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8C Drama: Persuasive Speeches from YIS Arts on Vimeo.
Drama 8C: Impromptu Speeches from YIS Arts on Vimeo.
These past few weeks in drama, we were learning how to persuade someone using different techniques. Some techniques were benefits, testimonial, blackmail etc.
1. My best speech was the persuasive speech because I prepared for it a lot. I knew what I was going to do and was totally prepared.
2. I should improve on trying not to twitch because it distracted the audience. Also, I should try not to look down at the cue cards so much because it still distracted the audience.
Choose another student’s video which appealed to you, embed it also and answer this question focussing on the key aspect that was appealing:
3. Another speech which was captivating was Axel’s speech because he had very valid points and the topic of the arguement was one that I had always wondered about, therefore, making the whole speech even more appealing to me.
8C Drama: Persuasive Speeches from YIS Arts on Vimeo.
In this unit we had to pretend we were working for pixar. Pixar wanted us to create a cartoon character based on a font. I was assigned the font Papyrus. I think this font was pretty easy because as soon as I got the font, I had a picture in my head. I also knew what papyrus was, it was a type of paper that scribes in ancient Egypt used. So the image I had was having an Egyptian scribe writing on a papyrus paper. After going through drafts, we did a final draft and traced it in black marker pen. We then scanned it onto Adobe Illustrator and paint it in.
I think in my first drafts, I did a good job of portraying the image in my head, however, it was exaggerated enough. As I progressed through the unit I did a better and better job of expressing the facial expression and body posture. I wanted my character to be young, around 20 to 30 years old. I started experimenting with faces. I tried all sorts of faces, cartoonish faces, realistic faces, long faces, wide faces, big faces, small faces by the time I finished, I must’ve experimented with at least 20 faces. But at the end, I decided to make my character’s face, realistic and angular, with slanted cheeks. I wanted this because I had looked through many egyptian and middle eastern faces, both cartoon and real, and I realized that they had very angular faces. The hair was also very important, the hair I had chosen was inspired by Dora the Explorer because I had looked through some photos of ancient egyptian paintings and it kind of reminded me of Dora’s hair. So I looked at some photos and implied it on my character. Throughout my first drafts, I had my character standing up while writing but I thought it wasn’t exaggerated enough. So I made him sitting on a rock but it made him look like he was relieving himself especially with the rock underneath him so I made my character in a squatting position. I think that really over exaggerated the position. I also decided to make the scribe a little bit fat because most scribes probably didn’t get a lot of exercise just writing all day. After I got the position, I had to decide the clothing. The clothing was very easy, I simply looked at pictures of actual scribes and found that they wear nothing but small white skirts, as did most egyptians did.
Some strengths I had was the actual planning phase. Since the day I was assigned my font, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. And after a little bit of research, the image in my head cleared up. Also, I think I did a good job experimenting, I tried many times and experimented until I got the exact posture or position I wanted. However, I don’t think my final draft was detailed enough. That was something I could’ve improved on. Also, it didn’t look very cartoonish, I probably could’ve changed the eyes to make it bigger or give him accessories like the head accessory that King Tutankhamun wore. If I were to do this project again, I would look at some examples of cartoon characters created by last year’s students to give me inspiration.
I think that stereotype affected my character hugely because most people know egyptians for having the head accessory and for wearing only skirts. And because of this, it helped me get a clear picture of what my character looked like without any research whatsoever.
1. English Creative Writing
In English, we are studying the book the Outsiders. A project we had to complete was to write a short passage from a character’s point of view, either first or third person, something that happened that wasn’t explained in the book. I enjoyed writing this piece and I think I did very well.
https://docs.google.com/a/yis.ac.jp/document/d/1IBZGq_70UGvKcu–ncqeuS2NrfYX7XFxc1DtH5ArWCM/edit
2. Art Font Cartoon Character
In Art, we are studying about stereotypes and how we can apply them to different characters. The project was that we were given a font and we had to draw a picture of a cartoon character bringing out the stereotypes. I think that this project was better than most of my other art projects I think it came out very decent.
3. Math UKMT
In maths, we had a competition quiz called the UKMT intermediate challenge. I think I did pretty well on this.
4. Science Test
Currently in science, we are studying evolution and genes. We had a big test and I did very well on it. I am very proud of this test. I got an 8 out of 8.
5. French Test
In French, we were studying Abidjan and foods. We had a test and I got a very good score.
6. Humanities Paragraph
In Humanities we are learning about Yokohama history. Part of a four part project, we had to write about 200-300 words about the history of Yokohama and how the westerners influenced Yokohama, particularly the bluff, Motomachi and Chinatown.
https://docs.google.com/a/yis.ac.jp/file/d/0BzRPjq8XWTRuRWdwTnNpZmhJTmc/edit
7. Drama Speech
In Drama, we are learning how to persuade someone. We had to choose a topic and discuss whether we were for it or against it. I chose being against gun control.
