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The theme of my creative project is “secrets and their consequences.” I got this point across by making a succession of heart drawings that could represent how secrets could affect a person. The first is a heart that has a lock and chain on it. As a caption for the picture I have, “Hold them back, seal them away.” This symbolizes someone who has a secret; they would try to hide it from the world, and in the process, they would hide themselves and their true feelings away. The second heart has a lock pointing towards the lock and chain. The caption I have is, “Prying eyes see through the lies.” This symbolizes people who may try to see past the exterior of a person and potentially find their secret. On the third heart, the lock is unlocked and the chain is falling. The caption is, “Collapse in character, lapse in security.” This symbolizes what happens when someone is afraid that someone may know their secret. They may become paranoid and start acting out of character because they are afraid they could not hide their secret. The fourth heart is on fire. The caption is, “The guilt burns; the heart’s an inferno.” This symbolizes the guilt someone would experience while holding the secret. It would feel like the secret is burning them from the inside out. The last picture is a pile of ash. The caption I have is, “Destroyed from the inside out, scorched soul, blackened reputation.” This symbolizes someone after they have held their secret for so long. Either they would feel terrible about holding that secret or someone would find out about their secret and no longer trust them; it would ruin what others think of them. 

The first thing I drew was the heart. I didn’t mean for it to come out as detailed as it did, in fact I only wanted it to be a simple line drawing, so I would be able to draw it over and over again. Since it came out as shaded as it did and I didn’t feel like I would be able to replicate it, I had to find another way to produce my transitional pictures. On a separate piece of paper, I drew an outline of the heart. I did this for each different drawing. I drew the object that would lay on top of the heart or around it; the chain and lock, key, and fire. I cut the pictures out and lay them on top of the drawing to take pictures of them. The corners of the little pictures kept curling up, however, and it would have been difficult to scan them with my scanner because the pictures would fall off. This caused me to have to find another way to get the pictures onto the hearts. I thought about tape, but it would show up in the picture. So I decided to try using plastic wrap. I pulled the plastic wrap taut around the heart picture and glued the little pictures on top. It still showed up a little in the pictures, but it looked better than I though the tape would. 

I think, despite all the challenges I had to overcome, that the heart drawings came out well. They were not what I had pictured, but I am still proud of how they came out and how I figured out a way to overcome the challenges.

I feel like I could have found a better way to add the pictures onto the heart. Though the plastic wrap was efficient, it still shows up a little in the pictures. If I would’ve had more time to edit, I would have tried to add the pictures on digitally, so they still had the stand out effect that I aimed for after the heart came out very realistic (cartoonish vs. realistic), but so that it looked much cleaner than it does.

If I could do it all over again, I would try to make a simpler heart drawing, so it would be easier to replicate it and add things onto it. If I were not producing the heart drawings, I would make a succession of different drawings instead, this way I would not have to be worry about the sizing of the picture and how similar they look to the others, as I had to do with the heart drawing. 

Contemporary dance is a term that combines many dance forms such as modern, hip-hop, Jazz, African, and ballet. The techniques are expressed with the music. It follows the beat, which can change at anytime also speed; rhythm and direction are mostly used in this form of dance. We chosen this category from the list because it would be unique to express the feelings in the book with the modern day music that we all listen to. Each song in the mix goes directly to all of the main characters in the book. The mix starts off with Rihanna song Unfaithful. We start it off with this song because in the Scarlet Letter Hester was not faithful to her husband. She had sex with someone she was not married to and got pregnant. In the song lyrics mention that one unfaithful girl is cheating in her relationship, and her spouse knows something is going on. He stays because he is loyal to her even though she is not to him. If Chillingworth were to leave the society would have been against him for leaving his wife. Our Second song, which is Daddy’s Little Girl by J-Cole, we dedicated to growth of Pearl. She was a reckless child that even her own mother couldn’t handle her. She was an outcast; nothing was normal with her. No one could tell her what to do due to her being in her own world. She would rather do that then to be in the world of a society that judges her and her family. In the mix our last song is Save me By Nicki Minaj for Hester and Pearl. They have both lost something in their which was each other and Dimmsdale. They are all asking for forgiveness at the end when the y finally realizes that they needed each other In the long run.

            We created our piece by first picking the songs that we thought would fit the type of dance and the themes that we wanted to include. The actually used three which are movement, internal destruction and responsibility in relationships. We chose these three because each one of them fit each of the songs that we chosen to do. One did come to one problem, which was trying to find a clean version to our J-Cole song. Unfortunately, we didn’t so we tried our best to choose the best less explicit lyrics in the song to dance to. We also ran into difficulties when we where trying to find a way to set our dance to the audience. We overcame this by working together to agree on a set up that turned out to actually be easy.

            I feel so good about this project. We have spent a lot of time on this dance for the last week. Working in all class period and even staying after school to make sure our dance was polished completely. I feel very confident and comfortable doing this dance. Even though I feel this way I know that I will have some bubble guts to try to get over before the show. Something that I would have like to do different is choosing the songs. They are great for the project, but when looking back at it I know there where other songs that I could have chosen to use.  I am very excited to perform this dance and hopefully everyone will be delighted to see our final piece. 

