Proactive or Procrastination

"Are you proactive or a procrastinator?" thats a question that I got asked. Thinking about it, I realized I am a procrastinator. But it does depend what i'm doing. When it comes to school, I have to admit that I am a procrastinator. Although, when it comes to doing certain arts and crafts, i'm proactive.  Overall though, I would say I am a procrastinator because of a lot of distractions. Usually instead of doing homework, cleaning, or anything else I go on the internet and listen to music or look at some friends pictures.

When it comes to comparing my amount of free time with my productivity, I know that the more free time I have, the less proactive I am. That may sound weird but when I have more free time, I tend to do other things before important things and I end up not even doing the important things. But when I have a limited time to do something, I do my important things first because that is all thats on my mind. It may be a bit confusing but I just tend to take advantage of free time, so having less time is better for me because it keeps me on track.

If I were to change some of my work habits, it would be to spend less time watching tv or on the phone. I would also keep my priority on doing all my homework or cleaning before doing anything else. To do that, I would first of all ask my mom for help. She tends to understand me very well, so I would ask her to remind me to do my homework before any phone time. Then I would organize y planner more because for right now, I am very unorganized which makes me loose a lot of my work. And loosing my work makes me stress, like a lot. But again, it is my fault for not being organized. Hopefully I will become more proactive.

My Visual Poem

My visual poem is about enjoying life. I wanted to tell people to enjoy life and do things that make you happy. For my visuals, I used a lot of pictures but they still show feeling. In most of my pictures you'll see someone laughing or smiling. You can really see that they're enjoying life. 

To make the mood of my poem a little more exciting, I added an effect called Ken Burns. This is a type of panning and zooming effect used on videos. So for most f my pictures I zoomed in on someone laughing or smiling to show that they are enjoying life. I think the ken burns helped show what I was trying to show in my pictures.

I am kind of satisfied with my results. I definitely could have made it better by using more videos and less pictures. It was kind of difficult for me to do this poem though because of how short it is, so the time for videos or pictures was very limited. I think next time I could think out a better way to show happiness and fun instead of all pictures.

Real World Report

The story I was interested in is called "No Death Penalty for Dad Charger in Toddler Death". This story is about a father leaving his toddler in a car for about seven hour. It was said that while his son was in the car, his father was sending nudes to ladies in his office. He not only sent nudes to women of age but also to underage women. The jury states that without 100% evidence that he intended to kill his son, they would not give him the death penalty. But he is facing murder charges.

I feel that he should be charged with two life sentences because if he got charged with only one death penalty, its a possibility that he could get out and that is not really fair. I feel that if he was capable of letting his own blood child suffer in the car with no air while it was very hot, he should stay in jail and be treated like a criminal. He should suffer just like his son did. In my opinion, people like that should suffer instead of just being killed easily. They should serve time around other criminals that can make him suffer.

I think people should be aware of this story because it is very cruel. People should see how important life is and how ones life can be taken at any time of day for any reason. It is also important for people to see this story so that they can see how dangerous our world is. There is a lot of people in the world that have really cruel minds and we need to be careful on everything we do.

Lessons Learned

So far this project has been quite interesting. I think the most interesting part was getting to hear people talk about their experiences through different hurricanes. I enjoyed hearing their stories and it made me realize that we need always be prepared. One of the interviewees stated that for hurricane Iniki, they did not get very much time to prepare because the hurricane was supposed to go pass the islands, but at the last moment it took a 90 degree turn and headed straight for Kauai. I love hearing all these different stories because I now feel I will be more prepared and ready for a hurricane if one happened to come.

Our biggest challenge to over come was editing all the interviews and getting B-roll. It was hard editing the interviews because we had six, and they were all pretty long. It was a struggle editing out all the mistakes and even the little ones because there was a lot and we wanted it to be perfect. The B-roll was alos a really hard thing to overcome because we had to catch videos of going down streets and roads which was very hard to film because of the camera movement. I did but the camera on a tripod but with the car moving and bumpy rods, the camera still shook a little.

I think the most valuale part of the film making process was interacting with my group. It was very nice being able to work with each one of them individually and listen to their different ideas. I loved how the group I was in was/is very full of spirit and always smiling. Although we ran into some problems, we were able to keep smiles  throughout it all.

Hiki Nō Behind the Scenes

For this project my team and I decided to do a news story. Our news story is based on hurricanes because of the great danger it can cause. We also chose this story because 2014's hurricane season in Hawai'i has been very active. Thankfully, so far this year we have not yet been hit with anything major. But we still keep our eyes open for any slight chances because we have heard or gone through experiences of past hurricanes and the tragedy it did to Kaua'i and the rest of Hawai'i.  So my team and I really want to send the message out to people that hurricanes are not something that should be taken lightly, you should be prepared; hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

So far we have gotten several interviews from family members and friends. We asked them questions like "What advice would you give to people that have not yet been through a hurricane?" and "If you have been through a hurricane, how did it affect you?". We asked various people these same questions so that we can get different ideas and perspectives and help people get a better visual on how and why you should be prepared for a hurricane.

