CAP Congress

In CAP, this past week has been fully dedicated to CAP Congress, which is exactly what it sounds like.

We were assigned to be either a MOCWA (Member of Congress with Agenda) or a MOCO (I don't know what this stands for).  You were a MOCWA if your assigned debate topic was chosen to be a discussion of our congress and they had to write a bill supporting their debate topic.  MOCOs had to write a page of notes on each of the six topics that were chosen.

The topics that we chose are Plan B in high schools,  the use of recreation marijuana, random drug testing for high school athletes, the death penalty, the dream act, and stem cell research.

I was a MOCWA arguing against the random drug testing of high school athletes. 

On Monday and Tuesday we did some additional research to support our bill of banning drug testing for high school athletes and we made our presentation.  On Wednesday all the MOCWAs presented on their assigned issues.  Afterwords, we lobbied to everyone else with food we had brought to try to get them to vote for our bill.  On Thursday, we were split into the Senate and the House of  Represenatives; I was a Senator.  Inside the House and Senate we were split into committees, just like in the real House and Senate.  I was on the Education Committee, looking at the bills about drug testing and Plan B.  My bill made it through the committee, however, my partner's in the House got killed in committee.  After the committees finished looking at the bills and deciding which to bring into the full House or full Senate, we gathered as either the full House or Senate and began discussing the bills that the committees passed.  If either the full House or full Senate decided to pass one of the bills, it was brought to the other group.  On Friday, we finished discussing bills and then all the ones that were passed were brought to the president.  The bills that were signed by the president was the the one allowing for embryonic stem cell research, the one allowing for Plan B in high schools, the one abolishing the death penalty, and the one allowing the DREAM Act.

This assignment allowed me to greater appreciate what really goes on in the House and the Senate and how difficult it is to pass a bill.  It also increased my understanding of different governmental process.  While I got bored sometimes discussing the issues, I thought this assignment helped me a lot.

The basic proponents of my bill.
My presentation.

Fall Film

A few days ago I wrote about the progress of my fall film.  The assignment was to capture fall anyway we wanted to in 60 seconds.  I finally finished mine!

I have shots of trees that I saw and looked cool and leaves on the ground.  I also have shots of a creek and path near my house which look really nice in the fall.  I have various Halloween decorations and I have some different fall foods.

I'm really happy with how my video turned out.  I found an effect called "Old Film" in WeVideo which I added to my video and I really like.

If the time that I actually spent on the project is added it up, it isn't really much time; however there are gaps of about a week between the times I spent working on different sections of the project.  I first started working on the project a few days after it was assigned.  I did all the filming and the next day I put all the clips into wevideo.  Then, during our days off because of the hurricane, I did all of the editing and found the music I wanted.  I couldn't figure out how to import music into wevideo but today I finally learned how so I added the music to complete my video.

A few times when I was editing I got pretty frustrated with WeVideo.  It wouldn't let me put transitions between all the clips and I found it difficult to figure out how to cut clips and import the music I wanted.  Also, when I tried to export my video to YouTube I couldn't find where it exported to for awhile. Once I figured all that out though WeVideo worked really well.

All in all, I actually liked this assignment and I'm really happy with how my video turned out.

Finished Dystopian Trailer

So a while ago we started this project where we come up with a premise for a dystopian movie and then film a trailer for it - I wrote a post about it before where I put up a sample movie poster for it.  Anyways, we finally finished our trailer and I posted it above so you can watch it.

Our trailer is called iPower.  The basic story is that sometime in the future machines, specifically phones, will control everything and everyone but without the knowledge of the people.  The machines can send certain people back in time to kill those who have too much knowledge in the future.  Eventually one girl finds out what is happening so sends herself back in time to try to stop the machines from ever being invented.

I think that our trailer came out pretty good, especially considering that no one in our group really knew how to use Final Cut Pro before the project started.  It was all a learning process for us and I feel like that I am MUCH more comfortable navigating Final Cut than I was four weeks ago.  There is still A LOT more that I need to learn how to do on final cut; adjusting sound on music, key frames, transitions between shots (like fades), and overlaying clips are just a few to get the list started.

I enjoyed this project.  I liked how it connected things we were doing in English to Media and I liked how it gave us some freedom but it was guided (yeah, I know, kinda contradictory).   It was fun going out and filming and figuring out what we were even doing.  There were a lot of moments that happened when we were filming that might not have been so funny then but looking back now are hilarious.  My favorite is when we got yelled at by a farmer lady saying we were killing the planet by filming.

Even though this project required some dedication, I wouldn't mind doing another one like it.  And I'm really looking forward to Friday when we get to watch all the other trailers - I've seen a few already and they're really well done.

Pre- Fall Video

So last weekend I was working on my fall video.  The assignment is to "Capture the Fall" and make a 60 second video doing so.

I went to the bike path near my house and recorded the creek, a bridge, some leaves, a biker and a bunch of other stuff.  I also recorded various Halloween decorations I saw around and liked.

During our days off this week I worked on editing my video.  I used wevideo to use it and it worked really well, however it was kinda wierd because my video kept getting SHORTER, when I wasn't cutting clips.  Oh well, it all worked out.

I just have one more thing to do before my video finishes which is adding music.  I found some music that I like that I think works with my video except I can't figure out how to import it into wevideo.  I think that wevideo might not let you import music which is really frustrating. They (meaning wevideo) have their own selection of music to choose from which I'll probably just end up doing.

I'll have the video ready to post next week so I'll probably be adding on to this post then.