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11615626/DSCF4321.AVI
*VIDEO LINK IS ABOVE*

I did my slide like that because it's reflecting some of the things I like to do and where I am from. I like singing, playing the guitar, and playing soccer. I like doing other things too but I feel that those things are the things I like doing the most.. I am from Haiti and I had many bad experiences there especially with the earthquake in 2010. I still can't forget about it because it was so terrible. I am grateful to be in the United States and I want to do the most of it. Soccer is my favorite sport and I'm pretty good at it. I also like basketball but I like soccer better and I would like to be a professional soccer player. I really like singing and I want to be a professional singer. I feel like by just looking at this slide, people can learn many things about me.

I decided to make my slide look like this because I want people to know about my creativity. My brain is always flooded with original and detailed ideas that I can use for any of my hobbies. I love to use my imagination when I read, write and make films. Not only do I express my creativity in my writing and film directing, but I also use it when I play music. I play the double bass and piano. Often, I would attempt to compose one of my own songs to define how I am feeling at the moment. Also, I would use my compositions to include in my films to see how my final project looks and sounds. Whenever I put my imagination into words, I feel like a successful teacher. My creativity is my strongest trait.

Recently, we have been learning how to make slides for presentations on keynote. As anyone who say the previous version of this slide, you can see that I took away a picture and added a picture to the slide. The reason I took away the picture from black ops 2 is because anyone who looks at it would already know that I play games, so they don't really need to know the specifics of exactly what game I play. In place of the pic of black ops 2, I added a picture of books because boks are something that occupy me in my spare time where I am not playing video games or watching tv.

Felix d’Hermillon

This slide represents me by stating exactly what I like.It is telling you exactly what I am interested in.

I love skateboarding (my favorite thing in the world) so I had to put that up there. I want a penny board really bad. I am getting a gopro camera and they are one of my favorite things. I love surfing. I love photography, skim boarding, biking and music. I made the slide look the way it does so that people would be able to understand it and like the way it looks. What influenced my decision making was the blog that Mrs. Hull read.

In conclusion, this is everything that I like and the reason and decisions that I made.

The reason I..

The reason I used this theme is because its simple and to the point. I did it based on Instagram, which is a photo sharing app. The font is in a bunch of places to make it look  like a collage. The photo stands out and makes it something to look at, the photo was taken by my friend. So it’s not just something off the internet. The photo is recent and has not hit the internet yet except for Instagram of course.The little hashtags are what makes it look like Instagram. Instagram is all about me the photos that people take on there is amazing. The reason I picked Instagram is it's the #StoryOfMyLife. It shows me though my photos.

Self-Reflection

            Recently, in Sexuality and Society, we read the interesting tale of The Scarlet Letter, about the complicated relationships of Hester Prynne during colonial times. Shortly after reading The Scarlet Letter, we watched Juno, about the struggles that a girl named Juno has with being pregnant. Our project is loosely based upon both of these stories, mainly the themes we pulled from them. Matt and I chose to base ours off of theme of the main character finding it hard to change, while the world is rapidly changing around them.

            For our project, we wanted to create something that could show our theme very well, and what came to mind was making a stop motion film. Making a stop motion film showed one person (me) staying the same throughout the entirety of the video, while everything else around me, was changing very fast. The process of making the film was rather tedious, but in the end it was worth it.

We didn’t want the film to be the only aspect of our project, so we spent a good amount of time searching for songs that would relate to our topic. At first, we were thinking about using the song at the end of Juno, but that would be too closely related to the movie, so that song was scratched from the list. But, after much more searching we came upon song via Pandora, called Tire Swing by Kimya Dawson. We believe this song was just what we were looking for, the lyrics strongly related to our theme, and the beat was similar to the one at the end of Juno.

Putting the project together on the computer went without toil. But, taking the pictures was extremely tedious, getting the angle correct, working around the city folk, etc. When we had to take the pictures in the night time, the camera acted as if it hadn’t had sleep, and kept capturing blurry pictures, which prolonged our night, but was not a major setback.

With the minor setbacks that we had, I believe we crafted a well put together project, showing our understanding of our theme, as well as making an interesting visual. The project should show via the pictures, how much time we put into this project. The only part I wish we could have done was rather than choosing a song off the Internet to play in the background of our video, was Matt and I each playing a guitar in the background, like the ending of Juno. I believe that would’ve been much more personal, and much more powerful for our project. We couldn’t complete that aspect due to the fact that I have never played a guitar before, and we did not have enough time for me to learn it. And, if we could do it again, I would’ve taken the time from the start of the project to learn at least how to play the chords on the guitar so that we could have added that in, but that’s about it.

When I presented, I realized that I needed to fix my text and add pictures. My text was out of line, so I made sure I fixed that. I also had too much empty space on my first slide so I added a couple pictures. I learned some more about how your eye looks at certain things first and how it easily notices little differences throughout the whole slide. Knowing that, I made sure all my pictures and text were aligned right and that everything was even. 

 

My creative piece is about a combination of themes between the scarlet letter and Juno. What we had to do for this project was to come up with a creative idea that represents at least one theme present in the book and the movie. The idea that I chose was to create two-canvas painting, which represent two themes. The two themes that I chose were “Forgiveness & Acceptance” Also “Freedom and the cost of your true self”. To get my point across I went through different ways that I could express each theme and I believed that painting was a bold choice that would convey what I wanted to express.

