By Joseph and TK

For our project, we decided to recreate scenes from the movie “Moonlight” using the film and style techniques of director, Wes Anderson. Anderson is an indie movie director who’s most well known movies include “Isle of Dogs”, “The Grand Budapest Hotel”, “The Fantastic Mr. Fox” and “Moonrise Kingdom”. Throughout all of his movies, Anderson’s directing style stands out very vibrantly in tone and theatrics. Some recurring cinematographic elements of Anderson’s style include tracking shots, zoom, profile shots, symmetrical framing, overhead shots and whip pans. Some of Anderson’s theatrical elements include warm and cool color palettes, non-diegetic plinking harpsichord music, one or more childish adult characters, smoking, characters explaining elaborate plans, action, violence, stylish attire, foreigners, a vintage/ old timey aesthetic, shots of writing, and an assortment of recurring actors and actresses. We chose to incorporate Anderson’s style to “Moonlight” because we loved the concept of revamping a dark toned movie into something more vibrant and lighthearted. To accomplish this goal, we chose some scenes from “Moonlight” that we thought had potential to be reiterated through Anderson’s directing style. We then looked at Then we drew these scenes and placed them in a storyboard panel. We also were deliberate in our camera angles and essentially eliminate dimensions to give our scenes a very “flat look”.

These cinematography decisions echo Wes Anderson’s emphasis on aesthetic rather than the actual plot. Since Moonlight deals with a lot of important and heavy topics, changing the scenes to make it seem as if they are right out of a coloring book definitely in some ways dilutes the message. The overall design of his shots, including bright color palettes and fixed camera angles helps readers to disassociate from the societal context and instead pay close attention to the story unfolding between the main characters and everything that surrounds their situation. For instance, during the Grand Budapest, the audience was oftentimes too distracted by the bright colors and whimsical characters to remember a war being the backdrop. Even though the storyline was nothing spectacular or ground breaking, the attention to detail truly compensated for a somewhat lackluster plot. At the time of the creation of the  Grand Budapest, Wes Anderson utilized the advent of the anamorphic lenses to capture wide scenes within a single camera frame.

With Moonlight, we decided to use Wes Anderson’s style of directing to take the audience’s attention away from the harsh backdrop that is Chyron’s neighborhood, school, and home life, and instead focus the attention on the better parts of Chyron’s coming of age story. Through color and framing, we used our storyboard to communicate just that. In each panel, we drew pictures that involved vibrant colors and our desired camera angles. We drew a lot of wide/ medium shots, zoom, and made the backdrops pop with warm and cool colors. In terms of positioning characters, such as Kevin, Juan, or Chyron, we drew them face to face to highlight whatever intimacy they may have. Through these changes, we hope to help audiences remember the better and pure parts of “Moonlight” rather than just the harsh backdrop of Chyron’s life.

In class, we learned about two different movie test that judge based on  female inclusiveness and anti-gender biased ideals. The first test is called the Bechdel Test. This is a simple test that judges movies on the following three criteria: It has to have at least two women in it, the women have to talk to each other, and their conversation has to be about something besides a man. The second test is called the Mako Mori Test (named after Mako Mori from the movie, “Pacific Rim”.) This test judges movies on the following three criteria: There is at least one female character, this female character gets her own narrative arc, this arc must not support a man’s story.

The first movie I did these test on was “I, Tonya”. This movie is a biography of famous, olympic, ice skater, Tonya Harding. After watching the movie, I realized that this movie does pass the bechdel test. There are two women in the movie, Tonya Harding and her mother. They have multiple conversations with each other throughout the movie. Whenever the two talked, it was always about Ice Skating or how much they hate each other. They only talked about Tonya’s boyfriend once.

After reading the criteria for the Bechdel Test and Mako Mori Test, and analyzing them for things that could be added to improve the test, I have created my very own movie test that looks for gender and racial diversity. My test is called “The Joseph Test”, and it can be used to analyze any movie. The criteria for passing my test include: There must be at least two people of color who converse with one another and at least one of them must have their own story arc. There must be at least two women, of color or white, who converse with each other and at least one of them must have a story arc. The movie cannot be predominantly white male.

My test is actually difficult because a lot of movies wouldn’t pass my test. But, I can think of a few TV shows that would. In the upcoming Marvel TV series called “Cloak and Dagger”, the show’s lead characters are a black male and a white female. They will both have their own character arcs and the other supporting characters will mirror the diversity of the main characters. In turn, the show will not be predominantly white.

