: Learning Well With Others by Will Richardson, it focused on the new opportunities that social networking sites give to students, and suggest new ways teachers can integrate this new technology into their teaching. 

Richardson explains how children today are part of the "Collaboration Age", kids all over the world can communicate and share ideas with each other. They are exposed to an unlimited amount of information and experience, they can find other people who share their same passions and interests even though they live nowhere near each other. 

But Richardson also reviews the down-side of the internet, and the hardship of distinguishing the well written and accurate from the amateurish and mindless. He states that it is the teachers responsibility to make this distinction and to teach the students the difference between the two.
Richardson believes that the use of more technology in schools will allow the passions and creativity of the students shine through, and allow them to truly express themselves in "safe, effective and ethical ways."

In the article Richardson writes "In our zeal to hold on to the old structures of teaching and learning and to protect students at all costs, we are not just leaving them ill prepared for the future, we are also missing an enormous opportunity for ourselves as learners." 
I found this to be a very interesting sentiment, but also very true, technology has become a big part of our culture and way of interacting, not only socially but also in the work sense too. I never thought of a technology class to be something that could help me in future career, but with technology constantly evolving incorporating it into the school system would definitely help in the long run.

What i found surprising in this article was this eleven-year old Laura Stockman, i never did any kind of service projects when i was her age and i definitely didn't have a blog about them either. That shows the difference just between 4 years, i can't imagine what eleven-year olds will be like when i'm in college.

I think the whole idea of connecting with people all over the world, people who share the same interests and passions, is really cool and could be so useful to the learning experience. i would love to find people in other countries that shared an interest in writing, and poetry.

Quick Post

Today we made Diigo accounts, and were assigned to annotate a movie review using the Diigo tools bar. I chose "The Words" by Betsy Sharkey to annotate, because it looked like a very interesting movie, after reading this review though I might be having some second thoughts. Sharkey started the review with a brief background of the main actor Bradley Cooper, she talks about some previous works and then compares them to this new movie. She then gives her reaction to the movie, stating that it was rather boring or in her terms "It's a snooze. Like a bedtime story for adults." Finally she summarizes the movie's plot, throwing in comments about the acting and directing as she goes. She concludes the summary with a final critique to to Cooper's acting and a brief overview of the movie's overall scene, before finally ending the movie review with a quick paragraph re-iterating her opinion on the final product. 
 Sharkey's review wasn't the most structured, it kinda hoped around a bit from the plot to the acting, but i found that to be rather refreshing to the normal very structured format most reviews take shape in, in the future if i were to ever have to write a review, i believe the structure to be less important than the content.

Anyway Diigo seems like an easy enough tool to figure out, and I look forward to using it in the future. here's the link to my annotated movie review.

http://diigo.com/0ssu8

About Me

Hello I'm Maddie,
I'm in tenth grade and really excited for this years film class. I love all kinds of movies, and film is a medium in which  I am fascinated. I really would like to learn more about screen-writing and editing, one of my favorite projects last year was writing and directing a ten minute long News show. It was a really great experience working in a big group, and learning how to use all the equipment in the studio.

I think these blogs are a really great idea; this can be a place where students can express their other interests outside of CAP, and they can also express their frustration or excitement over certain projects given. This could be a very good way to interact with other students in CAP; to connect with classmates over shared interests and experiences.