I, and a team I will mention the names of later, submitted a film for the Kaikohe Film Festival… or well at least submitted it for voting within the school.  The name of the film is in the title of the blog: Finding Jacob.  The theme was related to treasures but I don’t know exactly what the theme was.  The film follows an anthropomorphic Pounamu lost to his owner, Jacob’s, neglectfulness.  The pounamu spends the film trying to get back to Jacob.  With a blend of CGI and animation the pounamu was brought to life.  First, how we got there.

The film began where all films begin, a storyboard.  About an hour or so of storyboarding and we had our general idea of a film.  Honestly it didn’t help that we had no idea what we were going to make. Taira, essentially a mentor, came up with the perfect idea.  A lost Pounamu which we animate over.  We get to it, I take a bunch of camera shots of a Pounamu , we also use a drone to take some cool shots.  Then it was the animation.   About 3 weeks for animation, maybe 2. “A god forbidden long time for 3 minutes”  I thought.  It made me realize how much goes into animation, thinking about it less optimistically a 1:1 week to minute ratio is horrible.  Anyways, after the animation was done we got into the effects.

Time to meet the team.  Jacob was: Voice acting, main actor, composer.  Asher was: Music, animation, assistance with the camera.  I was: Camera, animation.  Ariana was a miscellaneous help, helping out with animating the hard shots.  In my opinion the most important person, Taira: mentor, CGI animation, also supplied the camera equipment (very important).  I mean you can’t do something you don’t know, this was the first time any of us were doing this (besides Taira).

The film taught me a lot, not only about using Adobe for animation but also about camera shots.  Something that year 9 English would never properly teach me.  I learnt how important lighting it, how camera focus works, also how to actually use a camera.  The best part, it taught me the craft of film making and how much dedication needs to go into it.

The title describes it all.  The week was about communication, defense and dummy halves.  I didn’t really do much, I did learn a lot of technical stuff.  For example, how dummy halves work.  I learnt how the dummy half is essentially just an excuse to stop people from solo stomping, instead they duo stomp.  Most of the time, the dummy: picks up the ball after the person with the ball is touched and plants the ball.  A ball planting is basically just placing the ball down for the dummy half to pick up.  The dummy half then either passes the ball to someone else, passes it back to the previous owner (I swear there’s a difference), or tries and scores but fails because dummy halves can’t score.  That was interesting to learn because without context there is zero reason for there to be a dummy half other than balance.  

Another important part of the week was about positioning and defensive “sliding”, literally just walking to match the person you aim to stop.  I believe the most important part would’ve been the communication.  Knowing your comms is vital to playing efficiently because this game has been catered towards teamwork and NOT solo stomping.  Especially when you’re with a bunch of people that defend on offense.  In summary, next week will be absolute hell.  Zero highlights by the way if you were so curious.

In PHE after having done sexuality we’re starting a new topic, touch.  I really don’t like it, especially because our planner foretells a tournament among the class.  This is actual hell, I could barely do basketball and sexuality, usually  seen as the worst thing ever, was my saving grace.  I don’t play much sport, I’m not the most athletic, I REALLY don’t like physically impairing activities.  Touch is a simple game: you have a ball and a team.  Your team’s goal is to reach the end and put the ball on the try line.  Whenever the person with the ball is touched they give the ball to another person.  When they are touched with the ball a few times the other team gets a try at attacking.  All defense does is go and touch the ball holder, when touched they must retreat 7 meters.  That’s really all the game is but obviously there’s more to it.  

It’s so simple yet deadly for people who don’t want to play it.  PHE is essentially just that for me:  I wait patiently for sexuality so I don’t have to do stuff but then the next topic the bell tolls and the most athletic sport is forced upon me.  During the actual week I didn’t really do much, just ran with a ball essentially.  I believe that’s what the rest of the unit will end up being.  Since I really need to (try) improve something I want to improve my passing.

Forces and motion are essentially what describes how something moves.  For example gravity, everyone knows it because it’s a topic 7 year olds bragged about knowing when they just saw it off the internet.  Gravity is a force, the force that pulls you inward to the earth’s center.  Every action you take probably has some kind of force for there are various kinds of forces.

There is: Support going upwards going against gravity which is going down.  Push goes against friction, those two oppose each other but can go both ways (even in space! although ’tis very little.).  Motion is essentially the action while forces are what describe the act.  We use force in many ways, like the simple machines.  There are things like the lever which uses a flat surface to lift an object up.

In Pe in the first 3 weeks we had learnt and played Volleyball.  My best learning moment was learning the footwork for spikes.  That wasn’t really interesting but miles ahead of the other topics.  As you should know I am not confident in any athleticism let alone skills.  Thus by proxy every skill needs working on.  I learnt nothing in terms of game smarts because there isn’t much at the base level of volleyball.  NOTHING has changed since week 1.  If volleyball were to appear again in my agenda I would work on my reaction skills.

