The Great American NoBull Challenge

If anyone still reads this blog, although it's old news, I'd like to inform you that Arianna and I won the Great American NoBull Challenge back in the summer. We won the people's choice award/Move It award for our public service announcement on anxiety. Why don't cha' just watch it:




Although we did't have a very good experience with the organization itself, I feel very grateful for the people who shared our video and helped us make an impact! Also, thanks Mr. Sanderl for making us create the video to begin with, we couldn't have done it without your help. ALSO ARIANNA IF YOU'RE READING THIS you're the best team mate in the worldddddd I love you a lot let's start a youtube channel.

High School...

Hello my fab af pizza people! I am probably actually the only one to ever continue this blog after leaving Mr. Sanderl's GT class.. What can I say, I miss venting to the internet even though no no will ever read this. I really miss middle school..I miss some of the teachers and the flow of it all. I miss no responsibilities at lunch or recess. Here in high school you have to think about everything you're doing. You have a future to build here.

Now, in a way I guess I'm lucky. I'm not attending a traditional high school, but a blended charter school. On Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays we go to school in person but do independent study. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we attend our block schedule live classes virtually at home. My school only has about 40 high school students, mostly freshmen like myself. Although only having to attend school physically three days a week is nice, I sort of miss the social aspect of traditional school..then again, that is why I left middle school.

I am surprised with how well I'm keeping up with my work since we have to be responsible in doing our assignments independently. It's mostly the stress that motivates me. No matter how many times I tell myself "You can do it tomorrow," or "it doesn't matter anyways," I have to get it done. It keeps me up at night if I don't. I guess that's a good thing.

So far, high school is okay. Being a freshman isn't so tough (for now at least). I miss not having to constantly explain what you want to do in a few years. People always assume I'm stupid with my career choice. Oh well, jokes on them (says me who has to retake algebra 1)... If you're going to high school, it's gonna be okay. You'll be fine. Just keep up with your work and don't be too intimidated by the upperclassmen, I've heard they smell fear.

^^ There's my school photo bc it's cute ^^

Scratch Game Design

(^^this one doesn't work lol so don't even try. I had a class period to do everything and I'm not too good at coding. *sighs*)



(^^control this one with your mouse)

Oh GT class, how you love to mess with my brain. This time I'm here with another brand new project: Coding. Over the past couple weeks my classmates and I have been programming a simple chase game. User experience influenced how I coded because in my chase game I chose an octopus, and, well, *looks at blog URL* it was the closest I could get to a squid. Squids are cool. I tried to make the game simple and not too difficult since I'm so new to the coding thing.

The first two games I coded are both very different. The first one is a chase game, in which the code and concept were fairly simple. The second one is a platformer game. This one was a lot more difficult. I never even quite got the code right. It's a much more complex code and I only had a class period to complete it so I never had the chance to fix it. The concept of the two of them is a little bit similar, I guess. I mean they're sort of the opposites though. In the first, you're being chased, in the second, you're basically chasing.

My best code was the gravity engine I made for the platformer. Unfortunately, after half the class period of it working fine, it stopped working. So the gravity engine was also my biggest bug and I still haven't had the chance to fix it. It's quite a difficult script to wrap your mind around so I had to just copy a little bit of the code and then tweak it.

Invention Commercial

This time in GT, our assignment was to create a commercial for something we invented that explains what the invention is, what it does. and is entertaining to the audience. Our invention was an app, so it was sort of a struggle to film since we aren't allowed to have phones in school and were't free to film outside of school, but in the end we were able to pull through and complete the assignment quite well in my opinion.

The best moment for our team during production was, as cliché as it sounds, was when it was all done. We were sort of scrambling to finish the project before the deadline, so finishing was a miraculous time for us. At least thats what it felt like to me haha. To finally have the assignment completed and turned in was a great moment.

In this project, we all took turns editing. Arianna and I created the green screen background, and we all helped put everything together. It was difficult to make the green screen look okay since we filmed it with a glare, but we figured it out. I think we were judged fairly during the critique and although I wasn't present during the event (sick again..what a surprise), the results are on the right and I think we did well.

Composition Scavenger Hunt

Interesting Angles

Contrast in Content

Framing

Composition techniques are important in the world of photography and videography. In my opinion, the most important composition technique is unusual angles. I think that it's important to be different and have interesting shots. I don't know about you, but what draws me to a photo is how original or different it appears to be.

The composition technique that I view to be the most challenging is also interesting angles. I personally struggle to be different and original, and tend to take from other's work and build off that. I can strive to use this technique more by thinking outside the box and maybe doing the opposite of what I think of. Different difficult techniques for me is actually probably contrast in content and framing. I know it may seem easy, but to me it's actually very difficult to incorporate contrast in content and framing into my videos. I've actually never used them
before this project.

My teammates are Loren and Arianna. They're both super chill and a little crazy. There a couple of my best friends at school. In the composition techniques video, we all took turns doing different things. We all took turns acting, filming, and directing three of the ten parts. I edited the video on the first editing day and Loren & Arianna edited on the second editing day. They're super rad teammates and I look forward to working with them more this year.

Cracking the Code

It's the second quarter of school and I'm sailing in uncharted waters..our new project here in GT is all about...coding! I think that everyone should be learning the basics of coding. This is because there are so many job opportunities that aren't being taken advantage of in the coding community. Also, our society is becoming so advanced in technology so we should all have an idea of understanding how it all works.

My first experience with coding was actually in science class last school year, but we just went through the same program I went through last year again and it was good to refresh my memory. It's a pretty basic program and I got through it quite fast and easily. I enjoyed the program, it entertained me, and coding is now something I'm interested in. Also, up until last year I was in robotics club so I have a bit of programming experience there as well. For our project in robotics last year, we actually decided to create a video game using scratch and that experience has really helped in the duration of this project.

If I could create any program or game it'd probably be an app that has something that ha to do with bands or something. Ooh ooh, I just thought of something. A social media app thats divided into fandoms or fanbases. You could "join" fandom groups and there would be posts on that page that have to do with that fandom. Chords, fan art, concert videos, updates, etc etc. If you're in a mood for a certain fandom or need updates on a certain fandom, you could just go to that fandom page. I know that would certainly be useful in my case; I'm in sooo many fandoms and it's quite difficult to keep up with all of them.

My Humorous Monologue

Currently in GT, we're wrapping up our comedy project. In the duration of the project I've learned how to be an independent and proactive worker. This was a solo project so we had to all work individually on our pieces. I prefer the group projects, but this gave me a chance to try being by myself. I had to work quickly and ethically because, if you've seen my previous posts, I'm absent quite often.

Pad is the (usually) five second interval between when you start recording and when the action starts, and the five seconds after the action is over to when you cut the film. It's important to have pad so you can transition between clips without overlapping your "action." Without pad, some of your "action" may be cut short due to the overlapping transition, or just wont look/sound right.

My weaknesses during this project were, again, being absent, which I've already sort of solved from working ethically, and also filming. Filming was difficult for me since we didn't have tripods and I was the subject in all my shots. It was difficult finding a natural tripod that fit my needs. Also, my film required props, and by the time I had acquired the props it was dark out so some of my shots came out very dark. My strength was iMovie editing. I'm really comfortable working in iMovie and I believe I do a good job editing in it.

((yeah I don't know why I was voted for I'm not funny))