Music Video FINALE

HELLO TO THE COOLEST PEOPLE ON THE INTERNET! That's right. The absolute coolest. But not to cool for school. Stay in school folks. Anyway this is my final post as a Kapa'a Middle School GT student... If you are starting to cry, stop that nonsense right now. I'm still going to (occasionally) use this blog. However I'm thinking of changing the URL... is that even possible? I don't know. We end school on May 26th and I am really excited for high school (and the freedom that comes with it). However, next year we won't have any honors/ advanced classes which is a bummer. But those will be back in 10th grade, so it's not the worst thing in the world. I'm kind of sad to leave this place though... I've met so many great, inspiring teachers here that have pushed me to try harder and chase my dreams :) so thank y'all. Also I've discovered a very interesting thing about Maddie, she wants to "raise" (she meant grow but said raise) potatoes when she's older. She also wants to raise cows and cats and live in Idaho. And unlike she said on her blog, I don't want to farm humans (she twisted my words and turned it into an inside joke), nor am I a compulsive liar. Anyway... I hope you enjoy the rest of this post!

Behind The Scenes #1!

So as you can probably tell from the title of this post, it's that very special time of year again. The time of year in which we make MUSIC VIDEOS! Yaaaaaaaay! Last year, Maddie, Julie, and I made a music video to Shake It Off by the wonderful Taylor Swift. It was really fun, and if you'd like to check it out, click the link right >here<. This year I have an amazing team comprised of Alani, Makena, Emma, like always, Maddie the Monkey, and myself. We are doing the song Young Gospel which is mashup between Young Volcanoes by Fall Out Boy and This Is Gospel by Panic! At The Disco, both of which are some of my very favorite bands. Our story line, or story lines for that matter, are similar to each other in the fact that we are all sort of looking back and remembering hard times, but the actual events are different. The lyrics of the song match up to the differing story lines as they play, for example: Emma is thinking about broken memories and breaks a picture frame with the pieces flying everywhere.

Behind The Scenes #2!

For our music videos, one of the requirements was fast-edit montage sequences. We included quite a few, but my very favorite is right in the beginning. We cut between all of our faces in different locations really quickly, on beat with the music, and it gives our opening a great effect. Our editors (Emma, Alani, and Maddie the Monkey) did a great job with the video, and we're all really proud of how it turned out. Makena and I worked on the Photoshop music video official posters for our "band", Fall Out @ The Disco :)

We all worked really hard on our music video, as it is our last ever GT project and our last chance to demonstrate what we have learned over the past three years. I think that the careful planning that went into every aspect of our video really shows through in our final product. Makena is an amazing videographer (and I mean it when I say amazing, thanks Makena!) and her artistic ability shown in every shot, as well as Emma, Alani, and Maddie's great editing skills. I know what you're thinking, "Well what in the world did you do Kasiah?!" I did help, I swear. Like I said before, I worked on the Photoshop posters and helped with the planning/ story line. I also acted in it, along with my other wonderful team members. This music video is probably my favorite one so far and I'm really excited for y'all to see it!





Here is some of the lyrics if you couldn't hear the video:

This is gospel for the fallen ones
Locked away in permanent slumber
Assembling their philosophies
From pieces of broken memories

Oh, this is the beat of my heart, this is the beat of my heart [2x]
Their gnashing teeth and criminal tongues conspire against the oddsBut they haven’t seen the best of us yet

If you love me let me go
If you love me let me go
‘Cause these words are knives and often leave scars
The fear of falling apart
And truth be told, I never was yours
The fear, the fear of falling apart

Oh, this is the beat of my heart, this is the beat of my heart [2x]

This is gospel for the vagabonds,
Confessing their apostasies
Led away by imperfect impostors

Oh, this is the beat of my heart, this is the beat of my heart

Oh, this is the beat of my heart, this is the beat of my heart
Don’t try to sleep through the end of the world
And bury me alive

'Cause I won’t give up without a fight

If you love me let me go
If you love me let me go
‘Cause these words are knives and often leave scars

The fear of falling apart

And truth be told, I never was yours (and then the music fades out)

Our Score!

The Overall Rankings!

Behind The Scenes #3!