While I was going through the process of brainstorming and trial and error for this project I hit a lot bumps along the road, but the end results show how much I worked on it. First thing was to figure out how I would represent each theme, which required understanding what the theme meant and looking for possible examples to further my ideas. For the first theme that I tackled was “Forgiveness & Acceptance” which is a little broad since there were a lot of things that I could draw for this. But I wanted something that would stand out and look well, the first idea was to be two people hugging which didn’t go to well because the proportions were incorrect. The next thing that I tried was having two people holding hands but the proportions were incorrect again. The last idea that I really like was to have a girl kneeling on the floor and crying, then I though about the fact that I would need someone to forgive and accept her. So I then drew a male putting his legs and arms around her, which represent the theme though at first the proportions were incorrect. So I asked my uncle who was more experienced in drawing and he told me to have models pose in the way that I wanted them two snap a picture and draw them. The last thing that I have which look ten times better as well as a lot more natural.

 

I believe that the aspects of this project that I did well was choosing two themes and finding ideas that strongly represent them. Also trying new things when it comes to realistic drawing as well as painting and researching ways to prefect them to increase the aspects of the overall project, while at the same time boosting my skills as an artist.

I don’t believe that there was much about this project that I had trouble with and I feel as though I expressed my opinions to the fullest. So I don’t regret anything I created so I feel confident about this project because I don’t feel as though I was lacking in any area. Some of the thing that I had trouble with was centering my ideas as well as choosing a theme.

If I were to do this project differently I would start a lot earlier and would have drawn more pictures to correspond with more of the themes. Other than that there isn’t really anything that I would change if I were to do this project again, since I am pretty proud of it as it is. Though some things that I would change would be to have more experience in realistic drawing, as well as painting on canvas. So that I wouldn’t have made the small mistakes that I did. Overall I am really happy with the work that I did on this project, because it shows all of the hard work that I put into perfecting my skills as an artist. I learned knew techniques such as how to paint with acrylics on canvas. Also I was able to improve my skills in drawing realistically since I always draw things that are anime based.                      

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3ato_jBBihiQkxPSkVIcExvajQ

REFLECTION: A STORY ABOUT EVERYONE

The short movie A Story About Everyone was designed to invoke ideas beyond those that are literally shown. The main character, Everyone, breaks out of her paper world, and though she is at first frightened by the great things that can be, she is soon inspired. Back in the paper world though, the stick figures are not happy. They interrupt her fun and drag her back inside the lines. There she struggles to show her newly discovered and colorful personality in a place where there is only black and white. Eventually she tires of their confinement and returns to the land of colors and three dimensions to become a real girl.

This movie posed an interesting dilemma. How to show emotions and deeper discoveries with a poorly drawn figure? How to show the difference between two worlds? I decided to use lined paper for the stick figure world to literally represent the metaphor of living within the lines of society. The characters within this world are all drawn with a charcoal pencil which often smudged. The individual characters living within such strict lines have little definition. In the scene where she sticks her hand and the tip of her skirt into the other world, you will notice that they became colored, providing a direct comparison of the two lands.

I decided to use the metaphor of light for illumination. Everyone is no longer frightened once she has the light. She dances for joy in fact. The following montage of happiness with an overtone of giggles show her learning about music and activity, and making friends with my happy dog, whom she had previously been afraid of.

Finally there was the issue of how to differentiate Everyone from Everyone Else once she had returned to the lines. They strip her of her flower and color leaving her as blank as Everyone Else. I decided to use eyebrows as a tell. In the scene of a hundred faces, she is the only one with eyebrows, and they speak of her sorrow.

There were a couple more obvious metaphors, The title scene with the text A Story About Me, A Girl, Everyone is telling of the fact that this story of self discovery and struggle against society is something Everyone can relate to. 

It was difficult to insure that the watcher would understand all these points. For one, the video camera I have is not of the highest quality and would not focus at times. Another major issue I had is that once transferring the videos into quicktime, the top and bottom were cut off, leaving some of my thought bubble clues difficult to decider. The most effected scene being when she decides to use a cog as a flower. 

When I first sat down and began drawing I did not know the complete story, but as I drew it became clear. I had already picked my two themes self discovery and the individual struggle against society, so after having the complete story in my head, I went back to the beginning and added more drawings to show those themes a little bit better. I finished all the drawing and cutting before filming anything. 

The hardest part of that was getting my dog to do what I wanted. I ended up spoiling him with tiny pieces of steak to get him to be my actor. He did run away with my little character sitting on him a couple times, and I would have to run after him and find where she had flown off. 

After I finished the filming I had quite a few issues first removing the videos from my camera and then, getting their thumbnails to show up on imovie. I cut the videos together, and then added the song. I made some minor adjustments so the music and video fit better, added some sound effects (giggles and jail door slamming sounds) and finalized the project.

If I had more time, I would like to add more scenes between the ones already existing to help the watcher follow the plot line and catch the clues. I might put the project to music that fit a little bit better and use a higher quality camera to catch the already limited details of my drawings. 

The concept of this project is what I am most proud of. My drawings are poor and my video editing is passable, but the ideas and the metaphors that I tried to incorporate are something for me to be proud of.  I think that in terms of concept, this project is a star, I have rarely liked an idea so much. It is a bit frustrating to know I did not do it justice. 

