Humanities: LNG Review & Design Challenge Continues

LNG.
Today we start with Mr. Brackett providing some guidance and feedback on LNG responses.

There is now a Google Doc that you will complete each Monday and Wednesday, our designated LNG days.

Then you will put that guidance and feedback to work by completing a LNG using Newsela.com as your source.

DESIGN CHALLENGE.
EMPATHY phase.

Most every group is working on empathy interviews.  These should be completed in time to do empathy mapping on Wednesday.  Your group is still welcome to go to whichever phase works best for your thinking and brain.  Just make sure you are DOCUMENTING what you are doing.

On Google Classroom, I've added graphic organizers to capture your empathy interviews.  You can type notes into them OR add pictures of your notes.

BLOG.

This week's required post is on Google Classroom.  We're going to us that as our consist source of daily work and announcements and use Flight307 here as much as possible to add more information.

This week's blog post is over the totem work.

We never quite connected the dots with our totems, STEAL and symbolism. So this week, we fill in that blank on our blogs. Explain how your totem symbolizes you, how each part of the design is very intentional, and how it your totem reflects any/all of the following: your speech, your thoughts, your effect on others, your actions, your looks. Include a screen shot of your totem design AND hopefully, if the week goes according to plan, a picture of the finished totem printed out.

HOMEWORK.

Blogs: 3+ Posts
Due: Friday, Nov 21st
Req'd Post:  We never quite connected the dots with our totems, STEAL and symbolism. So this week, we fill in that blank on our blogs. Explain how your totem symbolizes you, how each part of the design is very intentional, and how it your totem reflects any/all of the following: your speech, your thoughts, your effect on others, your actions, your looks. Include a screen shot of your totem design AND hopefully, if the week goes according to plan, a picture of the finished totem printed out.

Design Challenge:  3 Phases (Discover, Empathize, Experiment)
Due: Thursday, Nov 20th

Humanities: Design Thinking: Empathy

Hi folks,

Most of you folks will be conducting empathy interviews this week.  Before you go about doing so, take a look at these videos.  A lot of helpful information in here.  You needn't watch all of them.  Jump around.  See which seem to have what you find most helpful.

NOTE: The second one does a great job of explaining empathy vs sympathy.

Pop Culture: Film Culture Product

Based on the work we have done in class around film culture, create a product that demonstrates your understanding of one or more of the following essential questions:

To what extent does film culture influence you?
To what extent do you influence film culture?
To what extent does film culture influence society?
To what extent does society influence film culture?

You will be assessed using the following rubric.




Due: November 25

HOMEWORK.

Blog: 3+ Posts
Req'd Post: Film Poster.

Begin: Film Poster.
Due: November 25

Pop Culture: Making Movie Magic Happen. (Sorta.)

Making the Movie Magic Happen. (Sorta.)

Stage 1. After watching a couple of clips under Mr. Ryder’s tutelage, try your hand at storyboarding, directing and cinematography.

1. In groups of one, two or three, choose a film from the  AFI Top 100 - 10th Anniversary list that you have seen or at least sorta kinda “know.” (This list is due for an update in 2017.  I’m curious to see what happens  . . .)
2. Find a clip of a well-known scene from that film online.  They are out there.
3. Using either people or LEGO minifigs and either digital photography or sketching, recreate that scene shot-by-shot, angle-by-angle
4. As you are producing that recreation, think about the placement of the camera, the framing, the movement.  Do your best to create as honest a reproduction as possible.  The point?  To see if you can see filmmaking from a creator’s point of view and become more aware of how the filmmaker’s convince their audiences to see and think about the subject matter in a particular way.

Which takes us to Stage 2.

After recreating that scene to develop a sense of how it all “works” in a finished product, use your skills to tell the following story.

Choose and recreate the camera angles to the best of your abilities from the following sources:

http://www.empireonline.com/features/film-studies-101-camera-shots-styles/p1

Great tool because it shows you examples from actual films

http://www.lssc.edu/faculty/matthew_w_kennedy/Shared%20Documents/ENC%201101/Film%20Terms.pdf

Fantastic explanation of camera angles

http://www.thestoryboardartist.com/Site/Film.html

Several great examples of storyboarding at work

Stage 3. #ShowYourWork by Creating a Google Presentation, Prezi, or other slideshow to show how your team did.   Post that to each of your blogs.

DUE. End of Next Class.

HOMEWORK.

Blog: 3+ Posts

Due: Friday, November 14

Req'd Post: Movie Poster.

Pop Culture: Digging Deeper Into Film Criticism

We'll start class by developing criteria for our teaser trailers and film festival programming.  We'll divide into groups of folks who are most interested in creating each one.   From there, based on the research you've done and experience you've had, you'll determine the criteria by which your product should be assessed.  I will turn this criteria into a rubric for Thursday.  Products will be due at the end of next week.

From there we will examine several clips from critically acclaimed and culturally relevant films.  Our goal is to identify the qualities that make up a quality film and also to get a better sense of the techniques filmmakers and actors use to engage the audience -- as well develop meaning and intention.

Here are the clips we'll be working with though not necessarily in this order.



HOMEWORK.
Blog: 3+ Posts
Req'd Post:  Film Review.

A.  Read through the four reviews of the first Hunger Games films linked here.
Roger Ebert here
Lisa Schwarzbaum here
Peter Travers here
IMDB.com User emptygravity here

B.  Choose a film you feel worthy of your time to write about.  It may be because you want to tear it apart and it may be because you want to sing its praises.  It may be a little bit of both.

C.  Write a 2-3 paragraph film review in which you attempt to copy the style of one the above reviewers by using the same techniques in your own review.

You might consider which of the above reviewers use the following:
References to other films in which the actors have appeared
References to other films the director has made
References to the source material for the film (in this case, a novel)
Summary of the plot
Spoilers and/or spoiler warnings
Spoiler-free discussion
Vivid and descriptive language
Casual and general langugage
Use of 1st Person "I"
Some form of review coding system: numbers, stars, thumbs, etc.

D.  In a final paragraph, explain which reviewer's style you were trying to adopt for your review.  To what extent has this influenced how you watch films?

DUE: Friday, November 7

DESIGN: Film Festival or Teaser Trailer
DUE: Friday, November 14