Last School Day!

It's that time of year to answer some surveys and prepare for your final, which will be to sit back and watch a movie and have fun with friends.

And also, share the URL for your portfolio here.

So-

please take the following survey AND, in the comment section below, recommend a movie you think the entire class would love to watch during your final next week.

Thank you for being such a great and creative group of people. I have loved working with you this year and seeing your ideas take flight. I cannot wait to see what you will do next year!

Mrs. Leather

Film-Portfolio Reflection

The following writing prompts are excerpts from USCs School of Cinematic Arts, NYU's Tisch School of Film and Television, and Chapman's Dodge College Freshman Applications. Select one of the prompts below and write a 300 word response to the question or reflective essay. This is simply practice, not to be used as a final draft for college admissions. Rather, it is intended to give you some time to think about such questions and ponder possible creative answers. Even if you have no desire to attend a film school, the writing prompts are creative and reflective and will allow you to think about yourself, your learning and accomplishments. They may also be springboards you may use to shape a personal artist final statement for portfolio.

USC:

Cinematic Arts Personal Statement (please upload in PDF format under the "Forms" section)

The personal statement will be read by the Film & Television Production Admission Committee as a measure of creativity, self-awareness and vision. We are looking for a sense of you as a unique individual and how your distinctive experiences, characteristics, background, values and/or views of the world have shaped who you are and what you want to say as a creative filmmaker. We want to know about the kind of stories you want to tell. Bear in mind that enthusiasm for watching films, descriptions of your favorite films and the involvement in the filmmaking process is common in most candidates. As a result, we encourage that you focus on your individuality. Note that there is no standard format or correct answer. (1,000 words or less)

- See more at: http://cinema.usc.edu/production/firstyearprocedures.cfm#sthash.wChSOmT1.dpuf

Chapman:

Prompt: Describe something that you are passionate about. How could you use the art of storytelling to share or pursue your passion? How has this passion influenced who you are and what your goals are in life? 

Formatting: One (1) page maximum in length. 12pt. Times New Roman Font. Single-spaced okay. One inch margins.

NYU-Tisch
Part 2.  Leadership and Collaboration Anecdote - Leadership and collaboration are important ingredients for creating successful media projects.  In three hundred words or less (no more than one page, double-spaced), describe an experience in which you exercised leadership and/or took part in a productive collaboration. We're interested in both your insights into these issues and your ability to tell an engaging short story. (Save as a pdf and upload to tischfilmandtv.slideroom.com.)


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Following your 300 word writing response, using your 4 samples of collected portfolio work, reflect on the following questions and add to the document to be uploaded-upload link below.

You will also upload the document to this link.

Questions:

1. Name and describe your 4 selected works. Why did you chose the 4 samples of work for your portfolio?
2. Do you consider these 4 samples the best media arts work of your high school career?
3. In looking at this body of work, how have you grown as a media arts student? (include skills, experience, understanding of how projects are developed, audience definition). Is there a single project that best shows your growth as a student? Select and describe.
4. Using 2 pieces of work from the 4, describe how learning from one piece informed the development of another piece of work that followed?
5. What would others say (viewers who do not know you) are the greatest strengths you possess, by looking at your portfolio of work? Why? (this should be at least a paragraph)
6. What would others say (again, viewers who do not know you), are possible gaps in your skills, knowledge as related to the media arts. Identify at least 1 possible gap, or lack of skill.
7. What can you do to close that gap, enhance a skill? (at least a paragraph)
8. Select one work that was mostly individual. Discuss this project as sole creator. Is there ever a  benefit in working independently on projects?
9. Select one work and describe the process of conceptualization through implementation. How did it start? How did you complete it? What were the steps and challenges in between?
10. Based on your own experience, what can you do if a project starts to 'go south'? Do you think projects that 'go south' can be saved? How do you save a project?
11. Describe a project you have not yet created that would take your current portfolio to a higher level of personal expression and satisfaction.
12. What is the single most important thing you have learned from examining your work of the past 2 years?

Portfolio

Reminder: Upload your American Story Project to youtube, post the youtube link on this spreadsheet today so that all teachers may have access to final movies for viewing/grading.
thanks

Please use Google Sites to create a personal website for yourself. You will have today's class period as well as time next week to complete.