I hope every one of you astounding people enjoyed this post or at least our music video bloopers (if you didn't, I'm very sorry for wasting 5 minutes of your life) and I will post again in the future. Like it was sung in the amazing movie The Sound Of Music, "So long, farewell, Auf Weidersehen, goodbye..." and have a great time until we meet again (or connect via the inter-webs for that matter :)

Animated Life Lessons

Hello Internet! Today I am going to talk about our new team animation project! We are using the Puppet Warp tool in Photoshop to animate, which you can learn more about in my last post right here. It's pretty tedious to use, but we pulled through and finished our video on time. Enjoy!

Here is our finished video!

The 1st half of our storyboard!

The 2nd half of our storyboard!

So for this animation project we had to create a humorous animation that exaggerated all of our teammates' personal traits and idiosyncrasies. My team was made up of Lester, Kaz, and myself. The traits we tried to exaggerate in ourselves were Lester's stubbornness, Kaz's obsessiveness, and my loudness. We worked really hard to portray those things and I think we did a good job. Our story is about a group of friends who go to Graphic Novel Con (our story's version of Comic Con) but Lester and Kaz get into a fight about who's fandom is the best. I eventually convince them to talk to each other and work it out so we can enjoy the rest of the convention. All three of us are pretty obsessive when it comes to fandoms so we felt that this was a great way to portray that.

Our scores!

The humor in our story is mainly based around fandom references because that's what made the most sense for our story. In our video, Kaz is a fan of the video game Over Story (Undertale) and Lester is a fan of the show Isaac Galaxy (Steven Universe). We tried to make the video in a way so that people who were apart of the fandoms in real life and even those who weren't would enjoy the jokes. In this project our story also needed a life lesson (hence the title of this post) that would relate to the audience. Our animation's lesson was that all of us need to learn to accept each other's differences and find things in common. I think that it's a really important message, because everyone in the world is different and those differences are what make us who we are. We should embrace those things and love
everyone for who they are, not judge them for what
they believe or what their personal opinions are.

The overall animation rankings for our class!

In this project we had to work with people we've never worked with before. It's always an interesting experience to work with new people, but it can get challenging at times. We had a pretty rough time with this project. I was out sick for a large part of the preparation/planning process and my teammates both missed a fair share of days. Also, our productivity level throughout the could have been better. Some of us kept getting side tracked with other things or didn't come in to work on the project during recess and lunch to help out so that made it quite difficult sometimes. I think that the biggest challenge our team faced was like I said, staying on track with the daily agenda and things we needed to get done. The greatest achievement for our
group was definitely getting to turn in our finished project on time :D.

Well, I hope y'all enjoyed this post and I will be sure to post again soon! Byeeerrr!

BEHIND THE SCENES SCENES SCENES SCENES SCENES:

Character Development

How have you been? I've been doing good. Great actually, because I've got some pretty big news. So in January I applied to Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama and I found out a couple days ago I received a full academic scholarship! It's really exciting :) I get to go for a whole week, we sleep there and everything. I want to say thank you my amazing teachers Mr. Sanderl (he teaches this GT class :), Mrs. Vedder (my awesome Algebra teacher), and Mrs. Bandsma (she was the one who really got me excited about science!) who all wrote really nice letters of recommendation for me. I love you guys! Oh and I guess I kind of like you viewers too... just kidding you're all great ;) But on to what this post is actually about...
ANIMATION! ANIMATION! ANIMATION! ANIMATION! ANIMATION!  That's right folks: Animation! Hope you enjoy!

So for this first half of the quarter we will be working on animation. Right now we are working on a .GIF to practice the animation skills in Photoshop, but eventually we will form teams to create an animation video that focuses on our personal idiosyncrasies. If I had to define myself as a person, I would say that I'm confident, passionate, and very dramatic. However, I also get mad fairly easily because of those things. I'm also a perfectionist, especially when it comes to my school work, which can make it hard to get things done  quickly (cleaning my room is a nightmare because everything has to be absolutely perfect before I move on to my other chores).

My body after it was cut out of the picture...

Me in front of the studio green screen. 

