Food Justice: Urban Gardening!! Shall We Update?

Hi, I thought I would do this cause I got some time to kill!

So, On Saturday, under the high heat and the blistering sun, we went outside! We lost a few gallons of sweat and went to 2 urban gardens! We interviewed several people – both organizers , and people who use the garden – and even volunteered a bit, planning on going there again in a week or 2.

Well, anyway, we suffered from the blistering heat, and yeah, that and that. We also had to search a bit for people to interview, as it’s being memorial day weekend meant that many people weren’t there.

The problem we encountered:
Memory. We should have brought an extra card.

So, yep!

Let the others of the group post!

Environment: Progress 2

(aka Week 4 but then it wouldn’t seem chronological. Also thanks a lot Georgiana and Benjamin for stealing my post it show me how much you appreciate my work >:D)

Challenges that we face involve planning and time. Because we’re doing stop-motion, planning out as precisely as possible would be ideal. However, with my so-called-partner-in-crime-aka-Ayumu missing 3 days in the past two weeks due to unavailability, thinking about and finalizing the script by myself is difficult. If I had all the time in the world to handle with this project instead of having to deal with last minute tests (SATII’s on Saturday and I’ve only started cramming today! yay!), essays (eleven days left and I haven’t even started! yay!), projects (a group project due in 7 days and we haven’t even talked about it! yay!) and finals in the last few weeks of school, it would be more manageable. (Also, Sara’s going to be gone for a week so we have to get some serious work done!)

However, on the bright side, production itself has become less daunting because we have completed the first of four (if we’re not tossing this scene out due to the crookedness of the board) scenes. Also, we’ve come up with a sort-of short cut, but not really a short cut, if you see what I’m saying. Now, if only we could narrow down our two most important scenes — where the heart of the information is.

At this point, these challenges seem a little daunting. After all, time in this world in this world is pretty limited. It’s not like I could magically add three more hours to a day, right? Well, for those tests and essays, I’ll probably spend my morning train ride to school studying and writing essays instead of napping. As for that project? Hahahahaha… For that planning out the script before we meet again on Tuesday? I’ll start spamming Ayumu and nag him to help me. For my part, hopefully inspiration will strike.

What I am excited about is seeing this entire project unfold and finalize itself in the next thirty days. Our start seems to be pretty good, and it’s the little details and efforts that we put into this project into becoming successful. Even the music, which is a major issue right now (we haven’t even thought about it yet…) plays a major part in changing the video from just pictures moving on a screen to a meaningful video. Piecing everything together is a long way off from where we are right now, but it’ll happen.

-brb spamming Ayumu on facebook-

Time To Edit

 

Today we learned how to edit videos, and each of the videos came out perfect for out first time of course. Shola already knew that our videos were going to be great. In the beginning however, everything was considered very rough, learning the basics is already one of the hardest parts of learning anything new and IMovie was no different. 

After learning the basics we decided to go downstairs in the basement and attempt to use our new skills on a practice video, in which each of us worked on a different part of the same video , a horrible basketball game that was played in Harlem. Unsurprisingly, each video turned out to be a comedy, it was pretty hard for the video not to be a comedy considering all of the plays were all failures, good times. Now that everybody has experience in video editing, next week, we are on our way back out to get more interviews in the area.

A Little Too Late Of A Post

Option 1:  This week, after we pitch our ideas, we’ll be working towards a storyboard, figuring out ways we can tell our stories through different mediums.  Write about what medium you are planning to use to tell your story and how this story is going to be told – Any interesting shots or interviews you want to record?  Any important information you want to make sure gets included?

In order for us to get this point across we are interviewing everyday regular people about Equal Rights, Police Activity, if certain people feel nervous about walking past Officers, or if Males are more likely to get stopped by Cops than Females. We started to record people and found out many things about how people feel towards law enforcement.

week 2 option 2

On week 2, we went to 14th st union square to interview people about the police activity and where or not they feel safe about this community. we manage to interview about 5 people which is a great thing. we hope we will be interviewing people who are cops and see what they think. 

what special about our activity is that it raises awareness about how the police acts towards people and what they should do when they are stop by the police. 

we are going to tell the friends around us. and we are going to use youtube and facebook and raise awareness about the police activity going on in New York city. 

