World News

According to a news article, Hector Beltran Leyva, a famous "drug lord" has been captured and arrested. He was in San Miguel de Allende, north-west of Mexico City, and had been living in the nearby city of Queretaro posing as a businessman dealing in art and real estate, according to the government. The Beltran Leyva gang has had a reputation as one of the most ruthless in the business.

Hector Beltran Leyva: gang known for its ruthlessness. Picture: AP Photo

My personal opinion on this issue is that I am happy that he was finally caught. Drug gangs are powerful, and being as ruthless as this one was, it could harm a lot of people. According to the article, they were planning a "bloody turf war" against against former ally Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman. These people have hurt multiples and would hurt more in the future, so I am happy that they caught him.

People should care about this because this gang and the leader could of hurt many people, and they could also bring other people down with them. People should care because these are real people that have done bad things and deserve to be thrown in jail, the people that caught him deserve recognition.

Lessons Learned

While we continue on our news story in GT, our team comes across some interesting things. For me, I thought the most interesting thing was seeing how the plant worked and seeing the workers use tools and planks of wood to keep building upon the plant to make it better. I also saw, when we were driving into the biomass plant area, we saw the colorful albizia trees that they use to burn. The albizia trees have bark in different colors which make them extremely pretty, but due to being an invasive plant and damaging the native ecosystems, they use that tree to fuel the plant.

I think our biggest roadblock in our project was making sure we met all the deadlines for Mr. Sandrel. We had to transcribe three huge interviews in a short amount of time.


I think the most important and valuable part of filmmaking is working together, if you don't work with your team, you can't get anything done. Working with your team well can push you to the next level. For example: my team and I have to have a lot of communication so we can finish our project on time. We have to plan where to go and how we're getting there.

HikiNo Behind the Scenes

For a project in my GT class, we got to chose between doing a profile story or a news story. My partners and I are doing a news story on a new biomass plant in Koloa. We are covering where it is, what its doing, and how everything works. The biomass plant uses alternative energy by using invasive trees that take over land and choke out native plats. Using these trees benefits the island in two ways: 

1. They take away invasive plants that can harm other native plants, also the unwanted trees can fall on to the highway and cause unnecessary destruction and inconvenience.
2. By taking away and using those invasive plants, they create energy for the island.

When the camera isn't rolling me and the rest of my team are working too find interviews, plan B-Roll, and tie up any loose ends that we encounter. Our minimum requirement for this project is three well done, transcribed, interviews. We also need great B-Roll to put in over the interviews to make them a bit more interesting. B-Roll that we use gives the story a more familiar feeling, as if the viewer has actually seen the biomass plant.

One thing I can do to help my team out is to plan interviews continually like I've been doing. Interviews in a news story is everything for us, they give us information, they make us more comfortable by being able to see a real person with their lives impacted by certain stories that interest the public. I email, plan, and set up interviews with important people that relate to our story. Then, we all go interview the subject and work together to make it perfect.

The Experiment

In my first period GT class, we did an assignment called The Experiment. The concept of this project was to give people without experience, or even with experience, a chance to explore photoshop and figure out how to work with it. They can see how things work and what we can use later in the school year. Mr. Sanderl basically said "Make something, without any of my help." And so thats what we did.

One of the things that was really fun is using the new tools and making something that looks really awesome. I improved on my contour skills and also I got more used to using photoshop on my own. I guess the only thing that was difficult is figuring out what to do when something went wrong, because like I said before, we weren't supposed to have Mr. Sanderl's help.

Here are the two things I made:

Levi

Destiel

Back To School

Well I'm back to school in eighth grade. Heres a little about what I like so far, one of my favorite moments I've had is meeting all my new teachers and realizing "Wow, I have awesome teachers this year." I feel like with great teachers I'll be able to learn a lot more this year, I think I'll improve on my weaker subjects like math or english because I see these teachers teach in a way that is easier for me to understand.

I guess if you hear the great parts about school you'd like to hear about the challenges of eighth grade. Like I said earlier, one of my biggest weak points in school is math. Last year I didn't really understand and ended up getting a C in math. This year I can tell it will be difficult because of all the complicated problems we are already doing. Hopefully I'll be able to overcome my struggle with math and pass with an A.

This year I will be successful by paying attention in class, studying with my friends and having them explain what I don't understand. I'll keep trying my hardest in my most difficult classes. I will be successful because I have confidence that I can pass with understanding in all of my classes.

(Raf and I being FABULOUSSS)

Words Of Wisdom

In my Gt class, we did a project called Words Of Wisdom. For this project we had to interview someone that we thought was wise. We also had to film lots of B-Roll to match the interview. We completed this by filming our interview and B-Roll on time. Then, we worked together to edit, and make the final touches. Sophia and Chazz, and I worked to the extreme in a high stress environment, just like what would happen at a professionals video workplace.

Glenna Foster

For our interview, we interviewed Chazz's grandmother, Glenna. She talked about how important it is to have fun, while still working hard. We thought this was important because sometimes people are stressed to the point of breaking down, so we think its important for people to know that you can still have fun while you're working.

Five Tips For

Our teams topic for our Five Tips project was "Five Tips For Reading a Book". We did this project earlier in the year so we could look back on it. We picked this topic because, Erin and Mikela, my two partners, also love books as much as I do. We spend our free time reading books, so we informed other people about our reading techniques. A lot of things could of been better in this video, for one example, we could of have practiced the voice over more, to have it sound natural. We also could of had more interesting angles and composition techniques. Compared to what we are doing in this quarter, this was horrible. but, it could be worse.
For another example, Erin's head is cut off and the background is distracting in the screen shot below.