For our animation project I am going to mainly focus on my dramatic side through my actions and how I handle different situations (I've always been pretty dramatic, however thanks to all of those summers spent at acting camp when I was younger definitely developed that further). My character in our animation will get irritated quickly. She will also kind of blow things out of proportion and make things that happen that aren't that huge of a deal to be the end of world as we know it. I think that the exaggerated theatrics of my character will make the audience laugh :)

MY GIF YAY

So I've always enjoyed animation and this quarter we are learning to use the Puppet Warp tool to animate in Photoshop. But as always when learning something new, there is bound to be some bumps in the road. On the week we were making our GIF animations I was working on another project for Hiki No and didn't get much time in class to work on it. It all turned out fine in the end, but that was a difficult week :). In order to create our GIF animations, we all had to take pictures in front of our Morning News studio green screen. Then we opened the images in Photoshop and used the Quick Selection tool to make cutouts of our bodies. After that we used the Puppet Warp tool to manipulate our bodies and move them across the stage. In my GIF, I slide into the frame, stop, and then shoot upward. I know, it's just so impressive and complicated. No, not really, but I'm am okay with the way it turned out considering it was my first go at it. However, I love the background on it because it is a picture I took while I was hiking with my mom (Hi mommy!).

Well, that's all for this post, but I will be posting again soon. Bye byeee!

.MOV Film Festival

Hellooooo Internet! Okay so I know that I told y'all that I'd be posting my Ireland blog post in a week like three weeks ago. I know, I know, I am such a bad blogger. So sorry for the delay but it will be posted soon. I wrote some more of it a couple of days ago and I realized that that was 6th grade me writing that and it kind of blown my mind a little. Anyway, I promise that it will up soon, and this time I am determined to keep that promise. But this post isn't about my Ireland trip, it's about are new .MOV Film Festival Project. Enjoy!

Maddie editing!

For this project, we had to make a video that would either tell a story or make the audience laugh. We chose to tell a story about a dystopian world where an evil tyrant (Preston) stole all the color for himself. He then proceeded to bribe people into doing his bidding in exchange for colors. However, there is one girl (myself) in the kingdom who can see color! She hides from the tyrant out of fear, but soon realizes she must stand up and free the color so everyone can see. If you want to watch it, the video is ^right^up^there^.

Preston editing!

Our storyboard!

Every good video needs keywords to describe and guide the story. The keywords my team and I chose are as follows: Unfair, Dystopia, Color, Bravery, and Tyranny. We really focused on the hero's journey and the courage she has to take on the tyrant. We took a while to put together our keywords so that they really communicated the message of our video to our audience which in my opinion is that you should never let anything stand in the way of letting you do the right thing.


Our video's message, like explained in the last paragraph, is that you should never let anything get in the way of doing the right thing. Our heroine works hard to take down the tyrant and doesn't let her fear and intimidation get in the way of saving everyone else in the kingdom. She also learns that it's okay to trust other people and that working as a team can be better than working alone. She teams up with a secret group of people who have stolen some of the color and are working to give it to everyone. I think that our main character changes into a better person by realizing that working for the greater good is more important than everything
 else.

Our script!

Maddie and Preston editing!

I think the biggest challenge my team faced was probably the filming process. We took a long time in getting our first couple of shots, mainly because we couldn't agree on how to shoot them. Because of that, we ended up having a nearly dead battery in the middle of our filming and started to freak out. We did everything we could to keep the battery going, like trying to get everything perfect in one shot and turning the camera off between scenes. In our final scene, there was about 25 seconds left on the battery, and we made it just in time.

Well, it was fun typing to y'all and I will be back soon with another (hopefully) interesting post about my life and/or GT. Farewell my friends, I'll type to you soon :)

Tiny Spherical Worlds

Hello internet! How are you today? I hope

your are doing well. I have a very, very, important question for you. And believe me, it is very important. What is your favorite band? Oh, wait, let me rephrase that: bands (because honestly, is it even possible to have just one?). My top three are: Panic! At The Disco, My Chemical Romance, and The Downtown Fiction :). If you would like, comment yours down below. The project we've been working on for the past two weeks or so is Spherical Panoramas.
What is a Spherical Panorama? A Spherical Panorama is a panoramic composite image that has been formed into a circle. To construct our Spherical Panoramas, my class used Adobe Photoshop. We did this project in 6th grade as well so if you would like to see the first ones I did, click here.


What is a composite image and why would it be better that just using a single picture? A composite image is a image made up of several other pictures, most commonly in the form of a panorama. Do you have a mobile phone that allows you to take panoramic photos? Well, it isn't in fact taking just one picture. It is taking multiple pictures and stitching them together to look like a single image. We do a similar process in Photoshop, except we take individual pictures of the landscape around us and stitch use photomerge in Photoshop to stitch them together. The reason why a composite image is better to use than a single picture when creating a Spherical Panorama is because you can't capture a whole landscape in one photo, which is what you need to do in order to create a Spherical Panorama.


