Vimeo is full of awesome videos! The other day I was watching animated short films and looking at which ones looked the best. Then I stumbled upon this one minute short film that I thought was pretty cool. The film was called Damp Spirits. I think that it is more like a PSA than a short film. It is a cool little video that has a nice ending with a message, much like a PSA. The animation looks really nice and clean.  I don't know how else to describe it. I hope that when I grow up I can just make small little films like this for fun. The video is below.

   Family night is comming up for this media class and its time to start thinking about what videowe want to show. This year I think that I want to show our Crazy Eights Submission for STN. The title of the movie was "A Buck Short", and as the name implies, is was about this girl who was a buck short. We tried to make the movie funny, and I think that we did a pretty good job. I want to show this video because I think it is a cool video, it was well made, and it was th funnest video to make.

   The video is a cool video because it is the only video that I made that had humor. In the class, I have mostly stayed with shooting stories that come form peoples interviews, but this is the first one that I and my classmates wrote to be funny and entertaining. We have wrote other fictional stories, but most of them are about tragedy. The story is an interesting one, and I think it is one of the best stories that I have made.

   The second reason that I want to show this video is because I think that it is one of the better videos I have helped make in terms of camera work. The shots were all pretty good and all of the lighting was balanced. The editing was pretty good, so the shots seemed to flow. I think that our audio was iffy at certain times in the video, but overall I think that it was pretty good.

   The third and final reason why I want to show this video at family night is because it is a pretty fun video to watch. When its in the afternoon, and you already watched a couple videos, I think it would be nice if they saw a little bit of humor. This may make family night more fun. It also would be cool to show because it was award winning. It may not have placed in the top three, but it still got an award, and it would be fun to show.

   The video that I am planning on showing for family night is our STN Crazy Eights video. This is an interesting video that was well shot and would be fun to watch. I will have to collaborate with the rest of my team to see if I can play it, but if not, then I am hoping to play my final project.

On Friday I went to see a movie. The movie was called Home. I thought that it was a really great movie. When I was watching it I looked for the elements of a story. We went over this and the movie seemed to match it pretty well. It started setting up the character and then about a quarter into the movie it introduced the conflict. The movie then started to pick up pace and he started defacing challenges and developing as a character. To make the movie less serious, there was a lot of humor and comedy. It also ended in a way that nobody could dispute, and the conflict got solved. The visual and auditory components of the movie were spot on. If I go into the cinematic film industry, I would like to work on animated films like this. Here's the movie trailer and I hope that you watch the movie!

  I think that mt fourth quarter projects is going to be on time. As of right now I think that I am on track. This is because i have two interviews scheduled, all of the b-roll filmed and I have also started the script.

  I have two interviews scheduled and about four already filmed. I will hopefully be done with filming interviews by the end of the week. If that were to happen, then I would be ahead because all that would be left is to write the script and the edit the video.

  The second reason why I think that I am on track to finishing my video on time is because I already have all of the b-roll filmed. Filming the b-roll for a project can be really hard and may take a long time, but I brought a camera on the trip so it is all filmed. This means that interviews are the only thing left to film.

  The final reason why I think I am on track with my video is because I have started the script. This is nothing major, but so far I have finished the first point and only have four left to go. This is because of the interviews I filmed before we left on the trip.

  So these are the three reasons why I do not think I am behind on this project. I have a few interviews filmed and more planned, I have almost all filming done, and the script is partially completed.

   STN was awesome this year. This might have been the best STN Trip that I have been on and here are the top three reasons why. This year we went on and adventure quest, I had a lot of fun with old and new friends, and this convention was the best.

   One of the best parts of the STN Trip was the adventure quest that we went on. It was like a mission impossible. You had to run around and once you completed one challenge it gave you clues to the location of another. It was a lot of fun and we finished first with the most points. We only got three questions wrong. It was a lot of fun though to run around the city and compete with our classmates.

   I also had a lot of fun with friends. The trip was an excellent way to bond. I don't think that we had any major disagreements and everybody got along with one another. It was a really great experience. We also met a lot of new people. We met the new students from Castaic middle school, but we also went to the middle school mixer where I met this girl from the mid-pacific institute. It was a lot of fun.

