Rolling...

I'm doing a mostly self-motivated senior project.  My plan is to shoot and edit a short animated film version of my two-minute play from last year's Thirty Plays in Sixty Minutes at Hawken.  Last year, I recorded the vocal performances of my cast from the play (Jocelyn Adams, Lindsay Kopit, and Alec Aldrich) with a high-quality mic.  Since then, I've edited the raw recording into a trim, audio-only version of the story.  I've also toyed around with building puppets for animating.

Today I continued with building puppets.  I'm going for an industrial look, so it's a lot of bare, twisted wire and such.  I also did some work on cataloguing the different sounds my actors make when they say each line, so I can use the appropriate mouth shape at the right time when it comes to shooting.  Mostly, it's been a busywork day.  I've cleaned up work spaces and begun setting up my shooting space.  I ran a bunch of errands for materials, from ping pong balls for heads to pegboard for flooring to clamp lights for suitable lighting maneuverability.  We'll see how things go....

Meeting and Structuring

Well, I had an easy day. I met my sponsor and his contact, Tom Turner, a former Hawken teacher (1999). (He says hi to Mr. Breisch!)  Apart from the fact that I had to wait for an hour and half to meet my sponsor; note he was not late I was extremely early, thanks to transport logistics! We talked about the project's aims and what kind of training and footage I had to look at. Tom Turner sits on the USA-Ohio  board of soccer and has a phd in soccer, I don't know name of the course he took. On the other hand, Mr Baltes, my sponsor is an A licensed coach in America; that means he could easily coach the US National Soccer team. These two like working with each other, and today they basically worked  the psychological approach to this project. Now I am more confident because I know exactly what I am looking for and what my final product will look like.

Tommorow, I begin serious work with 'under 8' year olds, I have never worked with very young kids but this is going to be interesting. Overall this project looks promising, can't wait to meet new coaches and players!

A Good First Day

My first day of project went very well, and has left me with much enthusiasm. When I arrived in the morning, my sponsor greeted me with a warm welcome. She gave me a quick tour of the school building and introduced me to faculty along the way. Everyone was very supportive and encouraging. In the morning, I observed both seventh and eight grade social studies classes. The seventh grade is currently studying the American Revolution, while the eight grade is studying the Civil War. In each of the six classes, I introduced myself to the students and answered a few questions. Today I was given the responsibility of proctoring a study hall and I was able to help several students with their math homework. After the study hall, the eight graders were fitted for their graduation gowns and had a practice Liturgy in the church for the upcoming May Crowning ceremony. I must admit that it was quite a challenge to organize so many students who are all socializing when you are asking them to listen and follow directions. At the end of the day, my sponsor gave me flowers for my own desk that she had provided for me. I look forward to tomorrow and the remainder of my project!

Off to a rough start . . .

     For those of you who don't know, I am shadowing/working with Bob Craig who owns and runs a small advertising and marketing firm in Chagrin Falls. He mainly works with small businesses on their television, web, and print advertising.

     Working for Craig Advertising posed challenges for me even before I entered the office. I drove past the office and walked into the wrong building before turning around and noticing that the right building had “1180 Bell Road” on a huge sign out front. After receiving a warm welcome from Bob Craig, his parents, and their dog, I got to see how Bob bills his clients for T.V. advertising spots he gets for them. Then, he set me up on a webinar called Pro Web Design Course where I listened to introductions to business, sales, and branding. Each was about eight minutes in length and provided a basic knowledge of what the web design business is all about. Afterwards, he gave me the task of researching a new client of his for whom he is creating a new logo. He did not know very much about this new client, so he wanted me to find out what they did and then look up their major competitors and their logos. I put all of this information into a Word document to which he could refer later. Finally, I watched him put together a monthly online newsletter for a client to mail out to their customers.

1st Day of 2nd Grade

Being the first day of "school" for me, I was fairly nervous, yet very excited to return to second grade. The teacher wasn't in class today, which was a little bit unnerving especially since I really didn't know any of the kids. We sat down to morning meeting and introduced ourselves to each other. I tried to catch all 17 names while attempting to avoid the typical second grade introduction, which included trying to tell me everything there is to tell me about their lives. We started the day off by working on cinquain poems, in which I helped the kids figure out nouns, verbs, and adjectives that would describe the members of their family. The entire morning consisted of organizing and studying new spelling words, writing poetry, and finishing literacy and skill work. The kids immediately warmed up to me and seemed to feel very comfortable asking me for help with their work, or just asking me questions about myself. After lunch and recess, I went with the class to their tech lab time in which they worked on brochures of endangered animals. I walked around correcting grammar, helping them to make their sentences a little bit more coherent. For the rest of the afternoon I sat in the classroom assembling "travel journals" and poetry books for the kids, as well as typed up poems that they had previously written. Before I knew it, it was 2:45, and the class was ready to go home. It was a very exciting yet tiring day to say the least. Second graders are quite difficult to keep up with! Although I came into my first day slightly nervous, it was very relieving to know that the class was happy to welcome me into their classroom.

Hello Senior Project Advisees! 

I hope your first day of project is moving along swimmingly.  If you have any issues or concerns, please let your respective SP advisors know.

Looking forward to your posts!  Be sure to comment on someone else's blog post in addition to your three posts per week.

Welcome!

Welcome Seniors and Senior Project Advisors!  I hope your projects are wonderful experiences for you!  Your advisors and other members of our project group are looking forward to tracking your experiences and progress during the course of your project.

Reminder to seniors: 

Post to our blog 3 times per week (M,W, F) providing commentary, updates, and stories about what you are doing or learning.  Posts should be approx. 200 words.

Feel free to provide pictures, videos, audio from your project.