When the camera is not rolling, my team and I are usually editing our interviews and B-rolls to make sure everything makes sense and looks good. We may look like we are just goofing around but we definitely are also doing work. I love my team because each one of us have our own great personalities and we get along well and help each other figure out problems (a lot of problems). Fixing those problems sometimes aren't easy but I think having five of us to put our brains together really help. I think to do my fair share and help the team I can talk a little less and brain storm more idea's for our B-roll. It is kind of difficult to find good b-roll because hurricanes aren't happening every day in Hawai'i (fortunately) but if i think hard enough, I'll come up with something. Stay tuned to Hiki Nō on your T.V. to hopefully see our finished product. Team Credits : Leleaka Anakalea, Russel Fu, Seth Kostelecky, and Noa Harrison.

The Experiment

Our very first project was named "The Experiment". For this project we needed to create any kind of project in photoshop. It may seem fairly easy, but the catch was that our teacher, Mr. Sanderl was not going to answer any question we had. He wanted everyone to get out of their comfort zone, including himself. Everyone struggled in one way or another, and Mr. Sanderl also struggled on holding himself back from helping us. This was an important project because it made us think deep and problem solve on our own using other programs to find answers. The down side of this project was that it took a little longer to complete it because we had to do a lot of research to find out how to do certain things. Although it was a struggle for myself, I enjoyed it very much!

Back to School

My summer was filled with many laughs and great memories, but now its time to go back to school. So far this school year has been good, Ive met many new people and made many new friends. My favorite moment so far was hanging out with all of my friends at recess at lunch. I love talking story and having laughs with them all. My biggest challenge was when my class and I got assigned to start our first project in photoshop. For this project, our teacher Mr. Sanderl let us do anything we wanted to, but there was a catch. The catch was that he was not going to help us at all, we just had to use whatever knowledge we already had. Many people had a lot of experience with photoshop, but many students had no knowledge what so ever with photoshop. Many of the students helped each other and used our different tools like safari to learn how to use the application. For my first project, I chose to do a deface animation. I learned how to do this last school year in this same class. Although I learned how to do this "Deface" project, my memory was faded. I had a hard time remembering a lot of the steps, but with deep thought I was able to figure it out.

Deface Project (Unfinished)

This year I will be successful by doing all my work on time and stop procrastinating. This year I plan to be more aware of my grades and stop focusing on other unimportant things. I am going to make sure to be early and on time to every class. Before school started I made sure to be prepared with all my pencils and paper, so now I just have to put it to use.

Metamorphosis Animation

For this metamorphosis animation project, we needed to use different types of animation to make an interesting story. The animation we made, needed to make people think deeper into it to find the true meaning of the story. The group that I was in chose to use stop motion, digital art, and claymation. Our first scene was me playing as the bully, walking into the scene and picking up my victim (the flower) and tearing it down. Then we made the broken teared up flower travel down the stairs and a friend (Keegan Kessler) came to put the flower bak together. The friend picks up all the broken pieces of the flower and slowly pieces it back together into its normal self. Then the flower climbs back up the stairs and morphs into itself (Leleaka Anakalea). We tried to show that their will always be someone there for you and to keep you going. So even though the bully (me) broke the little flower, her friend was right there to help her.

I liked the way our video came out because it was interesting and really made you think. If I could go back and fix one thing, it would be the stop motion. Since stop motion is kind of to trick the eye, we could have made someone flying instead of just walking across the room. Although there is room for some improvement, overall I think  my team and I did pretty good.

Words of Wisdom

We interviewed one of our team members, Leleaka Anakalea's grandpa named Dave Stewart. We chose his story as our project because it had some great words of wisdom and inspirational words. We also chose his story as our topic because he told how he had some big, life changing decisions to make, and he made the right choices and now he is successful. I think that people will be interested to hear Dave Stewarts story because of his braveness and determination to do what he wanted, but of course he knew it first came with hard work.

Dave Stewart's words of wisdom are important because it's encouraging people to never give up and to work hard to accomplish your goals and dreams. His words of wisdom are also important because it helps people realize that no matter how scary some things may be, change is not always a bad thing. His words show that taking chances may not always end up bad. Taking chances may end up great!

Five Tips For

In my team there was 3 of us, Ku'umomi Thompson, Keegan Kessler and I. This is one of the first projects we did, and it was called "Five Tips for How to Play Volleyball". We chose this topic because one of our team members Keegan Kessler was very passionate and good at volleyball. So we thought it would be the most effective topic for our video. In this video we explained how you should hit the ball and where. We also explained why teamwork is good and what you should do when you're working with a team.