Claire Elliot

For this project, I wanted to create something that was out of the ordinary. I figured that the obvious choice would have been to make something like a Keynote, but I wanted to challenge myself to be more creative. So, the idea came to make something that people could actually touch. At first, I was unsure of how to go about this. I considered making something out of clay but realized that this would be too time consuming. Finally, after watching a commercial, I came up with the idea to make a voodoo doll. I knew that this would well represent a theme from the novel and movie involving pain.

            After I figured out that I wanted to make a doll, I had to figure out what specific themes I wanted it to represent. The best choice seemed to be sin and punishment, which occurred through much of The Scarlet Letter and Juno. The toothpicks that I wanted to put in the doll could be labeled, each with a different type of sin present in the two works that we studied in class. When all of the sin-representing toothpicks were put together, it would show how more sin equals more pain. This then led me to another theme shown in both the movie and book, self-condition. I realized that the toothpicks on the doll could also represent how the aftermath of added sins can take its toll on a person, as the doll seemed more uncomfortable as more toothpicks were added. This was much like the characters in the book and movie getting increasingly uncomfortable as they committed more sin in the eyes of the elite.

At this point, it was time to start making the creative piece. Since I knew it would be impossible to find a real voodoo doll, I decided to make one myself. After seeing a sock monkey online, I instantly thought about making a sock doll, which I could easily stick toothpicks into. To do this, I gathered up the materials, followed an online reference, and carefully constructed the doll. Even though the process went smoothly, I was not pleased with the final appearance of the first two dolls that I created. I felt that the limbs were not proportionate to the head in the way that I had hoped. As a result, I created more dolls and selected my favorite. After this, I labeled a set of toothpicks (each with a different sin) and randomly stuck them in the doll, finally completing my goal.

Now looking back, I am most happy that the final doll came out the way it did. It is one of the most unique products that I have ever created. I was shocked to see that it actually did look like a voodoo doll when completed. In fact, I was so pleased with it that I actually preferred making the doll, as opposed to buying one. The reason is because since I made it, I could make every aspect of it (its size, colors…) the way that I wanted it to be. On the other hand, my least favorite part of this project was the fact that I did not get to utilize my class time as well as I could have. The reason is because I would keep my supplies at home for fear that I would leave them in school. It is my guess that if I had brought my materials to school, I could have taken advantage of school resources, like specialized paint. As such, I will do this the next time I have a creative project.

Technology Slide Project: Micah Henry

Introduction: In technology class, we are creating a slide that describes ourselves, with very few words. Visuals or a visual is being used to show our hobbies, our life, or possibly just are passions and dreams. The purpose of this slide is to show who we are and what we enjoy to do in life. Lastly, the slide should be very short with words to describe yourself, with a picture to emphasize your lightly worded description.

This slide looks the way it does because my favorite, most inspirational quote is hard work & dedication. I admire this saying because it basically sums up everything you need to succeed in life with three words. These three words being very powerful , for they explain how working hard towards your dream an having a motivation to do so, you will be successful. In addition, my slide has a picture of soccer, and on the top, hard work & dedication because the words summarize the picture. For the picture is of a soccer player leaping to his full extent to win the ball and gain possession, this all being to get a goal; this goal is to succeed, to win. My love for the game of soccer, and my thought patterns of how if you work hard at something, you can never lose has helped me to make the decisions on this slide. The message, in text, is short, but could tell a story, with this great picture of hard work & dedication to back up this message of succeeding. 

​On my slide I chose certain pictures describing myself. I put every school I've gone to on the top part, and my likes on the bottom part. In the center I have what I want to do in order. I have a picture of a gymnast because I used to be a gymast and I would like to start it again. I have someone graduating because I want to graduate. and I have someone working and a family because I want to have a good job a settle down.

I made some changes to my slide, I decided to use the same idea of my previous slide but I made changes to the background images by making them the same color of the background and thats pretty much it.

Reflection: 

For this creative English project, Sam and I decided to create a playbill, along with an accompanying scene from the “play” to demonstrate our theme of “Freedom at the cost of true self”. To start off, our play is set in an alternate dystopian universe within a society where all of its members are given role that to fulfill from birth. They abides by this standard so much that, its citizens aren’t even given birth names. Citizens are solely referred to by their occupation. Our main character, follow this with the name “Accountant #56780” who represents individualism and opposition to conformity. In our “play” he decides that he’s had enough with blindly fulfilling his occupation, and not getting anything out of life. This parallels the character of Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter by Nathanial Hawthorne. Hester herself was an outcast within the Puritan Boston community doing something that she felt was the right thing. Within the book, her reason for being out casted was because of her having an illegitimate children and not revealing the father. This is similar to our character “Accountant #56780”, because he also took a stand, went against societal norms and did what he wanted, not letting the society’s judgment effect him. The dialogue represents the scene where “Accountant #56780” is finally standing up to his society, represented by another character: “The Machine” We used the playbill to give detailed information on our play, as well as including ads which also tied to our theme of “Freedom at the cost of true self”.