In our project, we did two types of Spherical Panoramas. Two were called Polar, and the other two were called Sphere. The difference between the Polar and Sphere Panoramas were the Polar ones resembled planets because the ground of the landscape is located in the center with the sky around it, and the Sphere ones have the ground in a circle around the sky which is located in the image's center. They take mostly the same steps to create in Photoshop and look really cool when finished.

It takes a lot of thought and care to make your tiny worlds convincing. When you take you pictures to create the panorama, you have to make sure that you can see the ground in every shot and that where you pictures start and end in the landscape look similar enough to piece together in Photoshop. You also have to keep your horizon like fairly straight throughout your whole panorama. Also when you go to edit your photos, make sure that every photo has similar levels of exposure, color balance, brightness, etc. When you go to create your final product in Photoshop, be sure to adjust the horizon line so it is near to perfect and when you filter the panorama into your Spherical Panorama, take lots of time covering that line where the two sides came together.





Well I hope you all like this post and I will be sure to post again soon :) Bye bye...

Hockney Style Joiners

Hello my beautiful Earthlings (and possibly beyond...)! How is your day? How was your weekend? I hope they were both wonderful. I am doing pretty good, especially because I just got an amazing Slytherin House cardigan from Hop Topic. Hot Topic is my favorite store. What is your favorite store? If it is Hot Topic then you are awesome. Even if it's not Hot Topic, you're still awesome :). Okay I'll stop boring you now and actually get on with the actual post. So for our next project we are going to be making photomontages. We actually did this project in 6th grade and I did a post about it :D. I love photography so I am really excited to be doing it again.

David Hockney is a English artist who is known for his paintings and photography. He was one of the first people to make photomontages (or "Joiners") and he is the artist we are studying for this assignment. Of course, my photomontages are not as good as David Hockney's, but I think the main difference between ours is that in many of his, he takes shots from different perspectives to capture the movement of his subject(s) while he takes the pictures that will make up the collage later. He is such and amazing artist! I try to capture photos from different angles and arrange them in a intriguing way when putting them into the final collage later.

My school photomontage!

Images can send send both positive and negative messages depending on the way they're taken. I feel like generally brighter or more vibrant pictures give off a more positive aura. Ones that maybe have dull colors or are darker give off a more gloomy feeling. Another thing I feel that factors in is obviously what they are taken of. Shots that are taken of things that are positive usually have a subject that is happy like a dog in a park or a flower in bloom. Photos that give the viewer a negative emotion like rain falling over a window.

My final photomontage!

Well for my final photomontage I took pictures of the science dictionary I keep next to me on my desk at home because of how much I love science. It is my passion. I especially love physics, so I took a close up of its definition to work into the image. All my pictures are taken from interesting angles so the when I join them together they will look cool. I hope to communicate my love for science and learning in an interesting way and inspires others to feel the same way in my finished product.

I hope you all liked this post and I will type to you soon!

PS:
I am finally posting my 2014 Ireland Trip post sometime this week! I feel so awful that it has taken this long. You have no idea. But it will be up! I promise :)

2016 Aspirations

Bonjour aux meilleurs lecteurs jamais! Hello to the best readers ever! HAPPY NEW YEAR! Oh my gosh. It's 2016. How did that happen?! Last year just flew by. I am really excited for this year though! I have a bunch of really cool things that I am looking forward to and I just have a feeling that this year is going to be a great one.

Well this year I came up with 5 New Year's Resolutions that I am determined to attain for 2016:

• Learn a new language. My mom (that link is the blog post about a project I did in my 6th grade year about her time in the Peace Corps) and I are aiming to learn French this year (well, both my mom and dad went to Senegal when they were in the Peace Corps and learned French so she would just be touching up) which explains why I opened up this blog post in French.
• Eat better. I know that this one is really generic and a lot of people say it, but really I eat too much junk food.
• Advocate for myself. I think that it is very important to stand up for yourself and take the initiative to achieve your goal. This year I want to really start believing in myself and take charge of my life.
• Go running more often. I really like to run with my mom whether it's at the gym or on a path outside so I'm going to try and get out more.
• Play more music. I love to play the ukulele (just not in front others...) but I haven't done it in a while and it's such a great stress reliever.