To make our video better, we could have thought out the shots better to make the shot clear. We could have also kept the camera from shaking by tightening the tripod. In our video there was a lot of camera movement, which in our video it's not a good thing. I also think we could have changed the color of the text over our video, or change the placement because you cant see clearly what it says in some shots because the background is the same color as the text. Although we could have done better, I think our video was good for our first video.

Practice Profile Story

The purpose of this practice story is to tell about Leleaka Anakalea's passion for singing. We wanted for Leleaka to be able to show off her singing skills. We also wanted to hear her story of how she got into singing and why she loves it most. We chose this as our practice story because it was very interesting and had a good story. We also chose this topic as our practice story because of how great her passion for singing was, and still is. I'm happy that we chose this topic because it also had some good inspirational words. I hope that people watch this video and become more passionate towards something they love and enjoy to do.

A couple of struggles that we had while making this video was finding b-roll that matched our voiceovers. We had to film our b-roll first because there wasn't enough lavalier microphones for the amount of groups. So because we filmed our b-roll first, we weren't that ready so we didn't film enough b-roll as the amount of voiceover that we had. We also struggled on the voiceover because we did not practice a lot so you could hear some mistakes. Overall our video came out good.

It was our first time as a group working in final cut pro to create a video, so we did stumble a couple of times but our group worked very well even through a little stress. After turning our practice video, we got critiqued and used those helpful comments to make our final video great.

Profile Project Progress

For our project we decided that Dave Stewart, Leleaka Anakalea's grandpa had a great story to tell, so we chose him to tell his story. We chose him because not only was his story very interesting, but it also had some great words of wisdom for viewers watching. His story was based on how he got to Kaua'i and the struggles he went through, and even after all the hardships he has had great success. To show some of his successes, we took some video footage if his kayak business and interviewed him. His kayak business is located in Hanalei, so we figured that would be the best place to interview him. So we interviewed him right outside of his business and it was also great because his story brought out Hanalei a lot.

In order to show footage of Dave Stewarts company, we shot some B-roll. B-roll is video footage that adds interest to the story. It also shows whats happening instead of telling. Some people also use B-roll to patch up edited voiceovers. When interviewing someone, its best to have B-roll over the interview because it helps the viewers understand more. You should always remember that there is never too much B-roll.

Leleaka Anakalea, Hershel Weiner and Loren Weiner are the members in my group. Overall our group is good when it comes to working together. We could do better though. Some parts we could work on, is communicating. Instead of letting each other know how everything goes we usually just chat a little here and there.

My group and I turned in our rough cut of our video and got critiqued. Not only we got graded but we also got some suggestions on how to make our video better. Some suggestions we got was to film a lot more b-roll to cover up more of the interview. Another suggestion we got was getting more interesting shots on our b-roll. I'm glad I got critiqued and graded because it helps me know what people wants to see. On the grading part, we did not do very well, but that is why we have got to shoot more b-roll to make our video go from okay to great!

Composition Techniques

Composition techniques are used to add interest to your different shots. There are a variety of different composition techniques. The four main ones are rule of thirds, framing, unusual angles and leading lines. Rule of thirds is when you divide your image into three parts, and place your image either to the left or to the right. Framing is when when you create an image using things in the background or foreground to create a frame around your subject.

Three Shot Sequences

In excellent videos, sequencing is a variety of shot types in order with interesting angles that show what is happening. Sequencing keeps the viewer watching. To have good sequencing you need a variety of different shot types. Those shot types include wide, medium, close, and extreme. To add more great sequencing, you can use different composition techniques like rule of thirds and unusual shots. For a great video, you need to first start planning your shots so that way you can film exactly what you need.

While making our three shot sequencing video, we ran into some problems. One problem was that we weren't ready. We made a plan but we didn't exactly follow it.

Spherical Panoramas

 Here are my two finished spherical panoramas that I made during G.T. class. The images for the spherical panorama on the left was taken at maui during my trip. Then the images for the spherical panorama on the right was taken on Kaua'i at the beautiful beach Aliomanu. To make these spherical panoramas, I had to first take overlapping images that started and ended around the same place. Then after importing them onto the computer we edited them on adobe bridge. Then we compiled them into a panorama image using PhotoShop's PhotoMerge plugin.

Next, I resized my rectangular 360 degree panorama to be squared and filtered using polar coordinates. Lastly we used the elliptical marquee tool to select the final spherical panorama's and feathered it by refining the edges. Then finally I applied a black or white background before saving the final composite image.

Practice Story Reflection

Our practice story was based on Lele's passion for singing. We chose this topic as our practice story because of her beautiful voice. We also chose this as our topic because her love and passion for singing. We interviewed her and asked her some questions about her singing. Then we caught some videos of her singing and writing songs. Then finally after editing everything we made it into our practice story.

