Survive to Thrive
Survive to Thrive project is a Movie Series made up of 12 episodes. My group and I are episode 10. This series is about a society facing a collapse and learning to use lost knowledge to thrive into a new world. The episodes are divided in three categories: Survive, Transition and Thrive.
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Down below are the digital portfolios of my groupmates.
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Behind the Scenes:
While making the trailer we then thought it was a good idea to make a poster introducing each and every episode. I volunteered to be in charge of making the poster. The poster consisted of having a picture that represented the main focus of your episode as well as the title.
The photo I decided that represents our episode the most was a photo of people putting their hands together (as seen on the right), because in our episode the community comes together as one and starts working together. |
Here to the right is a picture of Matthew, Maritza and I working either on our DP's, our build workshop or the editing process. The editing of our episode consisted of all of our hard work. We all helped in the editing process. Some people were better at it than others but those who needed the help were able to get it.
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Consensus Building:
In order to be an effective group we had a talk to our group members of what we think makes an effective group as well as sharing our strengths and challenges that we face while working with groups. We then shared triggers which are things we dislike group members doing. For example, if we dislike group members getting off task and talking to there friends then that would be considered a trigger.
After talking we would make a list called community agreements which is a list that we promise to follow throughout the project. This list is placed in our group binder which is there for us to always go to when we need to be reminded of our agreements.
After talking we would make a list called community agreements which is a list that we promise to follow throughout the project. This list is placed in our group binder which is there for us to always go to when we need to be reminded of our agreements.
I believe that the process of creating this film takes a lot of cooperation. My group mates and I definitely had some troubles. Our scene was almost cut from the film due to negativity flowing through the group. We had an idea for our scene to make a bartering system but when we brought that up to our teachers they seemed to not like it and shot down our idea by saying we need to come up with something different. Thats when the negativity started because we thought there was nothing else to be created for our scene.We had a hard time coming up with a scene idea and that caused us to give up and think that there isn't anything that we could do.
Every episode group had something called a speaking token. Who ever had the token was the person who was allowed to speak at the moment. Our speaking token was a small toy kangaroo. We would have small conversations about how we felt we worked as a group, as well as talking about what has gotten done and what still needs to get done. This was very helpful because it was a time to organize our work. I also enjoyed it because we were able to talk about where our stress levels are at which was very helpful.
This is a Table Tent that I made for my group. Every episode had their own so people know which group is which.
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Episode "Build" Process:
In this episode we are building a stove which we are using to make cake for our Party. This stove is solar powered. We put together a research document with things that we could build for our episode.
The build we decided to make was a solar oven. In our episode we have a small party/get together with the whole community. We thought we should make a cake for this event so we needed something to make the cake with. The solar oven would be able to bake the cake without power.
As a group we made a mini prototype of our solar oven. It is made out of half of Soda Can, Aluminum foil, cardboard and wire. This prototype was used to help us get an idea of what the build is going to look like.
We got the donation of the oil drum. This right here is a metal drum cut in half. This metal drum is used as the actual oven and the wood on the bottom is the base.We drilled drainage holes in the bottom of the oven. This will allow liquefied steam that drips down the sides to escape the oven. After that, our wonderful teacher Mr. Ted painted the inside of the drum with reflective paint. The reflective paint will maximize the amount of heat inside the oven. The fourth picture are sheets of of tempered glass.These are used to insulate the solar oven.
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Script Process:
The script process began with a lesson about the guide to screenwriting. We learned about how to write it and the parts of the screen play.During the screenwriting process you have to be very specific and label everything. It starts with being specific about the location and what the characters are doing including emotions and movements etc.
Click here to see our final Script.
Click here to see our final Script.
Research and Development:
After being introduced to the project we had to do research and get a feel of surviving and thriving before going straight into creating our episodes. We watched movies and tv shows and read stories such as The giver, Minority Report, Harrison Bergeron, Survivors and Survivor man. By doing this we gained perspective as to watching societies being collapsed and seeing how it affected each individual differently. We did research on different societies that have collapsed and learned about how they collapsed. There is a man named Jared Diamond who wrote a book about how societies choose to fail or succeed. We learned about the factors that contribute to a collapse, for example : overpopulation, soil problems, Habitat destruction etc, which lead to more of a collapse.
We were put in a group to do research on place that was an example of a collapsed society and we were given Easter Island. This is a presentation which we did on that collapse.
Click here to see our Easter Island presentation.
We also did research on what we thought was lost knowledge. Down below is a presentation my group and I made about the lost knowledge of cooking.
Click here to see our Lost Knowledge: Cooking Methods presentation.
We were put in a group to do research on place that was an example of a collapsed society and we were given Easter Island. This is a presentation which we did on that collapse.
Click here to see our Easter Island presentation.
We also did research on what we thought was lost knowledge. Down below is a presentation my group and I made about the lost knowledge of cooking.
Click here to see our Lost Knowledge: Cooking Methods presentation.
My personal Growth:
A habit of heart and mind that I grew in the most was evidence. I believe that I grew a lot in this area because this was actually one of my struggles in past projects. I would wait till last minute to gather evidence, but I took that into consideration and ended up keeping evidence since day 1 of this project. I was very proud of that because I now have a variety of evidence to chose from. I hope to keep it a strength of mine for future projects because it was very helpful and useful.
A habit of heart and mind that I struggled in was perspective. I believe as a cinematographer it is very critical to get the right shots. As a group we thought it would be nice to get close up shots of each individual while speaking. We then uploaded the videos to edit and when we started to edit we noticed that it didn't look smooth. That was because after filming one person talking, we'd go to a next person and then after, we'd go back to the first person, but because the camera moved and was placed differently it would change the image.
The habit of heart and mind that I hope to work further is perseverance. Like I mentioned in the "consensus building" page, our episode group almost got cut. Being cut means being deleted from the movie and not being able to participate in the making. This was very challenging for my group because we felt like our ideas were being destroyed. My group and I learned to persevere through this moment. In order to persevere we had to come together as a group and think of a new and better idea, with a lot of brainstorming we were able to. I hope to always try my hardest to persevere when wanting to give up.
A habit of heart and mind that I struggled in was perspective. I believe as a cinematographer it is very critical to get the right shots. As a group we thought it would be nice to get close up shots of each individual while speaking. We then uploaded the videos to edit and when we started to edit we noticed that it didn't look smooth. That was because after filming one person talking, we'd go to a next person and then after, we'd go back to the first person, but because the camera moved and was placed differently it would change the image.
The habit of heart and mind that I hope to work further is perseverance. Like I mentioned in the "consensus building" page, our episode group almost got cut. Being cut means being deleted from the movie and not being able to participate in the making. This was very challenging for my group because we felt like our ideas were being destroyed. My group and I learned to persevere through this moment. In order to persevere we had to come together as a group and think of a new and better idea, with a lot of brainstorming we were able to. I hope to always try my hardest to persevere when wanting to give up.