Out of all my resolutions this year I would have to say the the one that is most important to me is to advocate for myself. The reason for that is I feel that it's just really important to make things happen for yourself and never settling for anything especially if you know there are ways you can change the situation for the better. You should never let someone tell you that you can't do something because that is never true. There is always a way around it or more possibilities somewhere because you control who you are and what you can do.

The steps I am going to take to achieve my goal of advocating for myself this year are really going to be making opportunities for myself and not relying on others. If I find my own path and push as hard as I can to succeed, I will reach my goals. I will stop taking "No" for an answer. I just really want to be more proactive and push myself harder.

This is my #kmsgt_flower daily photo challenge pic!

This is my #kmsgt_tree daily photo challenge pic!

This is my #kmsgt_sky daily photo challenge pic!

Well I hope you all liked this post and I will be sure to write to you again soon. Bye bye!

Scratch Game Design

Bonjour à tous! That was French for "Hello everyone!" (My New Year's resolution is to learn a new language even though it's not New Year's yet :) we just finished our new project that required us to design and make our own video game using the Scratch program and it was really fun. Here is more all about it:

Here is my Chase Game...

Description:
The game I designed is simple and easy to play. If you press the up key you go up, down key you go down, left key you go left, and right key you go right. You are guiding Phil the Wizard to all his missing Magical Doughnuts while trying to escape the evil starfish. When you reach 20 doughnuts (I know there are only 10 on the screen, but more come on once you have collected some) you win the game. Enjoy (:D)

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When designing a game we learned that you have to look at the game from the point of view of the person playing your game so that it is enjoyable to play. This is called the user experience. The user experience influenced my game in several ways including how the main sprite (Phil the Wizard) moves, the backgrounds I made, and even the sounds my game made. I recorded all the audio myself with the microphone on my computer at home! Also, I tried really hard to make the movements of Phil look (somewhat) natural and I thing I succeeded.

Here is my Platform Game...

Description:
This is a simple Platform game that I designed for my GT class. The way the game works is you use the left arrow to go left, the right arrow to go right, and the space bar to jump to move Mark the Reindeer across the stage and up the platforms to reach his missing muffin. There are two levels and you must get the muffin before the time runs out. Enjoy!
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The games I created both have different features that make them stand out. In my Platform Game, I made it so the main sprite Mark the Reindeer was chasing after a muffin to advance in the game. I did a very similar thing with my Chase Game where Phil the Wizard is collecting all his missing doughnuts to win. Something that was different about the games were the controls that you use to move. In my Chase Game, you simply use the arrow keys to maneuver the sprite around the stage, but in my Platform game, you use the space bar to jump and the left and right arrow keys to change direction and move. Another thing that is contrasting about my two games is that in my Platform game I added in a second level rather than the single level of my Chase game.

My doughnut code! (:D)

It is a given that when you code, you are going to mess up or get stuck trying to fix a bug. But, with perseverance you can pull through. While coding my Platform and Chase game, I had both good and bad moments. The best code that I wrote was probably the section of my Chase game were I made the doughnuts appear to be collected and then have them come back 12 seconds later. In that sequence I also recorded the jingle bell sound effects in my room after school. I was really proud of how well they turned out. One of the most difficult things that I coded for our video game projects was most likely creating a gravity generator for my Platform game. There were so many bugs! Eventually I did get it right though because I kept trying and put my best effort into it.



Description:
Hi everyone! This is my finished Freedom game. We had no set requirements for our this game so we were free to code whatever game we wanted. This game is a story-based game in which the Wizard Beardo the Bad takes Tera your best friend. You control Maldark the Wizard and his deathly fireball. To move Maldark, use the arrow keys up to jump, left to go left, and right to go right. To move the fireball, use the J key to go up, K key to go down, N key to go left, and M key to go right. Have fun!

Avoid the evil dragon!

I hope you all enjoyed this post and have a happy holiday season!

Invention Commercial

Hello Internet! It is me again (Kasiah Vercelli if your new here and/or didn't read the blog tile :) with a new blog post all about the project we just finished "Invention Commercial". On my team I had Maddie and Kyler who I have both worked with before. In this assignment we had to come up with an invention that solved a common problem and then make a commercial about it. I think it was a really fun project. Enjoy reading everybody!