            My responsibility in the project lied within creating the dialogue, as well as the cover photo of our playbill. The dialogue was the first thing I created for our project. Using Sam’s idea for a play set in a dystopian society, I wanted to create a scene where our character could demonstrate his emotions and the audience gets to see his passion for individualism. The actual process of writing the dialogue was pretty exciting. While writing, I had already planned out what the scene would look/sound like. It was really amazing to just get my ideas down, and be able to turn them into an interesting performance. One problem I did come across was creating an ending to our scene. I had this great dialogue but didn’t want the ending to be weak. Thankfully having my partner, we were able to easily come up with a strong ending. Next, the cover photo was kind of an opposite experience. While I still had a good idea of what I wanted the photo to look like, actually drawing it was an ordeal. Since I hadn’t actively drawn anything for the past 3 years, I was really rusty on my skills. All in all, the process took a good 4 ½ hours, but I do feel really good about my final product.

            I feel that Sam and I could have done a lot better on the final performance. I definitely wanted to incorporate costumes for us, because I feel like it would just look a lot more professional. I also felt that we could have utilized or time for things like making a more flushed out dialogue and developing costumes. Certainly if we had more time, my partner and myself would expand on our final project.

            

After reading The Scarlet Letter and watching Juno the theme that stuck out to me the most was the theme of private vs. public self. I wanted to illustrate this theme in a way where it applied not only to both stories, but also applied to society today. I decided to make a book using poster board and construction paper. I chose to make the border of the book red because it stands out just as the characters did. In both The Scarlet Letter and Juno both of the main characters stood out from the crowd in a significant way, which drew a lot of attention. On the outside of the book I used magazine cutouts to illustrate misconceptions of the 2 characters. I used a lot of judgmental words and words that essentially would make you want to look at the book but not actually open it. Then, when you open the book you see the quote "Never judge a book by it's ..." and several magazine covers. 

In The Scarlet Letter written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the main character, Hester Prynne, was highly criticized by the people who lived in her town. Their judgment was based solely on the “A” that she sported on her chest. Not many took the time to actually get to know Hester, which ended up to taking a toll on her. For a while she lived a lonely life because not many people wanted to get involved with her and what they believed she stood before. This relates to the book because everyone was so focused on her outer appearance that no one wanted to take the time to see what was inside.

Juno also shares a similar storyline. One thing that’s different in this story is that the main character, Juno, had a hard external appearance. She acted as if she didn’t want anyone to know the real her which is why no one actually did. Throughout most of the movie, the one person that wanted to know the real Juno, she drove off until the end. This also relates to the book because I chose to make parts of the book to look forbidden so that people don’t actually open it.

Although I am very proud of how my final product came out, there were a few things that stood in the way of me having a complete project. One problem I encountered while doing this project was determining the size of the actual book. At first I wanted to create a book that was essentially the size of a poster board, but that proved to be unrealistic. If I were to do a book this size, I would have needed a greater amount of magazine cutouts than I had. I chose these cutouts very selectively, so if I were to add more just to fill space I feel that the meaning would no longer be clear. However, I do feel that the quality of the project is being jeopardized because of the size but this was the best way to accurately get my point across. Other than that I really had no other complications. Normally my final product comes out nowhere near the way I envisioned it because of time. However, I did a good job with time management for this project so my final product was not far off from how I saw it to be.

            Even with my project fitting my expectations, if I could do it over I would do some things differently. For instance, instead of using magazine cutouts I would have found another method. I say this because for the most part all the magazines I got cutouts from had common themes. This made it hard for me to add a sense of diversity to my project or a variety of images. Maybe I could have done a drawing or something, which would have required me to generate my own themes, images, and ideas. 

In every day life, everyone is exposed to these labels; labels that define them and give them a place in the world. These labels can be placed on someone by the way they look, act, dress, their job, etc. This is exactly the point that I tried to make in my presentation. I tried taking something that is real, like a radio show and having real people talk on it. Maybe these people aren’t really alive, but that doesn’t mean that the labels that the people talking on the radio show display aren’t real. Everyone has a label, and the way that they act is reflected from this label. I really wanted to take to very common labels in high school, the jock and the popular girl. Both having this label and expectation that they need to live up to what they are.

The reason I ended up choosing these two specific roles in high school is because I feel they are the two roles that people can relate to the most. Whether they the jock or the popular girl, or someone who was affected by them, it is still represented throughout the typical high school scene. I really wanted the people talking to not only have the background of the label, but I wanted the way they talked to reflect it too. For instance, as I acted out the jock, I talked with a deep voice because when you think of a football player you think of a big muscular guy with a deep voice, and perhaps not the best talker. As I moved onto the popular girl I wanted her to talk really badly. Having her sentences messed up and for her to still be consumed in the label that she once had.

I really think I was able to capture the roles of the two labels in the two people that I represented in the radio show. I also think I was able to capture a typical radio host’s enthusiastic tone. I tried making it as smooth and as natural as possible and that is something that I think that I was able to capture really well. I really wanted the background music to flow with the conversations.

Equally I think something that could have been a little better is exactly what I did well with. I could have maybe elaborated the back-story of the two characters I created. With my first character, the jock, I think I made it clear that he realized he had this label on him, but with my second character I may not have made it clear that the popular girl still felt like she had this need to fill the label she was given. I also feel as though I could have perhaps looked into how other radio shows host their shows. It may have helped me in my creation since I don’t know much on how radio shows are run.

