Explorations
Introduction
The explorations unit was about passion and building on the skills we learned throughout the year. It was meant to go deeper into things we had been introduced to but hadn’t fully explored, so this was our chance.
EXPLORATIONS PROJECT SECTION
For our explorations project we were able to dive deeper into a passion that we had been working on, and just explore more possibilities of the skill. “How can you find, explore, and/or expand your passion?” We were supposed to build upon a 21st century skill, and the one I chose to build upon was Creativity – the act of bringing something into existence that is genuinely new, original, and of value either personally (of significance only to the individual or organization) or culturally (adds significantly to a domain of culture as recognized by experts). I explored show business culture, as well as my own love of theatre.
For my project, I wanted to make some costumes that were really integrated into showbiz, featuring elements of the industry and also fitting with the show we were producing. I ended up making a quick change outfit, with a poncho/skirt, and a rainbow showgirl outfit.
After finalizing my sketches, I had to buy all of the materials, which included fabric, boning, a lot of ostrich feathers, snap buttons, and zippers. I then had to cut out patterns to make the fabric fit the actors the way I wanted to. I had a lot of trouble with this project because the actors were always so busy so I rarely had time for them to try the costumes on, and even less time afterwards to fix the issues. eventually I got it to work though. For the red one, I had to use snap buttons to make the quick change happen, but they were too difficult to remove at first so I deformed them with pliers and afterwards they were a lot looser. For the Rainbow one, I had to figure out a way to attatch the feathers, and I especially had trouble with getting that one to fit because I didn’t have a dress form of the same size.
This dress also caused so many of my sewing needles to break because of the sequins, but it was all worth it. I like how the final dress turned out, especially when it is open. The poncho look isn’t quite my favorite though. overall I really enjoyed making this costume, and I loved seeing on the actress.
This showgirl outfit was such a struggle in terms of fitting. I originally wanted it to be so much tighter, but that didn’t end up happening. I would try to improve my pattern making abilities next time, and maybe even learn how to actually use the boning to structure the dress. I would also put a lot more care into scheduling so that I actually have time to fit it on the actor. Overall I am really happy with the feathers, and I love the headdress. I think I am mostly happy with the bodysuit itself besides the fitting. however next time I would try to find a fabric that actually includes red instead of pink, because the pink sort of made it clash.
After finishing this project, we had to give a presentation on it, and explain our process and inspiration, as well as what we learned and what we would change. Then we opened up to questions.
Overall I am extremely proud of how this project turned out. I ended up with 2 costumes that I really like, and I learned so much about fitting, scheduling, and constructing costumes. Next time I would try to work on time management, as well as a more streamlined sewing process where I plan everything out beforehand, and make sure it all works. I’d also try to make a mock up of each design so that I can try that on the actor and make a pattern based off of it so that the final product is cleaner. I also want my projects to be more animation centered in the future, because this project was hard to achieve in animation class.
MUSIC RECORDING
This music recording was a project that meant to build upon skills we had learned in protools and to learn how to use the recording studio. We had to choose a song and simply make a cover of it, whether that be singing or playing an instrument. I did this project with Maile Jeng, and we debated a couple different songs but ultimately landed on Love Me Not by Ravyn Lenae.
We decided to sing Love Me Not by Ravyn Lenae because the song was in both of our keys and it was a song that we both liked. We decided to split up the song into Maile singing the first verse and Athena singing the second verse, only singing together during the end of the song. After picking a date to record the song it was pretty straightforward from there. While recording this song, it was both of our first times recording in the studio and with the help of Mr. Flo we were able to get through it pretty smoothly. We had some trouble with timing on certain phrases, and stylization of the words, but eventually we figured it out. Recording in the studio is different than recording in the booths because there’s a person in the booth doing all of the controls for us instead of having to do it ourselves. It feels a lot more professional and overall the product was something that we were both proud of.
After the recording, we had to edit the song together in Pro Tools. We decided which recordings sounded the best and made sure that we normalized the sound so that the volume was equal throughout the song. The other issue we ran into was figuring out exactly what the right balance was for the backing music and our vocals. Athena also wanted to include the distortion that was in the original song, but we couldn’t find a way to make our voices sound like that without it taking too much time, so we didn’t use it. The part that we’re proud of the most is being able to record the song and hitting all of the notes properly. The final product was definitely better than we could have imagined and it’s cool to see all the work behind making music, even if we didn’t record any instruments and only vocals.
POEM SECTION
The poetry unit in english was meant to give us a different experience from the analysis of the other units. We had a poet-in-residence teacher, Christine Moore, who gave us a couple poetry readings, and taught us different poetic styles and techniques, like enjambment, which puts punctuation in the center of the line, and different ways of making your poem sound a certain way, like with alliteration. Throughout the unit we wrote our own poems, each with a different prompt. We did poems based on articles, cento poems that combine the works of others, and poems that were based on word manipulation. At the end of the unit, we took one of those poems, or wrote another, and refined it, later presenting it in class. I chose to use my poem based on an article, and this is how it turned out.
The poem was based on an article about Trump opening up Alcatraz, and it encompasses how I felt about that article, but also about the political climate in general. I used enjambment and capitalization to emphasize specific important parts of my poem, and I arranged the lines in a way that was intentional, and matched the poem. I am very happy with how it turned out, and I am especially proud of the line about silver, followed by the line about chains, because it sort of tricks the reader at first. I would like to continue to do poetry, but perhaps on less depressing topics.