Intro

Hey ya’ll! I present to you my Advanced Essay #4. I’m actually really proud of this one. Before writing this essay, I used my free write space to get out all of my thoughts and potential ideas. I ended up with many topics/ideas, but I had to choose one. That’s when I decided to write about violence as consumerism. I chose to write about this because I can relate to it and it’s just very interesting to me. To understand why people buy into violence. To My goals for this paper were to open my readers’ eyes to the perspective of violence as consumerism, manage my time wisely, to not overwrite my essay, stop by the Lit Lab and include a great, larger idea.  I very happy to say that I accomplished all of my goals with no problem at all. If I had to do this again, I think I may build a little bit more on my larger idea. I hope this essay affects your perspective on violence. Enjoy!

Essay

When it comes to violence, there are two perspectives involved. The first perspective is of  those engaged in the violence. The second perspective is of those seeing the violence. Many people believe that focusing on those engaged in the violence is the most important thing when it comes to these sorts of situations. However, those seeing the violence is just as important. In today’s society, violence is ingrained in most of the things that we consume, such as movies, television, social media and, most strikingly, in video games. I can relate the most to the last one.

Growing up, I would see violence in TV shows, movies and games a lot. One time in 2011 or 2012, I went over to my best friend Tim’s house to hang out. When I walked into the house, I saw that he was playing his Play Station 2 as usual, but, today was different. He had a new game called “DC vs. Mortal Kombat.” I had never heard of it, so I sat on the couch next to Tim to see what was going on in the game. This game was so bloody, grotesque and brutal. It involved a one on one fighting game that only ended in death. I had never seen anything like it before that day. Any kind of violence I had seen before this game never involved blood and death, just kicking and punching. This game disturbed me, yet my eyes never left the television screen. After ten minutes into this game, I had become intrigued. It was at that point that I joined Tim in the game and then, days later, got the game myself.

As I had, many people have given into the sway of violent video games. Games such as, “Call of Duty”, “Mortal Kombat”, “Battle Field” and many more. The imagery that’s displayed in violent video games has a strange quality that draws many people into buying them. This is what the mixture of violence and consumerism looks like: People taking pleasure in involving themselves in violence. In a TED talk with Peter Mantello, he explained the phenomenon of violence and consumerism merging together in the video game world. He stated, “In the first person shooter game, the battle field transforms into a market place. And so the key prerequisites to capitalism, production and consumption, revolves around production (the killing of adversaries for cash-kill points) and consumption (the trading of cash-kill points for weapons and body armor). So the more you kill, the richer you become. The richer you become, the more weapons you can buy. The more weapons you can buy, the more powerful you can become.” This quote gives you the reason as to why people react this way to violent imagery in video games. Indulging in this violence makes them feel powerful. This makes sense too because, speaking from personal experience, when you shoot someone down, or take someone out with your immaculate fighting skills and/or powers, you feel on top of the world and unbeatable. It’s an oddly amazing feeling.

This is one of the things that capitalism comprises. It took violence and put a price tag on it. Capitalism understands the powerful feeling these violent games give people. So they continue to manufacture more of these games. We, as a society, continue to consume these games. Capitalism prospers while society gradually becomes more violent. The more society buys into violence, the more it's safe to say that violence is human nature. People have been trying to end violence for many decades, but the result is always the same: more violence.

Bibliography

"Consuming War: Peter Mantello at TEDx." The Vision Machine. Accessed March 20, 2017. http://thevisionmachine.com/2014/10/consuming-war-peter-mantello-at-ted/.

Introduction

I had a little bit of a hard time writing this paper. The topic of identity can be really hard to write about due to the fact that it’s so broad of a topic. But after a couple of days of thinking and sorting out my ideas, I finally was able to to come up with a question and a stable structure on how to answer my question. Overall, I’m proud of my work because I wasn’t too confident in this assignment when we first got it. But I think I met all the requirements. I hope you enjoy reading my thoughts.

Essay

What truly contributes to defining our identity?