If think if I were to do this project over again, that I would work more on my second character. I also had thought about putting in more characters. My idea to stick with just two characters I believe is enough so that the person listening can sit and analyze the points I tried making, I would still stick with the labels that I chose, however if I were to add another person, I would want to take a completely different direction. Take it from the role of someone that may not seem to make a huge impact on the high school scene. Perhaps that person who isn’t the most well known person, but isn’t the one being teased; the middleman. It may have given the final product a bit of a twist with having such a big difference in characters and maybe kept the listener more interested. 

​Click HERE for the link to the poems!


Reflection:

 Maggie Long

B Band

Self Reflection

For my creative piece I chose to do a series of poems. I found that writing out some emotions is a great way to get a point across. I also thought that it would be good for me to work on my writing more instead of drawing pictures or doing a painting. My poems are each about something different. They each express a way someone in society is feeling. Each person in my poems has something about them that really stands out to them and to others. For example, in the poem, “Road bumps”, one girl is feeling very insecure about herself because she is pregnant. She also is the only one in the school that is pregnant. Which makes it harder for her because she is then labeled as a whore. This relates back to The Scarlet Letter and Juno because when both of the main characters in those movies were pregnant, they were both labeled as whores or sluts by the people around them.

I tried to make the poems overall problem a bit harder to figure out, but it was really hard to do. If I would start beating around the bush, then the poem started to loose some meaning and it was harder for me to get the point across. I ended up making the poems last however long I felt would be good for that poem in particular. I found it to be hard to write about topics I'm not all that familiar with. I don't have a kid, I'm not pregnant, and I'm not anorexic, but to create these poems I had to be for a short while. I had to research some illnesses and how they effect people and the results of having that illness. That was one of the biggest challenges for me in this project. If I go through a problem, then I feel more comfortable talking about it because I have a pretty good knowledge on that topic. But when I'm talking about things like pregnancy and schizophrenia, I just don't know enough about the topic from experience, so I have to research it.

Some aspects of this project I think I did very well in. I got it done on time and the process was normal, also I think that the creative side to this project was also very well done. It could use more in depth analysis for each poem. I think I did a great job showing the overall problem and the emotions the character was feeling, but need to go more in depth on why and what is to come next. The way I wrote the poems went well with what the poem is trying to say. Although, some of the poems could be longer. I did 5 poems overall to make a series of short poems. Writing a long poem is hard for me because I tend to go off task and forget my topic. Another thing I could have done well in is the process and time management. I did most of this project over the last week that you gave us because I procrastinate a lot. So, I used the time we had in class to work on it over the week and then put it all together over the weekend. That's when I figured out the structure of each poem and the topic for each. Other than those small problems, I thought this was a good project to work on for the Scarlet Letter and Juno. There were a lot of things to write about for each of the movies/books.

If I were to do this project again I would choose to do a whole other project. I would probably pick something more with arts and crafts. I love hands on learning and being able to have a more interactive final product then just poems. Not to down on poems though, because it was a great experience writing them for a specific theme and being able to have such diversity in the poems. I would just like to be able to look at something without it having a definite answer to it. That makes the whole project more fun and visually appealing. Thats another thing I could have changed about this project. I could have done something more to make it prettier. It seemed really simple to me and a little too plain. I didn't realize this until after the fact though. I probably could have cut out the poem and put them all on a board, then drew around them and made them look more appealing. All in all I think that the way my project came out was good. I got the point across and did it in a different way then most people that I heard from. I'm looking forward to other projects that we do that will be like this one.

There’s a vast array of interpretation that can be made about the meanings and messages behind the acclaimed novel “The Scarlet Letter” and the modern film Juno; though, as separate works. However, putting them in a side by side comparison forces one to hunt for common ground as simple, and as applicable, as the statement, “The theme of this is story is that lying is bad”. I personally chose to view both works through a certain feminist lens; a lens that looked at society as consistenly divided by gender and its accompanying stereotypes. Through hours of labor, I composed a charchoal piece symbolic of the past and current state of women, and the normalcy of its oppression.

My piece is an 18x24 inch large charcoal drawing, consisting of a nude woman with one arm in a chain, and the other hand pressed against a wall in front of her. The statement that I want to get across regards the standards to which women are held to because their womanhood, and how oppressive is has been, and will continue to be. First, the woman in my drawing is nude, yet she cannot see because her hair covers face. The nudity is symbolic of the vulnerability that women face consistently, and the impaired sight is a sort of conditional disadvantage. I deem it conditional because as the woman in the picture can choose to push the hair from her face with her free hand, women in our world today can choose to let their womanhood be a hinderance or disadvantage. A little bit more obviously, the wall and the chain are the constraints of society and gender roles in the world. Though, I chain specifically represents the seemingly unbreakable aspect of it, and the wall shows the seemingly immovable aspect of it. Both obstacles are repressive reagrdless, but I felt the need do incoperate both.

Speaking of obstacles, I honestly didn’t face too many that while creating this piece. My inial ideal had changed- after we finished Juno- but the idea was still very similar. I started by setting a mid-tone on the entire page, and began to construct a profile, or side view, face. From there, I losely worked my way down, making sure to outline the arm placement, and shape of her torso. It was here that I began to make contrast, shade and highlight. If anything, making sure that the darkest areas of my piece was dark enough, and the lightest areas of my piece were light enough, was my biggest challenge. Also, I’m very finicky when it comes to anatomy, so I tried my hardest to get my proportions correct. I spent a good hour just on my left hand alone! After I finished my hand, I touched up on my lighting, and wanted to make sure that my shadows were cast in the right places. I then transitioned into the chain and then the wall. Both objects didn’t necessarily have particular shading that added their sybolism, their actual appearance wasn’t something to focus on, but rather what they stood for.

