“Who am I?”
That was the essential question for Reflections unit. In the wake of college application season, knowing how to talk and explain to people who we are and what we value is of utmost importance. In all three of our classes: English, Digital Media, and our respective Electives (mine film), we worked to discover and learn more about ourselves. In English class, our main focus was the daunting, time-consuming Common App. We did various brainstorming activities prior to starting our writing, most of which came from College Essay Essentials: A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing a Successful College Admissions Essay by Ethan Sawyer. Then it was time to get writing. In Digital Media, our first assignment was to create a personal mandala. This also required some brainstorming, as the mandala was meant to reflect something important to us. I had trouble coming up with ideas, so I began free-drawing. In the end, I made a Christmas themed mandala for no particular reason, however Christmas and the preparation is a important time of the year for me because it brings me joy through spending time with family, reminiscing on fun memories, and listening to Christmas music. After finishing our mandala, we shifted to learning about Adobe After Effects by making a core values video, which can be seen below. Lastly, in Film, our task was to make a two minute video that reflected our unique thought processes.
Personal Mandala
For our mandala project, we had the opportunity to creatively express ourselves through art in the form of a mandala. Many people sought to represent their culture or something very significant to them, but I had trouble thinking of something. As I mentioned above, I started to toy around in Adobe Illustrator (software used to create the mandala), ultimately ending up with a Christmas themed mandala. Before I talk about why I decided to stick with the Christmas theme, I know some may wonder how we were able to make something like this. Well, with the help of Mr. Flo, we were able to set up the project in such that we could draw on a fraction of the canvas and it would copy it symmetrically in every other slice. That is the best way I can explain it without getting too complicated. Back to Christmas; I decided to stick with my mandala because Christmas is a meaningful time of year for me as it brings me lots of joy through spending time with my family, the sentimental feelings, and the majestical music.
Here is my artist statement:
My inspiration for this project was a couple of circles I drew while brainstorming. Those two circles turned into snowmen, and then before I knew it, my whole mandala was Christmas. I would say it worked out as it is indeed the most wonderful time of the year. If I were to convey a message with the piece of art, I would say just follow the path that your imagination takes you. I turned a couple circles into a piece that means a lot to me and represents a lot of the happy feelings I have surrounding Christmas. During this process, I compared to my mandala to be classmates super detailed and intricate mandalas which made me feel worse about mine, but comparison is the thief of joy, so don’t compare yourself to others. One last thing: Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town is the best Christmas movie.
I enjoyed this project because it was fun to see what a couple strokes of the mouse could create. Once again, this reinforced one of the most important things I’ve learned while here at Freestyle which is to follow your gut and not get overly perfectionist in the brainstorming process. Sometimes just following your instincts and not trying to find the “perfect idea” or “perfect project” is the best route to go because, for one, you will get it done faster, and one of the best ways to figure out what you want to do is simply, by doing.
The Ultimate Struggle: College Personal Essay
A benefit of being in Freestyle English is that your main focus during the first semester of school is working on your “Personal Essay” aka “The Common App Essay.” This process included some research and brainstorming exercises, pain, trial and error, more pain, and assistance from the people around you. I had a really hard time deciding what I wanted to write about because I felt like I had not experienced “significant struggle” and I didn’t really know what I wanted to study. Through the help of my mom, I was able to brainstorm various essay ideas and discover the essay that told the most about me. Writing about my struggles in last year’s Film class was able to answer the “Who am I?” question in a fairly complete way. I am proud that I was able to convey who I am in a 650 word essay and to be done with that grueling process.
Film
The major goal of Reflections unit in Film class was to produce a two-minute video that captured our thought processes. Our thought processes are something completely unique between individuals because there are so many factors that influence our actions and decisions. With this in mind, we made mini essays and recorded them, the goal being to show our thought processes, and then eventually making a two-minute video with that audio. Before doing this, we learned and got back into the groove of film with a few short exercises. I will talk about those below:
The first assignment we had was a one period film. Going into class, we had no idea this was planned. Mr. Taylor informed us that we had one period to write, film, and edit a short film. This was meant to practice our time management skills. You can watch below.
With the new fancy equipment and set-up in the Film room, Mr. Taylor decided that we would be the first class he taught how to do surround sound. To do this, we practiced with short video clips from YouTube to help prepare us to make our own surround sound scene. After getting the “okay” from Mr. Taylor, we were off to film and edit each of our scenes.
The final assignment leading up to our Reflections was the “Write, Shoot, Edit” film. The concept of this film was very different and hard to explain. At first we thought we were doing a storyboarding exercise, but the story we ended up drawing was going to be filmed by the group next to us. After filming someone elses idea, we then had to edit a different film. By the end of this process, we had all collaborated on everyones film, doing either the pre-production, production, or post-production part of the film.
And at last, the main project: Reflections. I had trouble finding ways to visually display my idea about intrusive and impulsive thoughts. For the first round of dailies, I tried it with Legos. Mr Taylor did not like that. Next, I tried filming myself doing different “impulsive” things but it didn’t feel very complete. I needed more. Mr Taylor gave me the idea to use match cuts throughout my film to represent the spontaneity of these thoughts, so I tried doing that. After multiple days of shooting and forcing family members to help me, I was able to gather enough footage to somewhat complete the film. In the end, my film did not come out the way I wanted it to, but I was proud of my ability to push through adversity and come up with a product that isn’t horrible.
[Reflections video once uploaded]