When we were doing this assignment, my team and I focused mainly on getting the audience to fully understand what the invention does. I think we communicated that really well and got our point across. Our product was called the Stick-It Bowl and was an attachment that would keep your bowls on tables/trays. We needed to solve a common problem and let's be honest, there is never going to a cure for klutzy-ness. So we made the Stick-It Bowl (this item is not available for retail sale ;).

During this production, our best "team moment" was probably when we all agreed on what problem we would choose to solve with our product. We were having a lot of trouble choosing and coming to a conclusion that would appease everyone. So when we finally came together and decided on the Stick-It Bowl, it was a cool moment. Also our idea ended up being a really fun one to talk about and film so we made the right choice. I think we all felt good about the way it turned out and liked the idea.

Our visual plan.

The other half of our visual plan.

When we were doing the post production editing we all switched off with what jobs we did. Kyler, Maddie, and I all like to edit so we took turns everyday. We tried to make everyone happy when making our decisions and when we didn't, we would try to form a compromise. Sometimes it is really difficult to work in a team, but it eases the workload and (usually) gives everyone a fair share of things they need to do. It also makes it easier if you have a problem you can't solve by yourself because then you can have multiple opinions and solve said problem faster.

Our score on how well we explained what our product does.

Our score on how well we explained how our product worked.

Our score on how entertaining our video was.

The overall class video ranking.

Composition Scavenger Hunt

Greetings fellow Earthlings (and others...)! For the past couple of weeks I have been gone for medical reasons so this project is not one I have done but I am still going to write about it because I think it was cool :) This assignment was all about constructing a video that showed and explained the different shot types and composition techniques. We actually did this same project in my first year of GT (Can you believe it has already been three years?!)

My first video... ever. Here for your enjoyment and my complete humiliation.



Did you have fun watching that? I know; it was so fabulous. That was sarcasm (^.^). Anyway, here is my actual post!

Well since I was gone during the whole project I am going to try to answer and explain everything based off the first time I did this in 6th grade and the knowledge I have accumulated over the years :) I think the most important composition technique is definitely the Rule Of Thirds because there are very few circumstances that you don't use it. It's one of those things that you are always suppose to make sure you have within your shot and you can put other composition techniques on top of. If you are using the Rule Of Thirds, usually it is to give look room for the subject. Also it looks more pleasing to the viewer's eyes when they are watching the video.

I think out of all the composition techniques, Leading Lines is one of the more difficult to shoot. One of the reasons is that you have to line everything up really well if you want to make it look good. When it is executed properly, it looks really nice. I think that I could use it more in filming by focusing on finding good areas to film the shot in that give my team and I the opportunity have lines from the environment around us lead the audience's eyes to our subject. Using Leading Lines is really important because if you have multiple things going on in a shot, you can use the lines to direct the audiences attention where you want it to go.

Leading Lines Shot

Well, for this last paragraph we are supposed to talk about our team members and how we worked together, but I wasn't here and had no team so I am going to end it here. Sorry this was such a short post, I promise the next one will be longer. Until next time my fabulous friends!

Maddie's Team Video!



Preston's Team Video!



Love you all :) BYE BYE.

Cracking the Code

Hello my fabulous viewers! I just got back from my fall break (well it actually ended two weeks ago, but that doesn't matter :) and I am doing great. Over my fall break I was at UC San Diego getting medical treatment and was unable post any blog things so apologize that this is late.

While I was gone the last week our GT classes worked on Computer Coding. Fortunately all of the activities were over the internet so I was able to participate. I definitely think that everyone who has the opportunity to learn code should do it. It is a really good skill to have especially because our world is now so dependent upon computers and technology. Also computer programmers tend to get generally higher pay when they go into their fields after college because of how in demand they are.

Level 20 of the first coding activity!

This is actually not the first time I have done coding. Last year in my science class we did coding practice with the same program and it was really fun. I caught on fairly quickly and was really excited about code. So when I found out we were doing coding in here, I was very happy :) This time around I was a little rusty, but I still enjoyed it.

My Flappy Bird Game (or my Flappy  SPACESHIP Game!)

If I was going to design an app or program, I would design one that could scan the bar code of foods in the store and tell you with commonly used words (and not the fancy scientific words that most people don't understand) what you're eating and the different ingredients inside the food. It could be helpful for people who really have to be careful with what they eat and who are on diets. I would make sure that all the information used in the app was reliable as well.