Some positive things about our story was the amount of information we had from Lele's interview. Another positive thing we had in our story was our shot of the interview. The lighting of our shot was perfect and we were also available to have a microphone in our shot. The microphone was a great add in because it added to the topic. Although we had a lot of positives, we also ran into some problems. One of our problems was that our transcript was created after we filmed, so when it was time to film we weren't as prepared on what we were filming. Another problem we had, was that we didn't have enough B-roll to keep the story interesting.

Overall, I think we did good for our first video making in a short period of time. Next time we are making another video, we will just make sure we know what we are filming before just filming random things that we may not use. But to my team members, Hershel Weiner, Loren Weiner, and Leleaka Anakalea, good job team. I hope that I will be able to do more projects with this team.

Polar Panoramas

 These are my two polar panoramas that I created in Photoshop. First I used the internet to see how to create a Polar Panorama. Then I chose a good location to take my images. After finding my location I took 10-15 images from left to right with a 10-15% overlap. Then I took my images and resized them in photoshop to a square, and rotated them 180 degrees.Then finally I applied the Polar coordinates filter. 

To make my Polar Panorama a little more interesting, I used the quick selection tool to cut myself out of a photo and drop myself onto the world. Then I resized the layer to make myself fit  my polar panorama nicely. The last step I did was copying and pasting my portrait layer, decreasing the exposure to black and turning down the opacity by around 50% to create a shadow.

Final Photomontages

This is a two photomontage examples that were inspired by a famous photographer named David Hockney. I used a digital camera and took multiple pictures from different perspectives of a location. ThenI edited my pictures using adobe bridge. Next I compiled them together to create these photomontages.

All About Me

I was born on January 19, 2001 on the island of Kaua'i in Wilcox Hospital at 4:04 a.m. I was born three months early and the doctors thought I was a boy throughout the whole pregnancy. So while my mom was going into labor, the doctors told her that I probably wouldn't cry because boys don't develop as fast as girls. But as my mom gave birth they heard loud cries and the doctors told my mom it was a girl! Surprised, yet happy, my mom was glad that I was fully developed.  I was actually double the weight they intended me to be. Usually a three month early baby is about two pounds, but I came out to be four pounds. Everyone was happy that I was fully developed and in pretty good health.

 There is 4 people in my family including myself. My mom, dad, little brother and I. My little brother is 3 and so far he is the only sibling I have. In age, my brother and I are nine years and nine months apart. Since our age difference is big, I am able to help my parents with him. My brother, named Mo is very, very hyper and loves to just jump around and play. I really wish I had as much energy as him.

My family and I love going on outdoor adventures. We mainly hike up mountains, swim in different salt and fresh water places, and just cruise. Sleeping giant is one of the mountains we like to hike because its not to hard and not to easy, so its a great family spot. Once you reach the top of Sleeping Giant there is a beautiful view of Kaua'i. We also like to hike to a waterfall in the mountains called Secret Falls. Its a famous tourist spot with a beautiful waterfall. The walk in is about 15 minutes and then you get to the falls. The water is very cold and makes you feel so fresh. There are a lot more places we like to go but it would take a while to write about.

My favorite hobbies are playing basketball, swimming, hiking, and taking photo's. I've played basketball from a very young age. I think I enjoy playing basketball because not only my entire family loves basketball, but also because of the rush it gives you. I love shooting the ball and watching it pass through the net. Also, I love swimming and hiking because it's a good exercise. Also because its able to relax me and have a great time with family. Lastly I love taking photo's because I love to look back at my photo's and reminisce back to that day. Although I don't have a great camera yet, I am able to capture beautiful photo's thru my iphone 5. In the future I want to buy a nikon camera and take more beautiful pictures and edit them on adobe bridge.

This is my second year in the Gifted and Talented Program at Kapa'a Middle school. This program lasts three years and so far has really helped me improve my knowledge about technology. I love G.T. because not only do we get to learn about our newest technologies but we also get to do group projects and we get to explore the many wonderful things about the internet. I also love this class because of the different programs we get to use (photoshop, adobe bridge, garage band ect). At times I struggle to finish projects because of the advanced technology but Mr. Sanderl, our teacher is really helpful and always gives us time and shows us "how to" demo's. I recommend this class to all people because it not only helps you in school but also out of school.

Magazine Cover

This is my finished personalized magazine cover that I made in photoshop to describe who I am. I edited all my photo's and different layers of this cover in photoshop cs5.1. The title of my magazine is " Family Adventures". I chose that as my title or main topic because I combined the two things I love the most, which is family time and adventures. Then I have some side topics that tell you a little more about myself and the things I like to do.