Project Planning 3/21/2018 This week me and Kennedy have been working on planning out our documentary/PSA. As of right now we have what kind of clips we are planning on filming and what kind of music we want to use planned out; now we just need to write the script so we know what we want to say when we go to record the voice over and interview style clips. Today during class me and Kennedy are going to call the Nature Institute to see what their policy on filming there is. Our plan is to film all of the documentary about the Nature Institute at the Nature Institute and to film the other portion of the video about, why you should take care of the environment, around town and wherever we can find a ideal and pretty location to film. I’ve been watching some videos on how to film a documentary style video on a DSLR camera and so far I’ve learned a lot of helpful tricks and tips that I’m excited to try out!
Documentary 3/2/2018 This week Kennedy and I hung up our environmental posters around town. It was really exciting to see our plans of hanging up the posters come to life. Also this week we talked to our teacher about what the next step in our project is going to be. We came up with some really exciting ideas. As you know Kennedy and I have talked about the idea of showing a documentary that deals with environmental issues to our community, recently we have also been talking about the idea of raising money through a bake sale then donating the money to a charity that gives back to the environment. After discussing these ideas with our teachers he suggested that we could combine these ideas by creating our own documentary about the nature institute that we are going to be volunteering at. Then after creating it we could host a public viewing of our very own documentary. When he proposed this idea to us, I immediately thought this would be something fun and exciting to create while also making a positive contribution to the community. When we were discussing exactly what our documentary would include; we came up with the idea that we could make it into a half documentary half PSA about the extreme importance of taking care of our environment. I’m really looking forward to seeing where this half documentary half PSA takes us!
New Ideas 2/5/2018 Lately me and Kennedy have been brainstorming to come up with new ideas, to not only help the environment, but also to inform other people about the importance of taking care of our Earth. So the other day I was watching a documentary about food and how what we eat effects not only our health, but also the environment. After watching this documentary I told Kennedy she also needed to watch it because we could possibly implement this documentary, or at least the message it is trying spread into our project. After she watched the documentary, we came up with the idea that we could possibly rent out a room somewhere local to us and we could show this documentary. And we had the idea that to spread the word about this event we could hang up flyers around town and in our school. We haven’t figured out all the logistics of this plan, but we are really hoping we can make this happen!
Exciting Progress 1/31/2018 This week me and Kennedy made some solid plans for our project. We called our local Nature Institute and we set up a day we are going to go and volunteer there. We don’t know exactly what we will be doing yet, but she told us we would be working outdoors. We are both really excited that we have some definite plans made. We are anxious to do something within our project that will have a immediate positive result. We hope after we volunteer here once we can then get more information about volunteering again. Also this weekend Kennedy and I are putting some posters up around town to remind people not to litter. We hope this will at least make people think twice before they throw trash out into our environment. We have already made the posters that we are going to hang up. We have also decided we are going to make a twitter account to show people what we are up to with our project and to try and spread the message that we all need to take better care of our Earth.
New Year 1/12/2018 It’s a new year and we are making even more exciting progress with our project. This past week me and Kennedy have made some posters to remind people to not litter. We are really excited to put these posters out and we really hope to see a positive change because of our posters. In my last blog post I mentioned that we emailed a local Nature Institute about setting up an interview as well as possibly doing some volunteer work at there facility. The thing is, me and my partner didn’t realize that our school email won’t allow us to receive emails from people outside of the school districts. So we are now planning on calling The Nature Institute and explaining the situation to them. Hopefully by doing this we can start volunteering in the near future. Another thing we have been doing to make our project more efficient and effective is coming up with some New Year’s resolutions for our project. One resolution we came up with was trying to work at spending more time outside of school working on our project. Another resolution we are pursing is not procrastinating when it comes to our project because I feel like we struggled with procrastination in the beginning stages of our project. I think we are at the point in our project where our ideas are going to start to take shape, I’m excited to see where this project takes us!
Environment 12/7/2017 I’m very excited to share that we have made a lot of exciting progress with our project since I have last posted. We have made the decision to make our project about helping the environment, as well as trying to show others that there are many things they can do to help as well. I am really glad that we choose this topic for our project because I feel like as humans we have a responsibility to take care of our planet. So this week my partner and I have emailed a local nature institute about possibly setting up an e-mail or over the phone interview about how we and others can help the environment. In the e-mail we sent we also asked if their was any volunteer work that we could help out with. While we are waiting for a response from this organizations we are researching other organizations we could possibly reach out to. I am very excited to see where this project takes us.
Project Change 11/10/2017 This has been a busy week for my me and my partner. We haven't really had a chance to talk with one another about our project. We are still struggling with deciding on what exactly we are going to be doing with our project. The good news is even though we didn't know exactly what we are going to be doing we have some really great ideas. I think the idea that we are leaning towards the most is cleaning up the community to help the environment. I really love this idea because I feel like it’s really important that people take care of the earth and environment. Also if we did this project we could not only take actions to help the environment but also educate people on why they should be taking actions to help and protect the environment as well. Tomorrow me and my partner are going to get together and make a final decision on what we are project is going to be. No matter what we decide I'm very excited to start the next step in our project.
Update 11/3/2017 After getting going deeper into our project last week, this week Kennedy and I have decided there might be some aspects of our project that we need to change. The issue we ran into with our project was that, while we love the idea of interviewing people about their ambitions in life and what steps they are taking or have taken to reach their goals, we aren't quite sure how we can use the information from these interviews to positively impact our community. So my partner and I have been doing some brainstorming on what we could do to change our project. One idea that our teacher helped us develop is instead of interviewing people about their personal dreams we could interview people about what they would like to see and their dreams for the future of the city where we live. Then we would work to turn as many of those dreams into reality as possible. Another idea that we are considering is doing different task that would help the environment. Kennedy and I both love this idea as well. So now we just have to decide on which project we want to pursue!
Project Planning 10/27/2017 This week me and my partner focused on making plans to move forward in our project. We decided that we are going to use an app called Story Corps to record and save our interviews. We are really excited about this because its a really fun app to use! Then we started talking about who specifically we are going to be interviewing. We think it’s important to have a wide age range to get a variety of stories from people. So we are thinking we are going to interview elementary age kids, high schooler, adults, and senior citizens. This week my group talked more specifically about what questions we are going to be asking. We know what the main idea of what are interviews are going to be about but this week we worked on trying to get more specifics. I am very excited to hear and learn from other people’s stories about their dreams and ambitions. We still aren't completely sure what we are going to do with the information and stories we gather. But me and my partner were thinking about somehow sharing the advice from people we collect about following your dreams and share it with younger people and that’s how we could use this project to positively impact the community. Introduction 10/23/2017 Hi, my name is Gracie! I love spending time outdoors and being with my friends, family, and dogs. I enjoy playing volleyball in my free time as well as photography. I have one older brother who is currently in the Army. Anyways enough about me, more importantly I’m writing to tell you about a project me and my partner are in the beginning stages of and we are very excited about. So when asked to come up with a project that we would be interested in that would also have a positive effect on the community my partner and I had many ideas, but the one that was most interesting to us was to do a project where we go around our community and interview people of all ages and ask them about dreams (goals) they have had throughout there lives. Now we haven't fully figured out all the logistics of our project, but we know we want to ask questions like, “What are some challenges you've faced when pursuing your dream?” and “Has there been any significant people/person in your life that inspired this dream? How so?” This project really interest me for many reasons. I think it’s really interesting to learn about other people’s lives.I feel like a lot of people have untold stories and knowledge that others can learn from. That’s why I think this project is so important because we will be giving ordinary people an opportunity to share their stories that otherwise may never get shared.