Drama 8C: Impromptu Speeches from YIS Arts on Vimeo.
In English we had a recent project where we had to choose a poem from the Poetry 180 website and interpret it and give a presentation. But the interesting point of this project was that we had to have some sort of comparison with another poem, song lyrics, videos and more.
May: Lift Your Right Arm-Peter Cherches
I think May started off her presentation very strong. She made a command to the class to lift their right arm. This immediately got my attention. I knew that her poem would be about some sort of command. Her slides had a lot of impact in my perspective because there was a slide each line of the poem. This really emphasized the meanings of the commands. I also really like the comparison text. The comparison text included a child having a conversation with her friend discussing whether or not adults lie. I think it was interesting because she connected it with how adults always have the authority and we shouldn’t question them.
Marshall: Sidekicks-Ronald Koertge
From the beginning, I knew that ‘Sidekicks’ would be completely different to ‘Lift Your Right Arm’ based on the titles. The poem Sidekicks had a different voice to May’s poem. It described how Sidekicks are always not recognized. Something I really liked about Marshall’s presentation was that he wasn’t afraid to share his opinions on the poem. He said that he didn’t like the poem because of how depressing it was and the lack of literary devices. He also broke up the 4 stanzas. The first stanza was about the imperfections of the sidekicks. The second stanza was about the brave part of the sidekicks. The third stanza was about how the sidekicks are like us. And the final stanza about the destruction of sidekicks.
Kazuki: To A Daughter Home-Linda Pastan
This poem was my personal favorite because it was so touching. I could really relate to it because my parents and I are very close and to think of leaving each other for college? His analysis was really in-depth. He had many philosophies and thoughts about this poem that you would have to think about in order to really make the connection. A connection I especially like was his connection with the TV show Hajimete no Otsukai which is a Japanese television show where little kids go shopping by themselves for the first time.
Hemanth: Bad Day-Kay Ryan
Hemanth had a good interaction with the audience. He asked a lot of questions to keep the audience focused on his presentation and not lose focus. His explanations and analysis on the poem was also very deep. In comparison, he made a comic representing the events that happened along the poem. I thought this was an interesting way to show connections. Nobody else had done this so for me, it had a pretty big impact on me.
The book award winning book 11/22/69 is a novel by Stephen King. It is about the protagonist (Jake Epping aka George Amberson) traveling through time to prevent the assassination of JFK.
Jake Epping is a 35 year old high school English Teacher who makes extra money by teaching adults trying to get their GED program. In this class, he receives a gruesome essay by Harry Dunning who tells about how his drunk and abusive father kills his mother, sister and brother using a sledgehammer 50 years ago.
Later, Jake’s good friend Al, who runs a local restaurant, reveals a secret that he has a time machine hidden in the pantry of his restaurant. This time machine takes a person back to exactly September 9, 1958 at 11:58 am every time. Al, who is dying of Lung Cancer, convinces Jake to complete a mission that he couldn’t in time, to prevent the JFK assassination. He arrives in 1958 as George Amberson, as a real estate agent. But he meets a Librarian named Sadie Dunhill who rocks Jake’s world.
It had a huge impact on my life because it changed the way I looked at time travel, what I would do with it and how I would use it. It made me ask myself questions like, would I misuse this machine? What would I use it for? Would I actually try to use it?
Shelfari Shelf:
8C Drama: Status from YIS Arts on Vimeo.
In this formative assessment, I portrayed a very rich person (Steve Balmer) who wanted to buy a new car. I clearly over took the status because I was very unfriendly and bossy to him. He tried to answer back at times but I made sure the point clear and I was in charge.
What is the skill that I used?
A skill that I used was voice. I used an a lot of authority in my voice to show that I was the one in charge. I also had to have good posture in order to show that authority. It was especially important to show authority so that the audience would have a very easy time trying to figure out who took over the authority.
How effective was my status and reversal of status?
It was quite clear who was in charge from the very beginning. As Kai tried to be nice and greet me, he was clearly surprised by my rudeness and authority. This happened in the first few seconds which was especially helpful for the audience.
How would I use this in performance?
This would be used in acting for movies, plays and other types of performing art events. This is important to establish the authority quickly so the audience doesn’t have to wonder who is commanding.
*I cannot post the reflection for the Character Analysis and Formative because I was absent on both days.