Society is so consumed in the materialistic aspect of our world. Whether it’s worrying about how many followers/likes they have on Instagram, “needing” to wear the latest fashion, religiously watching the lives of our favorite celebrities, or concerning ourselves with how much money we have/want. We believe that these things make us better, more popular, or bring us happiness. But the problem with this is that all of these material things are only temporary. They only provide temporary happiness; we as a culture strive for things to be permanent because we aren’t satisfied with temporary. In a video called “Celebrities Speak Out On Fame and Materialism”, different celebrities discuss identity and happiness in the fame industry. During an interview with actress, Cameron Diaz, she  states, “If you are looking for fame to define you, then you will never be happy. You will always be searching for happiness.” In today’s society, fame is one of the top goals people would like to achieve. But when they get there it’s like, what else is there to do now that they have everything they could every want? Fame doesn’t bring happiness and define your identity because all the praise is going towards what the person is known for, rather than who they are beyond their talent. Fame is a perfect example of how martialism as a whole shouldn’t define you. The material thing can get uninteresting really quick and it can overshadow who you really are as a person.

Our culture focuses on materialism so much that we begin to slowly forget what truly defines who we are or want to become; and that’s us. Going back to the “Celebrities Speak Out On Fame and Materialism” video, actress/model Cara Delevingne touched on the topic of identity. She says, “The most important journey…..is the journey in ourselves. To find our truth, to find who we are and what makes us happy.” It’s important that people go on this journey because it will separate us from the material world and “force” us to focus on ourselves and what we want to become in  life. This sets up the stage for what should truly define one’s identity. Before one can reach the final destination in the journey of discovering who they are, they must make one pit stop. This pit stop will be most helpful in defining one’s identity. But depending on the person, it can be extensive.

This pit stop is called expanding your horizons. This consist of several other sub-pit stops, but we are going to only focus on a couple. Such as expanding your knowledge, surrounding yourself with the right people, traveling to new places, and taking risk. By expanding your knowledge, you could learn things that can change the way you think for the better.  This can be achieved by reading more books or learning from the experiences of others. Knowledge is power; the more you know, the better you become. By surrounding yourself with the right people, you open yourself to new opinions and ideas that could indeed shape your identity. These people should be uplifting and contribute positively to upbringing of your identity, rather than being negative and influencing you to become someone that you don’t want to be.

This world is so vast and has so much to offer. By traveling to new places, you can start the process of figuring out the role you want to play in the world. Traveling doesn't just mean going to another continent or even across the country; you could also stay close to home and just travel to a part of your city(or state) that’s new to you. Your identity is shaped by your environment; by traveling to new places, you learn about what you can take away from the environment and if you are affected positively or negatively by it. By taking risk in life, you open yourself to endless possibilities that can shape your identity. If you stay in “the safety zone” of life by sticking to what you already know and have done in life, then you won’t become worse or better; you would just stay as you are. But if you take a step into “the risky zone” of life by experiencing new and different things, you may discover things that you never thought you would like, but do. You may also discover things that you never thought you could do, but can. Taking risk can be two sided, you could improve as a person or worsen, but you’ll never know if you don’t try.

The larger idea here is that our identity is defined by the world. Maybe not all of it, but certain aspects of it like culture, religion, politics, or even materialism. By expanding your horizons, you’re opening yourself up to all of the world. Experiencing all it has to offer and seeing what works for you and what doesn’t. No matter what people say defines their identity, all of their ideas are a product of their experience living in the world.

Citations:

"Celebrities Speak Out On Fame & Materialism." YouTube. Ed. Elina St-Onge. "Think For Yourself", 04 Mar. 2016. Web. 15 Jan. 2017.       <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYDKCx4hSQQ>

This is a video, but you didn't list the format we should have for videos on the MLA Style guide. So i just used the website format.

Introduction

Writing this essay has affected me in a positive way as a writer. I feel as though my writing  became better and my vision for literature had been expanded. My goal for this essay was to change the way people think what it means to be educated in literacy. I’m very proud of this essay, I think it was very well written. I’m also proud of myself for finding a larger idea to touch on in this essay. In my last essay, I didn’t really accomplish this. To improve myself as a writer, I think I should remember to not write too many unecessary words. I tcan end to write extrenuiously. Overall, I’m proud of my work and I hope you will be too.

Essay

During the good ole days of my adolescence, probably 14 or 13 years old, I was watching TV and came across a show called, “Parks and Recreation”. It was my first time watching the show, and I just jumped into the random episode that was on. I didn’t know anything about the characters, so I had to “read” them to sort of understand what they were about. For example, one of the characters on the show, named April, has very dark and I-don’t-care-about-anything attitude about her. I learned this from intensely “reading” the way she spoke, acted and carried herself. Another example from the show is a character named Leslie. After “reading” the details of the way she talked, acted and did things, I understood that this character is someone who is constantly determined to get things done, wants everyone to be happy and can be way over the top at times.

