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.