blue band projects

The Blue Band had a busy arc full of history, current events, and camera techniques. During their explorations, they talked about camera angles, lighting, and special effects; learned how to critically analyze a film; made vlogs of their work and understanding of ideas; and talked about advertising, representing Aesop's fables on film, and the hero's journey. They also studied a lot of history through film by watching both documentaries and fictional films about certain time periods, working backward from the American Civil War to the Holy Roman Empire. The projects that they ended up with were varied but all employed elements of their film studies.Jane created a series of silent film reboots, where she would pick a scene from a current movie and recreate it in the style of the early silent films from the early 20th century. She used title cards for important dialogue, instructed her actors to overact their emotions, and sped up the action to mimic the movie reels of a bygone era. In total, she made nine short films!Jack's project was a study of aerial videography, with research about the history of film in the air and construction of his own tricopter.JP made a horror music video inspired by the suggested violence technique. He wanted to make a music video with a storyline, and used the song "Tiptoe through the Tulips" slowed down as well as adjustments in lighting to create a creepy mood.Laurel's project was an experiment in hand drawn animation over live action film. She used three different programs to create her short films: DoInk, After Effects, and Animation Studio, and ended up creating five of her planned twelve storyboards despite a lot of technical difficulties.Josh also worked in animation, inspired by the CGI in the film "Avatar". He studied the history of animation and experimented with Daz software to create the camera's movements through a cityscape. It rendered very slowly and he had to be persistent with computer crash adversity.Aidan made a video tutorial on how to make a balsa model aircraft, taking what he doesn't like in tutorial videos and making it better for beginners who enjoy this same hobby. He showed us a timelapse of a section of the building process and has made three instructional videos so far, and plans to make more over the summer.Amelia made four films based on morals and fables. She collaborated with Jane on the filming, but did all of the scripting, storyboarding, and editing solo. Each video is accompanied by a director's vlog, where she explains her process.Evan did a ton of research and produced a series of videos on three aspects of history of the Roman Empire, in the style of John Green's Crash Course: the Punic Wars, religion and government, and Christianity. He spent three weeks doing research and worried he wouldn't have time to do the filming, but ended up being more prepared because he was so well-versed in the history.