“How can you find, explore, and/or expand your passion?”

Our Explorations project challenged us to use our creativity and explore our interests in each class. In English, we wrote a lyrical essay from our topic of choice. In Digital Media, we used Pro Tools to create experimental music no matter the complexity or duration. And in Film, we chose a film related skill to master to present and teach our class. This project as a whole definitely helped me learn more 21st century skills. From color grading films to digital music and art producing, I gained a lot of experience.

Film

I have always been interested in the color and tone of film. So, I chose to research color grading, produce my own product and present it to my class.

Process

This process took a while, I had to research color grading and theory in depth. Although I didn’t use the complex information I had gathered from researching, my end product was the basics of color grading and provided what it needed to.

I made 3 videos. 2 being clips of already made movies and the 3rd being my own.

This change of color was done manually by me. The initial purple and pink represents desire, past love, and something he can’t have. The orange and yellow then represent danger, caution and something odd.

This just shows the contrast of colors in a movie when something is happier vs sadder.

The sudden change of colors is there to make the colors clearer. As this can be interpreted as funny, my original scene was going to be super dark and sad. Thus, I used darker and mellow colors to represent the sadness although it may have not turned out like it was supposed to.

Overall, I learned many things about colors and their theories. I have always loved colors and how they represent such important things. Couple things I would have changed would be going further in depth in my research, using more LUTs and having a more well thought-out scene.

Digital Media

In Digital Media, we made music of our choice. We used Pro Tools to create our own 1 minute song, no matter how experimental. I used a piano loop from the video game Genshin Impact and added drums to it.

I learned a lot about Pro Tools during this project. I learned how to use loops, virtual instruments, and many more features. Since music production was my first passion, I benefited a lot as a digital artist from this project. I definitely valued the use of digital production of music in general.

English

In English we explored our own topics of a Lyrical Essay. – Definition: Lyric Essay is a literary hybrid that combines elements of poetry, essay, and memoir. The lyric essay is a relatively new form of creative nonfiction. We were challenged to come up with it by ourselves. I had trouble since I am not that great a creative writing, but once I realized I could have a song as a topic it became mush easier. I wrote about “E. Coli” by The Alchemist. I described the atmosphere and world it creates for the listener and the singer.

Reflection

Overall, I thought this was a great project to end my Junior year. It was fun, relaxing and super helpful in terms of skills. I definitely had help from my peers and teachers, but also this project was more about myself and what I want to learn. I’m proud of my skills and experience I have gained.