I see this moment in my life as a form literacy. As you may know, literacy is a form of education. While watching “Parks and Recreation” for the first time, I was educating myself on who the characters were by “reading” them. Most people would say that I’m not educating myself; they’d say that I’m doing nothing more than watching non educational TV. But they are wrong. By “reading” these characters, I’m educating myself on who they are and what they’re about. There is more to education than just school curriculum.

In the Apartheid of Children’s Literature, Christopher Meyers finds out how old a child is just by examining his features: "I’m talking with a boy. He’s at that age when the edges of the man he will become are just starting to press against his baby-round face." Although Meyers doesn’t state the actual age of the child, his description of him entails that he is at a maturing age such as 12 or 13. In this quote, Meyers demonstrates the exact same thing that I performed when I first watched “Parks and Recreation”. In order to better understand who this little boy was, Meyers educated himself by “reading” the boy. Literacy has many forms, and being able to read people is one of those forms. This would classify as cultural literacy because culture symbolizes identity, and identity is what I was looking for when educating myself on the characters of “Parks and Recreation”.

Knowing how to “read” people, and or situations, is a great way to educate one’s self; especially if you don’t know how to read. In today’s society, high officials set the standard that being literate means just knowing how to read words. If you can’t read words, then you would be considered slow minded and unable to be educated. The fact that this is happening is unacceptable, especially when it comes to race. They are basically making them dumb by ignoring the intelligence they already possess. Just because a person isn’t literate in one way, doesn't mean they aren’t literate in another. Like I mentioned before, literacy has many forms. When Sherman Alexie was just a young, Indian boy in his story, Superman and Me, he was unable to read the words in the Superman comic book that he had. But, that doesn’t mean he was unable to read the story: “In one panel, Superman breaks through a door. His suit is red, blue and yellow. The brown door shatters into many pieces. I look at the narrative above the picture. I cannot read the words, but I assume it tells me that ‘Superman is breaking down the door.’ Aloud, I pretend to read the words and say, ‘Superman is breaking  down that door.’” (Pg 12-13) This quote emphasizes my idea that there is more to education than schooling because Sherman reads the comic book without reading the words. By “reading” the actions and situations in the comic book, Sherman then taught himself how to read. Looks like people who don’t know how to read words aren’t so slow minded as some people assume they are.

In fact it was from this point, of educating  himself on how to read, that Sherman was on the path to a bright future. Near the end of Superman and Me, Sherman grew up to become a very successful and well rounded adult: “Despite all the books I read, I am still surprised  I became a writer. I was going to be a pediatrician. These days I write novels, short stories and poems. I visit schools and teach creative writing to Indian kids.” (Pg 14)  This quote doesn’t really exemplify my claim, but it does support it. The quote points out that other forms of education, such as “reading” the world, can lead you to success just as much as schooling education.

The fact that Sherman grew up to be such a successful writer is a major feat, especially since he taught himself how to read. Like Sherman, not many minority youth are given the opportunity to get educated in literacy. So they would either learn about it in another way or not learn it at all. The high officials of today’s society, who are pre-dominantly white, set the standard as to what literacy is and who can be educated in it. When these high officials see minorities who don’t know how to read or write, they write them off immediately or give them very low quality education on literacy. Back in 2014 in an essay called The Apartheid of Children’s Literature, a man named Christopher Meyers saw the potential for greatness in young minorities, particularly black ones. He decided to educate them on a consistent issue with children’s book that is still a little relevant today. This exchange is between Meyers and a young, black boy: “‘So you’re telling me these are all the books published last year for kids?’ they ask me. ‘That’s a lot of books. That’s more books than I could read in a year.’

‘Yep, it’s a few thousand.’

‘And in all of those thousands of books, I’m just not in them?’

‘Well...um...yes.’

‘Are there books about talking animals?’

‘Oh, sure.’

‘And crazy magical futures?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘And superpowers? And the olden days when people dressed funny? And all the combinations of those things? Like talking animals with superpowers in magical futures ... but no me?’

‘No you.’

‘Why?’

‘ Because you’re brown.’”

Meyers educated this child, and most likely others, on this topic by having them “read” over the world of children’s literacy. This agrees with my idea that there is more to education than just schooling because these black kids were educated on an issue that most schools wouldn't even touch on. These kids were being taught how to be aware of the diversity issues going on in the world of children's literature.