My Certificate of Completion!

Well I hope you all enjoyed reading this post and I will be sure to post again soon! BYE :)

My Humorous Monologue

VercelliK_Comedy from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.

Fabulous face (:P) LOL

HEEEEEEEEY EVERYBODY!!! How are my fabulous viewers doing today? I hope you're dong good! This post is again about my humorous monologue. Sorry this intro is so short but I am going to just jump right into it. The video above is my final product ^.^

My Joke Plan!

This post is also about my humorous monologue project in GT (if you want to see my last post about it click here :) and I have to say, I really liked this project a learned some cool stuff. We are working in iMovie to create this project and for the past couple of years we have worked in Final Cut Pro so I am still learning the program. When I was doing this project I had to self teach myself some of the stuff  and search how to do different things online. Some of the things I learned were how to to edit audio and work through the different effects in iMovie. I also learned how to put in other clips or pictures into your video (in my video I have it so it looks like different picture are floating above my hands).

How my classmates graded me!

When filming something that you are going to edit, be sure that you include pad. Pad is a section of your film before and after your actual shot that has nothing going on or nothing important going on. It is a must-have when you are editing because if you don't then your video can cut off. Also if you are joining two clips together then it's good to have pad so that they don't run into each other and sound bad. Remembering to film pad hard though, and I'll admit, I have had to re-film shots because I didn't have pad (:P).

When we finished this project I was (and still am) very proud of my final product. But unfortunately, nothing is ever 100% perfect. One thing that I wish I could go back and change is maybe the sound effects that I used. One of my weaker skills in GT is getting creative shots and angles when filming (but I really enjoy filming, I'm just not very good at it :). However, I think I am somewhat good at editing. I really enjoy the entire process of video making so I felt that this project was a really great way to express myself :)

I hope you all liked this and I am going to put up my post about my Ireland summer trip very soon! BYE!

Comedy Writing

Me and Maddie laughing GIF :)

Hello my beautiful Earthlings (or aliens...)! Do you like olives? "Olives are the funniest fruit, forever and always. Personally, I love everything thing that has to do with olives; olive the color, olive the name, the restaurant Olive Garden, olives the actual food, but you you know what the best thing that has to do with olives is? Olive jokes." That's the intro to my humorous monologue for our brand new project in GT! Interesting Fact About Kasiah: She LOVES acting. That's right folks, the weirdo science geek is also an actress. Did I blow your mind? Yes? No? Maybe? Well anyway, I love to act. I've been theater ever since I was a Kinder-gardener and starred in the school play in 2014 (That was the year I started this blog!). I am super excited about this project because we are writing and performing a humorous monologue. And laughing is fun. Very fun.

I think a sense of humor is an important character trait because it can usually say a lot about a person's personality. Another reason why it is an important aspect is that it can establish how that character will interact with other characters. However, effectively communicating a characters sense of humor is not always an easy task. Always run your work by others so that you can make sure that everyone understands the message or tone you are trying to convey.

Five tips I would give to someone else writing a humorous monologue are :

1. Write about something you're interested in. Don't try to force anything, because it will show through in your work.
2. Make sure the material is appropriate for your audience. For example, you shouldn't write like you are explaining something to a five-year-old if you will be presenting to an older crowd.
3. Be sure to develop a main topic. Finding that one main thing that ties everything together is really important because without it, it will just sound random and will (most likely) confuse your audience.
4. Also, be sure it's relatable! Be sure to use realistic situations and ideas in your piece so that people will understand.
5. And now for my final tip. Drum Roll please...... T-I-M-I-N-G! Be sure that your timing and phrasing in your work makes sense. Timing is really important in the sense that it can make or break your joke(s).

Well I think that it's about that time where I have to say goodbye, but before I do that, I should probably show you my entire monologue instead of just some of it... so here ye go! Just a note, all of the punch lines are olive related and don't make as much sense written out on paper, but I assure you, when I post the actual finished video it will look and sound much better.

Olives: the funniest fruit, forever and always.

Personally, I love everything thing that has to do with olives; olive the color, olive the name, the restaurant Olive Garden, olives the actual food, but you you know what the best thing that has to do with olives is? Olive jokes.

What does the mommy olive say to the baby olives before bed? “O-love o-live you!” (I love all of you!).

What did the British olive say when he rolled off the table and fell to the floor? “Ol-ive!” (I’ll live!).