Yellow, this term my class has been learning about atoms and related things like their atomic structure.  It’s quite simple really, the atom is basically a conglomerate of  3 things: Protons, neutrons, electrons.  These three things each have a diffrent electrical charge: Protons have +1 chare, neutrons have no charge and electrons have -1 charge.  Here’s the structure of an atom.

This is a carbon atom, what carbon is made out of.  As you can see the electrons are circiling around the protons and neutrons.  Those circles are called shells, a certain amount of electrons can be in each shell.  The first shell (the inner-most shell) can only have 2 electrons, the rest of them can only have 8 max.  For example the inner shell of the atom has 2 electrons, whereas the outer shell has 4.  This means the outer shell is incomplete.  If so the atom will try to gain a full outer shell, the atom will always go the easier route, in this case both routes (losing or gaining electrons) are equally easy.  This means the atom will try share electrons with another atom, for example another carbon atom.

As the title suggests atoms are literally the matter of this universe and everything in it, with a few exceptions like light.  Why am I sharing this?  I thought it’d be nice if you youngin’ learnt about atoms, of course this is an abriged to the proper explanation.  It’s also a nice way to recap on what I learnt.

Hello, in recent times my class has been learning a new topic in social studies/science.  Don’t know what social studies is?  To put it simply it is the American’s idea of history class, although american classes can be more political.  Globalisation and its effects are an example of political history, although its not exactly history.  Globalisation, in my opinion of course, is the procsess of the world (or globe, considering its in the name) intertwining thanks to the act of trading and sharing culture with one another.  Basicly it is how the world connects with each other, my best example being the exchange that goes between markets.  FOR EXAMPLE, that chromebook of yours, probably made from china as always (it isn’t).  Chromebooks require a large amounts of reasources considering it is only the height and length of your forearm.  Because of this, china needs more stuff to make more product.  They start trading (most likely money, bad sign when they trading with resource for resource )  to get what they need to create the Chromebook.  They make it,  send it, then a shop elsewhere receives it.  Last of all the chromebook is sold, to you… maybe.  Chromebooks aren’t the only thing sold, another thing we talked about, weirdly enough, is the selling of humans.  That sadly counts as globalization because it is a trading of product and the connection of countries.  If you want, you can think of globalisation as a fancy word for the phrase: overseas shopping that effects the economy.

I didn’t explain it greatly because I kind of lost track but I myself learnt a lot from this topic…

For a while me and my class have been doing many things about fractions for maths.  Decimals, mixed fractions, improper fractions, etc…  I… I didn’t learn much due to my already extensive knowledge on fractions but it was a good refresher.  “The class” learnt a lot about fractions in equations.  It isn’t really complex if you have the right mindset or the right strategy when it comes to equations with fractions.  I’ll give a few examples of my learning.  5/10 – 4/10.  When it comes to like denominators (The bottom numbers of the fraction) and equations, I ignore the denominator because in the end, it won’t matter.  So, ignoring the denominator, you get 5-4 which equals 1.  add the denominator back and yippee, you have the answer, 1/10.

Another example is 1/2 – 1/3.  Now the denominators are unlike, when it comes to this I try to find the lowest common multiple (LCM) between the two denominators.  The LCM is the lowest multiple between your two numbers, don’t get it?  I’ll give an example.  Say… 5 and 3.  To find the LCM you’d list all the multiples you think you’d need.  Then find the lowest number that is in both “lists”.  In this case 3’s list is: 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 27, 30, 33, 36 (up to X12).  5 is: 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60, 65, 70, 75, 80, 85, 90, 95, 100, 105, 110, 115, 120 (Also to X12).  The Lowest common multiple is 15 due to 15 being found the lowest on both lists.  Now back to the question, 1/2 – 1/3.

We find the LCM, no need for the list, its just six.  When encountered with an unlike denominator question the easiest thing for me is to just multiply the two denominators together, this doesn’t always work though.  So far, we have made things easier by making the two denominators, previously unlike, to become like.  So now the 1/2 – 1/3 is 1/6 – 1/6…  This doesn’t work though so lets continue.  Now, whatever you do with the denominator you’d do with the numerator (top number).  For the first fraction time we multiplied the 2 by 3 to get six.  Now we multiply the numerator, which is a one.  Now it is a 3.  Do the same with the other, that is a 2.  Now the fractions are 3/6 – 2/6.  We have successfully made the unlike denominators like. 🙂  Now finally the answer, is 1/6.

Hope you learnt something, if not, too bad.