In conclusion, the education of literacy is very diverse topic. In this essay, I focused on the literacy of “reading” people and situations; which would fall in the category of cultural literacy. Most people would say that this type of literacy is not needed or unimportant, but I beg to differ. By being able to “read” people and or situations, you acquire a skill set that is very much used in politics. Which is “reading” issues/ situations and coming with ways to improve or fix the situations. So we, as a society, need to reevaluate how we view education. Because we could just be dismissing our future politicians and presidents.

Bibliography

Meyers, Christopher. "The Apartheid of Children’s Literature." New York Times. N.p., 15 Mar. 2014. Web. <The Apartheid of Children’s Literature>

Alexie, Sherman. "Superman and Me." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 19 Apr. 1998. Web. 30 Oct. 2016. <http://articles.latimes.com/1998/apr/19/books/bk-42979>.

¡SLA es Súper Agudo!

¡Hola! Somos Asher Swartz, Tajnia Hussain, y Joseph Lee, y somos en noveno grado. Somos estudiantes de Science Leadership Academy, o SLA. SLA es una Filadelfia imán escuela. Está en centro ciudad Filadelfia, 55 Norte 22 Calle. Está cerca de Arch Street Gourmet, Trader Joe’s, y 7-Eleven. ¡Comida! SLA es muy divertidos, y un poco extraño. Hay muchos estudiantes cómicos. ¡Es súper genial! Hay aproximadamente 500 estudiantes en la escuela, casi 120 por clase. Tenemos cinco pisos, y muchos profesores. Tenemos deportes diferentes, corremos en las carreras, leemos y escribimos poesía, cantamos canciones y bailamos bailes, y dibujamos arte. Tenemos también tocamos instrumentos, trabajamos en proyectos, estudiamos para pruebas, y comemos durante el almuerzo. ¡Tenemos buenos niños y niñas equipos fútbol y equipo de debate (bastante bueno equipo de debate), y muchos más maravillosos equipos y clubes! ¡Asher participa en Ultimate Frisbee porque es tremendamente divertidos! ¡Tenemos un gran escuela!

Hay clases bioquimica, historia, inglés, español, álgebra, tecnología, teatro y ingegneria en noveno grado. Mis clases favoritas inglés y bioquímica. Inglés es muy divertida y entretenido y un poco difícil. Nosotros hacemos trabajamos y escribimos. Señor Kay enseña muy bien y es tranquilo y chévere. Necesitamos la computadora y libros. Leemos libros tal como Odyssey, y opciones libros. Para tener éxito en esta clase debemos escuchar y prestar atención durante las
discusiones. Bioquímica es bastante, interesante y fácil. Señorita Dunda es sociable y fantástica enseña. Necesitamos cuaderno para labs y bata de laboratorio. Experimentamos y tomar apuntes. Es requerido y importante a colaborar y hacer preguntas. También a responsable en puntualidad y estar preparada.

La Srta Manuel enseña español. Es bastante tranquila, boba, y baja. Su clase es divertido, interesante, y muy energético. En la clase hablamos español, cantamos en español, jugamos juegos, y tomamos apuntes. También tenemos súper divertido competiciones de clase. Los estudiantes son qué chévere y responsable. Muy diverso. Nosotros somos una mezla de razas.

Joseph

Intro:

Los Seres Queridos En Mi Vida

Yo:

Me nombre es Joseph, tengo los ojos cafés y el pelo café. Quiero ser un veterinario. Soy muy inteligente.

Él:

Él es son mi mejor amigo, Tim. Tiene los ojos cafés y el pelo negro. Tiene quince años. Es de Filadelfia pero vive en California. Es muy comico y súper loco y muy talentoso.

Ella:

Ella es mi prima, Sfen. Tiene los ojos cafés y el pelo café. Le gusta la banda All Time Low y la banda Panic At The Disco y le gusta anime. Asiste a Freire Charter School.

Ell@s:

Él es mi perro, Duke. Tiene los ojos azul y el pelo cafés y blanco. ¡Es un amor de gente! Ella es mi gato Amanda. Tiene los ojos verde y el pelo negro, blanco, y café. La quiero mucho. Les encantas las personas. Son un poco molesto y son (casi)siempre simpático.

Nosotros:

Ellos son mi familia. Tenemos los ojos cafés y pelos cafés, pero mi Padre no tiene pelo. Nos gusta ir al cine y escuchar musica. El nombre de mi padre es Joseph, el nombre de mi madre es Regina, y el nombre de mi hermano  es Caleb.

Fin: