Cumulative Blog Reflection

     The senior capstone project was a mind opening experience. I'm glad that I had to face the hard work and challenges that was involved during this project. I think every high school senior should have to a project like this. At first, like mostly all the seniors, was reluctant to do the capstone project. Now that its done, I'm glad that I accomplished it and most notably learned from it.

     During the capstone project, I had to communicate with many different personalities. There was one personality I thought to be obnoxious but I kept my calm and just listen to his criticism. I had to be mentally focused at the shoots I was involved in. I was on my feet constantly running back and forth and had to be ready at any given second. I had many duties when working on the shoots such as slating, moving equipment, and being assistant director. 

     Knowledge and experience were among the most important aspects of this project I gained. I am ready for any situation that life throws at me. I gained more confidence in speaking with other people who I don't know at all. I am not afraid to start a conversation with random strangers. I learned many things about filmmaking such as lighting, significance of colors, and editing. I also learned that being a independent director comes with a lot of responsibility especially if you don't have a whole team to work with.

     The challenges I faced was writing the five to seven page essay. It was just difficult to me in general. I was busy with sports and school. I learned to just do it and get it done. I complained to myself a lot but I felt great being overwhelmed with the work because without the hard work, I couldn't see myself where I am now. Now I am a gym enthusiast which I never really thought I would be. I train every time I get a chance. I am ready for challenges in my future. I've been challenged and I accomplished them. There is no challenge tough enough to stop me from completing it, whatever it may be. 

  

Last Day With Mentor

May 11, 2013.
     I arrived at my mentors workplace at 9 a.m. I learned that organization is one of the most important things while making a feature film. You can get away with music videos or 30 second clips. If you are not organized from the start, he says its like "shooting yourself in the foot". The feature film he is directing has thousands upon thousands of takes and scenes. I logged in those takes and scenes onto a word excel spreadsheet. I learned to convert raw footage to high resolution and low resolution footage. I was a long process especially for the conversion of raw footage to high resolution footage. I learned the importance of having backup data for the footage. You never know what might happen. A hard drive failure, flooding of the studio, or fire can destroy data. He had four backup hard drives. He keeps one in the bank for safe measure. I learned that a movie such as Iron Man, there would be a team ready to take the footage, convert it and make backup copies. My mentor is an independent director so most of that work would be done by him. I realized that I do not want to become a independent director. I also learn how to edit clips, color correction, add stock animation, and place scenes in sequence. I worked on my online portfolio and finished it. I ended my work at 5 p.m. I logged in 8 hours for the day and a total of 28 hours.

January 18 2009 day.

It was January 18^th, 2009. It was a day that brought many changes to my life. Love, pain, passion and many other emotional and physical changes were brought because of this day. 1189542 is a series of numbers that I can’t forget. It tells the month, day, year, and time I asked a girl to be my girlfriend. I didn’t know what I was getting into and didn’t know what was going to happen. The moment I asked her out, was the moment that would forever change my life.

            The girl was a stranger. I met her on myspace. She went to Alta Loma and I went to Westborough. She was a grade younger. It was not love at first sight. It was a mystery on how I started talking to her. But needless to say, I talked to her. I was a player and flirted and she knew. I was a different person before I met her and after I met her. She changed me a lot and helped me realize a lot of things in life.

            Before I met her, I was ignorant, selfish, and childish. She changed all that. She changed me and I’m not sure if I should have let that happen. But it happened and I think I approve of it. I stopped my bad habits I had, slowly but gradually. I became a changed person for the better. She made me a thousand emotions, great and horrible. Sometimes I didn’t even feel like it was reality but it was.

            She was my first love. I was infatuated, I was deeply, and happily in love with her. I couldn’t resist her. I never felt that type of feeling and I was addicted. I couldn’t tell if this type of addiction was bad or not. Later, I would find out that it wasn’t as grand as I thought.

            Arguments and hurt feelings over the years lead to a breakup. Well, there was many breakups anyways but eventually lead to the last breakup. I was feeling awful and I felt like I had a bad high. Sometimes I couldn’t believe that all the events happened.

            I learned a lot of things from the relationship I had with the girl. I become more mature and stronger in person. I gained a lot of qualities such as respect, kindness, and honor. A relationship will change anybody who has been through all the many aspects such as love, hate, and care ness. I will never regret this part of my life because it changed me for the best.

Gilbert "El Nino" Melendez MMA shoot

Today I did nine hours of work. I started from 10 a.m until 6 p.m.  I was assistant director and helped with lighting, camera, dolly, etc.