What did the the olive yell at the Brad Pitt movie premiere? “O-live Pit!” (I love Pitt!).

An olive walks into a bakery one day. “How many cookies would you like?” asks the baker. “O-live them!” (all of them) said the olive.

What John Legends song made top ten in Oliveland? Ol-ive me! (All of me!)

What is an olive’s favorite quote? “Olive long and prosper.”

Well folks, that’s ol-ive (all I’ve) got, so olive vior! (Au revoir!)

I wrote this monologue around the idea of olives because as you can probably tell, I love olives ;) I think that this monologue is funny because of all the puns. I really love puns (though I don't think of myself as very punny) and wanted to base my project around them. Also I love writing with witty word play so the whole process (including the acting :) was very fun to me.

Well I hope you all liked reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it and I will communicate with you all later (it may be telepathic communication... I wish ;).

Motivational Poster

Hellooooooooooooooooo everybody! How are you doing? I am doing good. Our current project is to create a motivational poster in Adobe Photoshop and I am really excited! In my last post, 'Personal Manifesto' I talked about the inspiring manifesto that is going on our poster. I hope you guys like this post!

For this project we have specific requirements for working in Photoshop and what our final product has to look like. I apologize in advance if my explanations of the technical stuff is confusing, but I'll try my best to describe them. So in Photoshop, most of the different things you do are separated into different layers. Layers are kind of like miniature work spaces that you can turn off and on (They are super helpful for when you have to edit!). 

Our layer requirements for this project are:

My images arranged but not with image adjustment layers.

1. We need four images in our final product; three of personal symbols that we feel represent us (check out my last post for the pictures I will be using and why ;) and one portrait of our extremely gorgeous faces (because my face is just so fabulous :P).
2. We also need two text layers. Text layers are layers with text in them (but I bet you figured it out ;). One of the layers needs to contain our personal manifesto and the other will have our  personal quotes.

But we can't forget about the design requirements now can we? Design requirements instruct us on what our posters have to look like. 

The design requirements are:

My text without colors or blending options (it does have kerning though).

1.  All text in the poster must be kerned without blank spaces or holes and must fit across the entire section. Kerning is when you adjust the spacing and placement of text to make it visually appealing (practice your kerning skills here).
2. The poster must contain a triadic color scheme. A triadic color scheme is a type of color scheme that contains three colors, one dominant and two harmonious accent colors (here is the color scheme creator we used).
3. All the text layers must contain blending options such as strokes, outer or inner glows, drop shadows, and/or bevel and emboss (all the different Photoshop blending options here).
4. Also all of the images need adjustment layers such as levels, curves, exposure, and/or color balance (all the different Photoshop image adjustment layers here).

So now this part is going to get confusing for those of you who don't know Photoshop because I will (attempt to) give you a step-by-step on how I did it.

Step 1:
The first thing I did was transcribe my manifesto (and quotes) from my Google Drive to Photoshop. Then I placed and kerned my text. This first part took a while because I had to shrink, stretch, and space all the lines of words so they looked perfect and flowed naturally.

Step 2:
The second thing I did was apply different blending options to my text layers to make it stand out and pop. The colors I used were FFA35D (Pale Orange), E5FB5C (Pale Yellow-Green), and 8957CE (Pale Blue-Purple). If you want to see the full palette click here.

Step 3:
Next, I opened all my pictures in Photoshop. Then I selected to the move tool and dragged each of them into the motivational poster document. Once I did that, I moved the pictures around until I got a layout that I liked.

Step 4:
Then, I added image adjustment layers to the images to match my color scheme (It took a lot of fine-tuning!).

Step 5:
Lastly, I saved the final product as a .jpeg!

My biggest challenge that I had with this project was working with all the different image adjustment layers. When you stack all the different layers on top of one another it poses a challenge if you want an effect to only apply to one layer. In the end I just had to merge my image layers with their intended adjustment layers. I think my overall product turned out better than what I had originally thought it would turn out like. One thing that I would do to improve it would be to include the blending option bevel and emboss somewhere in my final product. I really like the look of it and it make the different layers stand out more.

Well I hope you all liked that post! I will be posting again soon but until then, I shall write to you later.
Love your loyal writer who loves olive jokes/puns (you will find out what that means later... aren't I so cruel? :P),

- Kasiah Vercelli :) <3

My final product! Yay!