18smiths blog heyy killjoys;)

During english class we have been focusing on films and the things most people don’t notice in movies but are very important in making the movie become magic. Some of these things are: lighting and special effects, shots and angles, symbols and sound effects and soundtrack. Ms.Cox had separated our class into four different groups that were to focus on those four different subjects of film. We watched the movie as a class and made sure to pay close attention to our own subjects. This lead to creating and presenting a presentation on our subject. We had to create scripts, we had to focus on specific parts of the film Indiana Jones and the Raiders of  the Lost Ark  and then write in our scripts what the part of the film had to do with our subject for example: I talked about a part of the movie where Indiana Jones and some of his workers were digging up the ark and behind them was the sun , which created a silhouette which is a technique in movies. Finally we showed are presentation to the class which had to be at least 15 minutes. Above is my groups reflection on our presentation.

During English we had a exam that was suppose to be a news report based on either: A: based on a story about Mt Fuji erupting, B:stolen cars and police chase, C famous sports star injury and D: a new gadget invented. I did my story on C. In class today we reflected in our english books on the following questions and also answered the questions:

What can I target between now and Grade 7?

I think I should target making sure not to overuse words because that could cause my reading to look rushed. Between now and Grade 7  I’m going to try and not miss minor grammar mistakes because all I really have to do is fix that problem is check my writing more carefully and several times. I suppose I need to work on making sure to use capital letters because I just forget to use them and sometimes rush through my writing so I just don’t notice the letters. One thing I always notice in my reading is I use a lot of informal words which don’t match with my writing.

How will I do it?

I will hit my targets by as I said before checking over my writing more and using a wider variety of words by reading books that aren’t in my genre so I can learn new words as well as checking my thesaurus. Also I would like to try and take my time when I’m writing more important projects or assessments because then I will be able to check over my writing and not sprint through my writing, and make mindless mistakes. To make sure I dont use informal words, to make sure I don’t use informal words I’m determined to read novels that aren’t as casual that are written towards only more teen books.

During english class we are starting a unit about film or movies, to start off this by looking at how angles and shots of the camera can change the way you see a character and how the angle interprets what they are feelings.

What we basically did was we went to the roof and had a partner, we would have roles of a(who had to direct the person in the shot) and b (who was the actual person in the shot). Then we switched roles.  What we were suppose to do was experiment with different types of angles for example high angled,low angled shots, medium view, long view, short view, close up and extreme close up, then at the very end we experimented with the zoom.

The purpose of this activity was to experiment and really see how different angles and shots can express emotions and how the character(s) feel.I also think the purpose of this was to get the hang of how to use the camera and to not only have looked at pictures also experience what its like to be in the shot and to be directing the shot.

The outcome of this event was pretty good my partner and I got several different shots done and also got to work with another group to have more people in one frame.I think one bad outcome was at the very end where the person who had the video on their camera didn’t have the ability to share the shots with me aside from one of them.

Something that worked was the experimenting of the angles because I found it really helped me on how to take accurate angles and helped me find out what the different angles really meant. What also worked was switching roles because if we didn’t do that obviously we wouldn’t have been able to see how your partner was feeling while you took the shots of them.

What didn’t work was when we became a group with another pair we didn’t really use group shots we just did single shots which I thought it made not useful to be in a group. Another thing that didn’t really work was some of the zoomed in shots from a far distance because they always turned into a blurry shot where you can barely notice what your shooting.

I learned a bunch about different shots and angles and how they can convey feelings and how

During english class we worked on reading a mystery book of choice. Then when we finished reading it we had to come up with a podcast book review where we had to add numerous amounts of information about the book.

I read the book “the murder of Roger Ackroyd” by Agatha Christie.

When people commented on my previous podcast bo0k review I found it very helpful because the constructive criticism gave me good things to consider fixing about my podcast for example they said  you can work on speaking clearer, slower and louder because it was difficult to understand my podcast at some points which I tried to improve in the murder mystery podcast but I didn’t exactly fix that. Also in future podcasts I think if I had a chance to work with a partner it would work a whole lot better and teach me more on the speed of my voice because I would be able to match the other persons voice tempo with mine so I wouldn’t rush.

Below is my podcast hope you enjoy(: and I hope you can see that the book is really great through my book review.