The Making of Our Video of the Poem, We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks

When we first were given this assignment, I was genuinely excited because I love making iMovies and taking pictures. I did not realize the level of difficulty this project was going to entail. This multimedia project was enjoyable but it was also stressful and difficult. When we were given the list of poems I started to analyze them and search for the one I would want to use to explain a cultural problem.

The first time I read, We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks, I immediately thought of gang violence and my head started to fill with ideas that my group and I could use for our project and how we could portray the problem of gang violence through a medium of media.

I quickly rememberedthat at that point in time I was not yet in a group and I would have to go with the poem that the group as a wholechose. We were not put into a group for a couple of days after that but I could not stop thinking about this poem.

Then the day came where we were put into groups and I was nervous because I did not want to have a group where none of the members got along and did not work well together. Also, I was worried that my group members were not going to want to do, We Real Cool. We got in our groups, I was paired with Brandon and Katy, I was happy with who I got paired with and I thought that we were all going to get along and have a really successful project.

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After being paired together we started to go through the poems and choose which ones we would want to create the project on, I did not say anything about, We Real Cool, because I wanted to see if anyone else had any good ideas about other poems. Than Brandon read, We Real Cool, and was like we could use this poem and portray how gang violence is a problem in our culture. I was so delighted when we choose to do the poem, We Real Cool.

After we chose the poem, we had to start actually planning everything out and what we were going to do for the project. This was one of the hardest parts because we had to figure out what was the best way to portray our message. We thought of all the mediums of media we could use and we thought that a video would be the best because we could actually show the gang and how they influence people and use their violence towards others. At first, we were not sure what our story was going to be.

We thought of getting people to portray a gang and have them act out a story but than we thought that would be to difficult to get enough people to help and to figure out times with everyone with everyone’s busy schedule. We collaborated to create a story about a boy, Robert, who had no friends, strict parents, and was a good student in school who would become friends with gang members and die just to be apart of this “family”. Now that we had our story we had to figure out how to make it and how to act it out. We were able create scenes to get our message across and produce ourstoryboard which was presented to the class.

Once the story was created we started to work on creating the video. We still were not sure on what to use for characters but Brandon was able to find action figures from his house that we were able to use in our video. They had a rough and tough look to them and had been known as being violent in their TV show. Once we figured out our characters we came up with the idea to do a stock motion video using a green screen and add the backgrounds in iMovie. Brandon was able to get a green poster board from Wal-Mart that we could use as the green screen. We rented a camera from the library and also used my camera to take the pictures.

Once we got all our materials together we started to take pictures and began putting them on the computer to see how it would turn out. I was surprised when it actually looked good all together on the computer because none of us had ever done anything like this before. Brandon and I took the pictures and after each scene we would put them on Katy’s computer. But then she told us she would be gone all weekend and so then we transferred them onto my computer. It did not take long to get all the pictures we needed for each scene.

At times, we would get them on the computer and look through them and realize that they did not look good and so we had to go back and retake some scenes. After we took all the pictures I started to go through them and piece the video together.

The hardest part was putting the actually video together, putting the backgrounds in, and making sure that the music fit the mood of the video. We were able use a song that was made on GarageBand that worked well with the video. I had to go through all the pictures and pick the best ones and put them together to where it made sense and flowed. This took a long time because we had taken so many pictures and I had to go through all of them one by one and I had to keep going back and forth to see if it made sense and that all the motion was correct.

I finally got all the pictures in the right order, I had the beginning completed, the transitions were created, and the music inserted. The only thing left was the backgrounds. I started to try to put the backgrounds in but they were not working, the only thing that was coming up was the background I was trying to insert for each picture. After I tried everything to make the backgrounds work, I realized that you had to put the backgrounds in first and then add the pictures. But I had already created the whole video and had everything the way it was suppose to be. This upset me so much because after spending so many hours of putting the video together and making it perfect I had to go back and redo it.

So I had to publish the video I first made and than create a whole new video where I put the background in first and then add the video I had first created on top it. That was hard because I had to make sure that the video clips worked and were in the right places and cut to the right scenes. I also had to make sure that the backgrounds worked and looked good and that everything flowed again.

Once I got all the backgrounds finally how they should be, the only things I had left to do was redo the music, make the scene where the Robert was killed, and then add the part with the news articles that Katy put together. Finally, we had everything completed. We showed you to make sure that we had everything and that we did not need anything else, you told us a few things that we needed to fix and work on to improve the video. So we added the explanation of Robert in the beginning and made the gunshots interrupt the music. These changes helped to make our video better and more understandable. Thank you for your time, help, and suggestions to make our video the best it can be.

When Brandon, Katy, and I were first put in a group I thought that we were going to work well with each other and make a good group. We got along as a group and we did not have really any problems other than at times Brandon and I would talk about ideas and Katy would get an attitude or put down our ideas. At other times she would not understand what we were trying to say and then not try to understand what we were saying. She also had a really bad attitude about everything and she never really seemed to care about the project and how we did on it.

I do not understand why she wore what she did on the day of the presentation or why she did not stay to hear how we did on the presentation but it showed how she did not care about all the work that Brandon and I had put into this video. A lot of the times Brandon and I would be the only two to meet and work on the project. She never really helped to do anything to the actual video. The only thing that Katy contributed to the video was the news article at the end and than the statistics, which I added, all she did was find them and put them on the black screen. I wanted to have more statistics and she told me that she had a lot of statistics but then only sent me two for the video.

She then was not even able to defend the statistics when she was the only one in charge on that. She did not cite them at first and Brandon and I had to go back and cite a lot of them. Brandon got all the materials together and helped take pictures and helped as much as he could but since it was on my computer I did a lot of the editing and putting the video together. I took the pictures, put them on my computer, and than put them together and added all the effects and other details that needed to go into the video. The video took a long time to create and a lot of effort was put into it. But in the end it turned out really well and I am proud of the work that we created.