On that note, I think that I did a great job with creating a piece that clearly displayed the message that I wanted to get across, throught my effort. Charcoal is a very messy medium, but if channeled correctly, it can produce a beautiful outcome. I believe that I worked hard and precise enough on the actual image of my drawing, but also, I believe that I composed its entirety in a way that isn’t too hard to pick up on. Furthermore, I think that I made sure to encompass both pieces of work. My theme can be applied to “The Scarlet Letter” a bit more blatantly than it can in Juno, but if you squint, you can see that Juno broke many gender stereotypes herself, though it wasn’t as focused upon. On a different note, I believe that I could have made my shading a bit more smoothed out in the drawing. I also could have put her in a different space. Ultimately, all of possible things that I could have done better, are techincal. Yet if I could do this all over, I’d try to create a piece that captures themes that are bit more critical in thinking.  Overall, I’m satisfied with my work and portrayl of my ideas.

Frank, how’s it going? Are you happy in China now? Actually, there is something making me nervous.

You know, my mother was invited by a university as a visiting scholar. I follow my mother and have been in the United States for three months, and I entered a fantastic high school. But I still feel nervous, because I’m a foreigner for others, and it is hard to be understood. I am living in an environment which is foreign to me and my culture. 

We are having a science class, and our group did an experiment just now. I had a good idea for the experiment, but others in our group didn’t know what I was talking about. So they just did the experiment in their own way, and I couldn’t join the process of the experiment at all. I’m an outsider! Then, there were two members of our group asking me whether the teacher in China hit me if I did something wrong. Of course not, the teachers in China respect and love their students, just like the teachers in the United States. They don’t know much about China. They might just know a little bit about ancient China, but not modern China. It is my duty to introduce these to my classmates.

I want to talk about the present situation of China with my classmates, because China is not what they believe it to be. For example, China has become the second largest economy in the world, China has become the biggest developing country, and China has the third strongest military in the world. Most of Chinese are satisfied with their lives.

I want to talk about the Chinese culture with my classmates, because Chinese history is as long as five thousand years. Ancient Chinese people made great contribution to world civilization. For example,  Confucius, the greatest ideologist in ancient China proposed the idea of peace and harmony which are still meaningful nowadays. Chinese culture is colorful. For example, The Spring Festival is a time  Chinese spend time with families and eat dumplings. And as a language, Chinese is beautiful in form and pleasing in sound. I’d like to teach my classmates some easy greetings in Chinese.

I want to join the discussion of the experiment and the team work, and I want to be an active member in the discussion of the group or the whole class instead of being an outsider. I have a lot of good ideas for the experiments or discussion, and I hope I can make others understand what I mean. I wish I can make others stop saying something like “I don’t know what you are talking about”.

But as you know, I just come to the United States and my English is not good. So, it is hard for me to tell these to my classmates. Nobody wants to chat with a person who speaks slowly, so I can’t introduce the present situation and the culture of China. My English is not good, so I don’t know how to express my idea. I feel nervous. I need to improve my English as soon as possible. I need to read more articles in English and listen to VOA Special English every day. I need to memorize the new words that I meet and try my best to pronounce them so that I can communicate with others more quickly. I feel tired about these, but I can’t give up improving English in order to communicate with my classmates adroitly.

Oh, I’m under heavy pressure now, and I have to continue to have science class. Those are all the things that I want to talk to you. Frank, can you understand me? Hope you can!

The Scarlet Letter/Juno Creative Project

Isabella Tognini

Self-reflection

Due: 12/10/2012

 

For my creative piece I actually decided to focus on a couple of topics that weren’t quite discussed in class, which was “independence” and “an individuals pursuit of happiness.” When reading The Scarlet Letter, I couldn’t help but admire Hester’s ability to take her situation head on, and continue to carry herself and her child through some very rough times. From the beginning of the book she is definitely seen as an independent women. In spite of the way the townspeople see her, she soon finds liberation in the letter, which allows her to transform the meaning of the letter. In the movie, Juno, she starts off being an extremely independent person. She, as well, takes the situation head on, and decides to stay pregnant and for the most part, does not let others opinions effect her daily life. But though these two ladies were independent, they also found comfort and longing for the one they loved. I created a song about society’s cruelty and having the strength to endure their perception of right and wrong. When writing this song, I focused more on Juno, and how she had to carry the evidence with her, but also the support that she, in the end, wanted from Paulie. The song starts off saying “they were kind, for a time,” where I connected with how society treats individuals -- they can be kind, until you do something that they don’t see as the norm. With my lyrics I wanted to show that the character (or whoever might sing this song) was affected by society’s opinion, but at the same time knowing that they don’t actually understand the whole situation. Though times are hard and people are cruel, you can still be strong and be able to carry a burden without running away. But although it’s nice to be independent, having someone by your side to help support you can be a great thing.  

