Proactive or Procrastination?

Recently I asked myself, "Am I proactive or a procrastinator?" Well really, I'm both. At times I can be quite the procrastinator; not really with schoolwork, but with home priorities. After a long day of school, all kids want to go home and just relax, maybe take a nap, go to the beach, eat some ice cream accompanied by a movie, or we may just not feel like starting up our school brain again. And sometimes I feel like that. But usually right when I get home I begin my homework so I can finish it ahead of time and don't have to worry about the assignment later on. But it's another thing when it comes to chores. I usually put it off and wait until my parents remind me about it. Trust me I do plan when I'm going to do these things but sometimes it just slips my mind. But over-all I think I'm more proactive than a procrastinator.

The amount of free time I have always depends on how proactive I am. For example, I sometimes put my work aside so I can have free time for the afternoon but that always back fires. I then have heaps of homework to do the next day, from putting my previous assignments aside. But at other times, I'm really determined to finish my homework right when I'm assigned to it so I can have extra time during the afternoon or weekend.

If I were to change my work habits, I would most definitely try to be more proactive. Although I always find a way to finish all my assignments in on time and get good grades on them, it does cause me a lot, and I mean a lot, of stress. If I were to finish my assignments right when I got home, all of that stress would slip away. To fix my procrastination, I would try to forget about all of my distractions, and just focus on what had to be done. I will now try my best to always be proactive, and hopefully have a lot of free time after making my homework my first priority.

My Visual Poem

During the second quarter we had to create a Visual Poem. With this opportunity, I decided to write a poem about a place that I cherish; Hanalei. I was excited to film footage for this project because I got to remind myself of how lucky I am to live in such a beautiful place like Hanalei. I decided to revolve my poem on my outlook of this amazing place and what others may think of it too. I know that everyone has that one special place where they could just go and forget about all of their problems, so I choose a topic where people could relate upon.

Throughout my video I applied several effects to bring out the feeling I was trying to create. For example, with the clips of the sunset I enhanced the colors so the audience could feel like they were at the beach watching the enchanting sunset. In another clip I slowed down the motion and towards the end, I included a transition that fades so my last lines and picture could linger in the audience's minds.

Over-all, I believe my project had a great end result. I thought my poem had a good feel to it, my visuals accompanied my wording well, and I believe I edited my footage accurately. I am quite satisfied with my result, but there is a couple of things I could improve. With a little more time, I could have re-filmed my poem lines so it would sound more clear and it could have also been read a little slower. But again, I think I did a great job and I'm glad that I could share my love for my home with everyone.

Please feel free to watch my video down below

AnakaleaL VisualPoem from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.

Finished News Story

Yay! My group and I have completed our news story; Hurricane Iniki. I believe our finished product was great and included the required criteria. Our story was about the *horrible hurricane that hit the island on Kaua'i on September 11, 1992 and how the Kaua'i people were affected. We really wanted to reach out to people of all ages and educate them about the dangers of a hurricane and how to be prepared. We also wanted people to hear first-hand about what could happen to you or your family doing a hurricane. Although it took us quite some time to film the interviews, gather b-roll, and edit, my team and I worked very well together and got the task done.

 I must give a big thanks to my teamates; they went above and beyond and I couldn't do it without them.. so thank you Lilio, Russell, Seth, and Noa! I also really appreciated all of the people who agreed to contribute to our project and  were willing to be very open towards my team and I. We were able to film six interviews in all and learned a lot from each individual. With-in the six interviews we got information from all different ages; three ten year olds shred their knowledge, as well as three adults. My teamates and I loved getting to hear the stories and advice from each interviewee... we greatly appreciate all of their help!

I am very pleased with our final product! We worked very hard while trying to make our video the best it could be, and with overcoming any problems that we faced by resolving it as a team. I liked how we got information from several people of all different ages, so all audiences could connect to each interviewee.

After completing our video, the class critiqued each film one by one (All of the videos were amazing!) When getting the heads-up of our video being next; I must admit we were all afraid at first, but after the first couple of seconds we realized that we didn't do too shabby. We were also more than happy with our results; I did agree with everyones votes and kind comments.

Down below is our final product, please feel free to watch!

P1T6 Hurricane Iniki from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.