In this unit, we had to make a presentation on anything we were passionate about. I chose to talk about the future of technology because I thought that computer addiction is already a problem now but in the future, it would be even more addicting because of the developing technology. In the investigation phase, we had to research some good examples of a slide show. I found some TED talks that were very inspiring in the way you could present. Also, I watched some of Steve Jobs’ presentation and learned a lot about that type of style he performed in. My strength for this part was that I found many good examples of good and bad presentations. I also participated in group discussions a lot. Sharing ideas with my groups. In the planning phase, I planned my presentation. I did some research on possible tools I could use. I researched the tool I researched was ThingLink. I found ThingLink interesting and easy to use but it couldn’t really help me in my presentation. In the design phase, I came up with a couple ideas for my title slide. I wanted to come up with something simple and would catch people’s attention immediately. I would achieve this by making something simple. Finally, in my create phase, I created a presentation that was kind of based on my title page. Simple and clean. My presentation wasn’t the best. When I had practiced, I hadn’t stuttered that much. I was also too fast at the beginning. However, I had good eye contact with the audience as well as my projection. I also had a good intro and outro to show what i was talking about.
Music is like a universal language. It is recognized by everybody in the world. However, people from each country have their own different variety of music. They have their own genres, instruments, harmonies etc. There are also songs that are covers but have their own genre, instruments, rhythm and harmonies. An example of this would be Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen (original) and Bohemian Rhapsody by Hayseed Dixie (Parody). These two songs have the same lyrics and melody but sound very, very different.
Bohemian Rhapsody is a song by British rock band Queen. It was written by the late Freddy Mercury in 1975 for the album ‘A Night at the Opera’. Although Mercury never explained what the lyrics meant, I think that it is about a person who shoots a person and goes to hell. This song shows his ‘adventures’ through hell. The song has no specific chorus. It, instead, has 4 main parts. There is a ballad part ending with a guitar solo, an opera section, a hard rock section and finally an outro. The song starts with B flat major and changes to A flat major, A major and F major. It has the key signature of 4/4 usually. In other measures, the key signatures are 5/4, 6/8, 12/8 and 20/8. The song starts with an opera styled part with every member of Queen singing. Then it goes into a piano ballad until the 2:35 minute mark. It then goes into a guitar solo that Brian May plays. Then at the 3:03 mark, the band cuts out and the opera comes in until the hard rock part. The opera part sounds like gibberish to me, it talks about Gods, hell and other mystical stuff. The hard rock riff comes in at 4:07. The riff was written by Mercury. It then goes into the outro to the ending.
Hayseed Dixie is an American parody, bluegrass band. They covered the song Bohemian Rhapsody in 2010 for their parody album ‘Killer Grass’.
These two songs are the same song but very different at the same time. An example of a difference is the genre. It is very easy to tell. The original is a rock ballad with some opera parts while the parody is a very bluegrass and country parody of the song. The instruments are also very different the original version has standard rock instruments. The electric guitar, electric bass, vocals, drums and piano while the parody has standard bluegrass instruments. Vocals, Banjo, Mandolin, acoustic guitar, acoustic bass, djembe, dobro and violin. The difference with these two instrument setups can cause a huge different in sound as shown in these two songs. Tempo is also important. The tempos for these two songs are different with the original because slower and the parody being much quicker.
There are also some similarities such as the melody of the song. They are sung and performed in the same key and key signature as well. The form of the song is also the same. It has the four main parts.
Overall, I prefer the original song because it feels much smoother than the parody version. The parody version sounds rushed and a little bit forced. Also, it doesn’t really fit into that specific genre. The reason I chose this song is because it has such a big impact on me. The lyrics are like the moral of the story and I hugely respect this song for that.
In this unit, we were required to create an abstract art piece based on inspiration from an artist or artsits. The significant concept is ‘The principles and elements of art help us to create and evaluate art.’ and the unit question is ‘What makes art attractive.’
During the investigation I researched the artist Wassily Kandinsky because of his use of shapes and profound feelings that he puts in his artworks. However, his paintings were very complex and they would take a very long time to finish. Therefore, I looked at other artists such as Jackson Pollock and Kenneth Noland. I researched Jackson Pollock because of his unique style of drip painting, which I thought was intriguing if the right colours were used (using the colour wheel). I also liked Kenneth Noland’s style because he used the emphasis element which creates a free flowing piece. I used these two artist’s styles and combined it into my artwork. I sketched a few thumbnails inspired by Kandinsky and some others inspired by Nolland and Pollock. My final plan was to add a little bit of a Noland and Pollock style into one painting. I planed to use the elements and principles, color, shape and emphasis. For color, I used specific colors according to the color wheel. The colors I chose were ‘accented analogic’ (two compliment colors with analogic colors for one of the compliments). The colors were yellow (background), blue, purple and red (drip paint). I used shape for the circle and triangle. These shapes were for the Kenneth Noland inspired part. Emphasis was also a big part of my art piece. The emphasis for my piece was the Kenneth Noland Part.
Overall, my painting went quite well. It came out how I planned it. However, some things I could’ve done better was the drip painting part. It looks quite awkward because there is too many drips. I think I got my art piece done in a reasonable amount of time because I was focused and engaged in class. I added an extra layer of paint on my background because I wanted the color to be extra creamy.