Week 4: Updates and Weekly Inspiration x2

THIS IS BENJAMIN AND GEORGIANA! 🙂

This is our weekly update!

Thanks for reading.

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Edit

Enviroment: Progress 2

Posted on May 14, 2012 by kc213 | Leave a comment

Just kidding!

We went over film and audio techniques today. We’ll be filming for the first time on Saturday (either my grandfather or the Patchen Community Garden)! Ben and I are very excited.

So far, everyone we have met have been highly welcoming! And thus have encountered no problems!

Our goal for the video is to teach others the importance of urban gardening in relation to food and to inspire others to be involved.

Weekly Inspiration:

What are some challenges or difficulties you are facing as you begin production?

G: My only challenge is finding the time to film and balancing the externship with my final projects.

B: Pretty much the same! But I’m finishing school in a week and that will no longer be a problem!

How do you plan on tackling these challenges?

G: With lots and lots of planning. I’ll try to not procrastinate much. I have my days planned out for the next few weeks.

B: Planning!
What are you looking forward to working on? Is there a particular aspect of production you are especially excited about?

B: Interviews! And filming people! And what Georgiana says right after me!

G: I’m excited to visit some of the groups that we’ll be filming and see exactly what they do. I want to film!!! 😀

Environment: Progress 2

This week, we decided to begin script writing so that we could have a better idea of how we want our final project to look like.

We decided on the use of animations, specifically drawing on a white-board. With the white-board, we plan to create drawings that enables the viewer to more easily understand our concept and also to present the facts more straight-forwardly. The white-board also emphasizes that our idea that color is needed (in this case, trees) to better the environment for health and visual purposes.

To narrow our ideas, we came up with answers to “why us?” “why me?” and “why this?”

I believe that New York City, with its population of over 8 million people, can do so much more to change and better our environment. Air pollution is an issue to be concerned with for people who live in the city, and it is only with the collaborative effort of the 8 million people that we can truly make a difference.

Bio: Ayumu

Hello everyone I am Ayumu Nishikubo. I come from Japanese and American decent. My father is from Japan although he has lived in America longer then Japan. As for my mother she is just a city woman who grew up in the suburbs. I prefer to represent myself as a out stander like the black & yellow cow in a herd of sheep. Well, not as dramatically like that but I prefer not to be just another sheep in the herd of the world. I enjoy making people laugh, I’m commonly told I should be a comedian but I would prefer a career in media. I go to Quest To Learn, a digital media design school based on video game theory. I love Q2L (Quest To Learn) and will be the first graduating class. In my spare time I like to either play videogames or hanging out with friends. But recently I have been extremely busy with school and out of school projects/work so I may seem like I’m rushing or tired all the time. I also contain a remarkable ability to relax/sleep for hours on end. I see myself with a career in technology and media probably working on entertainment and videogames.

TEAM School Closures

We’ve been hard at work in school closures, and had a new addition to our team last week: Tevin Campbell. We spent this week sort of regrouping after our pitches, and taking some time to get to know our new member and some of the issues he’d like to tackle with the subject of school closures as well.

So far, our focus has been on the Regents Tests and how these affect School closings, and education in general. However, in the last meeting some of the curiosity raised some larger questions- mostly why do some schools stay open and some don’t?

We’re lucky that our media makers are so close to the subject of school closings (most have some experience or know people whose schools have closed) and are excited to have the opportunity to explore these themes. We know what the Board of Education holds as standards (graduation rate, test scores) but what are the perspectives of those involved that we don’t usually hear from? How does this shape the education landscape?

Since we now have a third person and new ideas, we decided to take one step back and one more week to gel together a written project statement where our young media makers will write now exactly what they want to say and accomplish with this piece.

Having a written statement by next week will help put us all on the same page, with a specific goal and message, so we can start putting together a plan and talking to people (we are VERY aware of the deadlines, and have a rolling list of contacts, but we feel that this is a crucial step in our process before we take any further steps.)

Environment team hard at work!

Had another great meeting yesterday, as we move further along with our research, scripting and storyboarding!