Two Music Shoots

On the 2nd of February, I went to Tavoy Films International in Martinez to meet with my mentor, Mr. Teddy Gyi. I arrived at the building early in the morning at around 11 a.m. My mentor introduced me to a number of staff. I was the assistant director for the day.
I helped in the preparation of the music video "Gas" by Problems and Iamsu, upcoming bay area rappers. In this music shoot, I helped by taping down where the rappers would stand, where they could not pass, and other such things. I used the clapper and had to announce what scene and take it was. I've almost made the mistake of going into the shoot because I thought it was another take.
In the second music shoot, for the song "In The Sunlight" by Sharyn Maceren, we made a makeshift room. A bed, curtains, window, tv, and what would look like a real room. It was a lot of work but exciting.
I learned that lighting is one of the most important aspects in video shooting. We used two softboxes opposite to each other and two barndoor as well. We used all four lighting tools for the rappers to make them look glamorous. We wanted to eliminate all shadows. For the singer, we had to put the lighting to where we needed it. We moved it around a lot to eliminate shadows and have a direct shot of what we were shooting.
For the rapper music video, we had about six scenes with about three of four takes each. We had a b-roll for a hip-hop dancer that was part of the rappers crew. We also had b-roll for the singer.
It was a long day and I was still sick at the time. I lost my voice but it was worth the hours and experience I learned from that day. I log about 11 hours. I was there from 11 am to 10pm.

Experiment on Google search tools

Today, in the library we used the Google search tools. I prefer Google as my searching tool. It is fast and reliable. The Google search tools helps you search with specifics. You can see whats been posted in the past 24 hours about a certain subject. It helps for those who want to lessen the results. The search tool gives different options and combinations to help our search.
We typed in “how do the democratic AND republican positions on fiscal cliff differ?” to see what results we would get. At first without using the search tools to lessen the results, I got about 65 million results in .54 seconds. When I used the search tool verbatim I got about 17 and a half thousand results in .12 seconds. To lessen the results I used the minus signs to cancel out certain things. I used the verbatim search tool and in the search bar I used –blogs –videos –images –books –past hour –personal –news which lessens the results to 10. The best search tool was the verbatim and it got me the least results.

The Fallen Hero

The Fallen Hero

            The fallen hero is a hero that makes self-conscious decisions that leads to his or her own destruction or downfall. In Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Anakin, the protagonist, makes a number of self-conscious decisions that lead him to become the fallen hero. His selfish actions lured him into the dark side of the force.

            The first mistake the Anakin makes was when he was fighting Count Dooku. Count Dooku says to Anakin "I sense great fear in you, Skywalker. You have hate. You have anger. But you don't use them." The anger and the hate are only used by the dark side. A Jedi has a code of conduct such as a knight to chivalry. As Anakin is being taunted by Dooku, he uses his anger to disarm and decapitate both Dooku’s hands. While Dooku is incapable of fighting, the chancellor urges Anakin to kill him. Anakin consciously thinks of what decision to make. He knows it’s not the Jedi way but also knows that Dooku is too dangerous to be alive. As Anakin makes the decision of killing Dooku, he is drawn closer to the dark side.

            The point when Anakin was most lost was when he was told by Obi-wan to spy on the chancellor. Anakin sees this as treason to the republic and doesn’t like this mission because the chancellor is his friend. He is confused and upset about the whole situation. At this point, he doesn’t know what to do which eventually leads him to make selfish decisions that ultimately lead to his downfall.

            The crucial mistake that Anakin made was when Master Windu was about to kill the chancellor. Anakin was either going to choose the Jedi force or to save Padme. Anakin tells Windu that the chancellor must stand trial but Windu disregards it and says that he is too dangerous to be alive. As Windu was going to kill the chancellor, Anakin intervened and cuts off Windu’s hand. The Dark Sith shocks Windu out the window to fall hundreds of stories down to his death. At that point, Anakin knows he cannot go back. He pledges allegiance to the Dark Sith in return to learn the power to save Padme. He becomes the apprentice of the Dark Sith and is known now as Dark Vader. This decision he made was the point of no return.

            Did Anakin ever have a chance of remaining a Jedi? He had many chances of remaining a Jedi but chose not do. He could’ve let Windu kill the chancellor but instead he betrayed his master. He could’ve let Count Dooku live and stand trial as the first decision he made. He had many chances of remaining a Jedi. When he betrayed Master Windu, it was the point he could not remain a Jedi. In that point, he made his ultimate decision to pledge allegiance to the dark side. That one selfish decision he made erased any chance of remaining a Jedi.