Dystopian Trailer Sounds

For the sound and music portion of our dystopian trailer, I found two sounds in particular that I think we could put to use. One is an air raid siren, and the other is a clip of classical music. I chose the air raid siren because it gives a sort of ominous tone to whatever scene is going on, but also one of slight chaos, which will definitely occur at some point in our trailer. When heard in movies and TV shows and whatnot, the viewer generally gets the feel that something bad is going on, and this is a mood we are hoping to create in our trailer. 

I chose the classical music piece, "Ave verum corpus", because it could be used as an interesting juxtaposition to the chaos and action occurring on screen. Sometimes in movies, you'll see fighting or action on screen, and classical music in the background. It makes the clip seem even more effective, because it sort adds a calm to the movement happening. Also, it could be used during scenes which display the "upper class", because it gives an air of sophistication to the scene. 

We could find some other sounds of yelling, perhaps, or maybe a simple police siren, and include them in our trailer. We could use the yelling if we have a scene of social unrest, and the police siren could be used when the authorities are rushing over to arrest the protagonist. They would undoubtedly add another level of quality to our trailer. 

Book of Eli Trailer

  Book of Eli .  Albert and Allen Hughes .  R .  2010

The United States as we know it has been destroyed for 30 years now, replaced by a society in which looting and murders run rampant. One man, known simply as Eli (Denzel Washington), has been traversing the country since the war, determined to complete his task of getting the last Bible in the world into safe hands.

The trailer uses a multitude of effective techniques which create an exemplary  post-apocalyptic dystopia trailer. Among these techniques are background music, lighting, color, setting, and voiceover. The trailer opens in a dark forest, as ominous music pumps through the background. The music beats quicker and quicker until finally it hits a crescendo, in which the screen switches to a wide shot of a solitary man, walking across a dry wasteland. This small sequence encompasses music, color, and setting to create the dystopian feel. The music sets a serious and tension-filled mood, and when combined with the black and gray color of the forest, viewers immediately realize that this movie will center around something dangerous and dark. In the wide shot that follows, setting is utilized to further make clear that something has gone very wrong with this society. The setting depicts two highway overpasses with rubble and other miscellaneous metals strewn beneath them. The inclusion of the overpasses makes it clear that at one point, civilization flourished, but the rubble and overall disrepair makes it clear that such a society has not existed in a long, long time. As the trailer continues quick shots are shown which display Eli looking over a wasteland and fighting with insane looking men. In both of these shots, lighting is used to further the setting of a post-apocalyptic world. The light casts shadows over his face as he surveys the land, and when he's fighting, the lighting is dark to show the danger of this world. Throughout the trailer, intense and fast-paced music flows, which only support even more the dystopia, and a voiceover of Eli plays constantly, which explains what his task is, and how truly dangerous it is. Our trailer will use voiceover, setting, and background music to portray our own dystopia, and this trailer is an excellent example of those techniques.

Connected Learning

In a nutshell, "Preparing Students To Learn Without Us" by Will Richardson states that customized learning has already been proven to work,  and that it's the issue of changing teachers teaching methods that will hold the concept back. Many students, including the author's own son, have found success with a personalized lesson plan that centers around a passion of theirs. It takes a specialized kind of teacher to aid the student in their learning, however, and the style necessary is fairly unorthodox compared to the rigid learning and testing standards that are commonplace now.

 One part of this article that struck me as surprising was that, as the author says, "personalization is an expectation" in education these days. At least in my schooling experience, there has not been a large amount of flexibility in the way we learn, besides division into advanced groups. Hopefully, in this media class, we get to do a little bit more of this, perhaps by having a good amount of freedom in our projects. Certainly, we need guidelines, but instead of laying out a very specific objective, we could receive a broader one and in the process, enjoy it more.

 We could also use these blogs to keep track of our own passions, and share them with others. For example, I love sports writing and sports journalism, so I could find blogs or sites that discuss this and follow them. Here is a link to my Diigo page.

"The Expendables 2" Movie Review

Emma Yeager, author of the review "The Expendables 2 is spent", was not enthralled by "The Expendables 2". The review, which can be found on Silver Chips Online, had very little positive things to say about the film, and from the get go, made it clear that the film was both "dull" and "dated".

The review began by outlining the plot, setting, and characters in the film, and after introducing the gist of the film, begins sharing her opinions on it. First, she comments on how women are portrayed by the writers, and then goes on to critique the acting, in particular, the acting of Sylvester Stallone. Before she concludes the article, she does give out a rare compliment to the film, saying that some of the the pure action scenes, are in fact, fairly entertaining.

Yeager's main problem with the film seemed to be the general theme of it. After all, the concept of American action heroes saving the world from a Russian super-villain is hardly an original one. The incessant violence in the film also seems to have left a bad taste in her mouth, as she several times referenced back to it being "ceaseless", and "gory". Surprisingly, for a review of an action movie, very little time was spent evaluating the editing and special effects of the film, something that had to undoubtedly be a strength of "The Expendables 2". Perhaps this was because she wanted to paint a negative picture of the film, but whatever reason, more than two lines should have been spent on it. Luckily for the readers, she does not reveal anything too spoiler-like in the review, but does give ample information to know what it is for the most part about.

The quarterly movie assignment should give us a considerable amount of freedom, as CAP kids do best when not restricted to a tight set of guidelines. That is not to say that we should have no guidelines, though. Having a base set of questions that need to be answered would be mutually beneficial, as the students would not become sidetracked into an entirely different project, and the teacher's could actually  have something to grade. However, it is key that we are given more freedom than we were last year, both in terms of what movie to watch and how to review it, as they could get to be a chore instead of actually watching and enjoying a film.

Here's the link to my annotated review:

http://diigo.com/0sv3u

I'm Alex, and this is my own personal CAP blog. I like to read and write and whatnot but my favorite thing to do is to relax with my friends, and do typical teenager things, like watch TV, play basketball, scrap, and eat copious amounts of food. I don't really I have a lot of video experience thus far, as I was a Home-Ec kid in middle school, but two projects I enjoyed doing were a show open and a video explaining the role of a producer. In the show open, me and two other group mates had to shoot a roughly 30 second segment to open the daily Info Flow show at Blair. And with some crafty editing from my group mates (I don't know how to edit) we made a pretty cool video that showed a piece of paper spelling out the word "INFOFLOW" travel around the school. In this project, I was the director, and set up the shots. In the producer video, we interviewed a number of people asking them what a producer did, and only gave them a rough outline of what to say. We got some fairly humorous responses out of this, and formed a decent video. Again, in this one, I was director and helped set up shots. Also, check this link out, it's a sports blog my main man Landon and I have. thesidelinescoop.com. The picture I chose is of Ian Desmond sliding into second, because he's my favorite player on my favorite team of my favorite sport. 

We could use this blog to:

• Share classwork that we're particularly proud of.
• Help study for quizzes
• Share our CAP experiences.

Image Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/keithallison/7435599724/in/photostream/