            I started my piece by picking a song that I really liked and know all the lyrics to. I originally wanted to write my own song, but then realized that I don’t play any instruments and that it would be extremely hard to come up with a tune/melody without knowing chords. So I decided to use a Mumford & Sons song and change up all of the lyrics. I wrote down some key concepts, which I thought might help with writing the song. While doing this I thought about that scene when Juno walked through the hall at her school and all of the kids just stared at her stomach and in The Scarlet Letter when Hester had to stand up on the scaffold. And while those people judged her, they still stood strong, Juno didn’t run to the bathroom and cry, and Hester didn’t just leave the town.

Unfortunately, the problem with using an existing song, is that I did have to pay attention to how many words/syllables I had in each line, or it would be sounded like I was trying to rush the song. Also, since it’s such a new song, I could not find the instrumental, and had to stick with using just my own voice (and a crappy microphone). I am also not great at writing songs, but I tried the best I could with being as poetic as possible. And I think that for never having wrote a song before, I did do a pretty good job, especially when I needed to execute a theme. I think I made it clear that in the beginning of the song, there was an obvious issue with society and was able to show a solution near the end when they are able to be strong together and they don’t have to run away, even if they don’t live my society’s expectations. 

If I had to do this project all over again, I think I could have tried to pick another song, one that I could find an instrumental for, which I believe would have made the song sound a lot better. Another thing which would have been really cool to do, is to actually have learned to play the song on guitar. Though I do think it was smart for me to take an already existing melody, or I would have created something that would have absolutely been horrid (haha). 

     

Qaswa Malik

Theme: Identity VS Society 

Self Reflection 

        We read “The scarlet letter” and watched “Juno” in our sexuality and society class. Both stories portray the same themes and some messages but represents the different time periods of the world. “The scarlet letter” is a story of a women who becomes victim of public eye just because of committing an unforgettable sin of adultery. Many themes occur which directly relates to our sexuality and society class. “Juno” is other story of a teen girl who gets pregnant and reflects the story of modern Hestor Prynne. Both stories are not just congested in portraying the main ideas of sexuality and society but goes further and explains themes, ideas, symbols and messages which makes the reader enough flexible in understanding of sexuality and society and things beyond this. 

I chose the theme of Identity Vs Society, for this creative project. Identity and society are one of the main themes in both stories which are important because it explains how sometimes a personal identity actually looks like but how people are unaware of the real identity of an individual. In both stories, this theme is occurs as the prominent one. In Scarlet Letter, Dimmendale’s character was facing some inner destruction and he knew his identity but for people, due to his work and purity, Dimmensdale was a very young beautiful, genius and pure person who have served the community honestly. But she has shown wise enough to pull the situation on a right side so that she can solve the problem even though she was much younger than her perception and wise decisions. For her parents she was like a kid and in actual she was but her decision for making other's family happy was a proof of that she was not kid anymore. Here this shows a connection with The scarlet letter in a way that sometimes people think opposite of actual identity or stage where a person stands at that time. Although this does not directly relates with the Dimmensdale condition but shows the same idea behind them. For my final creative product, I could not put the situations of both them together but I chose to make a cage that could reflect the dimmensdale's situation but would be giving the same idea for both or any kind of situation like that. 

When I started to think about my creative piece, I decided to make a cage which would show my selected theme by representing a little piece of poetry and color selection which would be showing different meanings. I hanged a bird, broken feathers with poetry written on them, in the cage. I did not poetry by myself but I translated it from Urdu to English just to give a shape to my final piece. I chose to make feathers and bird all in red color because each color means something different. So the meaning of red or scarlet color is sin, flame and the things in this categories. For the outside of the look, I decided to choose green color because this color shows respect and honor. I put some flowers and butterflies to fully show what I wanted to present through it. So this whole piece describes an inner situation of a person and then how people are unaware of the internal destruction or internal happiness or things that portray the same idea behind something. I really tried to show the colors that mean something important in understanding of the theme and creative piece. 

For the picture of my final creative piece, I passed through different stages of thinking to finalize my thoughts. At first, i had a different idea about feathers and poetry. I thought I would just stick them inside the cage but that wasn’t enough for poetry so then i decided to hang them with string. Before hanging them, I had to arrange according to the lines of poetry. The making of whole piece was a fun for me but I faced some problems in making the cage with the paper. I think this was difficult and took more time because I made a craft like this first time. 

Now there are some parts I where I did good as well as some parts where i don’t think I did well. Well done parts include choosing of a theme and idea of how to present it. I think I was creative in doing this project as a whole because main parts of the project include the well presentation of ideas through various creative techniques. I took more time to finalize the product than choosing theme and idea. I did this crafts thing for the first that’s why it took me more time to stand the structure of this cage. I have a better idea of this project if I do this again because  this piece have some mistakes done by me. First one include small size of feathers which lead to small font size of my poetry. If I do this once again, I would focus on large size of feathers so that it would be easier to read the little piece of poetry. Also redoing would expand my mind and hands to do better to present the idea of theme based on colors and poetry.

Little piece of poetry

the heart's desire 

was left ignored

and so this love madness grew

between us 

were these distances 

i know know what compelled us

a bit of my heart was drowning in sorrow

and a bit of it was a love madness

there were lonely nights 

and they stayed just so 

in these colorful tides

my eyes drowned 

what was unsaid, unheard

all that was to be said, my gestures articulated 

a bit of my heart was drowning in sorrow

and a bit of it was a love madness