   The third reason why this STN Trip was awesome was because the convention was a ton of fun. I was in Live Action Short Film for the crazy eights and it was so awesome thinking of our own story and shooting it and then editing it all together for a short film. It was great. There was also an STN carnival that was a lot of fun.

   So those are the top three reasons why STN was so awesome this year. It had fun activities, fun people, and a fun convention. I hope that I get to go next year!

   This is probably the best video that I have ever seen. Ever. The animation is flawless and the story itself is beyond genius. There is a very good story and it flows really well. You may start out wondering about the characters a little bit but once you piece together the first minute and a half, it all starts to make sense. The music goes along really nicely and the video also stresses the importance of imagination in a child. I really like how they also blended 3D animation with 2D animation. I think that really helps to show how they are imagined and brought to a new realm. I have the video below.

  Today we left San Diego and went back home. This was a bittersweet moment. It was great to be going back home but it was also said that we would be leaving San Diego, especially because this will be my last trip with the middle school class. We woke up early at 5:30 so we could be down at the lobby at 6:30. We then departed on the bus to the San Diego airport with Kauai High. We then boarded the plane to go back to Honolulu. The flight was really long and I got sick. It was not fun at all. I sat by Angeline on the plane again. She was a really nice person to be around. When we arrived at Honolulu we ate lunch. I had Chinese food. We then departed the airport to complete the last leg of the journey home. We got home at about 3:30. It was great to be back home where I can start going to bed at a decent time again. This was an amazing trip and I am sad that it is now over. I hope I get to go next year with the high school.

  Today was our last full day at STN. We got up for the closing ceremonies where they announce the winners for the competitions. It gets you really hyped up and excited. We got to go in first because Mr. M was a board member. We sat down a little before they opened the doors up for everyone else. It went through the awards and I think that they get longer every year. We went through the awards and we did not win anything for the Movie Trailer, Music Video, Anchor, or Commercial team. We got first in Sopt feature, third in PSA, and honorable mention in both crazy eights competitions. This was really cool because it meant that everybody who came on the trip with us won. I was kind of disappointed that the movie trailer team did not place though. When the closing ceremonies were over we took a lot of pictures with the other Hawaii schools and then we went to the mall. The mall is called the Fashion Valley District and we had been there before. We ate lunch here and I had Panda Express again. People then went shopping. We saw a movie instead of shopping. We saw the movie fast and furious seven. It was cool and it had a lot of explosions and special effects. When we were done we ate dinner and celebrated everybody who had a birthday on the trip. We then had a debriefing and went to bed.

  Today was what some would call judgement day. This was the pinnacle of the entire STN trip. Today we competed in the competition that we have been practicing for. Let's take this from the top. We stayed of the day by getting up pretty early. We then had breakfast. I had a strawberry yogurt. It was delicious. We then went to our briefing, which was in a giant ballroom. We started off the competition when the instructor went over the guide lines for the competition. We then got our topic which was Plan B. We started off by brainstorming ideas till we reached one that everyone would be okay with. We then immediately went to filming. We finished filming in the allotted time which was three hours. We then went into the editing room where we spent three hours editing our video. Our video was two minutes long so we had to cut about half of it out. That made it really hard. We finished with a final project that was about this girl who tries to get rid of this annoying girl at school. We then went back up to our rooms where we showered and then got ready for the STN Carnival. The carnival was really loud amid a lot of fun. There were hacky sacks that you could play with. It was two hours long and after that we went to bed.

   Today some of us went and competed while others went and watched breakout sessions. The sessions were very informative. I went to about six of the sessions and took notes in every one. These may not have been very fun but they were definitely very informative. The first one that I went to was about editing. It gave you all of these techniques to make your video flow a lot better. I then went to a session with Andrew Jenks where he talked about the basics of filming. The next two sessions I went to were about writing a better story for journalism. An example of the advice they gave was that viewers want to hear the story, not you, so try to talk as little as possible. The fifth breakout session that I watched was about improving your videos through the little things, like casting a shadow or being too close to your subject. The final one that I went to was about what types of mics you should use and for what. After the breakout sessions we ate dinner which was chicken Alfredo. We the proceeded to the grand hall where we watched the excellence awards which took a very long time. We then went to bed.