Click here for a tutorial

Your website should have at least:

1. Home page (About you, artist statement, areas of experience or expertise, software skills, other such as hobbies and interests). Could also include any awards or ways that you stand out from the crowd. 
2. Page that showcases work you have created, at least 2 movies (sourced from youtube) and 2 or more images. Images could be photographs, photoshop images, scanned images, artwork, etc.
3. Upload a recent resume to your website.
4. Include a section or area for recommendations (such as on Linkedin) from teachers, coaches, peers you have collaborated with, people you have been on teams with, etc).
5. A few examples of your work uploaded as pdf files, for example, this could be significant writing or analysis, math or other work that demonstrates proficiency at something or enjoyment.

Share a link with me when complete

Thank you.

Portfolio and Individual Goals

It is that time of the year to take stock in your work, this year, last year and also your Freshman year.

Respond to this blogspot with the following ideas:

1. Do you have a resume or bio you could include in a portfolio website?
2. Given that colleges normally look for 10-15 solid pieces of work in a portfolio, what media arts pieces have you created in MAP (or outside) would you feature (Make a list). Note what kind of files they are (are they images, movies, 2d, 3d or stop motion animation, photos, designs/logos/visuals, etc).
3. Write a short 1 paragraph (5-6 sentence) artist statement. An artist statement is a brief description of your goals, interests and achievements as an artist, and normally points to work in progress that support your interests. For example, you could say you are a filmmaker that enjoys working with fictional narrative and write about that. For now, this can be in draft format, and included in the blog.
4. Now that you have some ideas together, open Google drive. Look at the available apps and see 'google sites'. This week you will explore making a portfolio website using Google sites. 
5. Following your portfolio development, you will look at connecting to your portfolio using Linkedin.

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Start to think about your goals moving forward. Next week, when you have completed your portfolio and linked it to Linkedin, you will be given 2 final class weeks for planning your next media arts steps.  This will include making a short video note to next year's MAP teachers, and creating some possible outline ideas for summer media projects of your own ambition, and possible themes for next year's work.

Monday May 12th

Good Morning! Happy Monday.

Please write a blogspot response (in your comments field below, as normal) to the following question (individual response, 1 per person, this is not group response):

Reflect on the American Story project. Use at least 3 of the following reflective topics as a writing prompt:

1. How do you get from conception of an idea to a fully implemented quality movie? What are the steps along the way? What was successful for your? What improvements would you make if you had to do it again?
2. Like this year, this project has yielded extremely successful results in the past. What are the key ingredients in this project that draw student engagement, participation and desire to create a 'keeper' movie?
3. Regarding your project from this year, did you create what you would consider a 'keeper' film, something you would consider for a student portfolio? Why/why not? 
4. Is the American Story a unique story, or is it a shared story among all Americans and the world? As a writer/director of such work, who is your audience? Is it you and your friends? Is it Americans? Is it an age group within American society? Does your project extend interest to citizens of the world?
5. Why do the time honored traditions and industry standard tools such as script, shot sheet, storyboard, call sheet and schedules matter in the film, tv and video industries? What is the relationship between all of them? Why are they used? Are they all used for all productions?
6. Role play that you are directing your American Story project again, but this time, you are being paid by the hour to develop and deliver a product in a 3 week time-frame to air on a broadcast cable network. What are the first steps as a director you would do to prepare? How would you ensure success of the project?
7. If you are a student interested in applying to film school (any university), what have you learned from this American Story production experience that would be relevant to preparing a portfolio piece for application to a film program at a desirable university (this will require you to pinpoint a school, see what the 2013-14 admissions movie requirement was and use that as a starting point).
8. The most successful creative teams achieve what is called "Group Flow". This concept emerges from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's work around individual creative flow (Prof. at Claremont College, studies collaborative and creative behavior). We see group flow within the most highly successful creative environments such as Pixar, Dreamworks, Google and others. Flow is described below. After you read the description of 'flow', do you desire to work in teams in which Flow occurs? Do you desire to create spaces for yourself in which you experience creative flow? How can you create environments and relationships within members of your group to promote healthy group flow and creativity?

A particular state of heightened consciousness. He (Csikzzentmihalyi) discovered that extremely creative people are at their peak when they experience ‘a unified flowing from one moment to the next, in which we feel in control of our actions, and in which there is little distinction between self and environment; between stimulus and response; or between past, present, and future.’”

American Story Film Narrative

Lukas, Shayan, Komdean, Yosh
Parsa, Andrew, Samie
Alec, Saha, Maddy, Teddy, Alex, Addison, Noah
Maddy, Rebecca
Kate, Gonzalo, Maddy, Nate, Reilly (and Ryan who also created story panels for several groups)
Mihir, Sydney, Samir, Kevin
Tony, Trung