Explorations Project
For the Explorations project, students were asked the question:
“How can you find, explore, and/or expand your passion?”
For my Explorations Project, I decided to do a Director Study. Earlier in the school year, I had seen the film “The Tree of Life”, directed by Terrence Malick. I was awestruck and inspired by this beautiful film, and wanted to learn more about Malick and his unique style. I wanted to improve my skills of observing, analyzing, and immitating his style of film.
Malick films are very heavy, often a bit meloncholy, and introspective. They are very quiet, soft, and sometimes peaceful, but they also show the harsh realities of real life, death, and other universal human struggles.
What I first noticed and love about Malick films is that they are existential questioning in film form. They ask some of the greatest questions that humans have been asking since the beginning. Why is there something, and not nothing? Why are we here? However, Malick does not seek to provide an answer with his films, they are simply a way to get the audience to question themselves and their lives. Malick seeks to capture truth, he does not try to answer questions he does not have the answers to.
I started the process by researching Terrence Malick: his life, education, early films, and late films. I started by watching as many Malick films as I could. I watched, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line, and Badlands, in a span of about two weeks.
I then began to research his style more. What kind of techniques does he use? How does he interact with his actors and fellow crew? How does he direct, write, and ultimately create these beautiful films?
One well known characteristic of Malick’s style is his use of smooth steadicam shots. Since I didn’t have access to a steadicam, I had to learn how to use a glidecam, pictured below. Learning how to use a glidecam was very, very hard. I had to use weights to balance the camera, and it was really hard to get smooth shots with it. I spent a lot of time practicing with the glidecam and figuring out how to even out the weights so that the camera would not wobble or drift and would stay steady.
I then began filming with my wonderful actor Athena Hart, and edited the video together. I knew that I had to include Malick’s signature audio component: the whispered voiceover. I included that as a large part of the film.
The Explorations Project was incredibly valuable to me. I learned how to research a directors history, career, and style. I was able to take what I learned and apply it in filming and editing to mimick Malick’s style in my own work. In the process I learned how to use a Glidecam, which was very challenging and difficult to figure out. Learning how to use new equipment is always hard, but through this project , I have become a more adaptive and faster learner. I recorded my voiceover in the ISO booths in Digital Media, and edited the pieces of the audio together. This project has helped me to grow in video and audio recording and editing. This project was challenging, but fun and very rewarding.
Presentation
I presented my Explorations project to the all the AM Juniors and Freestyle teachers. This project helped me to develop my public speaking skills and presentation abilities. I enjoyed getting to share what I learned, and the project that I had worked very hard on, with all of my peers and mentors.
Music Recording Project
For the Music Recording Project, Nicola and I collaborated to create a cover of the song “Bigger is Better” from Sofia the First. We both really liked the song, and though it would be really fun to do our own version. We recorded the song together in the music recording studio with Mr. Flo. This was our first time using the Recording Studio, so it was really cool to see how it worked! We then edited our audio recording, and created an album cover for our song.
Album Art
Recording
Artist Statement
Junior Music Recording Project in DM
Title: Bigger is Better by Nicola Colace and Mia Staulo
The Music Recording Project was an incredible experience. Students got to use the music recording studio at Freestyle, edit the music and create an album cover for the song. This project was a collaborative song cover. Nicola and I worked together to create a cover of “Bigger is Better” from Sofia the first. Recording in the music recording studio was awesome! It was amazing to learn how the studio worked, and get to make use of our amazing facility. Mr. Florendo showed us how to record, how to mute things, and how to pan the audio so that some tracks will be louder in one ear and quieter in the other. Nicola and I took turns singing, with me singing the first part and Nicola singing the second. Then, we went back and added some background vocals.
The music recording studio is an amazing space that we have at Freestyle. I hope that in the future, we will have more chances to make use of it. I feel that this project has helped me gain more appreciation for music production!
Editing
Poetry
For the poetry unit in English, we had a Poet in Residence, Christine Moore, who taught a poetry workshop. We read and analyzed several poems, including “Metaphors” by Sylvia Plath and “How to Triumph Like a Girl” by Ada Limon. Using what we learned about literary devices, imagery, and figurative language, we were tasked with writing our own poem. I decided to write a poem about being dehumanized in a institution, and being valued as a “worker,” for your usefulness, rather than as a human being. I intentionally kept my poem ambiguous, so that it can be applied to many different circumstances.
Work by Mia Staulo
Kneeled on the mountain,
She collected the dripping sweat of her brow
In her open palms
She watched as it
seeped between her fingers
Plummeting to the damp soil beneath her.
The ground soaked it up
As it had the others’
Absorbing her labor and growing.
She had trekked the mountain
So long
And far,
The road back
Would now be longer and harder
Than the path forward
“Don’t think” the Mountain whispers,
And she stumbles on.
In the beginning, the mountain had given her purpose
But now
it drains her,
Holds her back,
Uses her,
She, the untiring working machine
It, the cruel master who’s bidding she does without question.
And when her body decays
And she can no longer work
The mountain will toss her corpse to the depths
Because she was just a worker
And she will be forgotten
This poem was partially inspired by the book Seeing Silicon Valley by Fred Turner and Mary Beth Meehan, which we read in English class as a part of our documentary unit. The book focused on the low-income workers in Silicon Valley whose stories are often unheard and overlooked. Similarly, my poem tells the story of a girl who works tirelessly for a ruthless mountain who values her only for her usefulness, not as a human being. I decided to keep the poem vague so that it can be applied to almost any institution. Today, with the advent of AI, computers, and large corporations, people are sometimes reduced to numbers or statistics. Human beings are more than that. This poem is for the people who have ever felt dehumanized by a system or institution.